Showdown at the Ikedaya Inn: Samurai Secret Police
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Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us, the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it. Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network, and as always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell. Welcome to Episode 14, Showdown at the Ikedaya Inn.

When the sun rose over the city of Kyoto, Japan on June 5th, 1864, a man named Kotaka Shuntaro had been hanging by his feet for hours. He was still alive.

barely. His back had been shredded by whips, his limbs had been beaten till they were purple, his breathing was ragged and strained. And all of this torture was part of a pitiless interrogation that had lasted for almost eight hours. And all Kotaka had to do to make it stop was give his captors the information they wanted. His silence, they assured him, was slowly killing him.

Throughout the night, they had asked him lots of questions, over and over again. But Kotaka wouldn't say a word. According to an eyewitness, the prisoner, quote, closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and passed out. But he would not open his mouth.

End quote. Eight hours earlier, Kotaka had been asleep in his bed. He owned a small shop in the mercantile district of Kyoto, and he was exhausted after a long day of running the store. But in the middle of the night, he was woken by a noise, the sound of someone walking up the steps to his bedroom. Before he could even get up, the door to his room slid open, and Kotaka saw several silhouettes step into the cramped room.

He could see that all of these men were heavily armed. They each wore two swords on their hip, a long one and a short one. And Kotaka knew what that meant. That meant that these men were samurai. But why were they at his house in the middle of the night? Well, it became painfully clear when one of the swordsmen spoke out of the gloom, quote,

By the authority of the protector of Kyoto, you are under arrest for conspiring to overthrow the government. Kotaka's stomach dropped. They must know everything, he thought. And sure enough, these midnight visitors knew a lot about Kotaka. The humble shopkeeper was not just any old shopkeeper. In fact, he was a key conspirator in an imminent act of domestic terrorism.

The evidence of his guilt had been found by these midnight visitors in a secret compartment in the walls of his shop. They found a huge cache of guns, powder, and ammunition. An entire arsenal. This evidence was damning enough, but something else was found in the walls of Kotaka's shop. A small written document. A terrorist manifesto that spelled out in no uncertain terms what was about to happen in the sleepy city of Kyoto.

The terrorists, whoever they were, were planning to take aim at the highest authority in the country, none other than the Emperor of Japan, who lived in his opulent palace at the center of the city. The plan was ruthless and simple. The conspirators would assassinate a number of key city administrators, kidnap the emperor, and start a fire that would burn the city to the ground.

As Kotaka hung upside down from the rafters at a black site somewhere in Kyoto, he was determined not to give up his compatriots. No matter what his captors did to him, he would not talk.

If he could just keep his mouth shut, then the plan might still have a chance of success. His captors knew the broad details of the plot, but they didn't know when, or who, or how. If Kotaka could just endure the excruciating pain and stay silent for a little bit longer, then within 24 hours Kyoto would be a pile of ash, and the Emperor himself would be on a ship, bound for the southern reaches of Japan.

Far away from these brutal samurai who were taking the skin off Kotaka's back piece by piece. On June 5th, 1864, the clock was ticking.

It was a clock that had started ticking almost a decade earlier, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, in Norfolk, Virginia, of all places. On the chilly morning of November 24, 1852, four ships steamed out of Norfolk Harbor. Their commander was a senior naval officer named Matthew Perry.

Commodore Matthew Perry As the Commodore strode the deck of his flagship that morning, his thoughts must have been constantly circling back to the letter he had locked away in his quarters. It was a letter signed and sealed by the President of the United States himself, Millard Fillmore.

Commodore Perry had been tasked with taking that letter and his four ships thousands of miles to the west, across the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean to a mountainous island chain off the coast of mainland Asia, to Japan. At this time, in the mid-19th century, the world was rapidly changing.

Widespread industrialization and meteoric technological advances had catapulted the seafaring capabilities of Western nations into the stratosphere. Ships could go farther, faster, and with greater confidence.

As a result, the map was shrinking extremely fast. Imperialism was in full swing and everyone, from Great Britain to Russia to Belgium, wanted their slice of the pie. Places like Africa and India and China were money trees just waiting to be harvested. The

The trade opportunities and resource deposits in these exotic locales were almost limitless. This was a game of hungry, hungry hippos on a global scale, and you had to act fast if you wanted to walk away with a prize. And few nations were hungrier to carve out some of this prosperity than the United States of America. By this point, the notion of manifest destiny had really taken hold in the national consciousness.

Expand, expand, expand. And after conquering the American West, if not fully taming it, the U.S. began looking beyond the golden shores of California in a desire to project its power and influence into East Asia. In preparation for his mission, Commodore Matthew Perry had read as many books about Japan as he could get his hands on.

But honestly, there wasn't much available. There were a few thin translations from old Dutch sources, scattered accounts from traders and Jesuit missionaries, but to the Western world, Japan was still more or less a complete mystery. And Commodore Matthew Perry was determined to unravel it.

Truth be told, Perry had not wanted this assignment at all. He'd been promised a cushy gig pursuing U.S. interests in the Mediterranean. He'd pictured himself getting a bronze tan and sipping strong wine on the sunny shores of old Europe. As he complained, quote, "...I confess that it will, to me, be a serious disappointment and cause of personal inconvenience not to go to the Mediterranean as I was led to believe."

Instead, he was being sent to a cold, rainy, jagged island chain on the edge of the map. But Perry was an optimist, if nothing else, and there had to be some glory buried in this unglamorous assignment.

Commodore Perry and his men would have been more than a little apprehensive as their ships steamed across the Pacific, closer and closer to Japan. The last time a foreign power had tried to strong-arm its way into Japan, it had been soundly repelled. The Mongol Empire had tried, and failed, twice to conquer the Japanese home islands. Even Kublai Khan himself could not manage to bend this scrappy archipelago to his will.

But Commodore Perry knew that there was more than one way to skin a cat. He had at his disposal the awesome power and resources of the burgeoning American Empire and a mandate from the president himself to use those resources. This was a nut that could be cracked, had to be cracked. But what were Commodore Perry and his men walking into? What was Japan like in the year 1853?

Well, the truth was Japan in 1853 was not all that different from Japan had been in 1653. For 250 years, Japan had been closed off from the rest of the world. After centuries of destructive civil war and cyclical violence, the country had finally been united under a single powerful warlord called the Shogun. That title, Shogun, essentially just means Generalissimo or Commander-in-Chief.

And after uniting Japan under a single government, the Shogun and his descendants made the decision to cut Japan off from the outside world.

No one in and no one out. Now in modern times, especially in the West, we take the basic concept of international travel completely for granted. We can leave our home country, go to others, come back, go to a different one. Well, that was not possible in pre-modern Japan. In fact, it was explicitly forbidden by law. There were no passports, no visas. If you left Japan, you would not be allowed back in.

In fact, if you were foolish enough to actually return after leaving the country, you would likely be put to death. And this extended to a domestic travel ban as well for the lower classes. If you so much as left the province where you were born, you could be severely punished.

But the main purpose of all these restrictions was that the Shogun didn't want outsiders coming into Japan. European ships were banned from all but one harbor. In fact, foreign vessels could be attacked and sunk on site with zero repercussions. This was known as the Don't Think Twice Decree. The Shogunate, the military government, did not want outside ideas, thoughts, or religions polluting the people.

the peaceful society that they had worked so hard to cultivate. As the Shogun decreed, quote, End quote.

No one in, no one out. All of this led to a societal and technological stagnation. It was like time itself had been frozen in Japan. And for 250 years, the Japanese lived, worked, died, and governed much as they had in the year 1600. As historian Marius B. Janssen wrote, Japan was, quote, a cocoon, seldom penetrated from without, end quote.

But the American ships that entered Japanese waters on July 8th, 1853 were not the kind that could be casually driven away. They were unlike any vessels the Japanese had ever seen. These ships were huge, six times the size of anything that existed in the eastern hemisphere. They were plated in black iron. They belched clouds of smoke and steam. They were bristling with cannons and guns that could rain down destruction from a mile away.

When he saw these things, the Japanese harbormaster noted with alarm, quote, They can move about freely without the use of sail or oar and can come and go with great speed. They are just like floating castles, which can move about as they please. End quote. After six months, Commodore Perry had arrived at his destination. As a Japanese official remembered bitterly years later, quote,

When the American barbarians arrived, although they knew that it was prohibited by law, they came into the harbor, gave us white flags as a symbol of peace, presented their letter, and then proceeded further into the bay. They fired blank shots from their cannons and even took soundings as they wished. Their arrogant insult was truly the worst humiliation in the history of our country. They continued to violate our laws and moved further into the bay close to the castle.

threatening us and making demands upon us. End quote. As historian Romulus Hillsborough writes, quote, For the first time in history, foreign warships threatened the shogun's capital.

End quote. After this show of force, Commodore Perry and his men splashed ashore and presented Millard Fillmore's letter to the hastily assembled Japanese delegation. It said that the president hoped, quote, that the United States and Japan should live in friendship and have commercial intercourse with each other. End quote. But the truth was, this was not a request. And the Japanese knew it. They had heard of what had happened to China,

when Europe came calling at their ports. How Great Britain, France, Russia, and others had kicked down the door to that ancient country. How the Chinese had been forced to sign unfair trade deals and exploitive treaties. How opium had flooded the country and ruined millions of lives. One Japanese politician remarked at the time, quote, "...it is deplorable to think that the refined culture of China might be transformed into a filthy European world."

End quote. The Japanese knew all too well what they were in for if the Americans were allowed to enter the country. As one lord prophesied, quote, The foreign barbarians will propagate Christianity to trick the people of our sacred land. They will conduct trade with us, pillaging our wealth, impoverishing our people, and finally taking our country through military force. End quote.

As news spread throughout Japan about this swaggering American sailor and his black ships, as they were called, all eyes turned to Japan's military leader, the Shogun, to defend the country. If anyone could throw these arrogant imperialists back into the sea, it was the most powerful warlord in the land, right? Well, the Shogun, to put it politely, was not up to the task.

Since the country had been united 250 years before, 13 men had held the mantle of Shogun. What began as a title that had to be earned through strength, intelligence, and political cunning evolved into a toothless hereditary position. Shoguns were born, not made, appointed to the position based purely on their genealogy, regardless of merit or competence.

Now, anyone who's studied the general trend of hereditary monarchies knows that this is a foolproof recipe for weak, ineffectual leaders. And the shogun who found himself facing the arrival of the Americans was no exception. As Romulus Hillsborough describes in his book Samurai Revolution, the shogun was, quote,

sickly, suffering a speech impediment and was unable to sit upright for extended periods of time. After about 30 minutes, his body would tremble and he would become prone to convulsions. He was introverted, had no interest in women, and shied away from all but his closest relatives and attendants. One writer reports that the supreme leader of Japan's military government was unable to stand up on his own to urinate.

End quote. But even for a strong, competent leader, the looming political choice would have been an agonizing one. Romulus Hillsborough goes on, quote, "...the shogunate found itself faced with the greatest dilemma in its history. Yielding to the American demands for a treaty would make Japan seem weak, which in turn might invite foreign aggression. But rejection might incite war, which the shogunate had no hope of winning."

The people of Japan became deeply polarized on the issue of how to respond to these foreign visitors, and there were two factions that emerged with two slogans, expel the barbarians on one side and open the country on the other.

The Hawks and the Doves The Hawk argument was pretty simple. One prominent samurai lord said at the time, quote, "...if we put our trust in war, the whole country's morale will be increased, and even if we sustain an initial defeat, we will, in the end, expel the foreigners. While if we put our trust in peace, even though things may seem tranquil for a time, the morale of the country will be greatly lowered, and we will come, in the end, to complete collapse."

End quote. In a nutshell, if we let these outsiders in, they will bleed us dry. They will infiltrate our country and take advantage of us. And we all know what happened to China, we know what happened to India, and we cannot allow ourselves to become a territory of some Western power to be abused and exploited. We have to fight back. We have to at least try, even if it ends in defeat.

The consequences of opening the country, it was believed, would be cultural devastation. As one diplomat urged, quote, "...there are, moreover, many curiosities and concoctions from abroad that dazzle the eyes and entice our people to glorify foreign ways."

End quote.

The other side of the debate, the open the country crowd, argued that resistance would be futile and ultimately disastrous. As one politician said, quote, It is impossible in this crisis we now face to ensure the safety and tranquility of our country merely by an insistence on the seclusion laws as we did in former times. End quote. Basically, there was no getting the toothpaste back in the tube now. The world had changed.

The fragile cocoon of isolation that the Shoguns had carefully cultivated for two and a half centuries was officially punctured. Japan had to adapt or die. The open the country faction argued, look guys, we don't want to make a deal with the Americans any more than you do, but we do not have the means to fight back. We're not strong enough to resist their technology and their firepower. We have bows and swords. They have guns and cannons.

But, if we can bide our time and learn how to use their technology and modernize, eventually we can fight back. As one prominent samurai lord said, quote, End quote. Many agreed with this pragmatic approach, arguing, quote,

End quote. The debate raged back and forth for months. But eventually the shogun reached a decision. One Japanese politician remembered years later, quote,

At that time, the shogunate decided to open the country and gradually did so. There were many people, including feudal lords, who resented this. They said that the shogunate was forced by the barbarians to open the country because of its cowardice and weakness and that this was why the shogunate submitted to this humiliation. They no longer believed in the shogun and there was heated argument everywhere. End quote.

On July 29th, 1858, a trade deal was signed with America. After that, it was open season. Trade deals were signed with Great Britain, then France, and then Russia, and the dominoes fell rapidly. And in a matter of months, foreigners were flooding into Japan, bringing with them new languages, new fashions, new weapons, and new ideas. The hawks were horrified.

Two centuries of carefully cultivated isolation overturned almost overnight. But they were not going to go down without a fight. With the advent of this humiliating treaty, the seeds had been planted for a fanatical nationalist insurgency. A wave of coordinated domestic terrorism that would sooner see Japan burn to the ground than submit to outside influences. The ink on the treaties may have been dry, but the blood dried.

was just beginning to flow.

On March 3, 1860, two years after the shogunate had signed its extremely controversial trade deal with the United States, it was snowing in the capital city of Edo. Someone who was there that day remembered, "...the snowflakes fell so thickly that objects only a few yards away could not be distinctly seen."

As the spring snows covered the rooftops, a very important man was making his way through the city streets, surrounded by an entourage of 60 armed guards. This man was the shogun's regent, a guy named I. Neosuke. Now don't worry, you do not need to remember that, that will not be on the test. Basically, all you need to know is that second only to the shogun, this man was the most powerful politician in Japan.

If you were looking for the man in charge, this was the guy. In fact, Neosuke had personally negotiated, drafted, and signed the treaty with the United States. And on this day, a crowd had gathered to watch his procession as it moved through the capital. Merchants and street vendors sold hot tea and sake in the cold as the famous politician rode past. But mingling amongst the crowd,

Blending in with the ordinary merchants and townspeople were 18 ronin, or rogue samurai, and they were disguised as ordinary peasants wearing wide-brimmed hats and red lacquered raincoats. But under those red raincoats, each of them carried a weapon, razor-sharp swords intended for a very specific purpose. Earlier that day, all 18 of these ronin had signed their names to a written document,

A pledge. Because they wanted all of Japan to understand their reasons for what they were about to do. Like many throughout the country, they were angry that this man, the Shogun's regent, had allowed, quote, "...foreigners to build places of worship for their evil religion. This wicked man has proved himself an unpardonable enemy of this nation, and it is our duty to put an end to this serious evil, to be the instruments of heaven." End quote.

As the regent and his entourage passed the threshold of a castle gate, the assassins struck. One of the disguised ronin fired a pistol into the air, and that was the signal to attack.

All 18 ronin throw off their raincoats, draw their swords, and rush the procession. They begin hacking the regent's bodyguards to death in broad daylight. According to one historian, quote, One of the assassins tore open the door, grabbed Naosuke by the back of the neck, and pulled him out. He struck the regent with his sword on the top of his head, and as he fell backward and tried to get up, the assassin beheaded him.

End quote.

There's actually a very famous woodblock painting of this ambush, and it does an amazing job of showing just how chaotic this attack was. It was fast and dirty and bloody. And in the painting, you can actually see what looks like a pitched battle in the middle of a city street. There's blood spattered all over the snow. There are Ronin swinging their swords and chopping limbs off.

You can see men biting off fingers and stabbing each other. And in the center is the regent, in his carriage or palanquin, seconds away from being killed and decapitated. And as crazy as all this carnage was, it only lasted about 15 minutes. In a single terrorist attack, Japan had been turned completely upside down. As one historian wrote, quote,

The assassination of I Nelsuke was the most important event of the era. It brought a sea of change to the political and cultural landscape of the country. If the most powerful man in Edo could be cut down by a small band of assassins, there was no limit to the havoc that hundreds or even thousands of ronin could wreak throughout Japan." And these 18 ronin were just a tiny fraction of a much larger ideological movement.

Thousands of like-minded warriors felt betrayed by the shogunate and wanted to see its government toppled by any means necessary. As shocking as the murder was, it was only the beginning of a widespread terror campaign that would ultimately engulf the country. And the shogun's officials were not the only ones who found themselves falling under the blades of these fanatical rogue samurai.

The ronin also targeted foreigners, westerners, Europeans, and Americans. Their hatred and xenophobia was extremely intense. As one historian wrote to many Japanese, quote, "...foreigners were monsters, with long noses, round eyes, and red or yellow hair, who partook of human flesh and harbored unholy designs on the sacred empire."

End quote. To these Ronin, even foreign languages and writing were obscene and filthy. Quote, The shapes of foreign letters are confused and irregular, wriggling like snakes or larvae of mosquitoes. The straight ones are like dog's teeth, the round ones are like worms, the crooked ones are like the forelegs of a mantis, and the stretched ones are like slime lines left by snails. They resemble dried bones or disfigured,

or decaying skulls, rotten bellies of dead snakes or parched vipers. End quote. Three months after the assassination of the regent, two Russian sailors were brutally murdered in the port city of Yokohama. And the crime scene was absolutely horrific. The Russians were, quote, left in a pool of blood, the flesh hanging in large masses from their bodies and limbs. The sailor was cut through his skull to the nostrils.

Half the scalp sliced down and one arm nearly severed from the shoulder through the joint. The officer was equally mangled, his lungs protruding from a saber gash across the body, his thighs and legs deeply gashed. End quote. The ferocity of this attack deeply unnerved the international community. As a British foreign official observed, quote, The manner in which the murdered men were slashed and nearly dismembered...

End quote.

In the following months, foreigners start getting murdered all over Japan. Just a few months after the Russians were killed, a French interpreter was murdered by the Ronin. The following month, two Dutch merchants were cut down in the middle of the street.

Shortly after, two British soldiers were stabbed to death in the middle of the night. Each time, the killers melted away as quickly as they had appeared. Some of them were tracked down and captured, but most of these assassins, as Hillsborough writes, quote, "...instantly fled and easily escaped into the dark streets." End quote. As random and vicious as all this violence seemed, there was a rhyme and reason to these attacks on foreigners.

The ronin believed that by killing Westerners, they could undermine confidence in the shogunate's ability to protect foreign diplomats on Japanese soil. They wanted to sabotage the relationship between the shogun and the Western powers. Essentially, they wanted to trigger a war, one that they hoped would result in the expulsion of all the foreign barbarians.

But there was another critically important dimension to the Expel the Barbarians movement, and it's a detail that I've been holding off and examining until now because I realize I am throwing a lot of new information at you. But before we can progress in the story, we need to understand the next bit. So we've talked about how during this time, Japan was ruled by the Shogun and his government. But technically, the Shogun had a boss.

The Shogun was technically a servant to the Emperor of Japan. Now, the cultural tradition of an Emperor was over a thousand years old in Japan at this time. It was one of the few reliable constants in their society. And most Japanese people took it for a granted, indisputable fact that the Emperor was a divine being, part of a bloodline that stretched back all the way to the mythical creation of Japan by the Goddess of the Sun.

And with that kind of holy pedigree, you'd think that the emperor would be the guy to talk to for all things political in Japan. Well, that wasn't really the case. The emperor's influence and power had slowly eroded over time, and the shogunate, the military government, was the actual shot caller in Japan. The emperor was still revered as a living god, but the day-to-day running of the country was considered beneath his divine intellect.

Well, all these ronin who were terrorizing the country start to build a cult of personality around the emperor and a radical idea takes hold. The shogun, once so respected and feared, had revealed himself as weak. As it turned out, the commander-in-chief could not protect the country from outsiders. And when your top military commander can't even drive away a small fleet of ships, maybe it's time for a change.

It was clear that the Shogun could not protect Japan, but maybe the Emperor could. Maybe it was time for the living God to take control of the country and lead Japan into a new era of prosperity and autonomy.

As historian Mark Ravina writes in his book, The Making of Modern Japan, quote, "...a significant and growing number of samurai and commoners throughout Japan were enthralled by the notion that devotion to the emperor could solve the nation's political problems. Central to radical loyalism was the belief that foreigners in Japan constituted a pollution of the land of the gods. Only by expelling the foreigners could imperial subjects prove their loyalty."

Anything less was not just cowardice, but also a disgrace to the emperor and the gods. End quote. So as the 1860s progress, the country becomes starkly divided between two schools of thought. Those who want to preserve the shogunate and continue opening the country to Western ideas and influence, and those who want to destroy the shogunate, elevating the emperor to his former level of power and expel the Westerners.

Now, because the emperor was based in Kyoto, in the center of the country, that city becomes ground zero for political unrest and factional violence. The terrorist ronin start flocking to Kyoto by the hundreds in a show of support for the emperor and disapproval of the shogun. These ronin were restless, violent zealots looking for any excuse to use the two swords on their hip. And Kyoto essentially descends into a hotbed of gang warfare.

between supporters of the emperor and supporters of the shogun. And these ronin with itchy sword hands began roaming the streets day and night looking for people to kill. Almost every morning, Kyoto city workers would find severed heads impaled on bamboo spikes at the city gates.

victims of the ronin. But the shogunate, down, out, and embattled, had one last ace up its sleeve. The military government had accumulated massive amounts of wealth over the previous two centuries, and they could use those deep pockets to find some killers of their own.

mercenary samurai who would form a counter-terrorist task force and take the fight directly to the fanatical ronin prowling the streets of Kyoto. And the man they turned to was a 29 year old teacher named Kondo Isami. Now take a second and commit that name to memory, Kondo, K-O-N-D-O, because Kondo Isami is going to be arguably the most important character in our story moving forward.

And like I said, Kondo was a teacher, an instructor to be specific. But he didn't teach poetry or economics or history. He taught swordsmanship. In essence, he taught people how to kill. And Kondo had been studying the art of swordplay for about 14 years, almost half of his life. But up until that point, he'd never actually killed anyone. And this was actually a big source of personal frustration for many samurai during the pre-modern era.

Back when the OG Shogun had united Japan a couple centuries earlier, he'd put an end to all the cyclical battles and territorial scraps. And almost overnight, the samurai became warriors without a war to fight. For most of them, the swords on their hip were purely ceremonial. They could use them in a practice dojo, but when it came to actually sticking that cold steel into a warm human body, many 19th century samurai were useless.

As one reformer named Katsu Kaishu explained, quote, "...during the more than 200 years of peace, the samurai indulged in luxury, lapsed into idleness, and eventually became soft."

End quote. Well, Kondo Isami was not soft. He did know how to use his sword. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of technique and theory and history. And when the shogunate came calling, looking for skilled samurai to fight the terrorist ronin in Kyoto, Kondo, the humble teacher, was anxious for an opportunity to use his skills in real life.

And as it turned out, Kondo Isami was very, very good at killing for real. In the coming years, he would form what one historian called, quote, the most notorious band of killers in Japanese history, end quote.

There's actually a very rare photo of Kondo Asami taken towards the end of his young life, and when you look at it, you definitely get a sense of what an imposing physicality he had. Broad shoulders, square jaw, dark eyes, and actually I'll post that pic on the show's Twitter and Instagram so you can see what I'm talking about, but you look at it and you instantly get the impression of a guy who will straight up murder you without hesitation. One historian said Kondo was quote,

A large, muscular man. His feet were so big that the maid employed at the home of a friend was, quote, stunned by the unusually large size of his wooden clogs, end quote. But surprisingly, Kondo also had a great sense of humor, and he loved to joke around. And there was one party trick that he liked to pull out at the bars around Kyoto, quote, his mouth was so big that he could fit his entire fist inside.

an antic that drew hysterical laughter at drinking bouts. End quote. But when it came to his new gig, Kondo was all business. He and a handful of other professional swordsmen had been recruited by the shogun for a very specific purpose. They were going to be the long arm of the shogun's justice in the lawless streets of Kyoto.

And their job was very simple. Hunt down and kill as many of the Ronin terrorists that they could get their hands on. They had carte blanche to detain, interrogate, torture, maim, and kill without repercussions. They were the shogun's secret police, and they literally had a license to kill. It was called, and I'm going to butcher this, kiretsute gomen, or license to cut down.

And the name of this very famous secret police force was the Shinsengumi, which just means newly selected corps in Japanese. But they were known by a different moniker on the streets of Kyoto. Their ferocity, brutality, and viciousness earned them the nickname the Wolves. Now you'd think that a secret police force would try and be as covert as possible, that they would fly under the radar to avoid tipping off their targets.

Well, the wolves did exactly the opposite. If one of Kondo's killers was walking down the street, you could instantly spot them because the wolves wore a very distinctive uniform. It was a flashy sky blue robe with white zigzags on the sleeves. As for Kondo, their commander, his robe was marked with a very distinctive skull insignia on the back. Very heavy metal.

His wife had actually embroidered it for him as, quote, a token of her appreciation for her warrior husband's resolve to die.

End quote. And despite their very serious mandate, the wolves were very fashion conscious. They even adopted a unique, intimidating hairstyle. According to Romulus Hillsborough, quote, End quote.

The more you read about the wolves, they start to sound less like a police force and more like a street gang. They were technically law enforcement, but unlike law enforcement, the wolves were answerable only to themselves. There was very little, if any, oversight from the shogunate. The government just cut the checks and let Kondo and his men kind of do their own thing. But that's not to say the wolves didn't have any discipline. Quite the opposite, in fact.

As commander of the wolves, Kondo Isami implemented a series of extremely strict rules which some historians refer to as the Iron Code. The Iron Code had five rules. Rule number one, do not, quote, raise money for selfish purposes, end quote. In other words, don't abuse your position to make money on the side. The wolves already got paid extremely well, so there was no excuse for any corrupt side hustles.

Rule number two, no, quote, fighting for personal reasons, end quote. So no personal vendettas. Your job is to kill Ronan and terrorists, not pursue grudges or petty feuds. Rule number three, no getting involved in litigation or legal disputes. So I guess no jury duty? I don't know. That's kind of a weird one. Rule number four,

Never, ever abandon your position in the wolves. No going AWOL. Once you were in, it was for life, or until you died fighting. You do not leave the wolves. The wolves leave you.

And the fifth and final rule was extremely broad. No, quote, violating the code of the samurai, end quote. This is also known as Bushido. And this last rule basically boiled down to the expectation that as a member of the wolves, you were not allowed to show even the slightest whiff of cowardice or hesitation. There is no living to fight another day. If you get pinned down, you either kill your opponent or you die in the process.

So that is the iron code. But what would happen if you broke the iron code? Would you get a slap on the wrist? Maybe a fine or a demotion?

No. A violation of any of these rules was an instant, non-negotiable death sentence. You would be required to present yourself in front of the entire wolf pack, express extreme contrition, reflect on your failures, and then disembowel yourself with a dagger. This is kind of what I mean when I say the wolves start to feel much more like a street gang than a police force. They have this really unique internal culture, and it's almost a little reminiscent of something like the Hell's Angels.

Well, Kondo, as I've mentioned, was a teacher at his core. But he was a teacher who believed in hands-on experience, experiential learning.

He realized that if they were ever going to have a snowball's chance in hell against this growing terrorist threat, they needed to be prepared for absolutely anything, all the time, 24-7. According to Romulus Hillsborough, quote, to further prepare the rank and file for the myriad and unknown dangers of street fighting and actual warfare, special practice sessions were held in the dark of night using real swords instead of the bamboo or wooden practice weapons of the training hall.

End quote. Kondo also believed that his pupils needed to know what it was like to actually kill someone before they could be expected to fight effectively. Hillsborough continues, quote,

End quote. Well, after a few months of this very harsh training regimen and some organization, Kondo decided that they were ready. On August 18th, 1863, Kondo and his wolves hit the streets of Kyoto looking for blood.

they would find more than their fair share. In the early hours of June 5th, 1864, Kondo Isami was pacing nervously. He was running out of time. It had been a year since he'd transformed a ragtag group of fencing students into the most feared killers in Kyoto.

an elite counter-terrorism unit that everyone in the city recognized on sight, thanks to their flashy blue and white uniforms. In that time, the Wolves had racked up a staggering body count. Kondo himself was known to have personally killed as many as 60 people. But there are problems even a sword cannot solve.

And at this moment, Kondo's most pressing problem was the man hanging by his feet from the rafters in the other room. This man the wolves had captured was a shopkeeper named Kotaka Shuntaro. And if you'll recall, that was the man that we opened with at the beginning of the episode. As we've mentioned, he was a key conspirator in one of the most audacious terrorist plots the country had ever seen. And the plan was shocking, even to the battle-hardened Kondo.

hiding somewhere in Kyoto was a cell of rogue samurai, or ronin. And their plan was to set fire to the city at a series of strategic checkpoints. And in the confusion, they would assassinate key members of the shogun's regime and kidnap the emperor of Japan, the country's living god. Their goal was to use the emperor as a rallying point to bring others to their cause, which would, in turn, trigger a final, devastating war against the shogunate

and its Western trade partners. But despite knowing all these critical details, Kondo was missing a key piece of the puzzle, one he hoped to torture out of the traitorous shopkeeper. Above all, he needed to know when. When would this happen?

Well, the shopkeeper, as it turned out, had an extremely high pain tolerance. Or a very deep devotion to his cause. Or both. By this time, the wolves had been working on him for hours. The man was half dead, but he still wouldn't talk. Then, one of Kondo's lieutenants has an idea. One last-ditch method of torture that just might break the man's will to stay silent. The lieutenant tells Kondo his idea.

And the commander listens and approves. Do it, he says. So the lieutenant grabs two wooden rods and he sharpens them into spikes. Then he takes a hammer and drives the wooden spikes through the shopkeeper's bare feet.

And that all sounds bad enough, but the lieutenant had a very creative build on this torture technique. He attaches a wax candle to each spike and lights the wick. The hot wax slowly drips down into the open wounds. And this final excruciating torture was the breaking point for the shopkeeper. He begs them to stop. Please, please, I'll tell you everything. Just stop. After that, the information starts pouring out.

In a matter of minutes, Kondo had the critical piece of intel he needed. As it turned out, the "when" of this terrorist plot was imminent. Possibly that very night. But most importantly, the ringleaders of this conspiracy would be rendezvousing that evening on the other side of the city at a place called the Ikedaya Inn. Kondo knew that he only had a few hours until the meeting was going to take place, and the conspirators had no idea that the wolves had caught their scent.

So Kondo gives the order for a strike team to prepare a raid on the inn. As he sharpened his sword and pulled a shirt of chainmail over his skull-patterned robe, Kondo must have been reflecting on the very long road that had brought he and his men to this climactic confrontation. Since he'd formed the Wolves, it had been a long year. One full of bloodshed, betrayal, and shattered friendships.

A year earlier, in 1863, Kondo and his elite band of swordsmen had hit the streets of Kyoto looking for trouble, and their mere presence was an open challenge to enemies of the shogunate. By swaggering down the boulevards in their garish blue and white with two swords on their hip, they were basically saying, anyone who's got a problem with the shogun has a problem with us.

And the Wolves' counter-terrorist operations tended to fall into two distinct categories, the first of which was targeted special ops. As one contemporary described, quote, their surveillance at night brought them from rooftop to rooftop. If they discovered Ronan, they'd kick down the doors to arrest every last one of them, even 30 or 40 at a time.

End quote. The second kind of activity was the daily ritual of just walking down the street looking for trouble, kind of like beat cops. They would go on patrol, track down leads, and gather information from spies and snitches.

But the problem was, the ronin were out walking around too. And unlike modern insurgencies that rely on secrecy and prefer to keep a low profile, the anti-shogunate ronin were out in the open, in the bars, the hotels, the restaurants, and the streets. So when a wolf and a ronin crossed paths while walking around town, it usually led to a good old-fashioned sword fight.

And these kinds of duels were very common and very bloody. And again, it was not unlike gang warfare or turf disputes. But nine times out of ten, the wolves cut their opponents to shreds. Kondo had trained them very well, and everyone in the city was terrified of them. As one primary source recalled, quote,

The wolves became the object of hatred among the ronin. They concluded that as long as Kondo and his men dominated the Kyoto scene, it would be difficult for them to effect an uprising. End quote.

Kondo's men killed ronin and anti-shogunate sympathizers so often that they turned their frequent bouts of violence into a little game. They used to brag amongst themselves about how far they could get the blood of an enemy to spurt when they hacked off a head, a limb, or a hand. As one contemporary remembered, quote,

Every day the men would go out and cross swords with the enemy. One corpsman claimed that the blood of the man he had killed today splattered on the ridge of an adjacent house. Another boasted that the blood of the man he had cut down had reached the roof of the house.

End quote. The wolves and their excessively violent methods began to alarm local authorities. At first, the wolves had been a godsend, like exterminators taking care of an infestation. But now, the wolves were getting out of control, and they became increasingly arrogant and aggressive. Before long, they weren't just killing Ronin, they would cut down anyone who looked at them the wrong way. As Kondo Isami himself admitted, quote, "...we killed anyone who insulted us."

End quote. Their reputation grew and grew almost to mythic proportions in Kyoto. As one witness to a raid remembered, quote, They searched the entire house most violently. I was frightened because during those days the wolves derived pleasure from killing people. While I was shaking with fear, a person who seemed like the commander came and quieted everyone down. That was the first time I ever saw Kondo. End quote. The

The wolves used their fearsome reputation and generous pay from the shogun to live like kings in the city. As one contemporary source observed, quote, they had no shortage of money, no matter where they went, they were well received by the women. End quote. Some shogunate officials began to worry that they had just swapped one group of violent thugs for another. And the most violent wolf of them all was a man named Serizawa Kemo.

Before he had joined the Wolves, Serizawa had been a criminal, rotting in a jail cell. Like Kondo, Serizawa was a swordsman by trade. But whereas Kondo was fairly principled and stoic, Serizawa was erratic, violent, and cruel.

Before the shogunate had put the word out that it was looking for samurai to defend its interest in Kyoto, Serizawa had been sitting on death row. He'd been condemned to die for mutilating and murdering three men over a petty disagreement. And it wasn't his first brush with the law either. As a teenager, he'd raped several maids who cleaned his family's house.

But regardless of his bad reputation, the Shogun needed soldiers, and Serizawa was granted amnesty and pardoned on the condition that he would serve the Shogunate in the newly formed counter-terrorist task force. He had to become a wolf or die. Serizawa wisely took the deal.

Kondo did not like Serizawa, and Serizawa did not like Kondo. But they were the most experienced men in the unit, so these two polar opposites found themselves working together in service of a larger goal. And Kondo knew that this guy was bad news. But the shogunate had, for better or worse, selected this wild card for the wolves. And there was nothing that the commander could do. But Kondo's instincts were spot-on.

As it turned out, Serizawa was not the kind of man you give a license to kill to. Serizawa the ex-con was a deeply hateful, vindictive person. And it didn't help that he also had a huge drinking problem. He was, quote, a pathological drinker, according to one source, which made him all the more dangerous to the residents of Kyoto.

In the early months of the wolves' existence, Serizawa achieved a terrifying notoriety that hung over the wolves like a noxious cloud. It was said that Serizawa had once passed a dog that was begging for scraps of food on the street. On a whim, he struck it on the head with a heavy iron fan, killing it instantly.

On another occasion, a zoo had come to Kyoto, and one of the exotic animals displayed was a tiger. Well, Serizawa wandered in drunk one day and asked if the tiger was "real" or just some other animal painted to look like a tiger, and they assured him that it was real.

Well, before anyone could register what was happening, Serizawa drew his sword and stuck it into the cage, stabbing the tiger. When the animal roared and hissed, Serizawa laughed and said, quote, It's a real tiger, end quote.

But Serizawa's casual cruelty wasn't just limited to animals. One day, a doctor diagnosed him with syphilis, and he became convinced that he had contracted the disease from a certain geisha. So he marched down to the tea house where she worked and cut her in half with his sword. Then he kicked her body into the river.

On another occasion, Serizawa and some of his fellow wolves were drinking sake in a brothel, and he asked two of the serving girls to sleep with him. But both of them said, "No thanks." Well, the next day, he returned to the brothel and cornered the owner, saying, quote, "Their insult to a samurai was inexcusable. I should kill both of them for their insult. But, since they're women, I'm going to pardon them. Instead, I'll just cut their hair."

The dynamic between Kondo the teacher and Serizawa the ex-con was an interesting one. Neither liked the other, but they had to work together in this uneasy professional bond. It's funny, but you know what it actually reminds me of? Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in any Scorsese mob movie.

The personality traits and the way that they play off one another are very similar. And Kondo is very much like De Niro, right? Stern, stoic, dangerous, but reasonable.

And Serizawa is kind of like Joe Pesci, unpredictable, erratic, capable of sudden, shocking violence at the drop of a hat, over the slightest provocation. And it wasn't long before Kondo started getting really tired of cleaning up Serizawa's many messes. As one of the rank-and-file wolves remembered, quote, his extreme violence perplexed even us, end quote.

Occasionally, Serizawa's aggression could draw the entire force into a feud. For example, one day Serizawa was crossing a narrow bridge near Kyoto. It was a really hot day so the swordsman was only wearing a thin loose robe rather than the distinctive blue and white wolf uniform. Well as he's crossing this bridge, Serizawa's way is blocked by this giant of a man. Huge belly, massive arms,

and Serizawa immediately realized that this guy was a sumo wrestler. Serizawa, annoyed at the delay, says, quote, move to the side.

End quote. But the sumo wrestler just stays put. He gives Serizawa a defiant, mad dog glare as if to say, no, you move. Well, before the wrestler can even blink, Serizawa draws his sword and in a single motion, slices open the man's belly. The big man dropped like a stone, bled out, and died twitching right there on the bridge.

Later that night, Serizawa and some of his buddies were drinking at a bar. And suddenly they hear a commotion outside, so they go to investigate. Outside, they find 20 huge sumo wrestlers waiting for them in front of the bar, each armed with a heavy wooden club. The man Serizawa had killed earlier that day was a member of their wrestling group, and they wanted revenge.

But the problem was, the wrestlers didn't realize that they were challenging the shogun's secret police to a fight. Serizawa and his boys weren't wearing their uniforms. But rather than de-escalate, the wolves draw their weapons and charge these huge wrestlers, quote, brandishing their swords like windmills.

End quote. Within minutes, five of these giant sumo wrestlers were in pieces on the street, and the other 15 were running for their lives. The wolves informed the local magistrate of the incident with a warning. Quote, End quote.

The magistrate agreed, and certainly didn't want to piss off the shogun's notorious secret police, so he issued a verdict on the matter. End quote.

The wrestlers were obliged to smooth the feud over with a barrel of sake, a bribe, and a profuse apology. Clearly, the wolves were borderline untouchable from a legal perspective, and they knew it. But Serizawa and his violent antics were exhausting Kondo's patience. This guy was a rabid dog, and sooner or later, he would need to be put down.

As one wolf remembered, quote, Serizawa became more and more agitated. He now engaged in misconduct day and night, according to his whims, and without any regard for the core.

End quote. The final straw came in early 1864 when it was discovered that Serizawa had been abusing his authority and extorting local businesses for money as part of a protection racket. As he told the business owners, quote, law and order are not free of charge. End quote. This was a direct violation of the Iron Code. And if that wasn't bad enough, when one of the businesses refused to pay up, Serizawa set the building on fire.

The shogunate was naturally furious. They were paying the wolves to keep the peace, not intimidate and extort local businesses. It was clear that Serizawa had outlived his usefulness. Kondo was quietly informed that he had the green light to assassinate this problematic wolf. Kondo was obviously no fan of Serizawa, so he happily agreed to organize the hit.

One night, a handful of wolves took Serizawa out drinking. They pour cup after cup of sake into this guy. And once they're confident that he's too wasted to defend himself, they wait for him to pass out in a room upstairs. Then they stab him to death while he's sleeping, along with the mistress lying next to him.

With Serizawa's death, Kondo had eliminated his key rival and acquired full control over the wolves in one fell swoop. But he would not get the opportunity to bask in this windfall. He and his men were about to face their greatest challenge yet, a fateful showdown with the terrorist Ronin at a place called the Ikedaya Inn.

On the evening of June 5th, 1856, that pivotal night that we've been returning to throughout the episode, the city of Kyoto was buzzing with activity. It was the eve of the famous Gion Festival, and the residents of Kyoto were out celebrating. As Romulus Hillsborough poetically described the atmosphere, quote, "...red and white paper lanterns lit both sides of the main road, glowing in front of the various shops, tea houses, and restaurants."

The steady pounding of drums, the winding of flutes, and the continuous clanging of brass bells filled the heavy, humid air. As nightfall offered no relief from the intense heat and humidity of the day, throngs of people filled the streets. End quote. But Kondo Isami and his wolves had no time to celebrate.

Somewhere in the city, a group of ronin were meeting, finalizing the details of a plot to burn the city to the ground and kidnap the Emperor of Japan. After torturing the conspiratorial shopkeeper with a pair of wooden spikes and some scalding candle wax, Kondo had finally squeezed out the last piece of information he needed.

This terrorist cell was meeting that night, at five o'clock, at a well-known establishment called the Ikedaya Inn. So Kondo strapped his two swords to his waist, pulled on a shirt of chainmail, and donned a simple iron helmet. He selected a handful of his best swordsmen for a small, ten-man strike team, and he knew that they would be outnumbered. The shopkeeper had estimated upwards of twenty ronin would be at the Ikedaya that night.

But Kondo was confident. The terrorists had no idea that the wolves had caught their scent and they had the element of surprise. Across the city, the ronin were starting to gather for their meeting at the Ikedaya. The inn was a two-story establishment and the serving girls went up and down the stairs bringing bottle after bottle of sake as the conspirators discussed and finalized the details of their plans. A few of them, however, were getting nervous.

Something was wrong. Their contact, who had agreed to supply guns and weapons for the attack, a certain shopkeeper, had gone missing. He hadn't shown up for the rendezvous, and no one could find him. Well, little did they know that shopkeeper was already dead, hanging upside down with spikes through his feet from the rafters of Shinsengumi HQ. At around 10 o'clock p.m., the owner of the Ikedaya Inn hears a knock at the front door.

Who's there? He asks. No answer. The innkeeper slides open the door to find Kondo Isami, commander of the wolves, in full battle gear, flanked by nine other heavily armed men. And Kondo says, quote, We are the Shinsengumi, and we've come to search the place. End quote.

Well, the innkeeper knew who Kondo was. He knew who the wolves were and their reputation and what they would do to him if they discovered his guests upstairs. So the innkeeper panics and runs for his life.

Kondo and his men storm the Ikedaya Inn, pushing through the fragile sliding doors. Kondo commands five of his men to cover the exits so no one can escape. Then he and four of his wolves file up the steps to the second story. They enter the room and see twenty very drunk ronin glaring back at them.

Kondo clears his throat and addresses the room, quote, We've come to investigate. If you resist, we'll kill you. Without mercy. End quote. For the first few moments, no one moves. Then one of the ronin draws his sword and rushes Kondo and his men, shrieking. One of the wolves steps forward and kills the man with a single fluid motion. And the attacker was dead before he hit the ground.

Upon seeing the death of their friend and comrade, the Ronin make their move. As one of Kondo's men remembered, quote, Now, it's very hard to verbally choreograph a sword fight between 30 people in a two-story hotel in the middle of the night.

Odds are the visual that pops into your head is probably more interesting than anything I could conjure up. But long story short, the wolves spend the next two hours butchering these drunk ronin.

And when you think of samurai fighting each other, the mind tends to go right to an Akira Kurosawa flick, right? Something cinematic and graceful. You've got the empty street, the snow gently falling on composed, respectful combatants, and it almost seems like a dance. Well, this showdown between the wolves and the terrorist ronin was not a dance. It was more like a UFC fight with swords.

They're screaming and slashing and biting and wrestling. Blood is literally flying everywhere. They were swinging their swords at each other so hard that Kondo later said, quote, End quote. An eyewitness to the battle described what was left when the fighting had finally ended. Quote,

End quote.

When it was all said and done, 11 terrorist Ronin were dead and 23 were captured. Several of them had committed suicide in the street rather than be taken alive. The innkeeper was later apprehended and died, quote, due to severe torture by the wolves.

And only three members of the Wolves had lost their lives, but it was a hard, desperate fight, even for expert killers like the Shinsengumi, as Kondo himself admitted, I have been in frequent battles, but our opponents were many, and all courageous fighters. I nearly lost my life."

As the sun rose on Kyoto the next morning, Kondo and his men marched back to their headquarters through the city. And one of the men remembered, quote, a crowd of tens of thousands watched us from the roadside, end quote. And the wolves' swords were so dented and bent from the two-hour brawl that they couldn't even put them back in their scabbards. And the hero of the hour was their commander, Kondo Isami.

According to someone who spoke with him hours after the slaughter at the Ikedaya Inn, Kondo was, quote, so composed that one would never have thought he had just fought such a fierce battle. End quote. In Kyoto, the wolves were considered heroes. In a single night, they had narrowly foiled an act of terrorism that could have destroyed the imperial city and destabilized all of Japan. After the Ikedaya Inn, every swordsman worth his salt wanted to be a member of the Shinsengumi.

The wolves were flooded with new recruits, would-be warriors who wanted to fight and die under the command of the famous Kondo Isami, and the size of the Shinsengumi increased significantly in the wake of the Ikedaya Incident. And the other thing that swelled was Kondo's arrogance and self-importance. He had come a long way from being a nobody fencing instructor. His name was known throughout the entire country.

And that sense of celebrity led to what one of his men called, quote, "'reckless and egotistic behavior.'" End quote. The humble teacher had transformed into a petulant rock star, a bona fide celebrity who had the power to kill at will and often did. As one wolf observed bitterly, quote, "'He treated our comrades at headquarters as if they were his vassals. If they didn't listen to him, he would resort to the sword.'"

End quote. Many of the older wolves, repelled by this new change in their leader, wanted to leave the force, but they couldn't. According to the Iron Code, that was a capital offense, punishable by ritual suicide. So most of them had to just shut up and tolerate the imperious commander that they had once held in such high esteem.

But for Kondo, fame was a double-edged sword. After hearing that their comrades had been butchered by the wolves at the Ikedaya, the thousands of extremist ronin and anti-shogunate clans throughout the country were outraged. They had been too cautious, they decided. Too covert. Maybe striking from the shadows was the wrong strategy. And ironically, the Ikedaya incident did not discourage revolution, it only inflamed it.

Over the next several years, the tide of anti-Shogunate sentiment continues to rise. And no matter how many plots they foiled, or people they tortured, or ronin they killed, the wolves and their masters in Kyoto could not stamp out the embers of change. Anyone with a brain could see a ground-shaking ideological shift was happening. The Shogun's time was over.

It was becoming clearer every day. The old order had to die, along with everyone who defended it. This contagion of political dissent was so widespread, it even wormed its way into the ranks of Kondo's killers. Even they were seduced by the idea of a fresh start for the country, led by the Emperor of Japan, rather than the shogun that they had sworn to fight for.

But Kondo was like a rock. He didn't care that the shogunate was weak. He didn't care that his enemies were multiplying every day. He didn't care that the ronin had placed a price on his head. He was a ride-or-die supporter of the shogun.

After all, he thought, only through the shogunate had he been transformed from a lowly teacher to a powerful commander. The shogun had made him wealthy and influential. He owed everything to that regime. By that logic, he was honor-bound to continue supporting the shogunate, no matter what happened.

Well, not all the wolves felt that way. The Iron Code was clear about what happened to deserters and defectors, but several of the wolves decided to leave the Shinsengumi. Genuinely moved and inspired by the revolutionary fervor raging across the country, they make a run for it. For Kondo, this was unacceptable. If the Iron Code could be broken without consequence, then the wolves were no more than a street gang. No one leaves the wolves.

Kondo mercilessly hunted down these men who tried to leave the Shinsengumi. No matter how far they ran, he sent men to cut them down and bring back their heads as proof.

But even that failed to satisfy the commander's growing paranoia. Before long, he began preemptively killing anyone he suspected of harboring revolutionary sympathies within his organization. As the country was collapsing around them, the wolves were collapsing in on themselves. In 1868, four years after the great victory at the Ikedaya Inn, the simmering tensions between the supporters of the shogun and the supporters of the emperor erupts into an all-out civil war.

A massive army is formed in opposition to the Shogun, consisting of a coalition of southern clans that were intent on seeing the current military government toppled and the Emperor raised to his rightful place as ruler of the country. As this army advanced and eventually overtook the city of Kyoto, Kondo and his wolves, along with the rest of the pro-Shogunate forces, were forced to flee.

They had to retreat in shame from the streets that they had once ruled with an iron fist. A few short years after the Ikedaya incident, Kondo and his killers were on the run.

As the Imperial forces drove the Shogun's armies further and further back, Kondo could feel the noose tightening. There were fewer safe places with every passing day, and at this point, his celebrity status was no longer a badge of honor, it was a liability. So he assumes an alias to move safely along the roads and through the villages, avoiding his many enemies.

But one night, Kondo and a few of his men were riding on horseback to meet with some of their allies from the shogunate, when out of the dark, muskets suddenly blazed and peppered the group with bullets. Kondo was hit on the shoulder and started bleeding heavily, and the ambushers rushed the riders, pulling two of the men off their horses and stabbing them with spears and swords. Kondo managed to gallop to safely despite his wound, barely escaping the trap. He later learned who had organized this ambush.

And it wasn't the extremist ronin or the anti-shogunate clans, it was former men of the Shinsengumi who had tried to kill him, ex-wolves who were angry at having watched their friends die in Kondo's paranoid purges. The commander of the wolves, once all-powerful, now realized he had very few people that he could trust.

A few weeks later, Kondo's luck evaporated completely. He and a handful of loyal wolves had been hiding out in a miso factory outside the capital when their safe house was stormed by revolutionary forces.

To their shock and surprise, Kondo surrendered, rather than fight to the death. As he was led away in shackles, he must have recognized the irony. Not so long ago, he had been the one raiding safe houses and apprehending terrorist ronin in Kyoto. In a painful twist of fate, Kondo Asami had become the outlaw.

Initially, the revolutionary forces didn't realize who they had captured. They thought they just apprehended another shogunate sympathizer. But as Kondo is led back into their camp as a prisoner, someone recognizes him. A former wolf, who Kondo had driven away in his bloodthirsty purges, raises his finger and points. That, he says, is Kondo Isami, commander of the wolves.

A hasty trial is organized and conducted and after a very, very short period of deliberation, Kondo is sentenced to death for his quote-unquote crimes in Kyoto. As the prosecution described him, quote, "He was a crafty scoundrel who committed evil for many years and killed a countless number of our men, but now he's been arrested and will die."

End quote.

But not everyone at this trial hated Kondo. Many could not help but feel a grudging respect for the man. One man was especially moved by the death sentence of this famous samurai. Quote, I simply watched the tragic scene, all while wondering if this is what happens when one loses a war. I was overcome with sympathy. Tears flowed down my cheeks. Kondo wore an intensely grievous face as he looked at me. End quote.

On May 17th, 1868, Kondo woke up and prepared to die. During this time it was common for samurai who were facing death to compose a poem or a verse to commemorate their own life. And this is what Kondo wrote just hours before his death. "Submitting to the will of another, I have nothing to say on this day. I value honor above life.

Ah, the long, flashing sword to which I readily surrender and repay my lord's kindness with my life." Normally, a samurai in Kondo's position would be allowed to commit ritual suicide, a way of dying with dignity. Well, these revolutionaries and ronin did not want to give him that courtesy. To them, he was a thug, a gang leader, and a killer.

and they decided that Kondo would be executed like a common criminal. But they did allow him one small courtesy. Kondo knew that his head would be displayed publicly as a warning to all those still supporting the Shogun, so he asked if he could at least shave his face before they took his head.

And they agreed. But the executioner shaved his face for him. They were still afraid to give the commander of the wolves an edged weapon, even a small two-inch razor. As a sword hovered above his neck, Kondo said his last words. Quote, "'I have been a great trouble.'" With that, he held his topknot so that the executioner could get a clear cut at the base of his neck.

One witness to the execution could only remember the moments before the fateful cut and nothing after. They recalled, quote, there was a flash, end quote. And then Kondo Asami's head fell into a pit that had been dug in the ground to catch the gushing blood. Kondo Asami was 34 years old when he died. Another witness to Kondo's execution said, quote, his countenance was the same as always in the face of death and he died with composure.

Those watching shed tears of sorrow for Kondo. He was truly a great man, unequaled throughout the ages." So this episode was slightly unique in that it focused on a very narrow viewpoint, in a very large event. Kondo and the Wolves were just one of hundreds of individual factions navigating this extremely complex time in Japanese history. It was a period of radical change and constant realignment.

and the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan in 1853 changed the country forever. But the way Japan responded to the influence of Western powers was singular and followed a remarkably different trajectory than that of China, Southeast Asia, or India. Eventually, the Japanese Civil War ended, and the shogunate was destroyed after 250 years of supremacy.

In the decades that followed, Japan modernized, shockingly fast, a transformation that's become known as the Meiji Restoration.

This is one of those periods that if you're into, you're really into. Which admittedly, I am. I have a huge soft spot for Japanese history, and my intention is to periodically return to the Meiji Restoration era and tell the story from a few different angles. Because although the story of Kondo, the wolves, and the Ikedaya Inn is fascinating in its own right, there was a lot going on in the country at the time. And

and we've only scratched the surface. But for now, I hope you enjoyed this look at an underappreciated corner of history. This has been Conflicted. Thanks for listening.

Conflicted is a proud member of the Evergreen Podcast Network. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram for updates, news about upcoming shows, and semi-daily musings about history. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcasts. And as always, thank you so much for your time, and have a great day.

I'm Ken Harbaugh, host of Burn the Boats from Evergreen Podcasts. I interview political leaders and influencers, folks like award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien and conservative columnist Bill Kristol about the choices they confront when failure is not an option. I won't agree with everyone I talk to, but I respect anyone who believes in something enough to risk everything for it, because history belongs to those willing to burn the boats. Episodes are out every other week, wherever you get your podcasts.