Goryōkaku: Where the Last Samurai Republic Died

On the morning of May 11, 1869, just outside the star-shaped Goryōkaku fortress on the north shore of Hakodate Bay, Hijikata Toshizō rode toward the front line at the Ipponki Barricade. Imperial forces had already surrounded the Benten Battery and taken the city. Hijikata, leading a few dozen mounted skirmishers, charged at the barricade to keep the retreat route to Goryōkaku open. The route held. Hijikata himself was hit by a rifle bullet to the abdomen, fell from his horse, and died on the spot. He was thirty-four.

Seven Months of the Ezo Republic

The political entity for which Hijikata died was the only armed republic in Japanese history. In October 1868, the former Tokugawa naval commander Enomoto Takeaki, beaten in the Boshin War and pushed out of Edo, had landed on Hokkaido with a fleet and 2,500 troops. By December he had taken the entire island. On December 15, 1868 a vote of all officer-class personnel elected Enomoto president and Hijikata vice-minister of the army. It was the first electoral government in pre-modern Japan. The republic asked France, Britain, and the United States for recognition; the British and French each declared a de facto neutrality. France left behind a contingent of officers under Jules Brunet, who had been training Tokugawa forces, and Hijikata received Western-style tactical instruction from them.

The Spring 1869 Collapse

The new Meiji government opened its Hokkaido offensive in March 1869 with a fleet and seven thousand troops. The republic's flagship Kaiyō had already been lost in a wreck the previous November. A naval boarding action against the imperial ironclad Kōtetsu in Miyako Bay in April failed. Land battles at Futamata Pass and Matsumae held for a time, but the three-to-one numerical disadvantage never closed. On May 11 the city of Hakodate fell, Hijikata was killed, and on May 18 Enomoto and the entire command surrendered. The republic's lifespan, December 1868 to May 1869, had been just over seven months.

Why It Was the Last Place of the Samurai

Goryōkaku was not just the last battlefield. It was the last geographical space in which samurai existed as an institutional political class. The June 1869 surrender of feudal registers, the July 1871 abolition of the domains, and the March 1876 ban on swords were the central policies of the Meiji state for dismantling the samurai class. The Republic of Ezo was the last sovereign claim made by samurai on their own terms. Hijikata was one of the last commanders to defend that claim with samurai protocol intact down to the final moment. Meiji-era novels, films, manga, and anime have returned to him for that reason ever since.

Goryōkaku Today

Goryōkaku is a Special Historic Site of Hakodate City today. The star-shaped moat and earthworks remain almost exactly as they were when Enomoto's army surrendered in 1869, and the adjacent Goryōkaku Tower offers the full view from above. The site of Hijikata's death at the Ipponki Barricade has a memorial stone. International visitors who come are typically drawn by the combination of an unmistakably European star-fort design and the story of the last samurai republic.

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