Founding the Tosa Loyalist Party: In 1861, Hanpeita Gathered Two Hundred Comrades

In August 1861 (Bunkyū 1), in the Tosa castle town of Kōchi (modern Kōchi City).

Takechi Hanpeita, having gone through swordsmanship training in Edo and exchanges with shishi of various domains and returned to Tosa, this month founded the Tosa Loyalist Party (also called the Tosa Gōshi Party).

Hanpeita was thirty-two. Nearly two hundred comrades gathered, with the majority from the classes of gōshi (rural warriors), rōnin, and lower-ranking retainers — the class of warriors placed below the jōshi (upper-ranking retainers).

Warriors of the Tosa domain were divided into 'jōshi' (former retainers of the Yamauchi house) and 'gōshi' (descendants of former retainers of the Chōsokabe house).

Since Yamauchi Kazutoyo's entry after Sekigahara (1601), the class fixation had continued for 260 years.

Jōshi occupied the center of domain politics; gōshi were placed in lower positions.

Hanpeita was of gōshi origin, and gathered the lower warrior class that shared the frustration with this class order through the ideal of imperial loyalism-expel-the-barbarian.

The Tosa Loyalist Party was a movement of thought and simultaneously a movement of social class.

The founding of the Tosa Loyalist Party took the form of shishi signing a blood-sealed pledge.

About 192 signatures survive (with Hanpeita at the head, including Sakamoto Ryōma, Nakaoka Shintarō, Yoshimura Toratarō, Okada Izō).

It was a firm pledge of solidarity with the meaning of mutual monitoring and prevention of betrayal among comrades.

Hanpeita was the drafter of this pledge and was positioned as the head of the whole Loyalist Party.

A year after the founding, in April 1862 (Bunkyū 2), the domain's power figure Yoshida Tōyō was assassinated by Loyalist Party members.

The perpetrators were three Loyalist Party members including Nasu Shingo, and the view that there was Hanpeita's instruction is strong.

By this assassination, domain politics tilted toward the Loyalist faction, and Hanpeita became the substantive shadow leader of domain politics.

In August of the same year, Hanpeita went to Kyoto and began exchanges with court nobles, contributing to the expansion of the expel-the-barbarian faction within the court.

It was the peak of the Tosa Loyalist Party.