First Captain's Sword: What Okita Sōji Actually Did

Okita Sōji's documented combat participation as Shinsengumi first-captain comes down to a handful of major actions: the Ikedaya Incident (1864), the Kinmon Incident (1864), the Akebonotei Incident (1864), the kaishaku at Yamanami Keisuke's seppuku (1865), the assassination of Itō Kashitarō (1867), and the Battle of Toba-Fushimi (1868). Compared with Hijikata Toshizō or Nagakura Shinpachi, the count is not high. But in every engagement he led from the front or held the central role.

His Role at the Ikedaya

At the Ikedaya on July 8, 1864, Okita was one of the first four men into the inn alongside Kondō Isamu, Nagakura Shinpachi, and Tōdō Heisuke. With twenty-odd Chōshū, Tosa, and Higo loyalists in conference on the second floor, Okita charged the stairs and fought hand-to-hand with the Chōshū and Higo men. He broke off mid-fight when he coughed blood, so the documentary record does not give a clean kill count. The point is the assignment: the position of first man up the stairs in an indoor sword fight is given only to the man the unit trusts most.

The Kaishaku for Yamanami Keisuke

In February 1865, the deputy vice-commander Yamanami Keisuke was caught attempting to desert and ordered to commit seppuku for breach of the unit code. Okita was named kaishaku. Yamanami had been Okita's friend since the Shieikan days in Edo; assigning him as the second to that seppuku was the heaviest internal duty a Shinsengumi captain could be given. Okita accepted and carried it out on February 23. The scene has been a touchstone in later Shinsengumi fiction for what the boundary between discipline and personal feeling cost the unit.

The Itō Kashitarō Assassination

In November 1867, Itō Kashitarō, the Shinsengumi's resident intellectual, left the unit on ideological grounds, founded the Goryō-eji guard, and went into opposition. Hijikata Toshizō ambushed Itō at Aburanokōji in Shichijō and killed him; several Shinsengumi members including Okita were part of the operation. Itō had been respected within the unit as a literary figure and Okita's relation to him was complicated. The assassination shows both the severity of Shinsengumi internal discipline and the fact that Okita was still being relied on as a combat asset late into the unit's life. Within six months he would be incapacitated by tuberculosis.

The 'Sword Prodigy' Reputation

Okita's combat record is not numerically extensive, but within the unit he served as sword instructor to the younger captains, and his swordsmanship was rated above all others by Kondō and Hijikata. Nagakura Shinpachi in Shinsengumi Tenmatsuki calls Okita's sword 'genius' and ranks him as the strongest of the Shinsengumi's four most senior swordsmen. As a contemporary documentary judgment, Nagakura's verdict is decisive. The 'sword prodigy' image of Okita that Meiji and later writers amplified rests on a real, if narrow, contemporary foundation.

"Okita Sōji was a swordsman of genius."