Takechi Hanpeita

Born on September 27, 1829 (Bunsei 12) at Fukui Village in Nagaoka District, Tosa Province (the modern Nitta in Kōchi City, Kōchi Prefecture) as the son of the gōshi (rural warrior) Takechi Han'emon.

His pen name was Zuizan. Skilled in swordsmanship from youth, he went to Edo to train at Momoi Shunzō's Shigakukan, and later returned to Tosa and opened his own sword school.

His disciples included Okada Izō (later 'Izō the Man-Cutter'). In August 1861 (Bunkyū 1), he founded the Tosa Loyalist Party and gathered nearly two hundred comrades.

He became the core of the imperial-loyalist expel-the-barbarian faction within the Tosa domain and, through Lord Yamauchi Toyonori, moved domain opinion.

In 1862, the domain's power figure Yoshida Tōyō was assassinated (an act taken as coming from within the Loyalist Party), and the Loyalist faction seized domain politics.

In the same year he went to Kyoto and, tying up with court nobles including Sanjō Sanetomi, contributed to the expansion of the expel-the-barbarian faction within the court.

But in the coup of August 18, 1863, the public-and-military-cooperation faction seized the court, and the Loyalist faction fell from power.

The former lord Yamauchi Yōdō launched a purge of the Loyalist Party, and Hanpeita was arrested in September 1863. After about two years in prison, on May 11, 1865 (Keiō 1), he was ordered by the Tosa domain to commit seppuku.

He was thirty-seven. He is transmitted to have cut a magnificent three-cut abdomen at his seppuku. At the same time, many Loyalist Party members including Okada Izō were also executed.

“Let the whole domain die on the path of loyalism.”

Hanpeita, as one of the leaders of the Bakumatsu imperial-loyalist expel-the-barbarian movement, created the four-month peak of the Tosa Loyalist Party.

But by Yamauchi Yōdō's purge, he was ordered to commit seppuku at thirty-seven and did not see the Meiji Restoration (1868).

He is positioned as a shishi figure who stuck to intra-domain politics — different from his fellow Tosa men Sakamoto Ryōma and Nakaoka Shintarō (core of the imperial restoration and the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance).

Self-portraits and calligraphy he made in prison are still held at the Kōchi Prefectural Sakamoto Ryōma Memorial Museum and other institutions, and are valued as materials transmitting the cultivation and spirituality of the Bakumatsu shishi.

His disciple Okada Izō became the executor of the tenchū politics as 'Izō the Man-Cutter,' and continues to be depicted together with Takechi as a hidden protagonist of the Bakumatsu — in Shiba Ryōtarō's 'Ryōma Ga Yuku,' the taiga drama 'Ryōmaden,' and other works.