Unfortunately. this is the most thorough work on this late warrior group. It's necesssary to read around this politically correct author, who clearly is unable to suspend his own cultural bias in order to present historical people from another culture. But, clunky, puritanical, and shallow as the opinionated obstacles are that the author presents--littered about amidst the historical facts- there are more historical facts in the work than anywhere else in English. Get a good background in modern scholarship of Japanese Culture and History and it will be easy to shed the American p.c. bias. Buy it used-take notes- and sell it quickly for as close to what you paid as possible.
Last year, the local foreign-language TV station here in L.A. broadcast an NHK-produced, fictionalized series about the Shinsengumi. The show was gripping, but it was obvious that the whole thing was highly romanticized. Since then, I've been looking for a more historically accurate account of the period, so I was delighted when I found this book.
I did indeed learn a lot more about the Shinsengumi from it. For one thing, the television series presents the group's members as heroes and patriots. By including descriptions of less-than-flattering incidents conveniently left out of the TV version, Hillsborough's book essentially portrays the Shinsengumi as a group of deluded, self-aggrandizing thugs. My personal sense is that there's some truth to be found in both of these approaches. Being aware of television's need to simplify and anoint heroes, I tend to trust books more. In this case, however, the written word doesn't live up to its promise. Neither version presents enough evidence for its own point of view, nor does either generate enough overall credibility to allow the consumer to make anything resembling an informed judgment.
Hillsborough says in the Preface that he's "concentrated on the spirit of the Shinsengumi and their place in history, rather than on trivial details...." To my mind, that's insufficient justification for the disorganized, repetitive writing and overheated descriptions found in this volume.
Regarding organization, I'm no fan of the "Dates and Places" school of history, and I have no trouble with the idea of an author bringing an era alive by telling incidents out of their chronological order. But really, shouldn't there be some kind of reason for jumbling these things? I couldn't discern one here.
The real problem with the book, though, is the shallowness of its analysis. Hillsborough's thesis is appears twofold. First, that a "will to power" combined with "self-aggrandizement" leads to trouble. Second, that the "superior martial spirit, fighting technique, and an unflinching propensity to kill," and the "official sanction to kill" granted by the Tokugawa shogunate is what set the Shinsengumi apart from their peers. This might be true. Repeating it over and over doesn't make it true. At one point, the phrase "propensity to kill" appears eight times in two pages. Several chapters later the point is driven home yet again, with a chapter entitled, yes, "A Propensity to Kill."
The Shinsengumi were a tragic group of idealists trying to hold on to a world that was passing them by. Their goals were lofty; their methods were brutal. I don't believe their leaders were unaware of the tensions between their ideals and reality. Although many were peasants, they were educated and pursued art and culture along with their martial activities. I await the day when an author writing in English treats their complexities with sensitivity and justice.
[Three stars for the information. One for the writing. Average: Two.]
