Excerpted from
History of the Imperial Guard, by Tenryu Asabe, Chapter 4
Owing to Nemuro’s close ties to the Daimyo Date, he was relieved from command by Prince Osahito in early May of that year. Sub-commander Kinoshita took command on May 8, and attempted to form an elite regiment, dedicated to ceremonial functions for the Emperor and His family. This function was unpopular with the soldiers and many of the underofficers. Kinoshita soon lost effective control of the Guard, leaving many companies to their own devices. This was the only recorded instance of looting attributed to the Guard.
Until May 19, Osahito was unaware of what was transpiring outside of Kyoto. The prince assumed that any complaints were merely the difficulties of changing commanders. Underofficer Riku Yamata, a veteran of the Hiroshima campaign, brought the lawlessness amongst the Guard to Osahito’s attention.
The Hiroshima campaign was launched by Ieyoshi in August of 1838 to deal with rebel sympathizers who had taken control of the city. The official orders describing the campaign listed the rebels as disorganized, possessing incompetent leadership, and lacking the support of the citizenry. None of these proved true. The campaign consisted of two battles. The first was the rout of Sendai Force after a mere forty minutes of fighting. The second was a pitched battle outside of Hiroshima’s walls.
At the time, Osahito was an underofficer, and Yamata, a soldier in the same company. In the course of the fighting, their company vaporized, and they found themselves fighting alongside the other eight survivors more than 500 meters behind rebel lines. For this reason, Osahito and Yamata became close friends after the rebellion, even though Osahito was a Prince of the Realm and Yamata a mere peasant.
Yamata’s warning to Osahito prompted action. By May 21, Kinoshita was removed from command, and later tried by tribunal for gross incompetence. Osahito took personal command of the Guard, and named Yamata second-in-command of the Guard. The Guard began to recover its discipline almost overnight. That was good, as the town of Kanagawa, where the Guard had been temporarily stationed, exploded into revolt two days later, on May 23. It was one of five rebellions planned by the renegade Daimyo Date to simultaneously rip Japan apart. The other four were easily put down by the Shogun’s other detachments.
This rebellion, however, was reinforced by the defection of no less than seven nearby towns in addition to the city itself. In total, more than eighteen thousand rebels attacked the twelve thousand Guardsmen. Despite the superior numbers, Osahito managed to delay the rebels from concentrating their forces until the rebels only had a five hundred-man advantage. He then engaged in a four-day battle resulting in the complete destruction of the rebel force. Osahito’s losses were six hundred twenty-four soldiers.