Changes

* ''Japanese'':浪士組

* ''Japanese'': 浪士組 ''(Roushigumi)''

 

==Background==

==Background==

In [[1863]], the [[Bakufu]] recruited [[ronin]] to guard [[Shogun]] [[Tokugawa Iemochi|Iemochi]] on the occasion of a visit to [[Kyoto]] to meet with the [[Emperor Komei]]. This visit was a precedent breaking event—not since the founding member of the Tokugawa Bakufu, [[Tokugawa Ieyasu]], had the reigning shogun gone to Kyoto to confer with a Son of Heaven. But these were difficult times for Japan, a country deep in a crisis in regards to how to respond to the perceived threat that the arrival of the Americans and the Europeans had sparked. Many Japanese, including Emperor Komei, were vehement xenophobes and wanted the “staining” foreign presence cleansed from Japan. Iemochi, as head of the military government, was being summoned to confer on how to enact the recent imperial edict calling for the expulsion of foreigners to be backed up by the use of force.  

In [[1863]], the [[Bakufu]] recruited [[ronin]] to guard [[Shogun]] [[Tokugawa Iemochi|Iemochi]] on the occasion of a visit to [[Kyoto]] to meet with the [[Emperor Komei]]. This visit was a precedent breaking event—not since the founding member of the Tokugawa Bakufu, [[Tokugawa Ieyasu]], had the reigning shogun gone to Kyoto to confer with a Son of Heaven. But these were difficult times for Japan, a country deep in a crisis in regards to how to respond to the perceived threat that the arrival of the Americans and the Europeans had sparked. Many Japanese, including Emperor Komei, were vehement xenophobes and wanted the “staining” foreign presence cleansed from Japan. Iemochi, as head of the military government, was being summoned to confer on how to enact the recent imperial edict calling for the expulsion of foreigners to be backed up by the use of force.  

== The Short Life of the Roshigumi Corps ==

== The Short Life of the Roshigumi Corps ==

In a strange twist of fate befit of the times, an anti-Tokugawa, imperial loyalist named [[Kiyokawa Hachiro]] was chosen to recruit [[ronin]] for the newly created Roshigumi. Kiyokawa proceeded to recruit members from the large pool of available sonno joi proponents. Although aware that the ranks of the Roshigumi was filling up with dangerous anti-Tokugawa subversives, some naive officials within the Bakufu hoped that bringing these ronin into the fold would help cement a union between Court and Camp (union of the Imperial Court with the Bakufu) to help maintain the harmony of the national polity during this time of crisis.  Thus with a force of 250 men behind him, on February 8, [[1863]], Kiyokawa led the Roshigumi out of Edo as the vanguard of Shogun Iemochi’s procession to Kyoto.

In a strange twist of fate befit of the times, an anti-Tokugawa, imperial loyalist named [[Kiyokawa Hachiro]] was chosen to recruit [[ronin]] for the newly created Roshigumi. Kiyokawa proceeded to recruit members from the large pool of available sonno joi proponents. Although aware that the ranks of the Roshigumi was filling up with dangerous anti-Tokugawa subversives, some naive officials within the Bakufu hoped that bringing these ronin into the fold would help cement a union between Court and Camp (union of the Imperial Court with the Bakufu) to help maintain the harmony of the national polity during this time of crisis.  Thus with a force of 250 men behind him, on February 8, [[1863]], Kiyokawa led the Roshigumi out of Edo as the vanguard of Shogun Iemochi’s procession to Kyoto.