Takahashi Taichiro
Takahashi Taichirô was a Mito domain retainer (and later ronin) who played a part in plotting the 1860 assassination of Ii Naosuke (Incident at Sakuradamon) and other violent political actions.
Takahashi was prominent in internal Mito politics as early as the 1840s, playing a role in efforts to get former lord of Mito domain Tokugawa Nariaki absolved of his crimes and released from house confinement in 1846-1848. Remaining in contact with Nariaki during this time, he played a role in conveying Nariaki's political desires to other Mito domain retainers. In connection with these activities, however, he was sentenced to house confinement himself, and had his stipend reduced, in 1848.
By 1858, he was back in service to the domain, however, serving in the post of okuyûhitsu tôdori (head secretary). Closely involved in both relatively everyday matters of governance and administration and in more explicitly political (factional) activities, he frequently met with loyalists from Mito, Kagoshima, and elsewhere.
The following year, on 1859/8/16, Takahashi was among a group of Mito and Kagoshima retainers who met at a restaurant in the Sumida area of Edo known as Daishichiro to secretly discuss an attack on Tairô Ii Naosuke. Whether this was their first meeting is unclear. Two months later, on 1859/10/9, Takahashi was again sentenced to house confinement for his political activities, which had attracted the criticism of a number of his fellow Mito domain retainers. Released by 1860/2, he was then ordered to appear at the domain's Hyôjôsho (judicial office), in an attempt to apprehend him; Taichirô ignored these orders and instead went into hiding in Mito. At this time, there was a controversy within Mito as to whether to comply with orders from the imperial court and the shogunate to return to the shogunate texts of imperial orders handed down to Mito several years prior; Taichirô sent letters to the domain government advising against doing so, and in 1860/3, just after the attack on Ii Naosuke, he fled to Osaka with his son Takahashi Shôzaemon, where he met with other loyalists and continued to plot further actions.
On 1860/3/23, surrounded by police officers sent to apprehend them, Taichirô and his son Shôzaemon committed suicide at Tennôji temple in Osaka. Both were later posthumously granted the Junior Fourth Rank.
References
- Ishin Shiryô Kôyô 維新史料綱要, vol 1 (1937), 28, 31, 37, 82, 84, 127, 140, 154.; vol. 3, 39, 153, 191, 206, 225, 235, 268, 280, 290.
