Honme Yarijirō [本目縫次郎]

Honme Nuijirō (本目縫次郎) recorded in the primary appointment register as Nuinosuke (本目縫之助), elsewhere as Yarijirō (本目鑓次郎), and argued by the Mata-shichi blog to be properly Nuijirō (本目縫次郎) — was a Jikishinkage-ryū swordsman attached to the Odani (男谷) house, with the notation ni-jutsu (二術; two arts/techniques) marking that he also held a spear post (he is thus one of the few men to appear on both the kenjutsu and the sōjutsu sides of the institute).

He served as shihandai (師範代; senior assistant instructor) at the Honjo Kamezawa-chō (本所亀沢町) dōjō of Odani Seiichirō Nobutomo — the proposer of the Kōbusho, thirteenth-generation head of the line and heir to that dōjō from his own teacher Danno Gennoshin (団野源之進; sobriquet Shinpansai, 真帆斎). He is generally identified with the “Honme” of Nagakura Shinpachi’s Shinsengumi tenmatsu-ki: in that episode, when Kondō Isami and his companions came to the Odani dōjō for a cross-school bout, Honme, standing in for the house, knocked away Kondō’s shinai but, seeing Kondō take an unarmed stance, withdrew with a bow and an acknowledgement of his opponent’s skill.

His tie to the Odani house was by marriage. He wed the eldest daughter of Odani Hikoshirō (男谷彦四郎), while Odani Seiichirō — who married the second daughter, Tsuru, and continued the Odani line — became his brother-in-law; since Seiichirō and Katsu Kaishū (勝海舟) were themselves cousins through the Odani line, Honme stood as a relation by marriage to Katsu as well. His year of birth is unrecorded, but he appears to have belonged to Seiichirō’s and Katsu’s generation: in the eleventh month of Ansei 3 his son Honme Tomigorō (本目富五郎) was already being appointed a Kōbusho kenjutsu sewa-kokoroe (世話心得; supervisory assistant), which implies Honme was a good deal senior to Kondō.

One period source names him independently of the appointment register. The Fujiokaya nikki, quoted in the institutional history of the Kōbusho on the schools and transmissions of the men who entered service as kyōjuhō, lists 「直心影流男谷精一郎門人書院番水野山城守組本目縫次郎」 — Honme Nuijirō of Mizuno Yamashiro-no-kami’s company in the shoin-ban, a Jikishinkage-ryū pupil of Odani Seiichirō.¹ This corroborates the school and the Odani pupillage from outside the Mata-shichi reconstruction, and it prints the name in the 縫次郎 form filed here rather than the register’s 縫之助 — which does not settle the reading, but does show that the 縫次郎 form was current in a contemporary diary.

Beyond the marriage tie, the spear post and the Shinsengumi tenmatsu-ki anecdote, little about Honme is independently documented, and even his name is unsettled; the points above rest on the Mata-shichi reconstruction from the appointment record and Nagakura’s memoir rather than on a dedicated biography.

A separate Honme should not be read into the Kōbusho records: the 本目長門守 who appears in the Rikugun rekishi as a unit commander is Honme Chikatami (本目親民), a kojūnin-gashira, and not the swordsman.