A Brief History of Ronin Swordsmanship and the Shogunate

The Imperial loyalist movement was drawing its support from groups of lower ranking samurai who had chosen to leave their domains for whatever reason. Matsudaira Chikara Nosuke, a swordsmanship instructor at a school in Edo argued that Ronin could be recruited to bolster the Shoguns forces. Kiyokawa Hachiro became one after killing another samurai over a personal quarrel,. Several of his former students had been involved in the 1861 assassination of the Dutch-American Henry Houskin.