Hijikata at Utsunomiya Castle

After his escape from Edo, Hijikata Toshizo and Otori Keisuke, a commander
of the former Shogunate's infantry, led an attack on Utsunomiya Castle.
Utsunomiya Castle was strategically located-- it was on the northward roads
leading to places like Aizu and Sendai, and one of the locations prime for
attack by the new government's army.

A question that has been on my mind for some time was the following-- a
castle in Edo-era Japan is never without an occupant. A ruling family of
Utsunomiya was never mentioned in anything I'd read on Hijikata's attack,
and this led me to believe that perhaps it was one of the Tokugawa family's
castles. Checking the list of castles in direct posession of the Tokugawa, I
quickly found that this was not the case.

Who ruled Utsunomiya Castle, then? Where was its lord, and why was his
castle attacked by Hijikata and Otori?

The logical step was to look for "Utsunomiya-han" ("Utsunomiya domain") in a
reference book-- in this case, volume one of Ogawa Kyoichi's "Edo Bakuhan
Daimyo-ke Jiten" ("A Dictionary of Edo-era Lordly Families"), and Abe
Akira's article on Utsunomiya-han in volume two of the the extensive domain
encyclopedia "Hanshi Daijiten". Sure enough, I found it: Utsunomiya-han was
a domain ruled by the Toda family. As of Keio 3 (1867), it was a
moderately-sized domain of 70,850 koku, or roughly a quarter of the size of
the Aizu domain in the same year (280,000 koku). The lord of Utsunomiya was
Toda Tadatomo, who in 1868 was a young 20 years old.

The next question on my mind that arose was this, now that I knew the name
of the lord-- did he have any history of a disconnect with the Tokugawa
family, or a tendency toward inaction when it came to Shogunal politics? The
answer was a resounding no-- Tadatomo held high positions in the Tokugawa
administration, both as a Master of Ceremonies (soshaban) and a Magistrate
of Temples and Shrines (Jisha-bugyo). He was appointed to these posts as of
the 25th day of the 7th month of Keio 3 (1867), so that doesn't leave much
room for him to do anything antagonistic to deserve an attack by the former
Shogunate's infantry.

Looking at a timeline of the actions of the lords of Utsunomiya throughout
history, I found the following: Toda Tadatomo was, on the 15th of the 3rd
month of Meiji 1 (1868), in Otsu, on his way to Kyoto, to transmit Tokugawa
Yoshinobu's apologies to the Imperial Court, when he was arrested and
detained. Utsunomiya was thus left lordless, until the 6th of the 4th month,
when his predecessor, Toda Tadayuki, returned to Utsunomiya from Edo, and
officially submitted to the new government.

This answered my question of why exactly Hijikata and Otori attacked him.
But I read further-- about a week after Tadayuki returned, a peasant riot (a
"yonaoshi-ikki", as it's known in Japanese) broke out, and hard on the heels
of the riots, only a handful of days later, Hijikata and Otori arrived and
took the castle on the 19th of the 4th month. However, the new government
attacked Utsunomiya Castle a handful of days later, on the 23rd. Years
later, Otori wrote an account of the events, which was published in the
magazine "Kyu Bakufu" in Meiji 32, in which he said that Hijikata was
injured in the toes and subsequently taken to the Higashiyama hotsprings
within the Aizu domain for treatment.

Just a little example of the level of detail that I am beginning to discover
in my research on the Bakumatsu.

(Sources: "Kyu Bakufu", vol. 1. no. 1; Ogawa Kyouichi, "Edo Bakuhan
Daimyo-ke Jiten" (vol. 1); Abe Akira, �Utsunomiya-han�, in Hanshi Daijiten,
vol. 2)

-M.