At the village of Gonda in 1868 there was a young retainer of nearly six feet. Ikeda Denzaburō, who later called himself Den, and Ikeda Akinobu. He was twenty-three at the time. Born the son of a sumo wrestler, he was adopted into a Gonda family as a son-in-law and became one of Oguri's infantrymen. He crossed the Karasu River to charge the enemy's headquarters, led the wife's party as far as Aizu, fought at Goryōkaku, and became a policeman in Kyoto. He left his betrothed in the village, and the two never married.
A wrestler's son, adopted as the Kamiya's son-in-law
There are two traditions about his birth. Koitabashi Ryōhei has him the son of a sumo wrestler of Nakano in Shinshū, given as a child to the Uehara family at the village of Sugao in Agatsuma district and brought up as the younger brother of the head of the house, Jūgorō. Since Jūgorō was an only son, that would make him a brother by adoption. Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki's Oguri Kōzukenosuke records that a wrestler kept by the Ueda domain died while staying at a relative's house at Hagiu, and that Ikeda Tamikichi, hearing of the child left behind, took him in and adopted him.
At seventeen or eighteen he was adopted into the house of Ikeda Tamikichi of Uenokubo in the village of Gonda, known as the Kamiya, as the betrothed of the daughter Kayo. His build and his temper caught Oguri's eye at once, and at eighteen he was sent to study at the Oguri residence at Surugadai in Edo. There was an arrangement by which young men of Gonda lodged in the row house within the grounds and attended the French-style infantry drill ground, and Denzaburō was one of them. Back at Gonda he studied the sword under Negishi Shōrei, fencing master of the Annaka domain. He is said to have been a master of the Araki school and of the Hokushin Ittō school.
Crossing the river to charge
In the third month of 1868 the gamblers of Sannokura and villagers from round about attacked Gonda. Oguri's side divided about a hundred men into five parties, and Denzaburō led one of them under the steward Tsukamoto Masahiko, posted from the upper post of Gonda to the neighbourhood of the Kawada bridge. They stood facing the enemy's headquarters across the river at the village of Miyahara. They made a dummy cannon by setting a long narrow barrel on a cart, packed it with powder and fired it to frighten them. Even a wooden barrel, it is said, gave out a great noise.
After that they crossed the Karasu River, charged into Miyahara, and cut down Maruyama Genbei, the headman of the village of Kawaura. Genbei was a pupil of Higuchi Jūrōzaemon of the Maniwa Nen school, so that both men were swordsmen. That he and Ōi Isojūrō killed some five men between them is set down in the Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries) as well.
Matakichi was sent at once to the upper post again, attacked them from the high ground, and at last pushed into the village of Kawaura across the Karasu River and drove them out; at this time Ikeda Den and Ōi Isojūrō killed some five men, and the other infantrymen killed as many as ten in various places
Before the charge, the account taken down says, he sucked blood from a fallen body to steady his nerve. In this fight Oguri was holding his men back, calling “do not cut them down”. It was a small district, and those killed were people from across the river whose faces were known.
→ His last command: driving off the gamblers' attack at Sannokura
Round by the Manki pass
On the afternoon of the third day of the intercalary fourth month the Oguri household left Tōzenji and stopped first at the Ikeda house at Uenokubo — Kayo's house, into which Denzaburō had been adopted. The family sat on the veranda and ate a late midday meal of barley rice, as Kayo and Seitarō left on record. On the night of the fourth they left Ōi's house at Kamezawa for the village of Ōzori. Denzaburō took charge of guiding them as far as Aizu and of arranging lodgings within Agatsuma district. It was his knowledge of the country from Agatsuma into Shinshū that settled the task on him.
It was through those connections that the party could take their sandals off at the Takahashi house at Kamiseki. The wife of the Takahashi house had married out of Uehara Jūgorō's house at Sugao, which made her Denzaburō's sister by adoption. It was the house that had attended her at her wedding, and it was Kayo's mother's family home as well. They were waiting with everything ready to receive them, and the secret of the journey was kept close.
At the edge of the village of Yatake the party split in two. The pregnant Michiko went with Nakajima Sanzaemon and others over the Sugao pass, while the mother, Kuniko, who was sixty, Matakichi's betrothed, Masako Kusaka, who was fourteen, and their attendant Nakajima Sai went round by the Manki pass, guarded by Denzaburō, Tsukakoshi Tomigorō, Hagiwara Goheiji and others.
One more story of that escape has come down from Denzaburō's own mouth. When the party was found at the Ōzori ridge by Kobayashi (Kurosawa) Shōgo, an officer of the Yoshii domain, he pitied the wife for being with child, could not bring himself to cut them down, and let them go. Agatsuma Gunshi (the Agatsuma district history) writes the scene thus.
The retainer Ikeda Akinobu and one or two others put her ladyship into a grass-cutter's basket, covered her round with grass, and carried her by turns, keeping out of sight
The story got out in later years from the mouth of “Ikeda Akinobu, an official of Kyoto prefecture, of the seventh order of merit”, and so became known. Akinobu is Denzaburō's later name.
→ The seventeen who went with them to Aizu ／ The flight of his wife Michiko ／ Honda Sanzaemon
He comes back with a broadsword at his hip
After the castle at Aizu fell, Denzaburō took ship from Sendai in the Kaiyō Maru, crossed to Hakodate and fought at Goryōkaku. Even after the defeat he did not go back to Kayo at Gonda, but became a policeman in Kyoto.
He appeared at Gonda in the sixth year after the flight. In his policeman's uniform, with a broadsword at his hip, he called at the house of the headman Satō Tōshichi, cried “my lord's enemy” and drew. Tōshichi fled by the back door and hid under the floor, shaking, it is said. Ikeda Tamikichi of the Kamiya heard the commotion, came running, talked to him and at last got him to give it up. Koitabashi puts this in June 1872, and writes that Tōshichi died suddenly on the twenty-seventh of that month, and that rumours went round of suicide and of poisoning.
In the account taken down from Kayo, the same day comes out like this.
He went away with her ladyship and we heard nothing of him, and then in the sixth year he turned up out of nowhere and wept, saying he had set up house in Osaka and had a wife and children, and asking me to forgive him. And he said that, having nothing to offer at his lordship's grave, he would offer Tōshichi's head. Tōshichi was shaking all over, there was a great commotion, and the men of the village came between them and talked it all out
The moustache, and the parcels of Kyoto rouge
Denzaburō was out in the Satsuma rebellion of 1877 as well. Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki's Oguri Kōzukenosuke has it that he joined the front as a policeman, was shot through the cheek at Tabaruzaka, and grew a moustache to hide the scar. Oguri Mankyō Den (a life of Oguri Mankyō) records that he himself told of serving as a corporal of the Kumamoto garrison and being shut up in the siege.
About 1881 or 1882 Denzaburō called at Tōzenji. He greeted Oguri Mankyō, who had become abbot, with ceremony — “Master Kikunosuke, it has been a long time” — and talked of the trouble with the gamblers and of the Satsuma rebellion before he left.
He later became an official of the city of Kyoto and kept a poultry farm. When Shūkichi, who had become Kayo's husband, and Ichikawa Gakujū of the same village called on him on their way to worship at Ise, they were welcomed warmly, it is said. The two left it on record that he was “a grand-looking man with great big eyes”.
He went on sending Kayo some money every year until he died. The parcels held Kyoto rouge and pretty small wares. Kayo said: “while I was still thinking I should like to go to Osaka once and see him, my brother died.” Denzaburō died of a fever. His name in death was Shōyō Denkō Koji. There is no record of the year and month of his death.
Denzaburō's name appears neither in the list of infantrymen cut on the burial mound on the hill behind Tōzenji nor in the roll of the letter of commendation that came from Oguri Teishirō to the escorts in June 1869. When the stone was put up in the Shōwa era, Ōtsubo Motoji set the list on the mound against the materials Ninagawa Arata had gathered, added Ikeda Denzaburō and Honda Saiko, who had been left out of both, and made the number twenty.
→ Ninagawa Arata, and the inscription “benevolence and duty together”
Sources: Koitabashi Ryōhei, Oguri Kōzukenosuke Ichizoku no Higeki (the tragedy of the Oguri family), Asao-sha; Tatsunami, the journal of the memorial society; Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki, Oguri Kōzukenosuke, Oguri Kōzukenosuke o Shinobu Kai, 1975; Ōtsubo Motoji, Kakei oyobi Ryaku-nenpu (the genealogy and short chronology); Kurabuchi Mura-shi (the Kurabuchi village history), including what it quotes from Agatsuma Gunshi (the Agatsuma district history); Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7
→ Ikeda Kayo — the girl who saw that spring at Gonda ／ Suwa Ehaku — the abbot who held the key and begged for a boy's life ／ The end at the riverbed at Mizunuma