Serizawa Kamo

Serizawa Kamo (1827 or 1830?-1863)

He was the descendant of a powerful family of the Mito clan, hailing from Tokou-shou Serizawa Shuro (Castle) Juushou (Lord), son of Serizawa Sadamoto. It is not certain but he used either Kimura Tsuguji or Shimomura Tsuguji back then, he most probably used “Kimura” as he is said to have married a daughter of the Kimura family. The Mito Clan were advocates of “Sonno-joi” idealogy. On 1859 he was involved in the obstruction in Nagaoka as a member of the Tengu-to. The Tengu-to was the group who assassinated Tairo Ii Naosuke, however he was not able to participate in this assassination.

He becomes a member of the Roshitai where he will meet Kondou and the other members of the soon to be Miburoshi. Serizawa and Kondou will submit a petition to the Aizu clan to allow them to form the  police troop in Kyoto and join in keeping peace and order there. However Serizawa had an arrogant and insolent attitude and in time became a continuous nuisance for the group engaging in questionable activities, like extorting money from merchants and causing trouble. two famous incidents are the Yamato store attack where he fired cannons into the store when the owner would not give him money and another was the Osaka wrestler incident, where he struck down and killed a drunken wrestler with his iron fan. This lead to more fighting between the Miburoshi group and the Osaka wrestlers. Because of the continuous problems he brought to the group, which was also reflected upon those who sponsored them (Aizu), Kondou received orders to assassinate Serizawa, which they did in September at night as he and his men slept. It was witnessed by the Yagi Tamesaburou who leaves us the accounts of what happened. His grave is in Mibu-dera Temple in Kyoto.