Amano Hachirō (天野八郎), the Shōgitai (彰義隊) leader sits in the Jiki Shinkage-ryū roster of notables alongside Sakakibara Kenkichi.
His Shōgitai corps affected a deliberate look — light-blue haori, white Yoshitsune hakama, red-scabbard swords, and hair dressed “Kōbusho-style.” Amano was born Ōida (大井田), second son of the Iwato village headman in Kōzuke, was briefly adopted into the Hirohama (広浜) fire-brigade house in 1865, and only assumed the hatamoto name Amano — naming himself “Amano Hachirō” — around 1866. Amano studied Jiki Shinkage-ryū from his youth.
Formed in 1868 by Shibusawa Seiichirō (Shibusawa Eiichi’s cousin) and Amano Hachirō to guard the retired shōgun Yoshinobu and police Edo, after discontented hatamoto issued a manifesto and seventeen Hitotsubashi men met at the Myōgaya in Zōshigaya on the 12th of the 2nd month. Shibusawa was head and Amano deputy — both risen from farmer/headman stock into Hitotsubashi service; the corps swelled past a thousand with ex-Shinsengumi remnants and toughs. When Yoshinobu left for Mito after the castle’s surrender, the moderate Shibusawa wanted to withdraw from Ueno, clashed with the hardliner Amano, and left to form the Shinbugun in Saitama, leaving Amano to lead. The end came at the Battle of Ueno: on 5/15 (1868) Ōmura Masujirō’s new-government army attacked the Shōgitai entrenched at Kan’eiji and crushed it in a single day.
Amano died in prison on 8 November 1868, age 38, a few months after the Battle of Ueno.
