Making the Poster Boys of Aizu: The Unlikely Apotheosis of the White Tiger Brigade

Perhaps the most poignant and lasting image to emerge from the Boshin War in 1868 is that of the White Tiger Brigade (Byakkotai) of Aizu domain. Having failed to defend their homeland against the forces of the new Meiji state, this group of teenaged samurai soldiers committed mass suicide atop Mount Iimori. Despite their disgrace as “rebels” and “enemies of the court” for their part in the civil war, the White Tiger boys soon made their way into official morality textbooks and other nationalistic celebrations of martial valor, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. How did these rebels and losers become loyalists and heroes? Of the many and various tragedies that befell Aizu in 1868, why has the image of these boy soldiers endured? As it turns out, the White Tiger Brigade was the discursive product of the struggle to redefine imperial loyalism in modern times and to reconcile the memory of rebellion and violence with new nationalist sensibilities. This paper examines how the remembrance of the White Tiger Brigade evolved from the late nineteenth into the early twentieth centuries, and reveals the ironies and contradictions inherent in manipulating historical memory.