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Born to a retainer of the Matsumae domain, he was an expert of Shinto Munen-ryu. Meeting Kondo Isami at the Shieikan in Edo, he accompanied the group to Kyoto in 1863. As captain of the Second Unit he distinguished himself in many battles, including the Ikedaya Incident and the Kinmon Incident. In 1867 he participated in the suppression of the Goryo Eji (Aburakoji Incident). After the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, he objected to Kondo's authoritarian leadership and left the Shinsengumi, organizing a volunteer unit called the Seikyo-tai and continuing to fight in Tohoku and Hakodate. After the Meiji Restoration he settled in Otaru, Hokkaido, and around 1912 wrote the "Shinsengumi Tenmatsu-ki," preserving the corps's history for future generations. He died in 1915 at seventy-six, the longest-lived of the Shinsengumi survivors.

Upright and direct in the samurai tradition, he spoke his mind against the organization or superiors when he felt something was unjust. Fearless in battle, he maintained his loyalty to comrades to the end.

His "Shinsengumi Tenmatsu-ki" is an invaluable primary source on the corps and became the foundation for later research and fiction. That he lived to old age and recorded history firsthand is one of the greatest gifts to Shinsengumi scholarship.