Takahashi Deishū (高橋泥舟; 1835–1903, died at age 69; tsūshō Kenzaburō, imina Masaakira, gō first Ninsai then Deishū). Born the second son of the hatamoto Yamaoka Masanari and adopted into his mother’s Takahashi house; younger brother of the spearman Yamaoka Seizan.
The Yamaoka were a famous house of Jitokuin-ryū (自得院流), also called Ninshin-ryū (忍心流), spearmanship; Deishū trained under his elder brother Seizan and was praised as reaching divine skill; he became Kōbusho spear instructor at 22 (1856) and shihan-yaku in 1860.
In 1863 he oversaw the Rōshigumi as rōshi-torishimari and was titled Ise-no-kami, and in 1866 he was made head (tōdori) of the newly created Yūgekitai while concurrently heading spear instruction for the unit. The Yūgekitai’s institutional head was Deishū, with Iba commanding in the field.
After Toba-Fushimi he urged Yoshinobu toward submission and guarded him at Kan’eiji, and when Katsu Kaishū chose him as envoy to Saigō, he declined out of concern for Yoshinobu and proposed his brother-in-law Yamaoka Tesshū go to Sunpu instead — the deferral that set up the Tesshū–Saigō talks behind the bloodless surrender. He is one of the “Three Boats of the bakumatsu” with Katsu and Tesshū; Katsu’s famous line was that Deishū “became Ise-no-kami on the strength of a single spear.”
Tesshū, note, was the Ono son adopted into the Yamaoka house as Seizan’s sister’s husband — Deishū’s brother-in-law.
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