He was born in Edo, the eldest son of Hasegawa Nobuo, a hatamoto with a 400-koku stipend. His name was Nobutame, his common name Heizō, and as a child he was called Tetsusaburō. Some place his birth a year earlier (opinions differ). He is the man widely known as 'Onihei', hero of the historical novel series Onihei Hankachō.
He was received in audience by the tenth shogun, Tokugawa Ieharu, and recognized as heir to the Hasegawa house. Records say that as a young man he lived a dissolute life and was feared as 'Tetsu of Honjo'. It is often said that this experience of town life later served him in hunting down thieves.
He married the daughter of the hatamoto Ōhashi Chikahide, and his eldest son and heir, Nobuyoshi, was born. His father Nobuo was steadily rising through shogunate posts, serving as captain of guards and commander of archers. The young Heizō is thought to have learned the hatamoto's way of life by watching his father's work.
His father Nobuo was appointed Kyoto town magistrate, and Heizō moved to Kyoto with his wife and child. The Kyoto magistrate was an important post responsible for order and justice in the city. In Kyoto Heizō saw at close hand the work of the yoriki and dōshin, the officers who policed the town.
His father Nobuo died in Kyoto. Heizō is said to have told his father's men that he would make himself known as a hero in Edo before returning there. In the ninth month he succeeded to the Hasegawa house and took his father's name Heizō, but for a while lived as a hatamoto without office.
He became a guard in the Nishinomaru shoinban, protecting the western enclosure of Edo Castle where the shogun's heir lived. He is said to have squandered his father's savings on pleasure while without office, but from here his career as an official opened up. The next year he also served in the office handling ceremonial gifts.
Following his appointment two years earlier as captain of the Nishinomaru foot guards, he was named commander of a vanguard archer unit. This was an important military post, and those who also served as arson-and-robbery police in Edo were chosen from among such commanders. Heizō's career took a major step forward.
Through the appointment of senior councilor Matsudaira Sadanobu, he took on the additional post of arson-and-robbery police for the winter months. After the Tenmei famine Edo was full of people who had lost their livelihoods, and arson and theft were on the rise. Fellow hatamoto are said to have complained that a man of his poor reputation had been chosen.
In the tenth month he became the full-time, year-round arson-and-robbery police chief. He generously treated his yoriki and dōshin to drink and meals, and is said to have even treated townspeople who brought in thieves to soba. Commoners called him 'Lord Heizō of Honjo' and 'a modern Ōoka', and he became very popular.
He rounded up the whole gang of the great thief Shindō Tokujirō, who had plagued the Kantō region, and his name became widely known. The same year he proposed to Sadanobu a facility to rehabilitate people without work and those who had served their sentences, and he was put in charge of it himself.
A workhouse, the ninsoku yoseba, was set up on Ishikawajima in Edo. People without homes or work were gathered there and taught skills such as carpentry, papermaking and making charcoal balls. Part of their wages was saved and handed to them on release as capital for a new life, a system that stressed rehabilitation.
When a post of Edo town magistrate fell vacant, Heizō's name was rumored, but he was not chosen, partly because there was no precedent. Even so he kept working, capturing the leader of a vicious gang of robbers, and is said to have remarked that Lord Sadanobu's trust was his only support.
Sadanobu, on whom he relied, had left the council of elders two years earlier, and Heizō resigned through illness from the police post he had held for nearly eight years. He received words of thanks and medicine from the shogun Tokugawa Ienari but died soon after. Sadanobu later wrote that the workhouse's success was entirely Heizō's achievement.
Matsudaira SadanobuTokugawa Ienari
Hayashi ShiheiKoikawa HarumachiInō TadatakaHanawa HokiichiShiba KokanŌta NanpoTsutaya JūzaburōUesugi Yōzan
People of the Edo period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.