This joke requires an actual explanation. The Byakkotai (White Tiger Unit) was a force of teenaged samurai fighting for the Tokugawa Shogunate in the Boshin War against the Meiji regime. When Meiji government forces besieged the Shogunate at the castle on IImori Hill in October 1869, a small 20 man detachment of Byakkotai were cut off from the castle, and could only watch the siege from a nearby hill. Government bombardment set the surrounding town on fire, but through the smoke and haze the Byakkotai detachment mistakenly thought the castle itself was on fire and thus had fallen to the Meiji forces. Believing their lord was now dead or captured the young men decided to commit seppuku, and 19 of the 20 were successful. The joke here is that, like the overly exuberant Byakkotai, Hinami gets carried away in her reenactment and accidentally destroys part of reality.
Joke goes even farther. We do only know of that incident because one of those boys survived to tell the tale in his old age, having failed at doing seppuku properly, right like Hinami.
Trivia: As a matter of fact, that boy, Iinuma Sadakichi, survived not because he failed to cut himself, but because he was tough as nails and was still alive when some peasants found thim and his dead comrades. He went on to, after the war ended with the Meiji regime victory, have a successful military carrer despite having fought for the losing side (reaching the rank of Captain) and after that was an officer at Sendai's post office until his death 1n 1931, aged 76
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iinuma_Sadakichi
And he had SICK headburns, too.
last edited at Dec 10, 2025 9:41AM
