The Revenge of the 47 Ronin: Edo 1703

The Revenge of the 47 Ronin Edo 1703 23

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The Tamura house records reveal the incredible speed of these events.

Asano attacked Kira some time before midday; the order placing him in the custody of Tamura was issued at 1. The first act of the drama was over. We now know, of course, that their eventual reaction was to mount the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin, but that was in fact the final conclusion they reached after much heart-searching and much deliberation. Before then, they contemplated the consequences of the dreadful breach of etiquette their former young charge had committed and, in their eyes, the fateful overreaction to it by the Shogun.

Their shocked discussions over what had happened were echoed throughout noble society. Emperor Higashiyama, when he got to hear of the incident, was apparently unsurprised and even satisfied to have it confirmed that these samurai fellows were at heart unspeakably vulgar. Tsunayoshi was clearly embarrassed by the insult to the imperial court and appalled by the defilement of a sacred ritual space by the shedding of blood. The latter aspect of the incident was a very serious matter because it related to an attitude embedded very deeply in the Japanese psyche.

Shinto beliefs involved extremely strict notions of purity and pollution, with blood being one of the worse agents of contamination. Asano Naganori had compounded his felony by shedding blood within the imperial presence, an environment where ritual purity was of the utmost concern. For the stunned Asano retainers, the question of ritual defilement was far from their minds.

Their immediate concern was with the survival of the Asano house.

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Tsunayoshi had already shown himself ready to punish daimyo by land transfer, and indeed the Shogun who had so speedily rushed to condemn Asano Naganori to death was to move with equally indecent haste to confiscate the Ako domain. He certainly should have done, because his own uncle Naito Tadakatsu had lost his life and his fief on account of a remarkably similar assault scarcely 20 years earlier. In that incident, Tadakatsu had killed a fellow daimyo called Nagai Hisanaga within the precincts of the Zojoji temple in Edo during the funeral of the fourth Shogun Ietsuna.

Just like Asano, Naito Tadakatsu was heard to exclaim that he was acting in revenge. In matters of discipline, the new Shogun Tsunayoshi had quickly shown that he was a man to be reckoned with. If that incident had not been enough to convince Asano Naganori of the folly of shedding blood in the presence of the Shogun, then surely another occurrence in should have persuaded him. Even brawls and quarrels among lowly hatamoto could be severely punished by compulsory suicide.

All three suffered, because the assailant was sentenced to death by seppuku while one of his victims died of his wounds and the other was exiled. Similar incidents were to occur in and Asano Naganori should have had considerable grounds for hesitation. One common factor in all these earlier incidents was that the victim was treated almost as harshly as the assailant in terms of losing his domain, if not his own life, so why was Kira not punished?

The argument that was to rage about this particular aspect of the incident centred on whether the attack by Asano on Kira was subject to the customary principle which was not a legal requirement that both parties in a quarrel involving physical violence should be punished equally, regardless of fault. As Kira had no domain to be confiscated, that form of punishment was of course ruled out. Yet the fact that he appeared to have escaped scot-free was an additional source of resentment as the Forty-Seven Ronin moved inexorably to their final and fateful decision.

As a counter to this argument, it was to be pointed out that Kira had in fact acted within the spirit of the equality principle by The news is brought to Oishi Kuranosuke in Ako by Hayami Tozaemon and Kayano Shigezane, as shown in a life-sized diorama in the Oishi Shrine, Banshu-Ako.

In fact, Kira was to be praised for his orderly conduct, which probably riled the Ako retainers still further. Supporters of Asano also argued that by not retaliating Kira showed himself to be no true samurai and therefore deserved punishment, a viewpoint that could be paralleled by arguing that Asano was not a true samurai because he failed to kill Kira, let alone that he attacked his man from behind!

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This criticism of Asano was to be voiced in a satirical verse composed about the incident which suggested that if Asano had known anything about weapon usage he would have stabbed Kira rather than slashed at him. Yamaga Soko served the Asano family for many In the Shadow of Soko years, and his attitude When the retainers of the late lord met to consider their fate, their deliberations were conducted beneath the benign shadow of the one of the greatest thinkers to have emerged during the first century of the Tokugawa regime: the Confucian scholar Yamaga Soko — In terms of intellectual inquiry, Yamaga Soko was akin to the wandering swordsmen of an earlier age.

His military skills enabled Soko to help in the design of Ako Castle, but he probably spent most of his time serving Naganao when the latter was in Edo because of the Alternate Attendance System. The publication of a book expounding these views seriously offended Hoshina Masayuki —72 , a senior bakufu official, so Soko was towards samurai behaviour and values undoubtedly influenced Oishi Kuranosuke and his fellow ronin as they moved towards their final decision to take revenge upon Kira.

From a painted scroll in Hirado, Nagasaki prefecture. Soko therefore returned to Ako in as an exile, but went back to Edo in after receiving a pardon, although his influence as an academic force never quite recovered. With considerable hindsight, the principles of bushido were to provide the rationale for the Ako revenge. Yet the warriors Soko now saw around him during his lifetime were not hatamoto fighting under the banner of their lord, but under-employed civil servants who stood in grave danger of a slide from virtue.

The central question for Yamaga Soko was this: what was the role of the military class in an age of peace? His conclusion was that the samurai had to act as exemplars to the rest of society, particularly by setting an example of devotion to duty.

A samurai should therefore be frugal in his ways and unostentatious in his dress. He was the karo senior retainer of the Asano daimyo of Ako. The notion of duty, for example, pointed inevitably towards the course of action that the Forty-Seven Ronin would shortly follow. Yet this was still some way into the future, because the immediate aim of Oishi and his colleagues was to safeguard the future of the Ako domain, or what was left of it.

Oishi Kuranosuke, the leader of the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin, is shown here in a hanging scroll at the Sengakuji. He is dressed in a simple costume that is probably authentic. His helmet is a fire-helmet, the standard issue for senior retainers.

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He has removed his helmet, but his age shows in his face and his hunched shoulders. It is not generally appreciated that this process left behind not just 47 but a total of displaced retainers. It is at this point that we begin to read of named individuals who were to join their leader, Oishi Kuranosuke, in the eventual drama.

Shortly afterwards, other prominent members among the Edo ronin made the journey to Ako. They were delayed only by the requirements to perform a seventh-day memorial service for Asano at the Sengakuji, his temple of repose. Also missing from the list of the conspirators are Yasui Hikoemon and Fujii Matazaemon, who were based in Edo and were so concerned that violence might break out that they forbade any more retainers from leaving Edo for Ako.

The Revenge of the 47 Ronin: Edo 1703 (Raid)

With this in mind, Oishi sent two emissaries to Edo to deliver a petition to the two bakufu officials who had been ordered to accept the surrender of Ako Castle. To these simple-minded folk, the fact that Kira remained unpunished had driven them to consider barricading themselves inside the castle. If satisfactory measures were taken in that regard, with Kira recognized equally as the cause of the problem, then surely the matter could be settled peacefully. Instead he went to Ako to join Oishi, where the aggrieved ronin planned their next moves to have the domain restored. It was only when that strategy failed that the final raid was planned.

He is shown here in a modern wooden statue in the Oishi Shrine, Banshu-Ako. As months went by, the possibility that the domain could be restored to the incarcerated Asano Nagahiro was the straw to which the ronin clung after both suicide and siege had been ruled out. Yet as all the previous examples of domain confiscation following an act of violence had shown, the best that could have been hoped for would have been for Nagahiro to be released and live out the rest of his days in Edo with a few retainers. This appeared to be confirmed a year later when Nagahiro was removed from house arrest and placed instead into the custody of the main branch of the Asano family in Hiroshima.

The Vengeful Imperative The restored wall and tower of the castle of Ako, the castle town of the han domain controlled by Asano Naganori, whose attack on Kira Yoshihisa precipitated the conspiracy of the Forty-Seven Ronin. The duty of vengeance that the Forty-Seven Ronin now felt was incumbent upon them had a long and honourable pedigree in Japanese history. Quick revenge upon the medieval battlefield or more considered moves, such as the long-planned revenge of the Soga brothers — a classic incident dating from the 12th century — had made the deed respectable in samurai eyes and hallowed by tradition.

Almost the entire Gempei War could be seen as an act of revenge by the Minamoto the ancestors, of course, of the Shogun Tsunayoshi against the slaying by the Taira of one of their patriarchal figures.

Such were the precedents, but Japan had moved on somewhat from those days, as the Forty-Seven Ronin fully appreciated. In our modern age a cursory reading of popular Japanese history, where samurai swords spend more time unsheathed than lying in their scabbards, disguises the fact that by the act of revenge was surrounded by a plethora of laws and regulations.

A systematic definition of katakiuchi vendetta and a series of rules about how one might be carried out, had emerged during the past century. Yet this could only be done within a very strict legal framework, the most important of which was the requirement that the intention to carry out a katakiuchi should be registered with the authorities in advance, who would then grant permission for the vendetta to be carried out. One of the earliest conclusions drawn by the Forty-Seven Ronin was that secrecy was essential if they were to succeed against Kira, because he was expecting retaliation and had the backing of the Uesugi.

The Forty-Seven also anticipated undoubtedly correctly that permission for their vendetta would never be granted. The Forty-Seven Ronin were also aware of this and tried to justify their actions by appealing to ancient tradition rather than modern legalities. So their subsequent conduct meant that they had set themselves outside the law on two counts, and there was a third. It is now customary to regard the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin as the classic act of revenge — the supreme vendetta — of Old Japan, yet this perspective reveals another complication for them, because to respond to the Ako Incident by killing Kira stretched the definition of a vendetta to its breaking point.

But in the Corridor of Pines, Kira had not been the assailant. Asano was. He may have claimed to be the victim of a grievance, but while no one knew for certain what that grievance was, everyone knew which of them had been the victim of the assault. The death of Asano had also come about so rapidly that Kira could have played no part in the decision to order his execution, which in any case was carried out according to the law and in conformity with every recent precedent. So if a vendetta should be carried out against anyone, then surely the target of the Forty-Seven Ronin should have been the Shogun himself?

The Revenge of the 47 Ronin - Stephen Turnbull - Häftad () | Bokus

Put quite simply, their lord had failed to kill Kira. They would finish the job in his memory. All the above factors were taken into consideration as the months wore on and an outrageous plan began to develop. Act Two had ended, and Act Three was about to begin. Born in , Oishi was distantly related to the Asano family through marriage. His position as karo gave him enormous responsibility, including, as was normal for every han under the Alternate Attendance System, being in total charge of the administration of the domain when the daimyo was in Edo.

It therefore fell to Oishi to take the lead in all the negotiations, demands and eventually the plots that would follow over the ensuing months.

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