To experience this world the public had to overlook deception and cold-blooded murder. In promulgating the myth of the Forty-seven Ronin, overlook it they did.
So enjoy this thrilling story, a tale that is usually regarded as the classic example of a Japanese vendetta, remembering that in reality it was nothing of the kind, its illegality and the questionable motivation making it an anomaly among the scores of other revenge killings that took place during the Edo Period. Militarily, the Ronin achieved their objective: to place the severed head of Kira Yoshihisa before the tomb of Asano Naganori. Vengeance was indeed taken, but not to avenge Asano’s death—rather for Kira’s unknown insult that he’d suffered and had failed to repay. Asano’s two errant strokes within the Corridor of Pines preceded a deluge of cuts that would settle the score for good. Lord Kira and his men were sent to their almost unknown graves; the Forty-seven Ronin were sent to glory.
Stephen Turnbull
University of Leeds
Preface
Japan was a country IN TURMOIL at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It was a time of pageantry and corruption in the Shogun’s court in Edo (now Tokyo) and of riotous gaiety in the pleasure quarters of ancient Kyoto, shuttered away from the world of social restraint. The arts flourished; the popular theater was born. Because the merchant class was rising in power it was also the beginning of the end of privilege for the professional warriors, or samurai, who felt their loss keenly, especially since they held the business of money-making in contempt.
In the midst of such bewildering change, eruptions of violence were not unknown. They came most often in the form of rice riots by the farmers who were taxed beyond endurance by the Shogun, the military ruler of all Japan. That they did not occur more often among the samurai was a tribute to the thoroughness of their training and their remarkable self-discipline.
But even a samurai could be pushed too far. Especially a rash young lord forced into contact with the effete and degenerate ways of the court.
It happened in 1701 in Edo. In a moment of anger and frustration, Lord Asano of Ako lashed out at a corrupt court official and set in motion a chain of events that terminated in one of the bloodiest vendettas in Japan’s feudal history. These events shocked the country and brought the Shogun himself to a legal and moral impasse. When it was all over, Japan had a new set of heroes—the Forty-seven Ronin, or ex-samurai, of Ako.
The historical facts of their deed are plain; the details are hazy. Celebrated in song, story, drama, and motion pictures, many widely differing versions have been produced.
This novel is intended to give an account in English of what might have happened in those colorful days when Japan was secluded from the rest of the world and the old traditions still governed the lives of men.
— John Allyn
Chapter One
MARCH 13, 1701.
The sun completed its route over the Pacific and began to set, the waters reddening around the islands of Japan. To the southwest, on a path near the Inland Sea, a tall man on an unkempt stallion shielded his eyes from the glare as he rode tight-lipped through the pines.
His name was Oishi; he was the chief retainer of the Asano clan, the rulers of this hilly domain. He was returning to the castle at Ako after an all-day horseback tour of the castle town with his master’s little daughter, who rode beside him on a pony with a tangled mane.
They made a strange pair. Oishi was a handsome man in his early forties with a high-domed forehead, a square jaw, and an air of quiet authority. His topknot, pleated hakama skirt, and two swords identified him as a samurai, a member of the warrior class. The child was petite and vivacious, bright as a butterfly in kimono and obi. Yet, in spite of their differences, each was comfortable in the other’s presence. The girl was freed from the strict discipline her parents imposed on her; Oishi was freer with a child, especially someone else’s, to relax his official manner and even joke a little.
At the moment, as their shabby horses jogged homeward, there was less conversation between them than usual. Oishi was appalled at what he had seen in the town, and the little girl respected his silence.
All his life Oishi had heard the Buddhist edicts against violence and cruelty, but in practice they had always been tempered with common sense. Sometimes one had to kill to defend oneself against an enemy, or, in the case of animals, to get food. Personally, he had always deplored the cruelty in tournaments where dogs were brought down by spears or arrows and he had no objection to such sport being abolished. But the Shogun’s new Life Preservation Laws went much too far. Animals were now apparently more privileged than humans and this topsy-turvy manner of thinking had brought the whole country to the brink of economic chaos.
In the town Oishi had seen once thriving farmers begging for jobs because they were not allowed to fight back against the pests that destroyed their crops. Foxes, badgers, birds, and insects ran rampant in the fields while those who had planted the seed stood by helplessly.
Oishi knew that poultry was secretly being sold in the back rooms of some otherwise respectable shops, but on the whole violations of the law were few. Not only was the administrative machinery of the Shogun’s government extremely effective in catching lawbreakers, but the penalty for injuring any living thing was severe. For taking the life of an animal, the punishment was the execution of the “criminal” himself.
There were others who were as badly off as the farmers. The occupations of hunter, trapper, and tanner had become obsolete and these men, too, were crowding the towns, seeking some way to support their families. To their consternation, they found that jobs were scarce and food prices high, boosted out of reach of the common people by the scant supply of farm products. The only commodity seemingly available at a low price was a young girl to sleep with, due to the growing number of farmers’ daughters who had been sold into the brothels to tide their families over the bad times.
As always, Oishi had skirted the so-called pleasure quarters when touring the town with Lord Asano’s daughter, but now the houses of prostitution were increasing so fast that they spread right out onto the main road and were impossible to avoid. Shocking was the word for it, and he was certainly going to bring it to his master’s attention when he returned.
As yet his own class had not felt the economic pinch—the samurai were paid out of funds that came from selling the rice grown on their lords’ fiefs at the going high prices—but their lives had been affected by the Shogun’s edict in other ways.
There was no more archery practice or competition, because they could not pluck goosefeathers for their arrows. There was no more falconry because all the birds had been set at liberty and even the Shogun’s Master of Hawks had been discharged. Horsemanship was becoming a lost art because the horses’ hooves could not be pared or their manes clipped under penalty of banishment. But worst of all, in Oishi’s mind, was the general laxity of morals that was spreading from the Shogun’s capital down into the provinces.
As the son of a samurai, Oishi had spent his childhood in the study of Confucian ethics as part of the necessary training of a soldier who must learn loyalty as well as fierceness on the field of battle. Because of this, he was shocked at reports that the dancing and play-acting that overran Shogun Tsunayoshi’s capital at Edo (Tokyo) was beginning to have a softening effect on the samurai quartered there. He had even heard rumors that samurai had been seen in the Kabuki theaters of Kyoto, the city of pleasure as well as of temples, but these he found hard to believe.
Such things had been going on for some time, but Oishi had not been aware of just how bad things had gotten in town until today. He began to compose in his mind the report he would make to Lord Asano, and as he thought of her father he turned toward the little girl riding beside him. She smiled at him but then her expression became more serious. She, too, had noticed a change in the countryside.
“Uncle,” she asked him, “why are all the farms so messy looking? They’re none of them kept up well at all. Don’t you think you ought to report the farmers to my father