The Revenge of the 47 Ronin: Edo 1703 (Raid)
Stephen Turnbull
Language: English
Pages: 80
ISBN: 1849084270
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
From 1600 till 1866 civil strife in public was virtually unknown in Japan; however, personal loyalty and self-sacrifice could at times rise above the samurai hierarchy to redefine Japanese culture. In 1703 former samurai avenged their lord in the most legendary raid in Japanese history. The story of the 47 ronin is a tale rich in emotion, precise planning, and flawless martial execution.
This was the raid that turned Japan upside down.
Lord Kira had brought about the death of Lord Asano, thus making Asano's loyal samurai into ronin (unemployed 'men of the waves'). In complete secrecy they plotted their revenge, and one snowy winter's night launched a raid against his mansion in Edo (Tokyo). The gates were broken down, and after the fiercest sword battle seen in Japan for over a century Kira was captured and beheaded. His head was washed and placed on Asano's tomb. The Shogun had now been placed in a dilemma. Should he reward the 47 Ronin for behaving more like true samurai than anyone since the time of civil wars, or should they be punished for breaking the strict laws about taking revenge?
In the end the law prevailed, and the surviving 46 ronin committed a mass act of hara-kiri, turning them overnight into national heroes as the 'gods of bushido'.. The dramatic revenge raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin is the ideal subject for a Raids title. There is a very strong narrative and a wealth of illustrative material. As the raid occurred during the peaceful Edo Period there is scope for original description of the samurai's weapons and their personal & physical environment that is not seen in any other Osprey titles.
Language Policy in Japan: The Challenge of Change
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 prospect of the restoration of the Asano of Ako looked almost impossible, and must have been a factor in the Forty-Seven Ronin’s
loyalty to the cause were paramount. There, one would think, the matter should end, and the debate might have continued at the pedantic level of whether an ashigaru was a true samurai had it not been for the following fact. Even though Terasaka’s name was included among the list of raiders on the written declaration of intent they left in a box at the Kira mansion, he was not around when the raid was over and was therefore not among those who were sentenced to death. So where was he? The positive
Forty-Seven Ronin, to which the population of Edo, eager for any scandal, responded with greedy interest. To the surprise of very few people, within days of the raid a hurriedly written and thinly disguised version of it could be watched on the stage. The resulting drama showed samurai behaving in a manner that was both ambiguous and anachronistic. It was a portrayal of the morals and actions of a bygone age in which the ruling classes still believed, so it is no wonder that the citizens enjoyed
the ancient custom, or you will be punished according to the law. There were many more decrees to come out of the new Meiji government, such as the abolition of the wearing of pigtails, and restricting the carrying of swords solely to the armed forces, but none would so eloquently reverse the duties and obligations of a previous age than the abolition of a samurai’s sacred duty of revenge. The Forty-Seven Ronin in Art and Literature Learned comment and scholarly debate about the Raid of the
become almost a fait accompli. To a daimyo Edo was where his family lived. It was the centre of commerce and entertainment, and the best place in Japan for what we today call ‘networking’. To reside in Edo was now a matter of choice, not compulsion, as illustrated by the remarkable statistic that by 1690 five out of every six daimyo then living had been born there. Some even had to be cajoled by their retainers to make the briefest of visits to the lands of which they were nominally the local