THE REVENGE OF THE 47 RONIN

Edo 1703

STEPHEN TURNBULL

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHRONOLOGY

ORIGINS

The Glory that was Genroku

The Triumph of the Tokugawa

The Delicate Balance

The Dog Shogun

Asano Naganori

Kira Yoshihisa

The Incident in the Corridor of Pines

INITIAL STRATEGY

Challenge to the Ronin

In the Shadow of Soko

The Vengeful Imperative

THE PLAN

The Final Decision

The Great Deception

Troop Numbers

The Costume and Armour of the Forty-Seven Ronin

The Plan of Attack

The Final Dispositions

THE RAID

The Night Attack

The March to Sengakuji

Judgment and Punishment

The Immediate Aftermath

ANALYSIS

Reactions to the Ronin

The Forty-Seven Ronin in Art and Literature

Sites and Memorials

CONCLUSION

FURTHER READING

INTRODUCTION

The revenge raid by the Forty-Seven Ronin of Ako was an incident that turned samurai culture on its head. As any popular account will relate, a young lord called Asano Naganori was taunted mercilessly by the greedy and cunning Kira Yoshinaka. Goaded to the limit, Asano struck Kira with a sword. As a result of the attack Asano was condemned to death, thus making the 47 samurai retainers who remained faithful into impoverished ronin or ‘men of the waves’, a word implying that they had been cast adrift on the ocean. Motivated solely by the principles of samurai honour and loyalty to their late master, the Forty-Seven Ronin, as history now knows them collectively, hatched a plot in complete secrecy and then, on a snowy night in January 1703, launched a raid to take the life of the cowardly Kira Yoshinaka. The Shogun, the ruler of Japan, utterly failed to recognize that the samurai code of bushido (the way of the warrior) and the self-denying tenets of Zen Buddhism had compelled them to seek revenge, and instead condemned them all to death. Within days they all committed suicide, earning thereby the respect and admiration of their contemporaries.

That is the popular version of the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin, immortalized ever since through numerous plays, prints, novels and films. The unfortunate thing about the above account, however, is that hardly a word of it is true. The date was 1703 not 1702. Their victim’s name was Yoshihisa not Yoshinaka. He was no coward. Greed and treachery were not involved and he played almost no part in bringing about Asano’s death. Not all of Asano’s 270 former retainers joined the plot or even sympathized with it. Religion played almost no part in their deliberations. The secrecy involved in their convoluted plot compounded the utter illegality and underhand nature of their act, to which the Shogun responded correctly by invoking the law of the land. The reaction by their contemporaries involved condemnation in addition to admiration, with both the Forty-Seven Ronin and their late lord being dismissed as cowards and a disgrace to the name of samurai. Finally, instead of 47 loyal samurai there were (according to some authorities) actually only 46, or maybe even 48. In fairness to the popular account, however, I can assure the baffled reader that on the night the raid was launched it was indeed snowing.

Up to the point when I undertook an extensive study tour of the places associated with the Forty-Seven Ronin, I shared fully and largely uncritically in the concepts and images provided by the popular version of the story, and in this I was not alone. One of the compilers of the Cambridge History of Japan, for example, in one of three references to the incident, calls the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin a ‘vendetta against a single wicked bureaucrat’. This negative judgement of Kira Yoshihisa’s character, together with the main details of the story, were set out succinctly in the first account of the raid to be published in the English language. It was contained within a book of 1822 entitled Illustrations of Japan, consisting of Private Memoirs and Anecdotes of the reigning dynasty of the Djogouns, or Sovereigns of Japan by Isaac Titsingh, where we read that the injustice of Lord Asano’s death sentence ‘exasperated the servants of the prince, so much the more since it was Kozuke [i.e. Kira], who, by his repeated insults, had caused the death of their master.’ Half a century later, a similar but much better-known and more influential account of the vendetta was to be contained within a book published in 1871 entitled Tales of Old Japan, written by A. B. Mitford (Lord Redesdale), one of the pioneers of Anglo-Japanese relations.

This statue of Oishi Kuranosuke, the karo (chief retainer) of the Ako branch of the Asano han (domain), greets visitors outside the station of Banshu-Ako in Hyogo prefecture. Oishi was the leader of the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin.

We now know that Titsingh and Mitford, in common with most of their successors, were looking at the incident through a very large distorting lens. This lens was provided by a play from the Japanese kabuki theatre that was based on the raid and is usually referred to by the abbreviated title Chushingura (The Treasure House of the Loyal Retainers). It was first produced in Edo (modern Tokyo) in 1748 and has never left the repertoire since; in fact the National Theatre in Tokyo was due to stage a performance of it shortly after my departure from Japan in the summer of 2010. This version of the story, involving changes of names, dates and locations, is universally recognized for what it really is: a classic drama based on an unashamedly fictionalized account of an actual historical event; yet somehow the overall impression of the nature and circumstances of the raid provided by Chushingura has completely eclipsed the sober historical reality. To use an analogy from English history: it is as if our total knowledge of Richard III and our commemoration of him was based solely and completely upon the fictionalized version contained within Shakespeare’s play. So, for example, the popular physical appearance of the Forty-Seven Ronin derives almost entirely from 19th-century woodblock prints that are based not on authentic descriptions of the raiders nor on surviving pieces of their clothing, but on the theatrical costumes used in Chushingura.

Most of what is popularly known about the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin derives not from history but from the theatre. In this romantic painting from early in the 20th century, we see Oishi Kuranosuke banging a drum as a signal to start the raid. This is essentially a scene from Chushingura, although the setting in snow-covered Edo is undoubtedly authentic.

A series of superb wooden carvings in the Oishi Shrine in Banshu-Ako add a more naturalistic image to the theatricality of the woodblock print depictions of the Forty-Seven Ronin. Here one of the ronin, called Katsuta Shinzaemon Taketaka, contemplates his sword.

Behind all these visual images lies one common message – the raid represented a noble act of samurai heroism to right a wrong that was tragically misinterpreted by the authorities. It is the purpose of this book to examine the revenge of the Forty-Seven Ronin for what it undoubtedly was: a small-scale, carefully planned and ruthlessly executed military operation designed to achieve a particular objective. This is an approach that will take into account the political and social environment of the time and the complex nature of the three centuries’ worth of reaction to it. By these means, I hope, we may be able to get nearer to understanding what really happened on that fateful snowy night when the world of the samurai was so dramatically turned upside down.

CHRONOLOGY

ORIGINS

The Glory that was Genroku

The Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin took place during the nengo (year period) of Genroku (1688–1704), an era when Japan enjoyed a time of growing prosperity almost unequalled until the economic boom of the 1960s. A lively cosmopolitan culture had developed, centred on the Shogun’s capital city of Edo, where the arts flourished under the patronage and encouragement of the city’s wealthy merchants. It was a world enjoyed equally by Japan’s ruling class: the aristocratic samurai, who spent much of their time and money in Edo. While on duty there, a samurai’s display of redundant military might concealed the state of genteel poverty into which many of them had sunk, along with their once exclusive martial traditions. Commoners now wore swords in open defiance of the law, while theatres put on plays whose plots mocked the once noble tradition of the samurai.

In 1701, when Genroku culture was at its height, a bizarre incident occurred inside Edo Castle whereby one noble samurai lord drew a weapon and attacked another noble samurai lord. This became known as the ‘Ako Incident’, and was to cause the reaction that we now call the Raid of the 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 it. Historical fact could hardly survive in such an atmosphere; it was almost as if the whole epic of the Forty-Seven Ronin had been specially commissioned for the theatre.

The Triumph of the Tokugawa

The Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin and the popular reaction to it was not the way the authorities would have chosen to begin a year of such historical significance. According to the contemporary lunar calendar, the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin took place only a few days before the dawn of a new year that would mark the centenary of a highly auspicious event. In 1703 the Tokugawa Shogunate would be 100 years old.

The word ‘shogun’ in modern Western terminology means ‘commander-in-chief’. Its use may be traced back to ancient Japan, when the Emperor commissioned brave warriors to march into wild and untamed areas of Japan to quell rebellions against the throne or to spread the benevolent influence of the dominant Yamato lineage among the remnants of the aboriginal inhabitants of the islands. In those days, the position of Shogun was always a temporary commission that ended when the general returned to the capital, his duty done.

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616) was the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, during whose reign the Raid of the Forty-Seven Ronin occurred, was the fifth Tokugawa Shogun. By this time the image of the Shoguns had changed considerably from the martial appearance of Ieyasu, shown here in a hanging scroll from Okazaki as the fighting general he truly was.

During the 12th century, however, a major convulsion occurred in Japanese society. The overuse of independent warrior chiefs to act on the Emperor’s behalf meant that several of the families who had received these commissions began to realize that they possessed a military strength in the form of their samurai (a word that originally meant nothing more than servants), who could be used, at the very least, as a bargaining counter to obtain imperial favour. Following several small-scale encounters, two of these clans – the Taira and the Minamoto – went to war against each other between 1180 and 1185 in the fateful conflict known to history as the Gempei War. When the war was over, the victorious Minamoto began a series of measures that would ensure that every aspect of the governance of Japan would pass under their control. The most important initiative came in 1192 when Minamoto Yoritomo received from the new Emperor the commission of Shogun. Yet no longer was this to be a temporary title to be surrendered when a campaign had finished. The post of Shogun was now understood to be a permanent appointment whereby the Minamoto clan, the greatest among the samurai class, would rule Japan on the Emperor’s behalf. It was an institution that (with several vicissitudes) was destined to last for 800 years until the commission was formally handed back to the Meiji Emperor in 1868 as Japan prepared to enter the modern world.

The position of Shogun was always meant to stay within the Minamoto family, and allowing for some subtle and creative genealogical manipulation, so it did. Yoritomo’s direct lineage, however, would only enjoy the Shogunate for two more generations until they were usurped by Yoritomo’s widow’s family, the Hojo. Their successive rulers, obedient to the Shogun tradition, called themselves a Regency. With the triumph of the Ashikaga family, who were of Minamoto descent, the Shogunate was re-established in 1336 and lasted until 1568.

Four decades of rule then ensued under the great unifiers Oda Nobunaga (1534–82) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–98). To a hegemon of Hideyoshi’s power and standing almost anything was possible, even to having himself adopted into a family of Minamoto descent and proclaimed as Shogun, but it was a step he never took. When Hideyoshi died in 1598 leaving an infant heir, it appeared that Japan would once again descend into the armed chaos from which he had rescued it. Matters came to a head at the decisive battle of Sekigahara in 1600, where the victor was Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), a great general and, as far as anyone was concerned, a descendant of the Minamoto. In 1603 Tokugawa Ieyasu was installed as Shogun by Emperor Go-Yozei. Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646–1709), the man who was to preside over the Genroku era’s many cultural highs and, thanks to the Forty-Seven Ronin, its most notorious cultural low, was the fifth member of the Tokugawa family to hold that illustrious title.

The Delicate Balance

The supreme position that the Tokugawa family were to hold for two and a half centuries after 1603 had been won on the battlefield. Yet Tokugawa Ieyasu knew that much more than the threat of military force was needed if he was to keep Japan from sliding back into a warring state that would threaten not only the peace and prosperity of the nation but also the very survival of his own family. The means by which he did this were far-reaching and complex, and had a decisive bearing on the chain of events that were to lead to that snowy night in 1703.

bakuhanbakufudaimyohan