The 47 Ronin is one of the most famous story, of the history of the samurai. The story tells of a group of samurai who were left leaderless (ronin, is masterless samurai) after their master was forced to commit seppuku, which is a ritual suicide, for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka. The story occurred at a time when the samurai class was struggling to maintain a sense of itself-warriors with no war, a social class without a function.

The teachings of Yamaga Soko (1622-1685), an influential theorist who wrote a number of important works on the warrior spirit and what it meant to be samurai, inspired Oishi Kuranosuke Yoshio, a samurai and retainer of Asano Takumi no kami Naganori (1667-1701), who led a branch of the powerful Asano family.

Lord Asano was chosen by the shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, to be one of a number of daimyo tasked with entertaining envoys from the Imperial family. To assist him in this new duty, the Bakufu’s highest ranking master of protocol, Kira Kozukenosuke Yoshinaka (1641-1702), was assigned to instruct him in matters of etiquette. Kira, it seems, was a somewhat difficult character and expected Asano to compensate him monetarily for the trouble, which Asano held was simply his duty. The two grew to dislike one another intensely, and Kira made every effort to embarrass his student. Finally, in April of 1702, Kira insulted Asano as a country boor with no manners, and Asano could restrain himself no longer. He lost his temper, and attacked Kira with a dagger, but only wounded him in the face with his first strike; his second missed and hit a pillar. Guards then quickly separated them.

Kira’s wound was hardly serious, but the attack on a shogunate official within the boundaries of the Shogun’s residence, was considered to be a grave offence. Any kind of violence, even drawing a sword, was completely forbidden in Edo castle. Therefore Asano was ordered to commit seppuku. Asano’s goods and lands were to be confiscated after his death, his family was to be ruined, and his retainers were to be made ronin.

When the news of the unfortunate event reached Asano’s castle, his retainers were thrown into an uproar and argued heatedly over what to do next. Some favored accepting their lot quietly and dispersing as ronin, while another group called for a defense of the castle and an actual battle with the government. Oishi Kuranosuke, Asano’s principal counsellor, who urged the retainers to give up the castle peacefully and struggle to rehabilitate the Asano family while at the same time preparing to take revenge on Kira, sounded the view that prevailed.

Kira was no fool, and expecting some sort of attempt on his life by the Asano men increased his personal guard. Oishi’s scheme was therefore to lull their quarry into complacency, biding their time while they waited for the right moment. To this end the ronin hid away a cache of weapons and armor before ostensibly dispersing, some taking up menial jobs while others, like Oishi himself, let it seem that they had lost any concern for their futures. Oishi left his wife and began frequenting all of Edo’s houses of ill repute, carousing with prostitutes and engaging in drunken brawls. On one occasion, a samurai from Satsuma is supposed to have come across Oishi drunk in the street and spat upon him, saying that he was no real samurai.

Kira began to doubt that he was in any real danger, and within a year had relaxed his guard. It was at that point that the ronin struck. 47 of them gathered on 14 December 1702 and, after donning the armor and taking up the weapons from the cache, they set out on their revenge on that same snowy night. Once at Kira’s Edo mansion, they divided into two groups and attacked, with one group entering through the rear of the compound while the rest forced their way through the front, battering the gate down with a mallet.

Kira was found in an outhouse and refused to say who he was, but the searchers felt sure it was Kira, and sounded the whistle. The ronin gathered, and Oishi, with a lantern, saw that it was indeed Kira - as a final proof, his head bore the scar from Asano’s attack. At that, Oishi went on his knees, and in consideration of Kira’s high rank, respectfully addressed him, telling him they were retainers of Asano, come to avenge him as true samurai should, and inviting Kira to die as a true samurai should, by killing himself. Oishi indicated he personally would act as a second, and offered him the same dagger that Asano had used to kill himself.

However, no matter how much they entreated him, Kira crouched, speechless and trembling. At last, seeing it was useless to ask, Ōishi ordered the ronin to pin him down, and killed him by cutting off his head with the dagger. Kira was killed on the night of the 14th day of the 12th month of the 15th year of Genroku.

After Oishi and the others had given the bloody trophy to the spirit of Asano, they turned themselves in. The assassination of Kira placed the government in a difficult situation. After all, the 46 survivors (one of the ronin was killed in the attack) now awaiting their fate had lived up to the standards of loyalty expected of true samurai and the ideals propounded by such men as Yamaga Soko.

As expected, the ronin were sentenced to death; but the Shogun had finally resolved the quandary by ordering them to honorably commit seppuku, instead of having them executed as criminals. The forty-six ronin did so on February 4, 1703. The clothes and arms they wore are still preserved in the temple to this day, along with the drum and whistle; the armor was all home-made, as they had not wanted to possibly arouse suspicion by purchasing any.
The tombs became a place of great veneration, and people flocked there to pray. The graves at this temple have been visited by a great many people throughout the years since the Genroku era.

The sequence of events and the characters in this historical narrative were presented to a wide, popular readership in the West with the 1871 publication of A.B. Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan; and appended to that narrative are translations of Sengakuji documents which were presented as “proofs” authenticating the factual basis of the story.  The story has been made into a movie at least six times.

Tag: The tale of the 47 Ronin