Line #42 UsefulNotes/The47Ronin


1	[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/800px-HokusaiChushingura.jpg]]
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3	->''"What if Lord Kira had died of a cold?"''
4	--> --'''[[{{Literature/TheHagakure}} Tsunetomo Yamamoto]]''' pointing out the major flaw of the lengthy plan outlined below.
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6	'''The Tale of The 47 Ronin''' is [[HistoricalDomainCharacter a (somewhat) true story of revenge and loyalty]]. The actual facts are much disputed, and large sections of the traditional narrative have been shown to be pure invention, but the story as generally told goes like this:
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8	On April 21, 1701, ''Daimyo'' Asano Naganori and ''Daimyo'' Kamei no Tsuwano received an envoy from the Shogun in [[UsefulNotes/{{Tokyo}} Edo]]. Since they had no experience in courtly etiquette, Kira Kodzukenosuke Yoshinaka was appointed to teach them. Unfortunately, Kira was quite a {{Jerkass}},[[note]]Allegedly, he scorned Asano for not offering a substantial bribe. Incidentally, Kira's neighbors didn't like him very much either.[[/note]] and Asano, a devout Confucian, could barely tolerate him. Eventually, Asano [[RageBreakingPoint had enough]] and attacked Kira. He managed to scar him, but he had committed a [[DisproportionateRetribution capital crime]] by drawing a weapon in Edo Castle.
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10	Asano committed ''{{seppuku}}'', and his holdings were taken from him. His now {{Ronin}} retainers were ordered to abandon the idea of {{revenge}}. Forty-seven of them secretly refused, and they hatched a plan, a cunning plan, a plan bordering on [[LongGame ridiculous in the amount of time it would take]].
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12	The ringleader, [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oishi_Yoshio Oishi Kuranosuke Yoshio]], told the others to hide amongst the populace as tradesmen and merchants, while Yoshio moved to UsefulNotes/{{Kyoto}} and decided to [[ObfuscatingStupidity act like a broken man, getting drunk and hanging out with prostitutes]], specially in the surroundings of the famous tea house [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichiriki_Chaya Ichiriki chaya]]. A Satsuma man (described as a samurai himself and attributed in popular culture the name "Murakami Kiken") upon seeing Yoshio drunk in a gutter, insulted his honour for not avenging his master like a true samurai, spat on him and kicked him in the face. [[note]]A commoner even touching a samurai -- ronin or not -- would have been executed.[[/note]]
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14	After a year in hiding, during which time Kira had stopped fearing assassination and dismissed most of his bodyguards, Yoshio secretly gathered his men and infiltrated Kira's home on December 14th, 1702. They attacked from front and back, sparing the noncombatants, and captured Kira. Yoshio offered him the chance to die by his own hand, with the knife that Asano had wounded him with, but he clammed up, so they held him down and used the knife to decapitate him. They took Kira's head to Sengaku-ji and laid it and the knife on their master's grave, saying prayers at the temple and giving all their money to the abbot. They then proceeded to Edo and turned themselves in.
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16	The Shogunate had a quandary: the ronin had violated a direct order from the Shogun by avenging their master, yet some said they had acted according to Bushido by avenging their master. This has, inevitably, been debated: others believe the truly honorable thing would have been to just charge Kira's home ASAP, deciding to get gallantly cut to pieces through honest action rather than attain vengeance through trickery, especially given the major flaw in their plan -- the potential for Kira to die of natural causes at some point before their attack -- which would have left them unable to avenge their master. On the other hand, in a society where [[HonorBeforeReason honour is most definitely more important than life itself]], it could be argued that their actions were the ultimate demonstration of loyalty to their lord. By publicly dishonouring themselves to ensure their plan's success, they could be seen to be making the supreme sacrifice for Asano's sake. Therefore, the whole situation was a '''massive''' LogicBomb for Japanese society of those days.
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18	One thing, however, was perfectly clear to the Shogunate: Questions of honour aside, letting Asano's retainers off the hook for killing a court official would set a dangerous precedent. After receiving numerous petitions from the public, the Shogun decided to sentence them to death by ''seppuku'' instead of execution as criminals. Forty-six ronin died by their own hands on February 4, 1703; Yoshio had sent the last one, Terasaka Kichiemon, back to Ako to inform Asano's former retainers that their revenge had been completed. The Shogun [[ThePardon pardoned]] him and Terasaka died at the age of 78, buried next to his comrades and his lord. Their weapons, armor, and clothing are still kept at Senkagu-ji. The Satsuma man who had insulted Yoshio came to Sengaku-ji to pray for forgiveness and then took his own life; he is also buried next to the ronin.
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20	The Shogunate allowed Asano Nagahiro to reestablish the Asano clan, but only gave him a tenth of his family's former land.
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22	It is probably appropriate to point out that despite the long-pedigreed valorization of the actions of the 47, there are still people [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation who take a very dim view of them]] -- among them obviously the surviving descendants of Kira Yoshinaka, who pointed out that he was merely a dutiful courtier whose life and legacy was stained by this controversy. Japan-based British historian Stephen Turnbull takes this view (even suggesting that, at best, their fight was more like a gang war-style execution) in a military history [[https://ospreypublishing.com/the-revenge-of-the-47-ronin-edo-1703 report published by Osprey]] in 2011.
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24	'''In Fiction'''\
25	Countless books, plays, TV shows, and movies have been made about the 47 Ronin.
26	* ''Kanadehon Chūshingura'', a ''bunraku'' puppet show first played in 1748, is the most noted among the earliest fictional portrayals of the 47 ronin. To avoid the Shogunate's censorship laws, the authors of the play changed the names and moved the dates back to the Muromachi period.
27	** ''Kanadehon Chūshingura'' has also been made into a ''kabuki'' play.
28	** It was so popular as a play that many theaters got out of debt by staging it again.
29	* The ''Series/HistoryBites'' episode "Samurai Goodfellas" recreates these events, playing them out in a manner reminiscent of ''Film/TheGodfather''. The episode's RunningGag is that the 47 ronin can't all fit into the room, so only four principal actors appear at any one time; when they refer to themselves as a group, Yoshio (Ron Pardo) mentions "The other forty-three ronin in the hall."
30	* ''Film/The47Ronin'' (''Genroku Chūshingura'', "The Treasury of Loyal Retainers of the Genroku era") is a 1941/1942 black-and-white two-part jidaigeki Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, adapted from a play by Seika Mayama.
31	* ''Film/{{Chushingura}}'' is a 1962 film version of the story, produced by Toho, with an AllStarCast that included Creator/ToshiroMifune and Creator/SetsukoHara (in her last film).
32	* ''Daichushingura'', literally ''Epic Chushingura'' is NET's 1971 TV adaptation that Mifune himself bankrolled. If the 1962 movie had an AllStarCast, then this one arguably took the term up to eleven by throwing in a grand majority of Japan's greatest film the stars from the sixties - with Mifune at the helm. The entire series ran exactly for one year, so viewers felt and experienced the same waiting game the forty-seven had to go through for their revenge in real time.
33	* ''VisualNovel/ChuSinGura46Plus1'' is a VisualNovel adaptation of the original epic, [[HistoricalGenderFlip except almost all ronin are women]] and it features romance with several of them. Despite a fair amount of {{Fanservice}}, it tries to be a faithful adaptation and also takes inspiration from the aforementioned movies and plays.
34	* ''The Assassin Gambit'' by Creator/WilliamRForstchen has the 47 Ronin transported into the far future in order to settle a bet about military tactics between powerful but decadent humans and aliens who have access to time travel and too much free time on their hands. The staged battle soon spirals out of control and triggers a galaxy-wide conflict, but some of the Ronin survive to become characters in the sequel ''The Napoleon Wager''.
35	* This incident is mentioned in 'Film/Ronin1998'', a thriller about a team of ex-Cold War spies who hire themselves out as mercenaries. The French doctor they seek help from is building a diorama of the 47 Ronin and relates the tale to the protagonist 'Sam'. Sam approves of the methods of the 47 Ronin, but not their subsequent suicide -- but the scene is a clue to Sam's own nature. Just as the ronin were pretending to have forsaken their duty, so Sam is only pretending to have left the [=CIA=].
36	* In ''Manga/SayonaraZetsubouSensei'', when he states that the lesson of today is the importance of holding one's tongue, he seems to take Kira's side when he describes it as [[PerspectiveFlip a noble courtier who upset some violent country bumpkins by saying the wrong thing.]]
37	* In ''Manga/OokuTheInnerChambers'', the Forty Seven are almost all men, a rarity in post-{{Gendercide}} Japan. This naturally makes the fallout worse for Shogun Tsunayoshi.
38	* TheTokaidoRoad took an interesting turn on the tale and followed a fictional daughter of Lord Asano through her own plot for revenge. The book climaxes with the raid by the 47 ronin.
39	* Series/JukenSentaiGekiranger had an episode where, via time travel, the Gekirangers end up enacting the legendary raid early in order to obtain the [[MacGuffin Sou Jyu Tou]] from a Rinrinshi possessing Kira. By the time they "exorcise" Kira and leave, the real raid begins. As a result of the Gekirangers' raid, all of Kira's bodyguards are incapacitated, fitting in with the story as it is known.
40	* An episode of Anime/LupinIIIPartII, [[Recap/LupinIIIS2E113 "The Name of the Operation is Chuushingura"]], is a {{Homage}} to the 47 Ronin, where the ghost of Kira asks for Lupin's help in regaining an earthly treasure.
41	* Argentine anime/manga magazine "Ronin" began its first number by quoting this story. The magazine is made by the staff laid off when a [[TakeThat previous magazine]] decided, due to pride, to close shop and run off to another country.
42	* An [[Film/FortySevenRonin American live action film]] starring Creator/KeanuReeves as the main character hit theaters on Christmas of 2013. In-story, Reeves's character is a [[ButNotTooForeign half-Japanese/half-English]] slave man named Kai who befriends the ronin and joins them in their path to revenge. [[spoiler: He ultimately commits {{seppuku}} with them.]]
43	* The manga ''Manga/AssassinationClassroom'' plays off this story, with many of the Junior High Trainee Assassins named after members of the 47 Ronin, their principal named Asano, and their target Koro-sensei inspired by Kira's name. Even the minor characters of both stories share similar names.
44	* ''TabletopGame/AllFleshMustBeEaten'' has a scenario in the book ''Worlds of the Dead'', dubbed ''The 47 Gaki''. In it, the forty-six ronin who committed seppuku and Lord Asano rise from the dead and seek vengence on the Shogunate. Notably, there's a lengthy sidebar attached to this Deadworld, acknowledging the importance of the 47 Ronin in Japanese culture and asking forgiveness from any readers offended at seeing them used for a zombie story.
45	* ''Literature/SanoIchiro'''s timeline eventually crossed with this event, resulting in the novel ''The Ronin's Mistress''. Part of the book centers around the court determining the final fate of the 47 Ronin, while the rest deals with Sano's investigation of Kira's death, and the claims of the ronin regarding why Asano was forced into drawing his sword in the first place.
46	* Creator/DarkHorseComics released a miniseries retelling the story which was illustrated by ''ComicBook/UsagiYojimbo'' creator Creator/StanSakai.
47	* Creator/JorgeLuisBorges adapted the tale to Spanish in his first short-story collection ''A Universal History of Infamy''. (He later distanced himself from the entire book, pointing out that he had been too timid at the time to write anything original and thus had merely taken this and other stories from other sources and altered minor details.)
48	* One episode of the original series of ''Anime/{{Yatterman}}'' had the surprise mecha of bot sides suddenly go on a retelling of this story, including the waiting one year part. With the battle taking less than a day as usual.
49	* Yoshio and Kira (the latter of whom turns out to be a dragon) both appear in a Christmas play that the cast puts on in ''Manga/MissKobayashisDragonMaid''. Bear in mind that the play [[DerailedFairyTale was supposed to be a retelling of]] ''Literature/TheLittleMatchGirl''.
50	* In ComicBook/Wolverine1982, Logan's {{Love Interest\|s}} and her [[BureaucraticallyArrangedMarriage husband]] go to see a kabuki troupe perform ''Chishingura''. Logan, watching from the shadows, remarks to himself that it's one of the best renditions he's ever seen. Then it turns out that the kabuki troupe are {{Ninja}} and attack the couple. [[CurbStompBattle This does not go well for them]], due to [[TheBerserker Logan]]'s presence.
51	* ''Film/LastKnights'' is a highly stylized European adaptation of the tale (albeit one directed by a Japanese director) that takes place in a AfterTheEnd feudal future setting where a group of knights plots to avenge their lord after a court intrigue gets him executed.
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Context UsefulNotes / The47Ronin