May 10, 2010 • 17 mins
Historically, the samurai were Japanese warriors famous for their loyalty to their feudal lords and adherence to a strict code of honor. Tune in to learn more about the samurai and the legendary tale of the 47 Ronin.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downie. And if there's
one thing you all really like, it's samurai. Judging by
(00:21):
our listener email, we've gotten all sorts of suggestions, perhaps
more than forty seven of them. And I'm actually lucky
enough to have met real samurai before. When I was
in eleventh grade, my school went to Japan to perform
at a cherry blossom festival, and I guess you could
say we are co headlined with a group of samurai.
After we were done with our thing, we got to
(00:42):
walk around and you know, by little trinkets, and the
Japanese people who had come to see the show all
one of their pictures taken with us. And we, of
course wanted our pictures taken with the samurai because they
have their awesome swords and they're cool costumes or armor
or rather. But one of the probably the coolest experiences
of my life, was when a group of samurai asked
(01:05):
my friends and me to have their pictures taken with us. Yeah,
I wanted to call this episode Sarah met a Samurai,
but Sarah wouldn't do it. It would. It's just a
small slegs of our episode for today, which is of
course the forty seven rown in and the Samurai's Code.
So we're going to talk a little bit about what
Samurai are, their warriors, and they emerged from centuries of
(01:29):
clan fighting and the struggle over imperial succession, and some
of their fighting styles may also have been picked up
from native Japanese who were from the Caucusus. And some
important prerequisites to consider before the formation of samurai or
the development of their class is armor. The arrival of
(01:49):
horses in the introduction of Buddhism to Japan and their
later armor is so awesome. The helmets have these face
masks that look like Kabuki faces. They're kind of locked,
and this permanent battle cry, and the helmets sometimes some
of them look like Darth Vader's helmet or just amazing things.
I looked at a gallery of some of them. One
(02:10):
has a giant gold praying mantis on top. And the
armor itself is really neat to it's The body pieces
are made from little scales of iron that are lacquered
and then laced together with silk cords or leather, and
the armor is handed down through generations of the family.
It's an art item as well as something practical. And
(02:31):
the horses are really important. As you may remember from
our Greatest Battle Horses of History podcast. Your average early
samurai isn't the guy you see in the movies just
wielding a sword. He's the guy on the horse with
a bow, something that's incredibly difficult to do and gives
you a good idea perhaps of just how skillful to
(02:51):
shoot a moving target while you're riding on a horse.
That would definitely be difficult. But the samurai we're pretty
important by the eight century, but they developed from provincial
warrior bands in the twelfth century and that's when they
refine this kind of stoic, disciplined culture that we think
of defining samurai. During the Kama Cora period eleven thirty
(03:16):
three and that's when they became the ruling cast of Japan,
they were completely and utterly different from the imperial court.
And during the Muromachi period they start to develop their
broader pursuits, you know, not just they're not just warriors.
They're also poets and masters inc painting and art. In
(03:38):
the tea ceremony and I have my little cup of
tea with me today while we're while we're recording in
honor of them. Well that you're scratchy through that too.
Their code of conduct is crucial to understanding the samurai
and also our story of the forty seven Rown, and
it's later formalized as bushido, but for a long time
(03:58):
it was just an written set of rules that placed loyalty, obligation,
and self discipline above self. And it's weird. When I
was searching for articles about Samurai and the forty seven
Rown in on Galileo, which is a search engine we
use a lot, there are so many sports articles that
come up just using samurai in a casual sort of way.
(04:21):
I guess it's the self discipline. They're a good role
model if you're training for something. Um. But a big
part of the formalized code of conduct is the ritual suicide,
which is called sepko and um. That's sort of another
main thing you think of when you actually think of samurai,
(04:42):
and it's actually disembowlment. You usually have a second though,
so most people who would do it wouldn't die, you know,
an agonizing hours long death from internal bleeding. They would
have somebody else to finish them off as soon as
they did the deed. But it was a way to
restore honor to oneself, to your family, to your lord
(05:05):
after a defeat or some sort of shame. And this
will come up a lot in our story. Yeah, and
we should mention the loyalty to the lords a little
bit and explain that before we get too into the
whole samurai thing. So, Japan had an emperor during this time,
but he had really become a figurehead after the shogun
(05:25):
rose to power and their military leaders. So um, While
the emperor is still there and still holds symbolic importance,
the shogun basically run the game, and they in turn
have lords who are loyal to them, and then the
samurai are loyal to their lords. So you have a
feudal system. And this feudal system really became more of
(05:46):
a closed cast like a closed aristocracy during the Tokugawa period,
which is sixteen oh three to eighteen sixty seven, in
an attempt to lockdown society as it was in that moment. Yeah,
no more changes, please, everybody stay in the position you're in.
So if you're a samurai. Your children will be samurai's
(06:07):
but it's not something that you can rise to yourself necessarily. Um.
But because they're years of peace in the Tokugawa period,
a lot of samurais don't have uh, their old warrior
jobs anymore, so they become bureaucrats or merchants, and they
can still wear their traditional two swords, which are very
important to samurai. They're obviously totally cool. There are four
(06:31):
main samurai swords. One is just a dagger which you
usually use to commit sappuku and uh. Sword smith started
signing the blades of the swords in the eleventh century.
So consequently, from that time we had all these different
swordsmithing styles developed, you know, each family making their own
kind of swords like brands or in in different ways.
(06:53):
They had contrasting metal tones, surface textures. And the other
cool thing is that they're made so they're incredible sharp,
but they're soft enough at their core so that they
won't break sharp enough to cut a man in half
if you if you just need a good reference point
for that a good conversation starter. But by the late
Tokugawa period, the economic position of the samurai is starting
(07:17):
to deteriorate and i impoverished nobles. Yeah, pretty classic story,
isn't it. And that's because their way of life is
not as important as it used to be. Um, the
country is turning more towards trade, and cities are replacing
sprawling feudal dominions, and yeah, the samurai aren't in the
(07:38):
same league as merchants anymore. And by the time that
westerners forced to open Japan in the mid nineteenth century,
some lower ranking samurai are hoping for their own kind
of change, and they're leaving their own lords, which makes
them ron in or masterlest samurai, remember that word. And
they start rebelling against the Tokagawa showgun and this ends
(07:59):
up in a lot of trouble. They start assassinating people
from moderate officials to pro Western scholars to various foreigners
within the borders, and by eighteen sixty eight we have
the Meiji Restoration, which finally returns Japan to imperial rule
after the shogun gives up his power. I mean, the
shogun has been in power forever essentially, so this is
(08:21):
a really big deal and it's a chance to remake
the country. So well, Samurai who are loyal to the
shogun skirmish for a while, the Meiji Emperor prevails, feudalism
is abolished in eighteen seventy one in Japan rapidly industrializes
from there, and it ironically ends up setting the stage
for a new kind of militarism that arises in the
(08:43):
twentieth century. But that's obviously a different story, different podcasts. Yes,
so we'll switch gears now that you have this little
bit of background. And as we mentioned, rown in our
masterless samurai, So that can happen for a few reasons.
It's possible that their master has died it or perhaps
they're just troublemakers who for some reason have lost their
(09:04):
noble sponsorship. But they're generally the kind of guys who
might roam around the country starting up civil wars and
making mischief, which of course they're giant swords of their sides.
But at least one group of them stars in our
story today, which happens to be maybe Japan's favorite story,
at least that's the impression I get from it, And
(09:24):
that's the tale of the forty seven Ronin. And the
forty seven Ronin are considered heroes and models for the
stoic honor bound lifestyle that defines the samurai class. But
as it always is, history is a little murkier than
the legend of the forty seven Ronin, and even the
name of the event is perhaps not so clear cut.
(09:47):
According to Henry D. Smith, the second of Columbia University,
what we know variously as forty seven Samurai, forty six Ronin,
or the forty six Samurai is simply called the ac
Incident by historians, and this name conveniently skips that whole
problem of forty six forty seven, which we're going to
(10:07):
talk about a little later. So our incident takes place
on April sev o one during the Tokugawa Shogunate, And
as we mentioned earlier, Japan is ruled by the military
power of the shogun with the emperor as a figurehead.
But that doesn't mean the emperor is an important He's
still a big deal in the symbolic sense, and his
(10:28):
unflays are coming from the imperial court in Kyoto to
the shogun's capital in what is today Tokyo, and the
Lord of Ako Asano Naganori, along with another feudal lord,
is in charge of receiving these envoys. So it's a
big day. But instead of doing what he was supposed
to do, Asano attacks one of the shogun's senior officials,
(10:50):
Kira Yosha Naka, with his sword, and he just nixed him.
But an attack on the shogun's man is simply not done,
so he's or to commit seppuku immediately, and he does
it like an honorable um lord would. He's buried, his
estates are confiscated, and this leaves his samurai and his
(11:12):
vassals masterless, which is not a good place to be
if you are a samurai. Forty seven of his samurai
aren't going to let this one go quite so easily.
They sign an oath to revenge their master, and according
to legend, they wait for nearly two years and lived
based lives that aren't suitable for samurai in order to
(11:35):
set Kira off his guard. So he's not expecting them
to attack, because of course they aren't even living as
honorable samurai. They're drinking and going visiting the gay shaw
all the time and stuff like that stuff samurai shouldn't do.
Um But they do wait two years for for sure,
and they finally storm Kira's mansion and they kill his
(11:57):
own samurai and they find him hiding in an out
building and they asked him to commit seppuku before they
have to to do it themselves, and they caught off
his head, carry it back in a bucket and take
it to their master's grave. So revenge accomplished. They have
um i guess redeemed their master's honor. But now the
(12:18):
shogun it, of course, is rather conflicted because they don't
know quite what to do with them. They acted like
honorable samurai, but of course, you know, coming up with
this plot and hunting down an official of the showgun
is very disrespectful, and they're also really popular with people.
So the shogun it has seven weeks of debate before
(12:41):
the verdict comes down, which was commits sippuku immediately. So
they're rowing in aged fifteen to seventy seven commit suppuku
on March oh three. Um. But that's that's the basic story.
But of course things are pretty murky, and one of
the trickiest parts is figuring out the number. What's what's
(13:03):
with it? Forty six or forty seven? Why is that contentious? Well,
most people agree that there were forty seven ronin who
participated in the attack, but only forty six who committed
ritual suicide. There was a man named Terasaka Kei Chiman
who was the odd man out and also the lowest
ranking member of their league. And our second big question
(13:26):
about this story is why did Asano attack Kira in
the first place. And this is kind of tricky because
a Saana would have known that an attack on an
official would have had pretty grave consequences for him and
for his vassals, for for all of his samurai. And
all we know is that Asana shouted, this is for
that grudge I've had against you, which I imagine must
(13:48):
sound more eloquent in Japanese. But um, the Ronan have
a lot of correspondence, and even they don't mention the
source of the dispute, so maybe we just don't know
what their problem was with each other. But in the legend,
Kira has been made into a bureaucratic villain to make
it make sense, and we can all recognize the model
(14:08):
of the bureaucratic villain who you know, disrespects and impedes
various efforts of Asana. Yeah, it definitely helps make the
story make more sense. Um. And but we still have
a third big question here. Which is why did the
Ronan actually go ahead and kill Kira? And they say
that they're fulfilling their master's vendetta, but that's not really
(14:31):
UM straight Samurai code, because after all, a Sana was
the one who tried to kill Kira, not the other
way around. And they even have to get a Confucian
scholar to try to justify the whole thing to to
make it legit. I guess historians have raised other possible motives.
Maybe they were angry that Kira hadn't been punished for,
(14:52):
you know, whatever his part may have been in the
dispute with Asano. Or perhaps they were just trying to
get work. And Sarah sudden to me earlier that perhaps
revenge looks good on a resume, So we're gonna I
am Aurai looking for a job. Yeah, but whatever, the
debate makes the incident a really good story, and one
(15:12):
that's so popular it's sprouted this whole genre of retellings.
UM actually originating from a puppet play, which Katie and
I kind of like puppet play. We're very into the
center of puppetry arts in Atlanta. UM. But this, this genre,
the Loyal League stories, has come up in kabuki theater
and books, movies, TV series. Half a million people visit
(15:36):
the temple where where all the samurai and their master
are interred, and in December, parades of kids dress up
as samurai to tell the story, which is that's when
it is officially celebrated in Japan. But the interesting part
for us is that usually a story that ends with
everyone dead on the ground think Hamlet is considered a tragedy,
(15:58):
but the Tale of the forty Seven rown in as
something that's about beauty and honor and living by a code,
and in this story, death and suicide have an entirely
different meaning. So if you have some comments on that,
we'd encourage you to email us at History Podcast at
how stuff Works dot com and let us know what
(16:20):
you think. And we also really wish we could have
seen this exhibition on samurai that was at the met
of late last year and early this year, and it
looked so cool. We were talking about the armor and
the swords earlier. But um, since honorable death was so important,
it was really important how you looked when you when
you went down or when you committed supuku, whichever way
(16:42):
it was. In the New York Times had a very
cool photo gallery that Sarah found and posted on Twitter.
You compend us at mist in History if you're looking
for us, and the reviewer said, the show of swords
and armors perfectly combined to Japanese styles, utter simplicity and
outrageous as rotation, which I think is how we can
think of the samurai themselves exactly, and that wraps up
(17:05):
the tail of the Romans. So again, if you have
something to say, feel free to email us, follow us
on Twitter, or join our Facebook fan page where we'll
keep you updated on what we're working on. And always
remember to check out our home page at www dot
house stuff works dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
(17:27):
and be sure to check out the stuff you missed
in History glass blog on the house stuff works dot
com home page
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downie. And if there's
one thing you all really like, it's samurai. Judging by
(00:21):
our listener email, we've gotten all sorts of suggestions, perhaps
more than forty seven of them. And I'm actually lucky
enough to have met real samurai before. When I was
in eleventh grade, my school went to Japan to perform
at a cherry blossom festival, and I guess you could
say we are co headlined with a group of samurai.
After we were done with our thing, we got to
(00:42):
walk around and you know, by little trinkets, and the
Japanese people who had come to see the show all
one of their pictures taken with us. And we, of
course wanted our pictures taken with the samurai because they
have their awesome swords and they're cool costumes or armor
or rather. But one of the probably the coolest experiences
of my life, was when a group of samurai asked
(01:05):
my friends and me to have their pictures taken with us. Yeah,
I wanted to call this episode Sarah met a Samurai,
but Sarah wouldn't do it. It would. It's just a
small slegs of our episode for today, which is of
course the forty seven rown in and the Samurai's Code.
So we're going to talk a little bit about what
Samurai are, their warriors, and they emerged from centuries of
(01:29):
clan fighting and the struggle over imperial succession, and some
of their fighting styles may also have been picked up
from native Japanese who were from the Caucusus. And some
important prerequisites to consider before the formation of samurai or
the development of their class is armor. The arrival of
(01:49):
horses in the introduction of Buddhism to Japan and their
later armor is so awesome. The helmets have these face
masks that look like Kabuki faces. They're kind of locked,
and this permanent battle cry, and the helmets sometimes some
of them look like Darth Vader's helmet or just amazing things.
I looked at a gallery of some of them. One
(02:10):
has a giant gold praying mantis on top. And the
armor itself is really neat to it's The body pieces
are made from little scales of iron that are lacquered
and then laced together with silk cords or leather, and
the armor is handed down through generations of the family.
It's an art item as well as something practical. And
(02:31):
the horses are really important. As you may remember from
our Greatest Battle Horses of History podcast. Your average early
samurai isn't the guy you see in the movies just
wielding a sword. He's the guy on the horse with
a bow, something that's incredibly difficult to do and gives
you a good idea perhaps of just how skillful to
(02:51):
shoot a moving target while you're riding on a horse.
That would definitely be difficult. But the samurai we're pretty
important by the eight century, but they developed from provincial
warrior bands in the twelfth century and that's when they
refine this kind of stoic, disciplined culture that we think
of defining samurai. During the Kama Cora period eleven thirty
(03:16):
three and that's when they became the ruling cast of Japan,
they were completely and utterly different from the imperial court.
And during the Muromachi period they start to develop their
broader pursuits, you know, not just they're not just warriors.
They're also poets and masters inc painting and art. In
(03:38):
the tea ceremony and I have my little cup of
tea with me today while we're while we're recording in
honor of them. Well that you're scratchy through that too.
Their code of conduct is crucial to understanding the samurai
and also our story of the forty seven Rown, and
it's later formalized as bushido, but for a long time
(03:58):
it was just an written set of rules that placed loyalty, obligation,
and self discipline above self. And it's weird. When I
was searching for articles about Samurai and the forty seven
Rown in on Galileo, which is a search engine we
use a lot, there are so many sports articles that
come up just using samurai in a casual sort of way.
(04:21):
I guess it's the self discipline. They're a good role
model if you're training for something. Um. But a big
part of the formalized code of conduct is the ritual suicide,
which is called sepko and um. That's sort of another
main thing you think of when you actually think of samurai,
(04:42):
and it's actually disembowlment. You usually have a second though,
so most people who would do it wouldn't die, you know,
an agonizing hours long death from internal bleeding. They would
have somebody else to finish them off as soon as
they did the deed. But it was a way to
restore honor to oneself, to your family, to your lord
(05:05):
after a defeat or some sort of shame. And this
will come up a lot in our story. Yeah, and
we should mention the loyalty to the lords a little
bit and explain that before we get too into the
whole samurai thing. So, Japan had an emperor during this time,
but he had really become a figurehead after the shogun
(05:25):
rose to power and their military leaders. So um, While
the emperor is still there and still holds symbolic importance,
the shogun basically run the game, and they in turn
have lords who are loyal to them, and then the
samurai are loyal to their lords. So you have a
feudal system. And this feudal system really became more of
(05:46):
a closed cast like a closed aristocracy during the Tokugawa period,
which is sixteen oh three to eighteen sixty seven, in
an attempt to lockdown society as it was in that moment. Yeah,
no more changes, please, everybody stay in the position you're in.
So if you're a samurai. Your children will be samurai's
(06:07):
but it's not something that you can rise to yourself necessarily. Um.
But because they're years of peace in the Tokugawa period,
a lot of samurais don't have uh, their old warrior
jobs anymore, so they become bureaucrats or merchants, and they
can still wear their traditional two swords, which are very
important to samurai. They're obviously totally cool. There are four
(06:31):
main samurai swords. One is just a dagger which you
usually use to commit sappuku and uh. Sword smith started
signing the blades of the swords in the eleventh century.
So consequently, from that time we had all these different
swordsmithing styles developed, you know, each family making their own
kind of swords like brands or in in different ways.
(06:53):
They had contrasting metal tones, surface textures. And the other
cool thing is that they're made so they're incredible sharp,
but they're soft enough at their core so that they
won't break sharp enough to cut a man in half
if you if you just need a good reference point
for that a good conversation starter. But by the late
Tokugawa period, the economic position of the samurai is starting
(07:17):
to deteriorate and i impoverished nobles. Yeah, pretty classic story,
isn't it. And that's because their way of life is
not as important as it used to be. Um, the
country is turning more towards trade, and cities are replacing
sprawling feudal dominions, and yeah, the samurai aren't in the
(07:38):
same league as merchants anymore. And by the time that
westerners forced to open Japan in the mid nineteenth century,
some lower ranking samurai are hoping for their own kind
of change, and they're leaving their own lords, which makes
them ron in or masterlest samurai, remember that word. And
they start rebelling against the Tokagawa showgun and this ends
(07:59):
up in a lot of trouble. They start assassinating people
from moderate officials to pro Western scholars to various foreigners
within the borders, and by eighteen sixty eight we have
the Meiji Restoration, which finally returns Japan to imperial rule
after the shogun gives up his power. I mean, the
shogun has been in power forever essentially, so this is
(08:21):
a really big deal and it's a chance to remake
the country. So well, Samurai who are loyal to the
shogun skirmish for a while, the Meiji Emperor prevails, feudalism
is abolished in eighteen seventy one in Japan rapidly industrializes
from there, and it ironically ends up setting the stage
for a new kind of militarism that arises in the
(08:43):
twentieth century. But that's obviously a different story, different podcasts. Yes,
so we'll switch gears now that you have this little
bit of background. And as we mentioned, rown in our
masterless samurai, So that can happen for a few reasons.
It's possible that their master has died it or perhaps
they're just troublemakers who for some reason have lost their
(09:04):
noble sponsorship. But they're generally the kind of guys who
might roam around the country starting up civil wars and
making mischief, which of course they're giant swords of their sides.
But at least one group of them stars in our
story today, which happens to be maybe Japan's favorite story,
at least that's the impression I get from it, And
(09:24):
that's the tale of the forty seven Ronin. And the
forty seven Ronin are considered heroes and models for the
stoic honor bound lifestyle that defines the samurai class. But
as it always is, history is a little murkier than
the legend of the forty seven Ronin, and even the
name of the event is perhaps not so clear cut.
(09:47):
According to Henry D. Smith, the second of Columbia University,
what we know variously as forty seven Samurai, forty six Ronin,
or the forty six Samurai is simply called the ac
Incident by historians, and this name conveniently skips that whole
problem of forty six forty seven, which we're going to
(10:07):
talk about a little later. So our incident takes place
on April sev o one during the Tokugawa Shogunate, And
as we mentioned earlier, Japan is ruled by the military
power of the shogun with the emperor as a figurehead.
But that doesn't mean the emperor is an important He's
still a big deal in the symbolic sense, and his
(10:28):
unflays are coming from the imperial court in Kyoto to
the shogun's capital in what is today Tokyo, and the
Lord of Ako Asano Naganori, along with another feudal lord,
is in charge of receiving these envoys. So it's a
big day. But instead of doing what he was supposed
to do, Asano attacks one of the shogun's senior officials,
(10:50):
Kira Yosha Naka, with his sword, and he just nixed him.
But an attack on the shogun's man is simply not done,
so he's or to commit seppuku immediately, and he does
it like an honorable um lord would. He's buried, his
estates are confiscated, and this leaves his samurai and his
(11:12):
vassals masterless, which is not a good place to be
if you are a samurai. Forty seven of his samurai
aren't going to let this one go quite so easily.
They sign an oath to revenge their master, and according
to legend, they wait for nearly two years and lived
based lives that aren't suitable for samurai in order to
(11:35):
set Kira off his guard. So he's not expecting them
to attack, because of course they aren't even living as
honorable samurai. They're drinking and going visiting the gay shaw
all the time and stuff like that stuff samurai shouldn't do.
Um But they do wait two years for for sure,
and they finally storm Kira's mansion and they kill his
(11:57):
own samurai and they find him hiding in an out
building and they asked him to commit seppuku before they
have to to do it themselves, and they caught off
his head, carry it back in a bucket and take
it to their master's grave. So revenge accomplished. They have
um i guess redeemed their master's honor. But now the
(12:18):
shogun it, of course, is rather conflicted because they don't
know quite what to do with them. They acted like
honorable samurai, but of course, you know, coming up with
this plot and hunting down an official of the showgun
is very disrespectful, and they're also really popular with people.
So the shogun it has seven weeks of debate before
(12:41):
the verdict comes down, which was commits sippuku immediately. So
they're rowing in aged fifteen to seventy seven commit suppuku
on March oh three. Um. But that's that's the basic story.
But of course things are pretty murky, and one of
the trickiest parts is figuring out the number. What's what's
(13:03):
with it? Forty six or forty seven? Why is that contentious? Well,
most people agree that there were forty seven ronin who
participated in the attack, but only forty six who committed
ritual suicide. There was a man named Terasaka Kei Chiman
who was the odd man out and also the lowest
ranking member of their league. And our second big question
(13:26):
about this story is why did Asano attack Kira in
the first place. And this is kind of tricky because
a Saana would have known that an attack on an
official would have had pretty grave consequences for him and
for his vassals, for for all of his samurai. And
all we know is that Asana shouted, this is for
that grudge I've had against you, which I imagine must
(13:48):
sound more eloquent in Japanese. But um, the Ronan have
a lot of correspondence, and even they don't mention the
source of the dispute, so maybe we just don't know
what their problem was with each other. But in the legend,
Kira has been made into a bureaucratic villain to make
it make sense, and we can all recognize the model
(14:08):
of the bureaucratic villain who you know, disrespects and impedes
various efforts of Asana. Yeah, it definitely helps make the
story make more sense. Um. And but we still have
a third big question here. Which is why did the
Ronan actually go ahead and kill Kira? And they say
that they're fulfilling their master's vendetta, but that's not really
(14:31):
UM straight Samurai code, because after all, a Sana was
the one who tried to kill Kira, not the other
way around. And they even have to get a Confucian
scholar to try to justify the whole thing to to
make it legit. I guess historians have raised other possible motives.
Maybe they were angry that Kira hadn't been punished for,
(14:52):
you know, whatever his part may have been in the
dispute with Asano. Or perhaps they were just trying to
get work. And Sarah sudden to me earlier that perhaps
revenge looks good on a resume, So we're gonna I
am Aurai looking for a job. Yeah, but whatever, the
debate makes the incident a really good story, and one
(15:12):
that's so popular it's sprouted this whole genre of retellings.
UM actually originating from a puppet play, which Katie and
I kind of like puppet play. We're very into the
center of puppetry arts in Atlanta. UM. But this, this genre,
the Loyal League stories, has come up in kabuki theater
and books, movies, TV series. Half a million people visit
(15:36):
the temple where where all the samurai and their master
are interred, and in December, parades of kids dress up
as samurai to tell the story, which is that's when
it is officially celebrated in Japan. But the interesting part
for us is that usually a story that ends with
everyone dead on the ground think Hamlet is considered a tragedy,
(15:58):
but the Tale of the forty Seven rown in as
something that's about beauty and honor and living by a code,
and in this story, death and suicide have an entirely
different meaning. So if you have some comments on that,
we'd encourage you to email us at History Podcast at
how stuff Works dot com and let us know what
(16:20):
you think. And we also really wish we could have
seen this exhibition on samurai that was at the met
of late last year and early this year, and it
looked so cool. We were talking about the armor and
the swords earlier. But um, since honorable death was so important,
it was really important how you looked when you when
you went down or when you committed supuku, whichever way
(16:42):
it was. In the New York Times had a very
cool photo gallery that Sarah found and posted on Twitter.
You compend us at mist in History if you're looking
for us, and the reviewer said, the show of swords
and armors perfectly combined to Japanese styles, utter simplicity and
outrageous as rotation, which I think is how we can
think of the samurai themselves exactly, and that wraps up
(17:05):
the tail of the Romans. So again, if you have
something to say, feel free to email us, follow us
on Twitter, or join our Facebook fan page where we'll
keep you updated on what we're working on. And always
remember to check out our home page at www dot
house stuff works dot com. For more on this and
thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com
(17:27):
and be sure to check out the stuff you missed
in History glass blog on the house stuff works dot
com home page
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