another synopsis, somewhat closer to the 1962 film version
Introduction to Kanadehon Chûshingura (Paul Kennelly) from UVa e-texts
RETHINKING THE STORY OF THE 47 RONIN: CHÛSHINGURA IN THE 1980S (Henry D. Smith II)
(an excerpt from this very interesting analysis)"If you study Chushingura long enough, you will understand everything about the Japanese (Tsurumi Shunsuke)...
...the legend seems to remain as durable and versatile as ever, and it remains quite simply the most widely known and frequently re-presented story in Japan...
Does this mean that Chûshingura will in fact begin to disappear as this older generation and its readers disappear? One small piece of evidence to the contrary is one of the most curious books of the 1980s, a 1988 work by the implausible author "Akita to Ikumi to Tamiko-chan" with the equally implausible title 'Heh, Chûshinguraa, nanda sore?' to iu kata ni pittari no Chûshingura desu. The orthography of the title is so expressive and difficult to capture in romanization that I here provide a reproduction of the cover that also reveals the shocking pink color--hardly what one would expect from a conventional explication of Chûshingura. The title is similarly difficult to translate in a way that captures the sense of contemporary Tokyo slang, but the authors themselves provide a good stab at it in an English table of contents provided as an appendix (itself a revealing mark of contemporary youth culture): "What the hell is Chûshingura?"
As the title suggests, the book is clearly intended for a generation that did not grow up with Chûshingura but somehow feels responsible for knowing about it. The main text, although written in the characteristic jargon of teenage girls and illustrated with cheery cartoons, actually provides a serious and responsible account of all the details of the historical Akô Incident. In a mark of contemporary egalitarianism, all honorifics are dropped, and Lord Asano becomes "Asano-kun," while Kira is referred to as "Kira no jisama." It is hard to know exactly what to make of a book like this, but at the very least it proves that there is clearly an audience for Chûshingura in the younger generation, if only to overcome its embarrassment at not really knowing anything about it.
Exploring the Ako Incident Controversy
2001 April 30 Koizumi Cabinet
Grand analogies are afloat. Koizumi compared himself to Oishi, leader of the revenge-seeking but suicidally honorable 47 Ronin (whose leader was renamed Oboshi in Chushingura, the famous 1748 play about the incident). Similarly, Tanigaki Sadakazu, secretary general of the Kato faction, compared Koizumi to Minamoto no Yoritomo, the successful leader of the Genji clan in Heike Monogatari (The Tale of Heike). With an astounding 80% support rate in the first round of opinion polls after coming to power (compared to less than 10% for Mori), Koizumi may have reason to boast.
Ichiriki Teahouse episode from Kabuki theater (from Major Japan Links)
Chushingura and the Samurai Tradition from Columbia --includes details of key characters --see also 300 Years of the 47 Ronin
Text of the bunraku play is available in Leyburn:
CALL NO. PL794.6.K3 E5 1971.
AUTHOR Takeda, Izumo, 1691-1756.
TITLE Chushingura (The treasury of loyal retainers); a puppet play by
Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Sh{229}oraku, and Namiki Senry{229}u. Translated
by Donald Keene.
IMPRINT New York, Columbia University Press, 1971.
1 > Leyburn-Level 3 PL794.6.K3 E5 1971
Chushingura prints from Dartmouth's Hood Museum, and Hiroshige prints
History of Samurai and another summary
extract from "Did Judo Emerge as an Expression of the Meiji Period?" (Paul Turse)
A brief synopsis of this story known as Chushingura may be of interest to the reader and demonstrate what feudal values of bushido permeated the Meiji period.Along with several other retainers, a young and inexperienced vassal, Lord Asano, has incurred the responsibility of receiving an Imperial envoy at the Shogun’s palace, an official ceremony filled with obscure and intricate formalities that, if not carried out properly, would cause a humiliating loss of face. The difficulty of his task is compounded by the fact that his chief retainer, Yuranoske Oishi, who is well versed in courtly procedures, is out in the provinces carrying out some administrative duties. The only person to whom Asano can go to for help is the lecherous and unscrupulous Moronao, a master of ceremonies who gives advice only for a price. The other inexperienced vassals are more than willing to pay for the proper instruction, but not Asano. Since it is Moronao’s duty to provide help, Asano refuses to pay for what should be rightfully given for free. But when the proud samurai does not carry out the procedures properly, he is humiliated in front of the Emperor. Moronao humiliates and infuriates Asano all the more by laughing at his poor performance and by making insinuations about the retainer’s wife, whom Moronao earlier had attempted to seduce by promising to aid her husband in exchange for her favors. The outraged Asano finally loses his self-control and to avenge his honor, he draws his sword and strikes but manages only to wound Moronao’s forehead. Before he can finish the job, he is halted by intervening bystanders. Even though he does not kill his enemy, Asano is doomed to death by disembowelment because the act of drawing a sword in the Shogun’s palace is a capital offense.
During Tokugawa times vendettas were legal but had to be officially approved by the authorities. If a request was to be granted, the aggrieved had three days only in which to legally carry out revenge. If carried out after the imposed time limit, however, official sanction could not be granted and the avenger would have to face the fatal consequences. Of Asano’s some three hundred and fifty displaced samurai, only forty-seven vow to get revenge against Moronao, the man responsible for their master’s untimely end. The Tokugawa period was a relatively peaceful period in Japanese history. With no external wars to fight and all internal strife quelled by the rigid control of the Tokugawa, the samurai class had slowly degenerated, and with this decline came a slackening of bushido and the traditional warrior values. Formal revenge against Moronao would have been nearly impossible to attain for two reasons: First, since Moronao was so close to the Shogun and such an influential person at court, it was not likely that a request would have been granted. Second, since Moronao lived within the Shogun’s court, the avenging parties would have had to launch an invasion against the heavily guarded castle of the Shogun. Despite the slight chance of penetrating, it is not likely that the Shogun would have sanctioned an attack on his own fortress.
The loyal forty-seven retainers, however, vow to get revenge but agree to wait until the opportune moment. To throw both the enemy and the authorities off guard, the forty-seven disband. Some retire to quietude. Others, like Oishi, abandon themselves to lives of dissipation and debauchery. All the while they secretly carry out plans for attack. The extremes to which the forty-seven and their families and friends go are exemplified by the retainer who sells his wife into prostitution. The dutiful wife willingly allows herself to be sold and eventually works her way into the Shogun’s household and becomes one of Moronao’s concubines. Once inside, so one of the many versions of this tale go, she makes detailed plans of the castle and is able to smuggle these plans out to her waiting husband and the other conspirators. Finally, after more than one year of anticipation and deprivation (except maybe for Oishi), on a snowy night in December 1703, during a rollicking party, the forty-seven ronin pull a sneak attack and fight their way through the heavily but perhaps somewhat inebriated stronghold of the Shogun and capture Moronao. When their enemy waives the option of self-immolation, they behead him and take the dissevered head to their master’s grave, where the renegade warriors dutifully commit seppuku several days later at the bequest of the Shogun. The shrine of the forty-seven at Sengakuji is still a popular spot for pilgrims and tourists who burn incense daily at the gravesites of these heroes.
It must be reiterated here that the forty-seven dutifully committed hara-kiri at the request of the Shogun because by remaining true to their master they had betrayed the Shogun. Their tragic demise has been and still is glorified in the Kabuki today. Generally speaking the condoning of personal obligation (ninjo) over the public good (giri) in no way compromises the ethics of Kabuki or of the Meiji period. Indeed, the Kabuki is filled with characters, such as Saigo Takamori, whose personal obligations cause their tragic downfall...
Excerpt from an essay on the director Mizoguchi Kenji, whose 4-hour 1941-42 version of Chushingura is available in Leyburn (Leyburn-Circ.-Video DS873 .G4):
Before dealing with Mizoguchi’s film, a few words are in order concerning the Chushingura theme which provides its narrative fabric. The place which this theme occupies in national legend is roughly equivalent to that of Joan of Arc in France. Above all, however, it is typical of that fund of narrative and symbolic material with which every Japanese is so familiar and upon which the popular cinema (and the traditional arts before it) have so heavily and repeatedly drawn.The events upon which the various theatrical versions of Cushingura are based took place, as I have indicated, at the very beginning of the eighteenth century. On the occasion of the arrival of two imperial envoys at the Shogun’s palace in Edo, two daimyo (provincial lords) were appointed to oversee the festivities. One of the daimyo thus honoured in the year 1701 was Asano-Takumino Kami, Lord of Ako. Ignorant in the ways of Court, Asano was reluctant to accept, but was assured that an experienced courtier, Kira-Kozukenosuke, would advise him. Kira was a courtier of relatively low rank who relied on advisory positions of this sort to round out his income. As Asano failed, half out of naiveté, half out of pride, to offer the customary bribes, not only did Kira deliberately misinform him, but repeatedly insulted him during the three-day ceremony. One final insult was too much to bear, and Asano drew his sword and assaulted Kira. Although the wounds were only superficial, Asano was sentenced to commit ritual suicide for having drawn his sword in the Shogun’s palace, potentially an act of treason. As further punishment, all of Asano’s property was seized and his retainers were stripped of their legal attachment to the house and forced to become ronin. A group of these, however, led by Oishi-Kuanosuke, chief councillor in charge of the castle of Ako, secretly swore vengeance against Kira, and for months they plotted, going to extravagant lengths to put Kira off guard. Finally, exactly one year after Asano’s death, the ronin stormed Kira’s residence during a New Year’s tea ceremony and executed the villain. They then made their way to a nearby temple; after a month of house-arrest in the mansions of four daimyo, they were allowed to commit ritual suicide instead of being executed like common criminals. For already their courage and loyalty had fired the imagination of the entire country.
This saga exemplifies the typically Japanese conflict of personal loyalty and national obligation, but its interest lies less in the forty-seven’s actual choice than in the fact that they dramatized publicly a dilemma which, to the ‘Japanese mind’, is in any case inextricable – Oishi would have discreetly died of shame had he not avenged his master. It is this detour through spectacular violence which explains why Chushingura still stirs the Japanese heart.
More important to us, however, is the fact that aside from the numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century stage versions of this theme, Chiishingura has been filmed at least twenty times. One of the most celebrated versions was a 1931 film by Kinugasa, unfortunately lost. The familiarity of the theme no doubt helped to determine the specific narrative modes adopted by Mizoguchi for his version, the most sumptuous and ambitious of them all. It is also an essential dimension of the Japanese cinema as a whole and, in particular, of jidai-geki, which even today occupies a large place in both cinema and TV production. For the political and social struggles, the values and the symbolism, and even the individual characters of the Tokugawa period (and, to a lesser extent, certain earlier periods) are so familiar to Japanese audiences that a great deal more ‘background’ can be taken for granted in jidaigeki than in its Western counterpart. Most important of all, however, is the endlessly repetitive quality of such films, grounded as they are in this shared heritage. Though this is a ticklish subject on which to make definitive pronouncements, it would seem that in a new film on an old theme the average, untravelled, unsophisticated Japanese film-goer still seeks not startling twists or even any novelty at all, but rather a confirmation of the permanence of certain values, certain symbols, certain structures.A Tale of Loyal Retainers, which lasts nearly four hours, is entirely devoid of anything remotely resembling spectacular action, if we except one no performance and an abortive combat described below. Its sumptuous austerity, its hieratic stateliness border at times on academic formalism. In some respects this is one of the few Japanese films which reflects to any serious extent the mood and rhythm of the classical no, although at the same time its lyrical scope would almost incline one to a more exotic comparison with Wagner’s Parsifal.Though played against elaborate reconstructions of vast mansions and castles, nearly every scene in the film is either a long discussion over such subjects as dividing up the Asano fortune, the ethics of the vendetta, the politics of the period (Fig. 27), or else is devoted to pure ritual: preparations for suicide (Fig. 28), ritual hair-cutting, tea-ceremony, a no play, a death commemoration, etc.
One feature of the film which distinguishes it sharply from the previous masterpieces, is an emphasis on balanced, generally centred framing observable in a majority of shots and which contributes strongly to the film’s hieratic quality (symmetry is regarded by Japanese tradition as suitable only to temple architecture). However, it would be a mistake to infer that this mode of composition leads to an occlusion of field and frame as does the subtle centering of the Western system, since the very nature of Japanese classical architecture, magnificently epitomized in these sets, is so committed to emphasis on frame and surface as to render such an effect unthinkable.
Perhaps most striking of all is the lavish extravagance of so many camera movements: for the first time, it seems, Mizoguchi had a crane at his disposal, though it would be trivial to reduce this radical abandonment of the principle of economy observed in Tale of Late Chrysanthemums to this mechanical contingency. For when these movements occur they adhere to a remarkable inner logic. The successive camera angles within a given shot previously tended, almost without exception, to form a centrifugal pattern in pro-filmic space, i.e. the camera, in accordance precisely with the principle of economy of means, tended to pivot about a single point or line. In A Tale of Loyal Retainers, on the other hand, the pattern tends to be centripetal, i.e. the camera tends to circle about the characters and often in fact effects one or more complete reversals during a single shot. And while this analysis certainly does not account for all of this monumental film, one does detect a systematic tendency to introduce the two main figures of dominant narrative editing – the concertina and the reverse field – into the camera movements but at the same time to unfold them with ostentatious slowness. As a result, there is absolutely nothing of that ‘organic’ embedding in the diegesis achieved by a comparable adaptation of the editing codes to movement in the West. In fact, the extravagance of these movements is such that ultimately they may be said to offer an absolutely unique ceremonial commentary on the representational system of the Western film.
One of the most spectacularly beautiful instances of this procedure is the sequence in which Asano’s wife sacrifices her hair preparatory to entering widowhood. This five-minute shot begins with a distant rear view of the lady, with two of her ladies-in-waiting visible on her right. The only sounds to be heard are the tolling death-knell and the women’s sobs. After a long moment, one of the women rises carrying a knife on a tray and goes towards Lady Asano. The camera starts to circle to the right and soon we see that there are many other women in the room all bowed and sobbing. One of the servants wraps the long hair in a sheet of paper, the other cuts the tresses with the knife. The camera completes its semi-circle. Facing the camera now, the widow remains erect and dry-eyed while all the servants prostrate themselves and sob even more desperately.
A far more elaborate example of this approach, almost bordering on the pedantic, is to be found in the long confrontation between Tokugawa Tsunatoyo, a relative of the reigning Shogun but who secretly sympathizes with the plotters, and Tominomori Sukeyemon, a young retainer of the late lord. The conversation in which Tsunatoyo affects to persuade Sukeyemon to give up the vendetta, is set in a large audience-room in Sukeyemon’s mansion, and consists mainly in two very ample circular movements which produce the equivalent of two reverse-field ‘cuts’ spread out over a period of five minutes! Similarly, slow forward tracking movements seem to reproduce the concertina, but within such restricted limits on the shot-size scale that the principle of camera distance is at all times respected, altogether eliminating the close-up, motor and target of the concertina in the classical Western decoupage. When Otshi comes upon two vassals of Asano, the commoner Izeki and his son, dying of self-inflicted wounds in front of the castle of Ak~, the first part of the scene is filmed from an extraordinary distance; when Otshi whispers to the dying Izeki that he intends to avenge their lord, the camera dollies in to a head-to-foot shot, which might be said to stand in this instance for a cut to a dramatic close-up. Taken on its own, this example might of course suggest that there is an ‘innate’ Japanese code of shot sizes, parallel to our own and merely less extended, but such procedures are too rare in the Japanese cinema to explain such work in purely cultural terms (not to mention the fact that this film was a commercial failure). We seem rather to be dealing with a specific transformation of a set of Western codes, comparable, at the level of the individual artist, with those cultural modes of transformation observed earlier.
Another remarkable example of distance, ‘resolved’ in this case by an actual concertina, is the scene in which Sukeyemon hot-headedly attacks Tsunatoyo as he prepares to perform in a no play (Fig. 29, PIs. la, b, c, d, e, f, g, and 2). The tiny face of Sukeyemon’s wife appearing from time to time in the background is typical of the way Mizoguchi demands that an audience read the image. A concertina occurs in the midst of the two men’s struggle (Pls. 1g. 2) as a prelude to the dialogue in which Tsunatoyo explains that he in fact favours the vendetta and that Sukeyemon must follow Otshi’s lead and bide his time. It is indicative of the displacement effect of Mizoguchi’s basic distance option on the editing codes in their literal use; but it also demonstrates the director’s new concern to introduce established editing figures. For although very long takes are again the rule in this film, the dilated analysis of the editing codes through movement is matched by a relatively frequent use of the actual figures (more predominant in the first part of the film than in the second, however). What is significant here is that their use usually seems to be deferred: often a scene will take place in very long shot for quite some time and then, at a point in the narrative which may seem quite arbitrary, a concertina (or other type of match) will occur (of course, the example illustrated above was not of this type).
Was it because audiences were disappointed in the complete lack of violence? Was it because of the extreme austerity of the narrative – for long inter-titles recalled the episodes not shown (among them the attack on Kira’s mansion and the suicide of the forty-seven) and the diegesis was almost exclusively discursive or ceremonial? These explications are difficult to accept, because so many successful films made until then had been equally eventless and austere, and this continued to be the case for years. Whatever the reason, this inordinately expensive film was a financial disaster. Possibly, of course, this lavishly austere presentation of basic ‘feudal’ values did not mesh with the historical mood and the material conditions which determined it.
The film was made during the Pacific War, in response to government demands that Shochiku increase their production of patriotic films . . . and Mizoguchi seems to have volunteered.