Pt. 2: Books and
Manuscripts (Starr Rare Book
Reading Room)
30. Letters of
the 47 Rônin
Throughout
their months of plotting, and particularly as the day of decision drew
near,
the Akô rônin corresponded frequently. Some 250 authentic
letters
survive (and
many forgeries), out of what must have been many more. Some are short
and
perfunctory, but many others are sustained and often moving
explanations of
their motivations, particularly the farewell letters written in the
final
months.
A number of these letters
circulated in manuscript form in the Edo
period, as
these two examples show. Above is a copy of a single letter written by
the
leader of the league of revenge, Ôishi Kuranosuke, to the chief
priests
of
three Zen Buddhist temples in Akô with whom Ôishi was
intimate.
Intended as a
farewell letter, it reports on recent events and recapitulates in
detail the
course of the revenge The original letter
in Ôishi’s
own hand survives in Shôfukuji temple. This letter circulated
widely in
the Edo
period, both in manuscript forms like this, and in private woodblock
printings.
Below is a manuscript copy of
three letters written by Mimura Jirôzaemon to his mother,
particularly
a long
letter of farewell dated 1703.11.30, just half a month before the
attack on Kira. Mimura was a 35-year-old
bachelor and the second
lowest ranking member of the league (just above the footsoldier
Terasaka
Kichiemon, who left the group after the attack and escaped punishment).
He
seems to have been very close to his mother.
Top shelf:
Ôishi
Kuranosuke (1659-1703)
Ôishi
Kuranosuke shukan 大石内蔵助手簡
(Letter
of
Ôishi Kuranosuke)
Manuscript
copy, n.d.; copied by “Tônen”
桃年;
original letter dated
1702.12.13Waseda University LibraryBottom
shelf:
Mimura
Jirôzaemon 三
村次郎左衛門 (1667-1703)
Akô
gishi
bunshô 赤穂義士文章
(Letters
of an Akô Gishi)
Manuscript
copy, n.d.; original letters dated 1702
Starr
East
Asian Library
31. Foundational
Narratives
Until
the final years of the Tokugawa period, it remained illegal to publish
any
printed accounts of the historical Akô Incident, even though many
works
for the
stage were permitted simply by transposing the time to the Kamakura
period three centuries earlier, and thinly
disguising
the names. The easiest way to circumvent this prohibition was to make
hand-copied manuscripts, which was frequently done by private admirers
of the
47 Rônin, as was clearly the case of the two copies on the top
shelf
(one from
Waseda, one from Columbia) of one of the most important documents of
the Akô
Incident, an account by Horiuchi Den’emon, a senior retainer of the
Hosokawa
domain of Kumamoto who in charge of seventeen top-ranking rônin
during
their
forty-eight days of custody before their execution. Horiuchi became
very
friendly with his prisoners, whom he clearly admired, and prepared a
detailed
history of their revenge.
Very different was the case
of Muro Kyûsô, a Confucian scholar who at the time of the
incident was
in Kanazawa,
in the service of the Maeda lord of Kaga, and who wrote his account on
the
basis of information sent from informants in Edo.
Completed in late 1703, and it rapidly became the single most
influential
account of the Akô Incident, particularly among intellectuals who
could
read
the kanbun (Chinese) text. Highly
embellished and sympathetic to the rônin, Kyûsô’s
history set the tone
of much
later debate. It includes both a narrative of the entire incident, and
individual biographies of each of the 47 Rônin. Manuscript copies
of
the
revised 1711 version are displayed, from both the Waseda and Columbia
collections.
Top shelf, left:
Horiuchi Den’emon堀内伝右衛門 (1645-1727)
Sekijô gishin taiwa 赤城義臣対話
(Conversations with the loyal retainers of
Akô)
Manuscript copy, n.d.; original dated 1703
Waseda University Library
Bottom shelf, left:
Muro Kyûsô 室鳩巣 (1658-1734)
Akô gijinroku 赤穂義人録
(Record of the righteous men of Akô)
Manuscript copy, n.d.;
original
dated 1711.
Waseda University Library
Top shelf, right:
Horiuchi Den’emon堀内伝右衛門(1645-1727)
Horiuchi Den’emon
oboegaki
(The memorandum of Horiuchi Den’emon)
Manuscript copy, n.d.; original dated 1703
Starr East Asian Library
Bottom shelf, right:
Muro Kyûsô 室鳩巣(1658-1734)
Akô gijinroku 赤穂義人録
(Record of the righteous men of Akô)
Manuscript copy, n.d.,
original date
1711.
Starr East Asian Library
32. Popular Jitsuroku
Accounts
Another
genre of chronicle of the Akô Incident is known as jitsuroku,
accounts that were produced in the first instance by
interested onlookers (almost all samurai, from what we know of the
compilers)
in the years immediately following the execution of the rônin.
These
were
typically collections of disparate hearsay accounts that were often
contradictory and obviously fabricated, providing the basis for the
turning of
history into legend from the earliest stage.
One important early jitsuroku
is
displayed on
the top shelf,
written by a samurai from the domain of Kago named Sugimoto Yoshichika,
who had
been a key informant of Muro Kyûsô (see case to the left).
Entitled Akô shôshûki, it is not a
coherently
structured narrative like that of Kyûsô, but rather an
assembly of
reports and
rumors. Works like this did not make for very entertaining reading, but
were
kept in circulation by manuscript copies made by amateur historians of
the Akô
Incident.
A work of particular
importance in the jitsuroku lineage,
but composed in a far more self-consciously literary style, was
Katajima Shin’en’s Sekijô gishinden, published
in Osaka
in 1719. This was the first work to violate the prohibition against
printing
any account of the historical Akô Incident. It is said that it
was
produced by
a group of publishers who knew that it would be banned, so they printed
a large
number of copies in advance and sold them in one lot in the major
cities before
the authorities could respond. Although immediately banned, it seems to
have
been illegally reprinted on later occasions, and this copy may be such
a
reprint. Shin’en’s account borrowed the style of the popular medieval
military
chronicle Taiheiki, and is often
referred to under disguised title of Taihei
gishinden 太平義臣伝. The
pages displayed here
show the end of the introduction, where the author lists his jitsuroku sources (many now lost). The
left-hand page commences a series of portraits of the Akô
rônin that
were later
widely copied.
Top shelf:
Sugimoto Yoshichika 杉本義鄰
Akô shôshûki 赤穂鐘秀記
3 vols.;
manuscript copy,
n.d.; original manuscript 1703
Waseda University Library
Bottom shelf:
Katajima Takenori (Shin’en) 片島武矩(深渕)
Sekijô gishinden 赤城義臣伝
(Biographies
of the righteous retainers of Akô castle)
15 vols., Osaka: Kawachiya Genshichirô, 1719
Waseda University Library
33. Later
Elaborations
For
over a century after Katajima Shin’en’s Sekijô
gishinden, efforts to compile new total histories of the Akô
Incident came
to an end. A new type of jitsuroku
appeared from the mid-seventeenth century, adding literary
embellishments and
more coherent plots to the older material, but of dubious historicity.
Such
works circulated primarily in manuscript through commercial lending
libraries.
A variety of other types of
works appeared in the later eighteenth century, however, such as the
two seen
here, both of which are bibliographical curiosities. On the top shelf
is a
splicing together of a fragment of a printed version of one of the
Confucian
debates over the legal and moral proprieties of the Akô revenge,
with
the
missing part written by hand on a printed form. The pasted seam between
the two
can be seen in the middle of the right-hand page.
Wholly different is
the book
on the bottom shelf, a biography of one Amanoya Rihei, said to be the
historical model for the “loyal merchant” Amakawaya Gihei in Act X of Kanadehon Chushingura. The historicity
of Amanoya Rihei, however, is much in doubt, and it seems likely that
he was an creative “back-formation” from
the fictional Amakawaya
Gihei. The greater interest of this particular specimen from the Waseda
collection is an inscription by its former owner, the famous Meiji
painter in
the Chinese style, Tomioka Tessai (1836-1924), recording a visit to
Amanoya
Rihei’s “grave” at Jizôin temple in Kyoto,
popularly known as “Tsubakidera” (“ Camellia
Temple”). Included
with the
book is
the postcard seen here of the grave and a statue of Rihei at the
temple,
inscribed on the other side with Tessai’s description of the statue.
Top shelf:
Akamatsu
Sôshû 赤松滄洲 (1721‑1801)
Dazai
Tokuo
Akô shijûrokushi ronpyô 太宰徳夫赤穂
四十六士論評
(A
criticism of Dazai Shundai’s opinion on the 46 Rônin)
Combined
manuscript and printed copy, n.d.
Starr
East
Asian LibraryBottom
shelf:
Rai
Shunsui 頼春水 (1746-1816), comp.
Amanoya
Rihei den 天野
屋利兵衛傳
(Biography
of Amanoya Rihei)
Printed
book, 1776
Ex-coll.
Tomioka Tessai 富岡鉄斎 (1836-1924)
Postcard of grave of Amanoya Rihei,
Tsubakidera Temple, Kyoto.
Inscription verso by Tomioka Tessai
Waseda University Library
34. Kibyôshi
Parodies of Kanadehon Chûshingura
The
receding interest in the historicity of the Akô Incident in the
later
eighteenth century was paralleled by the growing permeation of Kanadehon Chūshingura, the fictional
stage version of the story of the 47 Rônin, into every known
genre of Edo
literature. Particularly popular were parodies of the play that
appeared in the
genre of kibyôshi, “yellow-cover”
pamphlets in a comic-book format in which the text was incorporated
within
full-page images. These witty take-offs were intended for a
sophisticated urban
audience.
On the top shelf is one of
the forty-odd kibyôshi parodies of Kanadehon
Chūshingura that appeared over
the course of some 25 years from the late 1770s. The title relates to
the
reigning ideal of urbane sophistication in this era of tsû,
being “in the know” in the ways of the pleasure quarters and
up-to-date fashion. Where an earlier parody punned with “Tsûjingura,”
a “treasury of those in the know,” this work reversed
it as a “treasury of the uncool.”
The bottom shelf
features two
works by one of the leader writer-cum-artists of this era, Santô
Kyôden
(who
did the pictures for the work on the top shelf under the name of “Kitao
Masanobu”). The work on the right depicted the major characters in Kanadehon Chūshingura as types of horses
that reflected the personality of each. The pages shown here depict Act
I,
where Lady Kaoyo on the left is shown as a tame and docile horse,
choosing not
a helmet but a saddle, while the villain Moronao on the right is a
nasty “people-eating”
horse.
Top shelf:
Sakuragawa
(Kishida) Tohô) 桜川杜芳
Illus
Kitao Masanobu 北尾政演 [Santô Kyôden
山東京伝] (1761-1816)
Kanadehon Futsûjingura 假名手本不通人蔵.
(A
treasury of uncool retainers)
Edo:
Tsuruya Kiemon, 1787
Waseda University Library
Bottom shelf, left:
Santô
Kyôden 山東京伝 (1761-1816)
Illus.
Kitao Shigemasa 北尾重政 (1739-1820)
Chûshingura
sokuseki ryôri 忠臣蔵即席料理
(Chûshingura,
instantly cooked)
Edo:
Tsuruya Kiemon, 1794.
Waseda University LibraryBottom
shelf, right:
Santô
Kyôden 山東京伝 (1761-1816)
Illus.
Kitao Shigemasa 北尾重政 (1739-1820)
Katatazuna Chûshingura 假名手綱忠臣蔵
(Chûshingura
on hobby-horse)
Edo:
Tsuruya Kiemon, 1801
Waseda University Library
35. Spin-offs of Kanadehon
Chûshingura
Here
we encounter two unusual works from the Waseda collection that further
demonstrate the ingenious ways in which Kanadehon
Chushingura as the mother lode of Chûshingura was mined in
Edo
popular
culture. On the top shelf is a two-volume work (here bound in a single
volume)
in the kibyôshi format, but one that
involves not the usual plays on words but rather plays with pictures by
the use
of a rebus (in Japanese, hanji-e 判じ絵), a kind of visual riddle
where words or
syllables are depicted by pictures that suggest the sounds of the words
or
syllables that they represent. It is a common form of word play both
East and
West, and was particularly popular in late Edo
culture.
One often encounters the explanation that such rebuses were intended
for the
illiterate, but in fact they could be read only by the consummately
literate.
Shown here is Act V, where the first line to the right reads
“Yoichibei”: a
picture of a drunken man ( yoi) + the
kana chi + a picture of a fence ( hei). On the bottom
shelf is a
completely different sort of book, one that defies technical
classification. It
is conventionally described as a gôkan, a
successor to kibyôshi with colorful
covers. This particular work, however, is a prose rendition of a
curious kabuki
production of 1833 known as Ura-omote Chûshingura,
or “ Chûshingura Front and Back,” in
which famous stock scenes from each act of Kanadehon
Chūshingura were alternated with parodic “back” counterparts. Shown
here is
the “back” version of Act VIII, the michiyuki
in which Tonase and her daughter Konami travel east. We see
Honzô, the
husband
of Tonase, in the guise of a flute-playing mendicant monk in which he
appears
in that act, battling with some of the famed kumosuke
porters that tried to cheat travelers wishing to cross the
Ôi River on the Tokaido highway.
Top shelf:
Kyokutei Bakin 曲亭馬琴 (1767-1848)
Illus.
Kitao Shigemasa 北尾重政 (1739-1820)
Onagusami
Chûshingura
no kangae 御慰忠臣蔵之攷
(A
Chûshingura teaser for leisure time)
Edo:
Tsuruya Kiemon, 1798.
Waseda University Library
Bottom shelf:
Ichikawa
Hakuen (Danjurô VII) 市川白猿 (1791-1859)
Illus.
Utagawa Kunisada 歌川国貞
(1786-1864)
Ura-omote Chûshingura 裏表忠臣蔵
(Chûshingura
front and back)
2
vols. Edo:
Izumiya Ichibei, 1836-7
Waseda University Library
36. Yamazaki
Yoshinari’s Popular Tales of the Akô Gishi
Yamazaki
Yoshinari (1797-1856?) was a remarkable writer who typified many of the
trends
of the second quarter of the nineteenth century in which he was active.
Whereas
the characteristic intellectual of late eighteenth-century Edo
was a disaffected samurai of wit and intellect who communicated only
with
others within his own narrow circles in tricky and erudite puns,
Yamazaki was a
solid bourgeois citizen with an indefatigable curiosity about the past,
and an
eagerness to communicate his findings to a wide audience in plain and
unadorned
Japanese. He played a critical role in the history of the story of the
47 Rônin
by restoring their historicity in printed books that had an impact far
beyond
that of all earlier accounts.
Crucial to Yamazaki’s
achievement was a political breakthrough that occurred in the early
1850s,
first in a work of the Confucian scholar Aoyama Nobumitsu that is
displayed and
described in the tall narrow case to your left. For reasons that are
wholly
undocumented and probably undocumentable, it suddenly became possible
to talk
about the Akô Incident in print, using the real names of the
historical
protagonists.
Yamazaki’s
masterpiece was Akô
gishiden
issekiwa,
of which the
complete set in the Starr East Asian collection is on display here. In
ten
volumes adorned with full-spread illustrations by the talented
Hashimoto
Gyokuran (Sadahide), Yamazaki narrated the course of the Akô
Incident
and then
proceeded to biographies of all of the 47 Rônin. Although similar
in
structure
to the works of Muro Kyûsô and Katajima Shin’en over a
century earlier,
it was
far more accessible, and incorporated many of the countless new
anecdotes that
had been added to the Chûshingura repertoire by kôdan
storytellers over the previous half-century. Yamazaki
followed up with a sequel Akô gishi
zuihitsu one year later, seen here in pages describing artifacts of
the Akô
rônin.
Top row:
Yamazaki
Yoshinari 山崎美成 (1797-1856?)
Akô
gishiden
issekiwa 赤穂義士伝一夕話
(An
evening’s tale of the lifes of the Akô Gishi)
9
vols
[vol. 10 missing]
Edo: Yamatoya Kihei,
1854.
Starr
East
Asian Library
Bottom row:
Yamazaki
Yoshinari 山崎美成 (1797-1856?)
Illus. Hashimoto Gyokuran 橋本玉蘭 (1807-1873?)
Akô gishi zuihitsu 赤穂義士随筆.
(Essay
on
the Akô Gishi)
4
vols. Edo: Yamatoya Kihei,
1855.
Waseda University Library
37. The Kanbun Accounts of
Aoyama
Nobumitsu
As
described in the adjacent flat case that displays the books of Yamazaki
Yoshinari, there occurred a dramatic change in the middle of the
nineteenth
century in the telling of the story of the 47 Rônin when it
suddenly
became
legal to publish books using the real names of the historical
protagonists. The
earliest work of this type is seen on the top shelf here, a compilation
in
Chinese ( kanbun) of short biographies
of all forty-seven of the league members. The author Aoyama Nobumitsu
was a
Confucian scholar of the Mito
domain, and his writing served to forge crucial connections between the
loyalist and nationalist ideology of the Mito
School with the far
more
circumscribed loyalty of the Akô avengers, thus paving the way
for the
modern
appropriation of the Chûshingura legend by Japanese nationalists.
Aoyama followed up on his
interest in the 47 Rônin a number of years later in his 1866 Gijin isô, a print edition of various
poems left by the rônin together with some celebrations of their
accomplishments in Chinese verse. A number of the Akô rônin
were
accomplished
poets, particularly in haikai circles, and there exists a sub-cult of
their
verse in modern Japan.
Top shelf:
Aoyama
Nobumitsu 青山延光 (1807‑1871)
Akô
shijûshichishi
den 赤穂四十七士伝
(Lives
of
the 47 samurai of Akô)
2 vols.; Edo: Suharaya Ihachi,
1851
Starr
East
Asian Library
Bottom shelf:
Aoyama
Nobumitsu 青山延光 (1807‑1871)
Gijin isô 義人遺草
(Poetic
mementos of the righteous men)
Mito: Suharaya
Yasujirô, 1866
Starr East Asian Library
38. The Seppuku
of Ôishi Kuranosuke
This
hanging scroll painting of the ritual seppuku of Ôishi Kuranosuke
is
the single
most important Chûshingura-related object in the collection of
the
Waseda
University Library. It is one of a number of surviving copies of what
appears
to be the original painting that survives today in the private
collection of
the Yasuba family of Kumamoto. The date of the original is unknown, but
it was
presumably commissioned by Yasuba Ippei, who served as the “ kaishaku 介錯” or second for Ôishi,
severing
his head as he took
the dagger of disembowelment in his hand. It is presumed that the
painting
offers a reasonably accurate depiction of the scene at the Hosokawa
mansion in
Edo where the seventeen top-ranking leaders of the Akô league of
revenge were
executed on the afternoon of the fourth day of the Second Month of
Genroku 16
(March 19, 1703).
Other known copies of this
painting, such as those in the Eisei Bunko in Tokyo
and in the Hyôgo Prefectural
Museum in Kobe,
differ in small details, notably in the pattern on the panel at the end
of the
veranda to the upper left. But it is the overall similarities that are
important. The absolute center of attention in all versions is on the
two
protagonists, Ôishi with his short sword and Yasuba with his long
sword. Ôishi
seems wholly composed, with no intention of cutting his abdomen (which
at this
point in the history of seppuku was not expected). Yasuba, by contrast,
stands
crouched like a bow pulled taut, ready to slice off Ôishi’s head
cleanly and
then hold it up for inspection to the witnesses. Fully forty-five
figures are
shown in the officiating party, from the two bakufu inspectors in front
of a
ceremonial screen to the left, down to those in the bottom center who
seem to be
in charge of disposing of the corpses and cleaning up afterwards.
And then there are the
remaining sixteen men who await their turn at decapitation to the upper
right.
In all versions of the painting, they are shown in varied, even casual
poses,
some apparently chatting with one another. In the real world that
afternoon, of
course, they could not have seen what was going on in the courtyard
outside;
they heard only the announcements that one of their brethren had
completed the
performance, and the calling of the next name. The entire ceremony of
execution
is estimated to have taken less than two hours. The sword that severed
Oishi’s
head survives in the Yasuba family, and was recently exhibited at the
Akô City
Museum of History on the occasion of the 300th anniversary
of the
attack on Kira.
Gishi
seppuku
no zu 義士切腹之図
(The
seppuku of the Gishi)
Hanging
scroll
Waseda University Library
39. Portraits of
the Gishi
The
47 Rônin have been
depicted countless times in sets of paintings, prints, and portrait
sculpture.
With the exception of a pair of carved wood sculptures of Ôishi
Kuranosuke and
his son Chikara in the Historiographical Institute at Tokyo
University, which are
thought to
have been carved by a sculptor who had actually met the two men, all of
these
surviving portraits are imaginary. In print, the most influential
lineage began
in first volume of Katajima Shin’en’s Sekijô
gishinden, published in Osaka
in 1719. Virtually the same
portraits were then used again in the first volume of Yamazaki
Yoshinari’s Akô gishi zuihitsu of 1855. Both of
these works are included in other parts of this exhibition, and the
portraits
themselves may be seen in the adjoining seminar room in the form of a
single
large print depicting the entire group.
The book to the left also
appears to have been modeled after these same standard portraits,
although in
fact the preface by the author Hosono Yôsai, a Confucian scholar
from
the
Tokugawa domain of Owari (Nagoya), explains that he copied them from a
set of
portraits that had traveled from Sengakuji in Edo to be shown at a
local temple
in Nagoya.
Very different is the book of
1850 to the right, edited by a bakufu retainer in Edo,
who commissioned a large number of contemporary artists in different
styles to
execute highly individualized portraits of the Gishi. To each portrait
was then
attached a Chinese text by a literary figure. These portraits are every
bit as
diverse and interesting as those of the standard lineage are
stereotyped and
devoid of particular interest. Seen here are Okano Kin’emon on the
right (who
also appears on the poster for this exhibition), and Yoshida Chūzaemon
on the
left, who at the age of 63 was one of the most senior members of the
league.
To the left:
Hosono
Tadanobu (Yôsai) 細野忠棟 (要斎)
(1811-1878)
Akô
gijin shôzô 赤穂義人肖像
(Portraits
of the Righteous Men)
Manuscript,
hand-painted; 1863
Starr
East
Asian LibraryTo the
right:
Nagayama
Choen 長山樗園,
comp.
Gishi
shôzô sanshi 義士肖像賛詞.
(Portrait
eulogies of the Gishi)
Edo: 1850
Waseda University Library
40. The Akô
Gishi in the Meiji Era
With
the collapse of the Tokugawa regime in 1868, it became legal to talk
freely
about the 47 Rônin and the history of the Akô Incident. The
legal
prohibition
of revenge in 1873, and the distaste for things feudal in the early
Meiji
period led to a brief lull in the popularity of the Akô Gishi,
but the
trend
was rapidly reversed, and by the end of the Meiji period in 1912, all
Japan was
in the grips of a “Gishi boom.”
On
here are a few of the
countless publications about the Ako Gishi that reflect their growing
modern
popularity. To the left is an interesting variant on the prolific genre
of “individual
biographies of the Ako Gishi” (Akô gishi meimeiden 赤穂義士銘々伝),
here chronicling instead the lives of the “heroines” (retsujo
列女) of the
incident, the wives and mothers of the individual Gishi. Most of these
women
actually existed, but the flowerly biographies provided here are
almost entirely the stuff of legend. The preface on display shows the
Ôishi
family, with his wife Riku (here labeled simply “woman who was the wife
of
Yoshio”) sitting discreetly in the background.
On
the right is a copperplate
pamphlet of 1890 that contains the list of eighteen orders that
Ôishi
sent to
the members of the league about one month before the attack on Kira.
This is likely
the sort of item that one could buy at the souvenir shops lining the
entrance
to Sengakuji temple, as is the set of accordion-folded pictures
stretched out
along the bottom of this case below. It is untitled and undated, and
illustrates the course of the Ako vendetta; it probably dates from
around the
1910s. The side displayed here consists of twelve pictures that show
the course
of the incident from Asano’s attack on Kira up until the point that the
47 Rônin
gathered at the gate of Kira’s mansion to begin their attack.
Left:
Rôgetsudô
Yûjin 弄
月堂有人, ed.,
Akô
gishi
retsujo meimeiden 赤穂義士列女銘々伝
(Biographies
of the women of the Akô Gishi)
Tokyo:
Bunkyūdô, 1881
Waseda University LibraryAlong the
bottom:
Untitled
souvenir book,
Accordion style, 12 illustrations.
N.d., no publisher.
Right:
[Eiri]
Ôishi Yoshio
juhachi‑kajo
moshihiraki
jitsuroku 絵入大石良雄十八箇条申開実録
(Record
of
the 18-article memorandum of Ôishi Yoshio)
Matsushita
Tetsunosuke, 1890
Starr
East
Asian Library
41. Documenting
the Akô Incident
From
the early
twentieth century, the basic documents of the Akô Incident began
to
appear in
convenient printed editions, enabling more systematic research on its
history. Adachi Ritsuen’s Sentetsu
Akô gishi hyôron collected the
chief writings of Confucian scholars about the Akô Incident, and
appeared in
the midst of a 47 Rônin boom. Shortly after appeared Akô
gijin sansho, a critical work in making the basic documents
widely available. These materials had originally been collected by
Nabeta Shôzan (1778–1858),
an official of the domain of Taira in northeastern Japan, and
published some fifty years after his death in 3 volumes.
Two decades later, these volumes were
supplemented by an additional three volumes of further material that
had been
unearthed in the interval, entitled Akô
gishi shiryô
.
After
a long lull because of the war, a new series of documentary materials
was begun
in the 1980s by the city of Akô.
Entitled Chūshingura, it is a
projected 7-volume series, both historical and literary, about the
Akô
Incident, edited by a team of leading scholars of Edo
culture. The chief editor, Nishiyama Matsunosuke, is himself a native
of Akô.
He is also the editor of the popular volume displayed here, which is
one of the
best of many volumes that give an illustrated overview of the Akô
Incident and
its Genroku period context.
One volume above, one to
the left:
Akô-shi
Sômubu Shishi Hensanshitsu赤穂市総務部 市史編さん室, ed.
Chûshingura忠臣蔵
5
vols.
Akô: Akô-shi, 1987–.
Starr
East
Asian Library
Above to the left, with
colorful
cover:
Nishiyama
Matsunosuke 西
山松之助, ed.
Zusetsu
Chûshingura 図説忠臣蔵
Tokyo:
Kawade Shobô Shinsha, 1998Top row, far
right:
Adachi
Ritsuen 足立栗
園
Sentetsu
Akô
gishi hyôron先哲赤穂義士評論
Tokyo:
Sekibunsha
Starr
East
Asian Library
Right:
Nabeta
Shôzan鍋
田晶山, ed.
Akô
gijin
sansho 赤穂義人纂書
3
vols. Tokyo: Kokusho Kankôkai, 1910–1911.Top row,
second from
right:
Chûô
Gishikai 中央
義士会, ed.
Akô
gishi shiryô 赤穂義士史料.
3
vols. Tokyo: Yûzankaku, 1931.
Starr
East
Asian Library
42. Rewriting
the Akô Incident
The easy
availability of the primary documents of the Akô Incident led to
a
rapid
increase both in historical studies and historical fiction, of which
three important
examples are on display here. The
journalist Fukumoto Nichinan, for example, had written a popular
history of the
incident in newspaper serial form, published as Genroku
kaikyoroku in 1909. The following year, however, the three
volumes of the Akô gijin sansho
collection began to appear, and Fukumoto realized how much he had
missed. As a
result, he completely rewrote his history under the title Genroku
kaikyo shinsôroku, a “new record” of what he called the
“valorous
deed of Genroku.” In the pages open for display here, it is possible to
see how
he listed sources at the end of many paragraphs, and offered critical
“Comment”
(ben 辯) sections.
Over a decade
later, the young novelist Osaragi Jirô wrote Akô
roshi, first serialized in a newspaper, then published as a
three-volume novel, and later often made into films and TV series.
Osaragi used
historical materials, but added wholly new characters and introduced a
crucial
new theme that saw the Akô avengers as preoccupied less with
taking
revenge on
Kira than with criticizing the degeneracy and corruption of the bakufu.
Much
more recent is Maruya Saiichi’s book What is Chūshingura? (Chûshingura
to wa nanika), which attracted much
attention when
first published in 1984. Maruya basically argued that the Akô
Incident
was
literally a “dramatic” incident in the sense that it was inspired by
vendettas
performed on the kabuki stage, particularly the revenge of the Soga
Brothers of
the twelfth century.
Above left:
Osaragi
Jirô 大
仏次郎 (1897-1973)
Akô roshi 赤穂浪士
Vol. 2 out of three.
Tokyo :
Kaizosha, 1928-29
Starr
East
Asian Library
Left:
Maruya
Saiichi
Chûshingura
to wa nanika 忠臣蔵とは何
か
Tokyo:
Seikôsha, 1984Above:
Fukumoto
Nichinan 福本
日南
Genroku
kaikyo shinsôroku. 元禄快挙真相録.
Tokyo:
Tôadô Shoten, 1914.
Starr
East
Asian Library
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