Kanadehon Chushingura or "the story of the 47 loyal retainers" is perhaps the most famous story in Japan, popular among aficionados of "Bushido" and violent tragedy also in the West. It is based on two linked historical incidents (together called "the Ako incident"): in 1701, Asano Naganori, the daimyo of the Ako domain, assaulted his superior Kira Yoshinaka in Edo Castle, presumably after having been provoked; for this transgression (violence was forbidden in the palace of the shogun), Asano was sentenced to commit seppuku, but Kira did not receive any punishment. The shogunate confiscated Asano's lands and dismissed the samurai who had served him, making them ronin. Then almost two years later, after skilled secret planning, the leader of these ronin, Oishi Kuranosuke, led a group of forty-six/forty-seven of the ronin (some discount the membership of one for various reasons) in an attack on Kira's mansion in Edo; they captured and executed Kira, and laid his head at the grave of Asano at Sengakuji. They then turned themselves in to the authorities, and were all sentenced to commit seppuku. Read more about the historical incident in my blog article about Chushingura.
[The seppuku scene from Act Four, by Kunisada]
The uniqueness of the case and the mysterious motivations of its protagonists, soon made this story of the "Tormented Lord" and his "Loyal Retainers" extremely popular as fictional material, although the action had to be transposed back several centuries and the identities of its actors had to be hidden, as commentaries and plays about contemporary events and persons were forbidden by the shogunate. Between 1706 and 1892 about seventy Kabuki and Bunraku puppet plays were written about this hot subject. And the subject remained popular, also in modern times: in total about 70 Chushingura films were made in the 20th c. (mainly between 1907 and 1962), plus about 30 TV versions. They were generally box office hits, and served to propagate on a massive scale the ideal of loyalty and self-sacrifice (although most viewers may just have considered it as a good story). These modern films were based on the historical incident, rather, than the puppet play or Kabuki versions.
The most famous of these early plays became Kanadehon Chushingura, "Kana practice book Treasury of the Loyal Retainers," an 11-act bunraku puppet play from 1748. ""Kanadehon" or "Kana practice book" in the full title refers to the coincidence that the number of ronin matches the number of kana syllables.
Now, when you read this puppet play, you will be surprised. We are used to calling the protagonists "Asano", "Oishi" and "Kira," but in Kanadehon Chushingura the names of the protagonists have been
changed and the story is transported several centuries back. Asano
Naganori becomes Enya Hangan, Kira Yoshinaka becomes Ko no Moronao and
Oishi Kuranosuke is Oboshi Yuranosuke. The setting is the mid-14th century, the time of the Ashikaga shoguns. The initial incident in the palace is transferred from Edo to Kamakura, as is the last scene of the attack on Moronao's mansion in Kamakura. The ronin have been hiding in Yamashina, a suburb of Kyoto, and travel by boat with their weapons from Sakai, a port near Osaka, to Inamuragasaki, a cape at the western end of Yuigahama Beach in Kamakura.
[Act V: Kanpei, the hunter, and the thief who has stolen a purse]
Here are the eleven acts of Kanadehon Chushingura:
Act I: Set in Kamakura's Hachiman Shrine, where Ko no Moronao unsuccessfully tries to seduce the wife of Enya Hangan (adding a personal element to the motivation).
Act
II: Set in the Kamakura mansion of Wakanosuke, a colleague of Enya Hangan,
who just as much has a grievance against Moronao, but is prevented from acting on it by his clever retainer Honzo.
Act III. The taunted Enya Hangan attacks Ko no Moronao in the Pine Corridor of the shogunal palace in Kamakura.
Act IV: Enya Hangan's seppuku; with his dying breath Enya Hangan asks Oboshi Yuranosuke to avenge his death; Yuranosuke takes possession of the dagger used by Asano during his seppuku and
this becomes his keepsake, almost a fetish; in the end he will plunge
the weapon into the body of his lord's enemy.
Act
V: A side story mostly dropped in later versions of Chushingura, concerning the 47th ronin and why he was not able to join the attack in the last act. On the Yamazaki Highway, between Kyoto and Osaka, Kanpei, a former retainer of
Enya Hangan who wants to join the vendetta, by mistake shoots a robber
and finds a purse with cash.
Act VI: Continuation of Kanpei's story. Kanpei mistakenly thinks that he has killed his father-in-law in the previous scene and commits suicide; in reality, he has kiled a robber and retrieved the purse stolen by that robber.
Act VII: Set in the Ichiriki Teahouse in Kyoto's Gion area. Yuranosuke pretends to be debauched by making fun in Kyoto's licensed quarter.
Act VIII: Another side story: Konami, the betrothed of Yuranosuke's son Rikiya, travels to Yamashina (a village just east of Kyoto, now part of the city), where Yuranosuke is hiding.
Act
IX: Continuation of Act Eight: Yuranosuke's wife is against the marriage
of her son with Konami, but relents when Konami's father Honzo commits
suicide to atone for his act of restraining Enya Hangan in the past.
Act
X: Set in the House of Amakawaya Gihei, a merchant in the port city of Sakai. The ronin test the trustworthiness of
Gihei, who will transport them and their weapons to Kamakura by boat.
Act XI: The attack on Moronao's mansion, led by Yuranosuke. The attackers come on shore in Kamakura at cape Inamuragasaki, and then march to the mansion of Moronao, whose head is then carried to Hangan's grave at Komyoji Temple.
[Act X: in front of the mansion of merchant Amakawaya Gihei in Sakai]
Certain elements of this Bunraku / Kabuki play became standard to the
story; others proved more extraneous. Central were acts III, IV, VII,
and XI. I have marked two sequences (acts 5 and 6, and acts 8 and 9) as "side stories", but that is only from the perspective of the historical incident and later adaptations. In the puppet play these acts have been tightly integrated into the overall story. There are some inconsistencies in the puppet play, especially in characterization (perhaps because there were three different authors, Takeda Izumo, Miyoshi Shoraku and Namiki Senryu, who were each responsible for different acts), but overall it has a great variety of scenes and a magnificent cumulative effect. It is also a great play to read. A complete performance takes about ten to eleven hours. While the puppet play is sometimes staged in its entirety, in the many Kabuki versions which would appear within a few years after 1748, it became customary to perform just a few selected acts and not the whole work.
Kanadehon Chushingura is one of the core works of the Japanese theater tradition, together with the Noh play Matsukaze. These two plays could not be more different, but both are quintessentially Japanese, illustrating two different aspects of Japanese culture: in the Noh play, austere restraint and understatement, in the Bunraku play a craving for excitement, color and even violence (as Donald Keene writes in the introduction to his translation of the play).
English translation: Chushingura, The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, a puppet play, translated by Donald Keene (Tuttle, 1981, many times reprinted also in other editions).
See my blog article "The Ako Incident and the Forty-Seven Loyal Retainers (Chushingura) in fact and fiction" for a discussion of the various film version of the story.
Greatest Plays of All Time