Chushingura; Or, The Treasury of Loyal Retainers. Shoraku Miyoshi
was considered necessary, because after the official registration, the avenger took leave of his lord, who assisted him in every way and made him parting presents, and the avenger naturally set out full of hope; but it sometimes happened that when he was unable to find his enemy after a long search and at the same time his purse became lighter every day, he longed for home and with his first resolution now gone, he grew anxious to give up the fruitless search. In such cases he might come home, pretending that his enemy was dead. And it was to prevent such fraud that satisfactory proofs of the enemy’s death were required to free the avenger from the duty which he had voluntarily undertaken.
The avenger was usually the murdered man’s inferior, although sometimes he was his superior in position. He was in most cases his son, younger brother, relative, servant, pupil, or intimate friend.
The person upon whom vengeance was to be wreaked was not necessarily a bad man. In the early years of the Tokugawa régime, duels were of frequent occurrence among the samurai; they seldom discussed which were right and which wrong in a dispute. If there was a difference, one would exclaim, “Come, let us fight it out;” to which the other would as lightly express his willingness, and they drew their swords on the spot. Thus, a duel was an appeal to arms made by mutual agreement; and the vanquished had no cause of resentment against the victor. Yet his surviving family often took up his cause and revenged themselves upon his adversary. Sometimes justice was on the enemy’s side and the avenger was entirely in the wrong. Such cases were unavoidable when vendetta had the moral sanction of the nation and was practically a duty imposed upon the nearest relative of the murdered man.
Although the vendetta may be said to have been concluded when the avenger had killed his man, yet the avenger himself was sometimes looked upon as the enemy by his victim’s family, who, thereupon, commenced a vendetta against him. Next, the first avenger’s family would upon his death take revenge upon the second avenger, and so on, so that the feud would become as interminable as a Corsican vendetta. To put a stop to such endless vendettas, the Tokugawa Government strictly prohibited secondary vendettas.
Again, in a duel between the avenger and his enemy, the former was not unfrequently killed. Hence, the avenger sometimes was accompanied by his second. The second usually fought the enemy when the principal was in danger of being beaten; but in some cases he fought side by side with the principal. That was mostly the case when the avenger was a child or a woman, who had no chance against the adversary. It may be mentioned that when the government was reorganised upon the accession of the present Emperor, a law was issued in 1873 strictly prohibiting vendettas.
EARLY YEARS OF THE TOKUGAWA PERIOD.
In the early years of the Tokugawa period, the samurai still retained the rough and violent manners of the period of civil wars; they despised gentleness as characteristic of the effeminate people of Kyoto and luxurious living as peculiar to the merchant class, while they trained themselves in military arts and fostered military spirit. Such was the turbulence of those times that even merchants wore swords when they walked the streets. They had indeed need of them; for innocent men were cut down in the streets at night to try the temper of swords. Servants who were guilty of theft, had failed to accompany their master as he came home on horseback, or eloped with female fellow-servants, were punished at the will of their master, who tested the edge of a new sword upon their necks. The feudal government frequently issued laws to put an end to these violent acts.
THE “OTOKODATE.”
This prevalence of strong military spirit gave rise to a peculiar class of men, known by many names, the most common of which was otokodate. In all classes of society in the beginning of the Tokugawa rule, rough manners and turbulent spirit prevailed; but more especially among the hatamoto, or immediate feudatories of the Shogun, was it the case. They were samurai of Mikawa, the native province of Tokugawa Iyeyasu, and retained the simple manners and intrepid spirit of their country home; they prided themselves upon the fact that small as their stipends were, they were under the direct command of the Shogun, and in their pride, they lorded it over the streets of Yedo. Among the merchant class were some who were indignant at the arrogance of the samurai and their contemptuous treatment of the merchant and agricultural classes; they also trained themselves in military arts and opposed the tyranny of the military class; and they formed a special class under the name of otokodate. These otokodate mostly lived by gambling; they made it their business to take up other people’s quarrels or to mediate in them; and they spent their lives to a large extent in the pleasure-quarters. Yet their ideal was not inconsistent with the principles of Bushido; for they took pleasure in helping the weak and crushing the strong, they kept their word with the most scrupulous care, and if a mere stranger respectfully begged for their assistance, they would help him even at the risk of their lives. They refused to be beaten in anything by others, a word of insult was enough to draw their sword out of the scabbard, and the least grudge was repaid; they hated to work for profit and thought it undignified to count money. They went to eating-houses and ate their full; and if they had no money, they went away without paying. If they were pressed for payment, they used their fists; but if they were treated with respect and allowed to leave without payment, they came again when they had money and repaid more than their debt. These otokodate infested every part of the city in the early years of the Tokugawa period and so much damage was caused by their quarrels that they were suppressed in the Genroku era. They were punished with such severity that their number gradually diminished; but their customs did not altogether disappear. Among the ordinary citizens of Yedo were many who esteemed the samurai spirit of the first years of Tokugawa and the manners of the otokodate. In what is called the Yedo spirit is to be detected much which originated with the otokodate; for the true-born natives of Yedo show to this day the same hatred of being beaten by others, love of quarrel, contempt for skin-flints, and inability to keep the day’s earnings until the next day. Amakawaya Gihei, in the tenth act of the Chushingura, is a good sample of a chivalrous-spirited merchant after the manner of the otokodate.
THE GENROKU PERIOD
Some eighty years after the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate began the Genroku period. The Shogun at the time was the fourth of Iyeyasu’s line. No insurrection was feared at home and there was as little danger of the country’s isolation being disturbed by foreign invasion, for no foreigner was allowed to trade in Japan with the exception of the Dutch and Chinese, whose trade was confined to Nagasaki. The country, in short, enjoyed absolute peace and grew in wealth and prosperity. Such was the condition of the land in the Genroku period, which takes its name from the Genroku era (1689–1701) and extended over some fifty years beginning with the Tenna era in 1681 and ending with the Kyoho era in about 1735. It was a period of great importance in the history of Japanese manners, institutions, and literature. The first years of the Tokugawa régime were a period of turbulent militarism and its last years that of indolence and immorality; in the Genroku period, however, the rough militaristic spirit was nearly gone, but the people had not yet fallen into weak and effeminate ways; luxury and extravagance had commenced their sway, but the brave military spirit had not yet vanished. It marked, like the Heian period of the ninth and tenth centuries, the highest stage of Japanese civilisation; and with the dark age of internecine wars intervening between these two periods, it was, indeed, our age of renaissance.
During this period, Bushido, in spite of some evils that attached to it, reached its highest level. This peculiar spirit of Japan had been influenced in the earlier ages by the doctrines of Buddhism; but coming under the influence of Confucianism when the Tokugawa family came into power, it became a cult of complete growth and took its final form early under the Tokugawa rule. But Bushido, like all other institutions, was bound to undergo changes