Chushingura; Or, The Treasury of Loyal Retainers. Shoraku Miyoshi
seriously declined; but Ota and Toyotomi, who were loyal to the Throne, presented landed estate to the Court when they had brought the country into peace. Tokugawa frequently built Imperial palaces and presented funds for household expenses; and the Imperial House was placed in easier circumstances. But it was the policy of the Tokugawa family to hold the real power over the nation. In 1614, Iyeyasu established regulations for the control of the kuge, by which although the real power of the Imperial House was diminished the principle of loyalty to the Throne and distinction of lord and subject were strictly maintained, and Tokugawa himself set the example to the nation by his reverent treatment of the Imperial Family. Although this attitude towards the Throne was a policy of Iyeyasu, it was also an expression of the innate loyalty and patriotism of the people. Thus, the dignity of the Imperial Family remained unimpaired; and it may be seen from the original cause of the Ako revenge how high the importance was attached to the reception of Imperial envoys.
THE SAMURAI.
The samurai were all under the control of the feudal government. Those whose annual stipends were not less than ten thousand koku of rice were called daimyo, those below them were hatamoto, and the lowest were kenin. The daimyo were of three classes, lords of provinces, lords of castles, and lords of domains without castles. They ruled over their domains. Asano Takumi-no-Kami, the vengeance for whose death forms the subject of the Chushingura, was the lord of the castle of Ako in the province of Harima; his annual income was 50,000 koku; he belonged to the second category of daimyo. The daimyo came in turn to Yedo for a short stay; and among their retainers, some remained permanently in Yedo, while others accompanied their lords on their journeys to and from the Shogun’s city. The samurai who left their clans and drifted about, or for some reason, lost their stipends, were known as ronin. Such were the retainers of Ako who lost their stipends through the fall of their lord’s house.
THE COMMON PEOPLE.
By common people were meant the merchant and agricultural classes. They were not permitted to wear swords or have family names; and they were known only by their individual names. Thus, merchants and artisans were called by their trades and farmers by their villages.
Besides the above-mentioned kuge, samurai, and the common people were the lowest classes. Although there were in this way four grades of society, such grades did not regulate the material circumstances of the people belonging to them; but as a whole the kuge were poor and the daimyo wealthy. With the samurai wealth was considered contrary to the principles of Bushido; and while they made it their pride that they possessed no more than a hat to shelter them from wind and rain, few tried to accumulate wealth; but as the samurai spirit began to decline, there were many who sought for wealth. The most wealthy were to be found among the common people, for, debarred from the rights and privileges enjoyed by the samurai, they directed all their energies to money-making; it must, however, be added that many of them also lived in abject poverty.
BUSHIDO AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS.
The vendetta of the retainers of Ako was an outward expression of the spirit of Bushido. A few words must be here added regarding Bushido, a peculiar product of our country, which reached its highest development under the Tokugawa régime.
The people of the Eastern Provinces, the centre of which was Yedo, were from the oldest times noted for their fearless courage. Moreover, when Yedo became the seat of the feudal government, the samurai who had been engaged in rapine and slaughter during the wars preceding the Shogunate of Tokugawa, flocked to the city and made it their place of residence. The city became the second home of the simple and intrepid samurai of Mikawa, the province, of which Tokugawa Iyeyasu was originally daimyo; and the retainers of other clans also repaired thither in great numbers. In fact, Yedo was the centre of neither commerce nor industry; it had been established solely for the residence of samurai; and there hundreds of thousands of samurai gathered to practise military arts. In short, in Yedo, Bushido was in greatest vigour. The principal elements of Bushido were three in number:—
The first of these was the high esteem for military valour and practice of military arts. It was the most important of the samurai’s accomplishments. In remote antiquity, the two families of Mononobe and Otomo took to the profession of arms and guarded the Imperial Court. It became their hereditary office to act as the Imperial bodyguard. All their descendants were trained in military arts and grew up to be men of high resolution and integrity. They were taught to refrain from all acts likely to bring dishonour upon their family name. When, however, the Fujiwara family came into possession of the political power, military affairs began to decline and give place to civil affairs which were then held in high esteem. The military profession was regarded with contempt and looked upon as fit only for barbarians. This slighting of the military calling was due to communication at this period with China, whose civilisation so dazzled the Japanese that they caught the literary effeminacy which then afflicted that country. The samurai of Kyoto the capital gradually lost their former military spirit. But Bushido was not seriously affected by its decline in Kyoto; for this effeminacy was confined to the capital and its immediate neighbourhood. Those, for whose ambition Kyoto was too small, mostly migrated into the country where they strengthened their position. And Bushido found its home in the country and there it developed without obstruction. These ambitious men lived in different provinces; and when their families grew too bulky, the members established themselves in other places. Most of them became powerful men with large domains. They had many followers, who became their private soldiers. The relations between these local magnates and their adherents continued unchanged for ages. The lord took care of his adherents and instructed and encouraged them so that they might prove of service to him in an emergency, and they, on their part, trained themselves in military arts so that they might be able to show their loyalty to their lord. Thus, Bushido was driven out of the political centre of the land by the introduction of Chinese civilisation and grew up in the country, especially in the Eastern Provinces, because those provinces were lower in the degree of civilisation and at the same time retained a spirit peculiar to them. Military training was pursued to the highest pitch in the East; the samurai, whether leader or follower, considered it cowardly to show the back to the enemy, and always feared to bring dishonour upon their family name. They looked upon it as shame to themselves not to die when their lord was hard pressed and not to help another in his difficulty. Their own shame was the shame upon their parents, their family, their house, and their whole clan; and with this idea deeply impressed upon their minds, the samurai, no matter of what rank, held their lives light as feather when compared with the weight they attached to the maintenance of a spotless name. In their breasts was always present the thought that an unstained reputation was of highest value to those whose profession was of arms, and it was disgrace upon a samurai to be spoken of as having fled for fear of the enemy. Especially, when the Minamoto and Taira clans became the two great military families in the eleventh century, was this spirit carefully instilled into the hearts of their followers; and the characteristics of the samurai became more highly developed and the path of conduct of the subject towards his lord, of the soldier towards his commander, and of samurai towards each other became clearly defined to a degree unparalleled in any other age or country of the world. This path was called the path of loyalty, which was the second essential element of Bushido Thus, by failure to follow this path, the samurai forfeited the name, he was despised and held up to scorn as a leper and a man of no spirit. Such contempt, once a man was exposed to it, was heaped upon him to the end, and he himself felt it keenly until death; and however wealthy he might subsequently become, he was too ashamed to hold up his face in public. If, on the other hand, he strictly followed the path of loyalty, he was constantly praised by friend and foe alike; and consequently, if a man was born of an unexceptionable