Chushingura; Or, The Treasury of Loyal Retainers. Shoraku Miyoshi
Shogun Iyetsuna (1650–1680), the fourth of the Tokugawa line, the old sturdy military spirit began to decline in Yedo; and under his successor Tsunayoshi (1680–1709), the Genroku period came in with its love for luxurious living, display, and immorality, with the result that Bushido which had been developed to the highest degree among the warriors of the Eastern Provinces left Yedo, the centre of those provinces, and sought refuge in the country, where it remained unimpaired among the simple samurai of the daimiates. The Ako vendetta was a striking instance of its hold upon the country samurai.
The changes of manners under the Tokugawa Shogunate spread as a rule from Yedo to the provinces. But in the early years of that Shogunate Yedo was not yet the centre of Japanese civilisation; for though it held the foremost position in military arts, it was in literature, art, and other things inferior to Kyoto and Osaka which were as cities far older. The Eastern Provinces changed their manners by imitating those of these two western cities. But the manners and customs of the latter cities were at the time almost directly opposite to those of Yedo. They were soft, frivolous, and elegant to effeminacy; Kyoto had, since it became the capital of the country in 794, been the centre of Japanese civilisation, while Osaka which had been from the oldest times an important port for vessels sailing to and from the western provinces, became especially prosperous from the days of Hideyoshi the Taiko (1536–97); and while they had long lost the simplicity and straightforwardness of more primitive districts, they were less moved by a sense of honour, more impelled by desire for wealth, and became more and more luxurious as they advanced in civilisation, and naturally grew more fond of ostentation.
The characteristics of the Genroku period were then represented by the manners and tastes of Kyoto and Osaka. In that period, though Yedo was firmly established as the political centre of the country, it had to import from Kyoto and Osaka their literature and customs, which were thereupon acclimatised in Yedo. The true Yedo spirit and manners did not come into being until a century later, that is, the beginning of the nineteenth century.
THE MERCHANT CLASS.
The centre of the literature and customs of Kyoto and Osaka was not, as in Yedo, the samurai, but the merchant. The merchant who had, until a generation or two previously, been oppressed by class distinctions, came in the long period of peace to acquire wealth and extravagant habits as the standard of living rose. For as the means of transportation and communication developed, many of them made large fortunes by engaging in building and public works. There were not a few of these noted men of wealth in Osaka and Kyoto. In Osaka the world was the merchants’; and the samurai, however high he might hold up his head, had to yield in actual power to the common people.
As there were many wealthy men among the merchants who spent money freely, they were the best customers in theatres and in pleasure-quarters. The samurai, too, grew in time to envy the merchant’s popularity and began finally to imitate his ways. The manner in which Yuranosuke is drawn as a man about town in the seventh act of the Chushingura, may be due partly to the fact that the authors were all of the merchant class; but it also serves to show the general behaviour of samurai in pleasure-quarters.
THE PLEASURE-QUARTERS.
But a merchant could only be a merchant; the strict social distinctions could no more than the hereditary character of family occupations be set aside. And the only place where the merchants could spend money lavishly without fear of the samurai and without distinction of classes, was the pleasure-quarters. The attitude of the people of that time towards those quarters was different to the attitude of men of the present time. Love between the sexes was condemned by the moral teaching of the time; and it was not to be thought of that men and women should exchange love of their own free will. Not only women, but men, usually left entirely to their parents the arrangements for their marriages; and when the husband and wife lived together, they appeared to the world somewhat in the relations of master and servant, however much they might really love each other. Some of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s plays depict men and women freed from all trammels and indulging in unfettered love. These plays won the admiration and sympathy of the world because they were written with peculiar skill by their great author. But otherwise, the people of the period regarded such characters as being immoral and licentious; and while they pitied them for their sufferings, they condemned no less their lack of chastity. In the pleasure-quarters was to be found a world free from social restraint and from fetters of morality, where could be seen women in their natural mood, untrammelled by restraints of any kind. These quarters were outlets for the depressed spirits caused by the pressure of the negative policy of the Tokugawa government, where all ranks and grades of society could associate freely and on equal terms. The quarters in Yedo, Kyoto, and Osaka were frequent subjects of plays and novels of the time; indeed, it may be said that more than half the literature of the Genroku period was devoted to these quarters and their inhabitants.
THE “CHUSHINGURA.”
The revenge of the Ako retainers took place in the twelfth month of the fifteenth year of Genroku (January, 1703); and few months later, a play founded on it was already on the stage. In 1706, the Takemotoza, the great puppet-theatre of Osaka, put up a ballad drama by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, called Kenkohoshi-Monomiguruma, upon the same subject, which the same great dramatist followed up with another, entitled Goban-Taiheiki, in which the story was carried back to the time of the first Shogun of the Ashikaga line in the middle of the fourteenth century. In this play occur for the first time the names of Kono Moronao and Enya Hangwan, noted warriors of that period, as those of the two enemies whose fatal quarrel gave rise to the great vendetta, and also the loyal chief councillor of Asano appears as Oboshi Yuranosuke and the humblest of the loyal retainers, Terasaka Kichiemon, is disguised under the name of Teraoka Heiyemon. After this, several plays of more or less merit were performed in Yedo, Kyoto, and Osaka. A noted actor of the time, Sawamura Sojuro, made a great hit with one of these plays in Osaka in 1746 and in Kyoto in the following year; and a famous writer of puppet-plays named Takeda Izumo, who saw these successes of Sojuro, produced in collaboration with Namiki Scnryu and Miyoshi Shoraku in 1748 the play, Kanadehon-Chushingura, which is translated in the following pages. It was put up, as originally intended, at a puppet theatre and afterward at an ordinary theatre. It became not only the most celebrated version of the vendetta, but also the most popular of all plays; and other plays upon the subject of the loyal retainers of Ako were entirely dropped. So great is even at the present time the fame of the play that the revenge of Ako retainers is better known as Chushingura and its hero Oishi Kuranosuke sounds less familiar to the ears of the common people than his play-name of Oboshi Yuranosuke. For the latter name which first appeared in Chikamatsu’s Goban-Taiheiki is adopted in the Chushingura, as also the names of Enya Hangwan, Kono Moronao, and Teraoka Heiyemon. The play still retains its popularity and it is even now, as it used formerly to be, in many theatres the stock play for the last month of the year since it is sure to draw large houses, just as the plays founded on the vendetta of the Soga brothers are the most commonly performed in the first month.
We will now proceed to discuss the plot of the play and compare it with the true story of the famous vendetta.
THE ATTACK IN THE PALACE.
It was the established custom under the Tokugawa rule for the feudal government to offer to the Imperial Court a large sum of money and other articles as presents when a messenger was sent there to tender the New Year’s greetings in the first month of every year; and the Imperial Court, too, despatched envoys to Yedo to inquire after the Shogun’s health. On