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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downie. And if there's

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Speaker 1: one thing you all really like, it's samurai. Judging by

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Speaker 1: our listener email, we've gotten all sorts of suggestions, perhaps

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Speaker 1: more than forty seven of them. And I'm actually lucky

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Speaker 1: enough to have met real samurai before. When I was

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Speaker 1: in eleventh grade, my school went to Japan to perform

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Speaker 1: at a cherry blossom festival, and I guess you could

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Speaker 1: say we are co headlined with a group of samurai.

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Speaker 1: After we were done with our thing, we got to

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Speaker 1: walk around and you know, by little trinkets, and the

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Speaker 1: Japanese people who had come to see the show all

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Speaker 1: one of their pictures taken with us. And we, of

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Speaker 1: course wanted our pictures taken with the samurai because they

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Speaker 1: have their awesome swords and they're cool costumes or armor

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Speaker 1: or rather. But one of the probably the coolest experiences

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Speaker 1: of my life, was when a group of samurai asked

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Speaker 1: my friends and me to have their pictures taken with us. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I wanted to call this episode Sarah met a Samurai,

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Speaker 1: but Sarah wouldn't do it. It would. It's just a

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Speaker 1: small slegs of our episode for today, which is of

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Speaker 1: course the forty seven rown in and the Samurai's Code.

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Speaker 1: So we're going to talk a little bit about what

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Speaker 1: Samurai are, their warriors, and they emerged from centuries of

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Speaker 1: clan fighting and the struggle over imperial succession, and some

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Speaker 1: of their fighting styles may also have been picked up

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Speaker 1: from native Japanese who were from the Caucusus. And some

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Speaker 1: important prerequisites to consider before the formation of samurai or

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Speaker 1: the development of their class is armor. The arrival of

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Speaker 1: horses in the introduction of Buddhism to Japan and their

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Speaker 1: later armor is so awesome. The helmets have these face

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Speaker 1: masks that look like Kabuki faces. They're kind of locked,

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Speaker 1: and this permanent battle cry, and the helmets sometimes some

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Speaker 1: of them look like Darth Vader's helmet or just amazing things.

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Speaker 1: I looked at a gallery of some of them. One

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Speaker 1: has a giant gold praying mantis on top. And the

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Speaker 1: armor itself is really neat to it's The body pieces

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Speaker 1: are made from little scales of iron that are lacquered

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Speaker 1: and then laced together with silk cords or leather, and

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Speaker 1: the armor is handed down through generations of the family.

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Speaker 1: It's an art item as well as something practical. And

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Speaker 1: the horses are really important. As you may remember from

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Speaker 1: our Greatest Battle Horses of History podcast. Your average early

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Speaker 1: samurai isn't the guy you see in the movies just

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Speaker 1: wielding a sword. He's the guy on the horse with

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Speaker 1: a bow, something that's incredibly difficult to do and gives

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Speaker 1: you a good idea perhaps of just how skillful to

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Speaker 1: shoot a moving target while you're riding on a horse.

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Speaker 1: That would definitely be difficult. But the samurai we're pretty

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Speaker 1: important by the eight century, but they developed from provincial

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Speaker 1: warrior bands in the twelfth century and that's when they

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Speaker 1: refine this kind of stoic, disciplined culture that we think

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Speaker 1: of defining samurai. During the Kama Cora period eleven thirty

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Speaker 1: three and that's when they became the ruling cast of Japan,

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Speaker 1: they were completely and utterly different from the imperial court.

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Speaker 1: And during the Muromachi period they start to develop their

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Speaker 1: broader pursuits, you know, not just they're not just warriors.

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Speaker 1: They're also poets and masters inc painting and art. In

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Speaker 1: the tea ceremony and I have my little cup of

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Speaker 1: tea with me today while we're while we're recording in

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Speaker 1: honor of them. Well that you're scratchy through that too.

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Speaker 1: Their code of conduct is crucial to understanding the samurai

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Speaker 1: and also our story of the forty seven Rown, and

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Speaker 1: it's later formalized as bushido, but for a long time

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Speaker 1: it was just an written set of rules that placed loyalty, obligation,

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Speaker 1: and self discipline above self. And it's weird. When I

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Speaker 1: was searching for articles about Samurai and the forty seven

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Speaker 1: Rown in on Galileo, which is a search engine we

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Speaker 1: use a lot, there are so many sports articles that

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Speaker 1: come up just using samurai in a casual sort of way.

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Speaker 1: I guess it's the self discipline. They're a good role

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Speaker 1: model if you're training for something. Um. But a big

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Speaker 1: part of the formalized code of conduct is the ritual suicide,

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Speaker 1: which is called sepko and um. That's sort of another

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Speaker 1: main thing you think of when you actually think of samurai,

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Speaker 1: and it's actually disembowlment. You usually have a second though,

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Speaker 1: so most people who would do it wouldn't die, you know,

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Speaker 1: an agonizing hours long death from internal bleeding. They would

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Speaker 1: have somebody else to finish them off as soon as

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Speaker 1: they did the deed. But it was a way to

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Speaker 1: restore honor to oneself, to your family, to your lord

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Speaker 1: after a defeat or some sort of shame. And this

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Speaker 1: will come up a lot in our story. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: we should mention the loyalty to the lords a little

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Speaker 1: bit and explain that before we get too into the

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Speaker 1: whole samurai thing. So, Japan had an emperor during this time,

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Speaker 1: but he had really become a figurehead after the shogun

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Speaker 1: rose to power and their military leaders. So um, While

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Speaker 1: the emperor is still there and still holds symbolic importance,

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Speaker 1: the shogun basically run the game, and they in turn

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Speaker 1: have lords who are loyal to them, and then the

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Speaker 1: samurai are loyal to their lords. So you have a

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Speaker 1: feudal system. And this feudal system really became more of

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Speaker 1: a closed cast like a closed aristocracy during the Tokugawa period,

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Speaker 1: which is sixteen oh three to eighteen sixty seven, in

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Speaker 1: an attempt to lockdown society as it was in that moment. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: no more changes, please, everybody stay in the position you're in.

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Speaker 1: So if you're a samurai. Your children will be samurai's

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Speaker 1: but it's not something that you can rise to yourself necessarily. Um.

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Speaker 1: But because they're years of peace in the Tokugawa period,

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Speaker 1: a lot of samurais don't have uh, their old warrior

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Speaker 1: jobs anymore, so they become bureaucrats or merchants, and they

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Speaker 1: can still wear their traditional two swords, which are very

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Speaker 1: important to samurai. They're obviously totally cool. There are four

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Speaker 1: main samurai swords. One is just a dagger which you

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Speaker 1: usually use to commit sappuku and uh. Sword smith started

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Speaker 1: signing the blades of the swords in the eleventh century.

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Speaker 1: So consequently, from that time we had all these different

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Speaker 1: swordsmithing styles developed, you know, each family making their own

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Speaker 1: kind of swords like brands or in in different ways.

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Speaker 1: They had contrasting metal tones, surface textures. And the other

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Speaker 1: cool thing is that they're made so they're incredible sharp,

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Speaker 1: but they're soft enough at their core so that they

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Speaker 1: won't break sharp enough to cut a man in half

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Speaker 1: if you if you just need a good reference point

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Speaker 1: for that a good conversation starter. But by the late

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Speaker 1: Tokugawa period, the economic position of the samurai is starting

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Speaker 1: to deteriorate and i impoverished nobles. Yeah, pretty classic story,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. And that's because their way of life is

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Speaker 1: not as important as it used to be. Um, the

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Speaker 1: country is turning more towards trade, and cities are replacing

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Speaker 1: sprawling feudal dominions, and yeah, the samurai aren't in the

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Speaker 1: same league as merchants anymore. And by the time that

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Speaker 1: westerners forced to open Japan in the mid nineteenth century,

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Speaker 1: some lower ranking samurai are hoping for their own kind

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Speaker 1: of change, and they're leaving their own lords, which makes

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Speaker 1: them ron in or masterlest samurai, remember that word. And

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Speaker 1: they start rebelling against the Tokagawa showgun and this ends

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Speaker 1: up in a lot of trouble. They start assassinating people

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Speaker 1: from moderate officials to pro Western scholars to various foreigners

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Speaker 1: within the borders, and by eighteen sixty eight we have

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Speaker 1: the Meiji Restoration, which finally returns Japan to imperial rule

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Speaker 1: after the shogun gives up his power. I mean, the

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Speaker 1: shogun has been in power forever essentially, so this is

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Speaker 1: a really big deal and it's a chance to remake

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Speaker 1: the country. So well, Samurai who are loyal to the

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Speaker 1: shogun skirmish for a while, the Meiji Emperor prevails, feudalism

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Speaker 1: is abolished in eighteen seventy one in Japan rapidly industrializes

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Speaker 1: from there, and it ironically ends up setting the stage

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Speaker 1: for a new kind of militarism that arises in the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century. But that's obviously a different story, different podcasts. Yes,

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Speaker 1: so we'll switch gears now that you have this little

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Speaker 1: bit of background. And as we mentioned, rown in our

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Speaker 1: masterless samurai, So that can happen for a few reasons.

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Speaker 1: It's possible that their master has died it or perhaps

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Speaker 1: they're just troublemakers who for some reason have lost their

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Speaker 1: noble sponsorship. But they're generally the kind of guys who

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Speaker 1: might roam around the country starting up civil wars and

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Speaker 1: making mischief, which of course they're giant swords of their sides.

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Speaker 1: But at least one group of them stars in our

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Speaker 1: story today, which happens to be maybe Japan's favorite story,

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Speaker 1: at least that's the impression I get from it, And

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Speaker 1: that's the tale of the forty seven Ronin. And the

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Speaker 1: forty seven Ronin are considered heroes and models for the

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Speaker 1: stoic honor bound lifestyle that defines the samurai class. But

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Speaker 1: as it always is, history is a little murkier than

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Speaker 1: the legend of the forty seven Ronin, and even the

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Speaker 1: name of the event is perhaps not so clear cut.

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Speaker 1: According to Henry D. Smith, the second of Columbia University,

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Speaker 1: what we know variously as forty seven Samurai, forty six Ronin,

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Speaker 1: or the forty six Samurai is simply called the ac

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Speaker 1: Incident by historians, and this name conveniently skips that whole

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Speaker 1: problem of forty six forty seven, which we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about a little later. So our incident takes place

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Speaker 1: on April sev o one during the Tokugawa Shogunate, And

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Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, Japan is ruled by the military

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Speaker 1: power of the shogun with the emperor as a figurehead.

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Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean the emperor is an important He's

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Speaker 1: still a big deal in the symbolic sense, and his

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Speaker 1: unflays are coming from the imperial court in Kyoto to

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Speaker 1: the shogun's capital in what is today Tokyo, and the

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Speaker 1: Lord of Ako Asano Naganori, along with another feudal lord,

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Speaker 1: is in charge of receiving these envoys. So it's a

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Speaker 1: big day. But instead of doing what he was supposed

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Speaker 1: to do, Asano attacks one of the shogun's senior officials,

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Speaker 1: Kira Yosha Naka, with his sword, and he just nixed him.

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Speaker 1: But an attack on the shogun's man is simply not done,

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Speaker 1: so he's or to commit seppuku immediately, and he does

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Speaker 1: it like an honorable um lord would. He's buried, his

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Speaker 1: estates are confiscated, and this leaves his samurai and his

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Speaker 1: vassals masterless, which is not a good place to be

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Speaker 1: if you are a samurai. Forty seven of his samurai

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Speaker 1: aren't going to let this one go quite so easily.

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Speaker 1: They sign an oath to revenge their master, and according

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Speaker 1: to legend, they wait for nearly two years and lived

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Speaker 1: based lives that aren't suitable for samurai in order to

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Speaker 1: set Kira off his guard. So he's not expecting them

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Speaker 1: to attack, because of course they aren't even living as

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Speaker 1: honorable samurai. They're drinking and going visiting the gay shaw

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Speaker 1: all the time and stuff like that stuff samurai shouldn't do.

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Speaker 1: Um But they do wait two years for for sure,

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Speaker 1: and they finally storm Kira's mansion and they kill his

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Speaker 1: own samurai and they find him hiding in an out

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Speaker 1: building and they asked him to commit seppuku before they

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Speaker 1: have to to do it themselves, and they caught off

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Speaker 1: his head, carry it back in a bucket and take

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Speaker 1: it to their master's grave. So revenge accomplished. They have

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Speaker 1: um i guess redeemed their master's honor. But now the

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Speaker 1: shogun it, of course, is rather conflicted because they don't

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Speaker 1: know quite what to do with them. They acted like

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Speaker 1: honorable samurai, but of course, you know, coming up with

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Speaker 1: this plot and hunting down an official of the showgun

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Speaker 1: is very disrespectful, and they're also really popular with people.

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Speaker 1: So the shogun it has seven weeks of debate before

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Speaker 1: the verdict comes down, which was commits sippuku immediately. So

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Speaker 1: they're rowing in aged fifteen to seventy seven commit suppuku

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Speaker 1: on March oh three. Um. But that's that's the basic story.

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Speaker 1: But of course things are pretty murky, and one of

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Speaker 1: the trickiest parts is figuring out the number. What's what's

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Speaker 1: with it? Forty six or forty seven? Why is that contentious? Well,

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Speaker 1: most people agree that there were forty seven ronin who

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Speaker 1: participated in the attack, but only forty six who committed

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Speaker 1: ritual suicide. There was a man named Terasaka Kei Chiman

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Speaker 1: who was the odd man out and also the lowest

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Speaker 1: ranking member of their league. And our second big question

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Speaker 1: about this story is why did Asano attack Kira in

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Speaker 1: the first place. And this is kind of tricky because

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Speaker 1: a Saana would have known that an attack on an

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Speaker 1: official would have had pretty grave consequences for him and

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Speaker 1: for his vassals, for for all of his samurai. And

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Speaker 1: all we know is that Asana shouted, this is for

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Speaker 1: that grudge I've had against you, which I imagine must

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Speaker 1: sound more eloquent in Japanese. But um, the Ronan have

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Speaker 1: a lot of correspondence, and even they don't mention the

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Speaker 1: source of the dispute, so maybe we just don't know

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Speaker 1: what their problem was with each other. But in the legend,

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Speaker 1: Kira has been made into a bureaucratic villain to make

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Speaker 1: it make sense, and we can all recognize the model

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Speaker 1: of the bureaucratic villain who you know, disrespects and impedes

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Speaker 1: various efforts of Asana. Yeah, it definitely helps make the

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Speaker 1: story make more sense. Um. And but we still have

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Speaker 1: a third big question here. Which is why did the

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Speaker 1: Ronan actually go ahead and kill Kira? And they say

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Speaker 1: that they're fulfilling their master's vendetta, but that's not really

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Speaker 1: UM straight Samurai code, because after all, a Sana was

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Speaker 1: the one who tried to kill Kira, not the other

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Speaker 1: way around. And they even have to get a Confucian

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Speaker 1: scholar to try to justify the whole thing to to

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Speaker 1: make it legit. I guess historians have raised other possible motives.

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Speaker 1: Maybe they were angry that Kira hadn't been punished for,

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Speaker 1: you know, whatever his part may have been in the

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Speaker 1: dispute with Asano. Or perhaps they were just trying to

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Speaker 1: get work. And Sarah sudden to me earlier that perhaps

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Speaker 1: revenge looks good on a resume, So we're gonna I

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Speaker 1: am Aurai looking for a job. Yeah, but whatever, the

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Speaker 1: debate makes the incident a really good story, and one

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Speaker 1: that's so popular it's sprouted this whole genre of retellings.

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Speaker 1: UM actually originating from a puppet play, which Katie and

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Speaker 1: I kind of like puppet play. We're very into the

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Speaker 1: center of puppetry arts in Atlanta. UM. But this, this genre,

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Speaker 1: the Loyal League stories, has come up in kabuki theater

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Speaker 1: and books, movies, TV series. Half a million people visit

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Speaker 1: the temple where where all the samurai and their master

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Speaker 1: are interred, and in December, parades of kids dress up

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Speaker 1: as samurai to tell the story, which is that's when

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Speaker 1: it is officially celebrated in Japan. But the interesting part

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Speaker 1: for us is that usually a story that ends with

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Speaker 1: everyone dead on the ground think Hamlet is considered a tragedy,

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Speaker 1: but the Tale of the forty Seven rown in as

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Speaker 1: something that's about beauty and honor and living by a code,

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Speaker 1: and in this story, death and suicide have an entirely

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Speaker 1: different meaning. So if you have some comments on that,

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Speaker 1: we'd encourage you to email us at History Podcast at

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Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and let us know what

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Speaker 1: you think. And we also really wish we could have

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Speaker 1: seen this exhibition on samurai that was at the met

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Speaker 1: of late last year and early this year, and it

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Speaker 1: looked so cool. We were talking about the armor and

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Speaker 1: the swords earlier. But um, since honorable death was so important,

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Speaker 1: it was really important how you looked when you when

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Speaker 1: you went down or when you committed supuku, whichever way

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Speaker 1: it was. In the New York Times had a very

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Speaker 1: cool photo gallery that Sarah found and posted on Twitter.

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Speaker 1: You compend us at mist in History if you're looking

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Speaker 1: for us, and the reviewer said, the show of swords

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Speaker 1: and armors perfectly combined to Japanese styles, utter simplicity and

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Speaker 1: outrageous as rotation, which I think is how we can

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Speaker 1: think of the samurai themselves exactly, and that wraps up

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Speaker 1: the tail of the Romans. So again, if you have

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Speaker 1: something to say, feel free to email us, follow us

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Speaker 1: on Twitter, or join our Facebook fan page where we'll

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Speaker 1: keep you updated on what we're working on. And always

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Speaker 1: remember to check out our home page at www dot

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Speaker 1: house stuff works dot com. For more on this and

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Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the stuff you missed

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Speaker 1: in History glass blog on the house stuff works dot

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