Forty-seven Ronin

The revenge of the forty-seven ronin (四十七士, Shi-jū-shichi-shi?), also known as the forty-seven samurai, the Akō vendetta, or the Genroku Akō incident (元禄赤穂事件, Genroku akō jiken?) took place in Japan at the start of the 18th century. One noted Japanese scholar described the tale as the country's "national legend." It recounts the most famous case involving the samurai code of honor, bushidō.

The story tells of a group of samurai who were left leaderless (becoming ronin) after their daimyo (feudal lord) Asano Naganori was forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka, whose title was Kōzuke no suke. The ronin avenged their master's honor after patiently waiting and planning for two years to kill Kira. In turn, the ronin were themselves forced to commit seppuku for committing the crime of murder. With much embellishment, this true story was popularized in Japanese culture as emblematic of the loyalty, sacrifice, persistence, and honor that all good people should preserve in their daily lives. The popularity of the almost mythical tale was only enhanced by rapid modernization during the Meiji era of Japanese history, when it is suggested many people in Japan longed for a return to their cultural roots.

Fictionalized accounts of these events are known as Chūshingura. The story was popularized in numerous plays including bunraku and kabuki. Because of the censorship laws of the shogunate in the Genroku era, which forbade portrayal of current events, the names were changed. While the version given by the playwrights may have come to be accepted as historical fact by some, the Chūshingura was written some 50 years after the event, and numerous historical records about the actual events that pre-date the Chūshingura survive. The popularity of the story is still high today. With ten different television productions in the years 1997–2007 alone, the Chūshingura ranks among the most familiar of all stories in Japan.

The bakufu's censorship laws had relaxed somewhat 75 years later, when Japanologist Isaac Titsingh first recorded the story of the 47 ronin as one of the significant events of the Genroku era.