kweassa said:
Bromden said:
Yeah, but the case of the 47 ronin wasn't an assassination, it was a vendetta.
..nor were they "ninja", in the first place. They were samurai retainers who lost their master due to political circumstances, and thus fallen as "ronin".
They lost their master, so as retainers, swore to avenge him. Formed out a conspiracy to murder, waited, and then struck when the target was least defended, overwhelmed the guards in force, killed their sworn enemy, and then carried his head to their deceased master's grave and then committed mass suicide as a form of protest.
Hardly "ninjacraft" at all. If we call that ninja, we might as call Lee Harvey Oswald or John Wilkes Booth a "ninja" as well.
They didn't commit seppuku as a form of protest. After the raid, they turned themselves in to the authorities, and they were sentenced to commit seppuku. This is actually one of the two reasons Yamamoto Tsunetomo didn't like them at all. First because they waited two years before going into action (their target was already an old man who might well have died of natural causes in that time), and second, because they turned themselves in, which indicated that they hoped for an acquittal. Tsunetomo felt that they should 1) gone to action immediately, winning or losing didn't matter, they'd still have done right by their master. And 2) they should have committed seppuku immediately afterward, without waiting for the authorities' ruling. I happen to agree with Tsunetomo on the second point: in seeking revenge they were already breaking the law (which required them to formally apply for the Daimyo's permission for the vendetta, which they definitely would not have acquired as the case was), and afterwards they were indeed hoping to get off the hook by turning themselves in.
And yes, it was an assassination, not a vendetta: a vendetta required first of all that they were avenging a family member, not their master. And second, a vendetta would only be valid if the target had
killed the family member. Neither was the case here. In fact, it was
their master, Asano, who had tried to kill Kira. Asano failed, and was ordered to commit seppuku. This was legal, and could not be debated. Kira did not cause Asano's death either directly or indirectly, and Asano was not a family member, so the 47 had no legal grounds to seek revenge. They tried to argue "vendetta" to the bakufu, and got a Confucian scholar to try and argue that point for them, and if successful this would mean they would walk free, and honour restored. Of course, the bakufu decided that this was not vendetta, this was mere assassination, and the penalty was death. They were allowed to commit seppuku, however, rather than a simple and dishonourable beheading, in part because of their former samurai status (and the fact that they had done this as samurai, in service of their lord), but also because during the time of deliberation there was a lot public support for what they had done. Executing them like common criminals would cause needless feelings of resentment, and so 46 ronin were allowed to commit seppuku, which made everybody happy. (The 47th, an ashigaru, had not turned himself in.)
awkward moment !
