Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downie. And if there's one thing you all really like, it's samurai. Judging by our listener email, we've gotten all sorts of suggestions, perhaps more than forty seven of them. And I'm actually lucky enough to have met real samurai before. When I was in eleventh grade, my school went to Japan to perform at a cherry blossom festival, and I guess you could say we are co headlined with a group of samurai. After we were done with our thing, we got to walk around and you know, by little trinkets, and the Japanese people who had come to see the show all one of their pictures taken with us. And we, of course wanted our pictures taken with the samurai because they have their awesome swords and they're cool costumes or armor or rather. But one of the probably the coolest experiences of my life, was when a group of samurai asked my friends and me to have their pictures taken with us. Yeah, I wanted to call this episode Sarah met a Samurai, but Sarah wouldn't do it. It would. It's just a small slegs of our episode for today, which is of course the forty seven rown in and the Samurai's Code. So we're going to talk a little bit about what Samurai are, their warriors, and they emerged from centuries of clan fighting and the struggle over imperial succession, and some of their fighting styles may also have been picked up from native Japanese who were from the Caucusus. And some important prerequisites to consider before the formation of samurai or the development of their class is armor. The arrival of horses in the introduction of Buddhism to Japan and their later armor is so awesome. The helmets have these face masks that look like Kabuki faces. They're kind of locked, and this permanent battle cry, and the helmets sometimes some of them look like Darth Vader's helmet or just amazing things. I looked at a gallery of some of them. One has a giant gold praying mantis on top. And the armor itself is really neat to it's The body pieces are made from little scales of iron that are lacquered and then laced together with silk cords or leather, and the armor is handed down through generations of the family. It's an art item as well as something practical. And the horses are really important. As you may remember from our Greatest Battle Horses of History podcast. Your average early samurai isn't the guy you see in the movies just wielding a sword. He's the guy on the horse with a bow, something that's incredibly difficult to do and gives you a good idea perhaps of just how skillful to shoot a moving target while you're riding on a horse. That would definitely be difficult. But the samurai we're pretty important by the eight century, but they developed from provincial warrior bands in the twelfth century and that's when they refine this kind of stoic, disciplined culture that we think of defining samurai. During the Kama Cora period eleven thirty three and that's when they became the ruling cast of Japan, they were completely and utterly different from the imperial court. And during the Muromachi period they start to develop their broader pursuits, you know, not just they're not just warriors. They're also poets and masters inc painting and art. In the tea ceremony and I have my little cup of tea with me today while we're while we're recording in honor of them. Well that you're scratchy through that too. Their code of conduct is crucial to understanding the samurai and also our story of the forty seven Rown, and it's later formalized as bushido, but for a long time it was just an written set of rules that placed loyalty, obligation, and self discipline above self. And it's weird. When I was searching for articles about Samurai and the forty seven Rown in on Galileo, which is a search engine we use a lot, there are so many sports articles that come up just using samurai in a casual sort of way. I guess it's the self discipline. They're a good role model if you're training for something. Um. But a big part of the formalized code of conduct is the ritual suicide, which is called sepko and um. That's sort of another main thing you think of when you actually think of samurai, and it's actually disembowlment. You usually have a second though, so most people who would do it wouldn't die, you know, an agonizing hours long death from internal bleeding. They would have somebody else to finish them off as soon as they did the deed. But it was a way to restore honor to oneself, to your family, to your lord after a defeat or some sort of shame. And this will come up a lot in our story. Yeah, and we should mention the loyalty to the lords a little bit and explain that before we get too into the whole samurai thing. So, Japan had an emperor during this time, but he had really become a figurehead after the shogun rose to power and their military leaders. So um, While the emperor is still there and still holds symbolic importance, the shogun basically run the game, and they in turn have lords who are loyal to them, and then the samurai are loyal to their lords. So you have a feudal system. And this feudal system really became more of a closed cast like a closed aristocracy during the Tokugawa period, which is sixteen oh three to eighteen sixty seven, in an attempt to lockdown society as it was in that moment. Yeah, no more changes, please, everybody stay in the position you're in. So if you're a samurai. Your children will be samurai's but it's not something that you can rise to yourself necessarily. Um. But because they're years of peace in the Tokugawa period, a lot of samurais don't have uh, their old warrior jobs anymore, so they become bureaucrats or merchants, and they can still wear their traditional two swords, which are very important to samurai. They're obviously totally cool. There are four main samurai swords. One is just a dagger which you usually use to commit sappuku and uh. Sword smith started signing the blades of the swords in the eleventh century. So consequently, from that time we had all these different swordsmithing styles developed, you know, each family making their own kind of swords like brands or in in different ways. They had contrasting metal tones, surface textures. And the other cool thing is that they're made so they're incredible sharp, but they're soft enough at their core so that they won't break sharp enough to cut a man in half if you if you just need a good reference point for that a good conversation starter. But by the late Tokugawa period, the economic position of the samurai is starting to deteriorate and i impoverished nobles. Yeah, pretty classic story, isn't it. And that's because their way of life is not as important as it used to be. Um, the country is turning more towards trade, and cities are replacing sprawling feudal dominions, and yeah, the samurai aren't in the same league as merchants anymore. And by the time that westerners forced to open Japan in the mid nineteenth century, some lower ranking samurai are hoping for their own kind of change, and they're leaving their own lords, which makes them ron in or masterlest samurai, remember that word. And they start rebelling against the Tokagawa showgun and this ends up in a lot of trouble. They start assassinating people from moderate officials to pro Western scholars to various foreigners within the borders, and by eighteen sixty eight we have the Meiji Restoration, which finally returns Japan to imperial rule after the shogun gives up his power. I mean, the shogun has been in power forever essentially, so this is a really big deal and it's a chance to remake the country. So well, Samurai who are loyal to the shogun skirmish for a while, the Meiji Emperor prevails, feudalism is abolished in eighteen seventy one in Japan rapidly industrializes from there, and it ironically ends up setting the stage for a new kind of militarism that arises in the twentieth century. But that's obviously a different story, different podcasts. Yes, so we'll switch gears now that you have this little bit of background. And as we mentioned, rown in our masterless samurai, So that can happen for a few reasons. It's possible that their master has died it or perhaps they're just troublemakers who for some reason have lost their noble sponsorship. But they're generally the kind of guys who might roam around the country starting up civil wars and making mischief, which of course they're giant swords of their sides. But at least one group of them stars in our story today, which happens to be maybe Japan's favorite story, at least that's the impression I get from it, And that's the tale of the forty seven Ronin. And the forty seven Ronin are considered heroes and models for the stoic honor bound lifestyle that defines the samurai class. But as it always is, history is a little murkier than the legend of the forty seven Ronin, and even the name of the event is perhaps not so clear cut. According to Henry D. Smith, the second of Columbia University, what we know variously as forty seven Samurai, forty six Ronin, or the forty six Samurai is simply called the ac Incident by historians, and this name conveniently skips that whole problem of forty six forty seven, which we're going to talk about a little later. So our incident takes place on April sev o one during the Tokugawa Shogunate, And as we mentioned earlier, Japan is ruled by the military power of the shogun with the emperor as a figurehead. But that doesn't mean the emperor is an important He's still a big deal in the symbolic sense, and his unflays are coming from the imperial court in Kyoto to the shogun's capital in what is today Tokyo, and the Lord of Ako Asano Naganori, along with another feudal lord, is in charge of receiving these envoys. So it's a big day. But instead of doing what he was supposed to do, Asano attacks one of the shogun's senior officials, Kira Yosha Naka, with his sword, and he just nixed him. But an attack on the shogun's man is simply not done, so he's or to commit seppuku immediately, and he does it like an honorable um lord would. He's buried, his estates are confiscated, and this leaves his samurai and his vassals masterless, which is not a good place to be if you are a samurai. Forty seven of his samurai aren't going to let this one go quite so easily. They sign an oath to revenge their master, and according to legend, they wait for nearly two years and lived based lives that aren't suitable for samurai in order to set Kira off his guard. So he's not expecting them to attack, because of course they aren't even living as honorable samurai. They're drinking and going visiting the gay shaw all the time and stuff like that stuff samurai shouldn't do. Um But they do wait two years for for sure, and they finally storm Kira's mansion and they kill his own samurai and they find him hiding in an out building and they asked him to commit seppuku before they have to to do it themselves, and they caught off his head, carry it back in a bucket and take it to their master's grave. So revenge accomplished. They have um i guess redeemed their master's honor. But now the shogun it, of course, is rather conflicted because they don't know quite what to do with them. They acted like honorable samurai, but of course, you know, coming up with this plot and hunting down an official of the showgun is very disrespectful, and they're also really popular with people. So the shogun it has seven weeks of debate before the verdict comes down, which was commits sippuku immediately. So they're rowing in aged fifteen to seventy seven commit suppuku on March oh three. Um. But that's that's the basic story. But of course things are pretty murky, and one of the trickiest parts is figuring out the number. What's what's with it? Forty six or forty seven? Why is that contentious? Well, most people agree that there were forty seven ronin who participated in the attack, but only forty six who committed ritual suicide. There was a man named Terasaka Kei Chiman who was the odd man out and also the lowest ranking member of their league. And our second big question about this story is why did Asano attack Kira in the first place. And this is kind of tricky because a Saana would have known that an attack on an official would have had pretty grave consequences for him and for his vassals, for for all of his samurai. And all we know is that Asana shouted, this is for that grudge I've had against you, which I imagine must sound more eloquent in Japanese. But um, the Ronan have a lot of correspondence, and even they don't mention the source of the dispute, so maybe we just don't know what their problem was with each other. But in the legend, Kira has been made into a bureaucratic villain to make it make sense, and we can all recognize the model of the bureaucratic villain who you know, disrespects and impedes various efforts of Asana. Yeah, it definitely helps make the story make more sense. Um. And but we still have a third big question here. Which is why did the Ronan actually go ahead and kill Kira? And they say that they're fulfilling their master's vendetta, but that's not really UM straight Samurai code, because after all, a Sana was the one who tried to kill Kira, not the other way around. And they even have to get a Confucian scholar to try to justify the whole thing to to make it legit. I guess historians have raised other possible motives. Maybe they were angry that Kira hadn't been punished for, you know, whatever his part may have been in the dispute with Asano. Or perhaps they were just trying to get work. And Sarah sudden to me earlier that perhaps revenge looks good on a resume, So we're gonna I am Aurai looking for a job. Yeah, but whatever, the debate makes the incident a really good story, and one that's so popular it's sprouted this whole genre of retellings. UM actually originating from a puppet play, which Katie and I kind of like puppet play. We're very into the center of puppetry arts in Atlanta. UM. But this, this genre, the Loyal League stories, has come up in kabuki theater and books, movies, TV series. Half a million people visit the temple where where all the samurai and their master are interred, and in December, parades of kids dress up as samurai to tell the story, which is that's when it is officially celebrated in Japan. But the interesting part for us is that usually a story that ends with everyone dead on the ground think Hamlet is considered a tragedy, but the Tale of the forty Seven rown in as something that's about beauty and honor and living by a code, and in this story, death and suicide have an entirely different meaning. So if you have some comments on that, we'd encourage you to email us at History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and let us know what you think. And we also really wish we could have seen this exhibition on samurai that was at the met of late last year and early this year, and it looked so cool. We were talking about the armor and the swords earlier. But um, since honorable death was so important, it was really important how you looked when you when you went down or when you committed supuku, whichever way it was. In the New York Times had a very cool photo gallery that Sarah found and posted on Twitter. You compend us at mist in History if you're looking for us, and the reviewer said, the show of swords and armors perfectly combined to Japanese styles, utter simplicity and outrageous as rotation, which I think is how we can think of the samurai themselves exactly, and that wraps up the tail of the Romans. So again, if you have something to say, feel free to email us, follow us on Twitter, or join our Facebook fan page where we'll keep you updated on what we're working on. And always remember to check out our home page at www dot house stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the stuff you missed in History glass blog on the house stuff works dot com home page

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Downie. And if there's one thing you all really like, it's samurai. Judging by our listener email, we've gotten all sorts of suggestions, perhaps more than forty seven of them. And I'm actually lucky enough to have met real samurai before. When I was in eleventh grade, my school went to Japan to perform at a cherry blossom festival, and I guess you could say we are co headlined with a group of samurai. After we were done with our thing, we got to walk around and you know, by little trinkets, and the Japanese people who had come to see the show all one of their pictures taken with us. And we, of course wanted our pictures taken with the samurai because they have their awesome swords and they're cool costumes or armor or rather. But one of the probably the coolest experiences of my life, was when a group of samurai asked my friends and me to have their pictures taken with us. Yeah, I wanted to call this episode Sarah met a Samurai, but Sarah wouldn't do it. It would. It's just a small slegs of our episode for today, which is of course the forty seven rown in and the Samurai's Code. So we're going to talk a little bit about what Samurai are, their warriors, and they emerged from centuries of clan fighting and the struggle over imperial succession, and some of their fighting styles may also have been picked up from native Japanese who were from the Caucusus. And some important prerequisites to consider before the formation of samurai or the development of their class is armor. The arrival of horses in the introduction of Buddhism to Japan and their later armor is so awesome. The helmets have these face masks that look like Kabuki faces. They're kind of locked, and this permanent battle cry, and the helmets sometimes some of them look like Darth Vader's helmet or just amazing things. I looked at a gallery of some of them. One has a giant gold praying mantis on top. And the armor itself is really neat to it's The body pieces are made from little scales of iron that are lacquered and then laced together with silk cords or leather, and the armor is handed down through generations of the family. It's an art item as well as something practical. And the horses are really important. As you may remember from our Greatest Battle Horses of History podcast. Your average early samurai isn't the guy you see in the movies just wielding a sword. He's the guy on the horse with a bow, something that's incredibly difficult to do and gives you a good idea perhaps of just how skillful to shoot a moving target while you're riding on a horse. That would definitely be difficult. But the samurai we're pretty important by the eight century, but they developed from provincial warrior bands in the twelfth century and that's when they refine this kind of stoic, disciplined culture that we think of defining samurai. During the Kama Cora period eleven thirty three and that's when they became the ruling cast of Japan, they were completely and utterly different from the imperial court. And during the Muromachi period they start to develop their broader pursuits, you know, not just they're not just warriors. They're also poets and masters inc painting and art. In the tea ceremony and I have my little cup of tea with me today while we're while we're recording in honor of them. Well that you're scratchy through that too. Their code of conduct is crucial to understanding the samurai and also our story of the forty seven Rown, and it's later formalized as bushido, but for a long time it was just an written set of rules that placed loyalty, obligation, and self discipline above self. And it's weird. When I was searching for articles about Samurai and the forty seven Rown in on Galileo, which is a search engine we use a lot, there are so many sports articles that come up just using samurai in a casual sort of way. I guess it's the self discipline. They're a good role model if you're training for something. Um. But a big part of the formalized code of conduct is the ritual suicide, which is called sepko and um. That's sort of another main thing you think of when you actually think of samurai, and it's actually disembowlment. You usually have a second though, so most people who would do it wouldn't die, you know, an agonizing hours long death from internal bleeding. They would have somebody else to finish them off as soon as they did the deed. But it was a way to restore honor to oneself, to your family, to your lord after a defeat or some sort of shame. And this will come up a lot in our story. Yeah, and we should mention the loyalty to the lords a little bit and explain that before we get too into the whole samurai thing. So, Japan had an emperor during this time, but he had really become a figurehead after the shogun rose to power and their military leaders. So um, While the emperor is still there and still holds symbolic importance, the shogun basically run the game, and they in turn have lords who are loyal to them, and then the samurai are loyal to their lords. So you have a feudal system. And this feudal system really became more of a closed cast like a closed aristocracy during the Tokugawa period, which is sixteen oh three to eighteen sixty seven, in an attempt to lockdown society as it was in that moment. Yeah, no more changes, please, everybody stay in the position you're in. So if you're a samurai. Your children will be samurai's but it's not something that you can rise to yourself necessarily. Um. But because they're years of peace in the Tokugawa period, a lot of samurais don't have uh, their old warrior jobs anymore, so they become bureaucrats or merchants, and they can still wear their traditional two swords, which are very important to samurai. They're obviously totally cool. There are four main samurai swords. One is just a dagger which you usually use to commit sappuku and uh. Sword smith started signing the blades of the swords in the eleventh century. So consequently, from that time we had all these different swordsmithing styles developed, you know, each family making their own kind of swords like brands or in in different ways. They had contrasting metal tones, surface textures. And the other cool thing is that they're made so they're incredible sharp, but they're soft enough at their core so that they won't break sharp enough to cut a man in half if you if you just need a good reference point for that a good conversation starter. But by the late Tokugawa period, the economic position of the samurai is starting to deteriorate and i impoverished nobles. Yeah, pretty classic story, isn't it. And that's because their way of life is not as important as it used to be. Um, the country is turning more towards trade, and cities are replacing sprawling feudal dominions, and yeah, the samurai aren't in the same league as merchants anymore. And by the time that westerners forced to open Japan in the mid nineteenth century, some lower ranking samurai are hoping for their own kind of change, and they're leaving their own lords, which makes them ron in or masterlest samurai, remember that word. And they start rebelling against the Tokagawa showgun and this ends up in a lot of trouble. They start assassinating people from moderate officials to pro Western scholars to various foreigners within the borders, and by eighteen sixty eight we have the Meiji Restoration, which finally returns Japan to imperial rule after the shogun gives up his power. I mean, the shogun has been in power forever essentially, so this is a really big deal and it's a chance to remake the country. So well, Samurai who are loyal to the shogun skirmish for a while, the Meiji Emperor prevails, feudalism is abolished in eighteen seventy one in Japan rapidly industrializes from there, and it ironically ends up setting the stage for a new kind of militarism that arises in the twentieth century. But that's obviously a different story, different podcasts. Yes, so we'll switch gears now that you have this little bit of background. And as we mentioned, rown in our masterless samurai, So that can happen for a few reasons. It's possible that their master has died it or perhaps they're just troublemakers who for some reason have lost their noble sponsorship. But they're generally the kind of guys who might roam around the country starting up civil wars and making mischief, which of course they're giant swords of their sides. But at least one group of them stars in our story today, which happens to be maybe Japan's favorite story, at least that's the impression I get from it, And that's the tale of the forty seven Ronin. And the forty seven Ronin are considered heroes and models for the stoic honor bound lifestyle that defines the samurai class. But as it always is, history is a little murkier than the legend of the forty seven Ronin, and even the name of the event is perhaps not so clear cut. According to Henry D. Smith, the second of Columbia University, what we know variously as forty seven Samurai, forty six Ronin, or the forty six Samurai is simply called the ac Incident by historians, and this name conveniently skips that whole problem of forty six forty seven, which we're going to talk about a little later. So our incident takes place on April sev o one during the Tokugawa Shogunate, And as we mentioned earlier, Japan is ruled by the military power of the shogun with the emperor as a figurehead. But that doesn't mean the emperor is an important He's still a big deal in the symbolic sense, and his unflays are coming from the imperial court in Kyoto to the shogun's capital in what is today Tokyo, and the Lord of Ako Asano Naganori, along with another feudal lord, is in charge of receiving these envoys. So it's a big day. But instead of doing what he was supposed to do, Asano attacks one of the shogun's senior officials, Kira Yosha Naka, with his sword, and he just nixed him. But an attack on the shogun's man is simply not done, so he's or to commit seppuku immediately, and he does it like an honorable um lord would. He's buried, his estates are confiscated, and this leaves his samurai and his vassals masterless, which is not a good place to be if you are a samurai. Forty seven of his samurai aren't going to let this one go quite so easily. They sign an oath to revenge their master, and according to legend, they wait for nearly two years and lived based lives that aren't suitable for samurai in order to set Kira off his guard. So he's not expecting them to attack, because of course they aren't even living as honorable samurai. They're drinking and going visiting the gay shaw all the time and stuff like that stuff samurai shouldn't do. Um But they do wait two years for for sure, and they finally storm Kira's mansion and they kill his own samurai and they find him hiding in an out building and they asked him to commit seppuku before they have to to do it themselves, and they caught off his head, carry it back in a bucket and take it to their master's grave. So revenge accomplished. They have um i guess redeemed their master's honor. But now the shogun it, of course, is rather conflicted because they don't know quite what to do with them. They acted like honorable samurai, but of course, you know, coming up with this plot and hunting down an official of the showgun is very disrespectful, and they're also really popular with people. So the shogun it has seven weeks of debate before the verdict comes down, which was commits sippuku immediately. So they're rowing in aged fifteen to seventy seven commit suppuku on March oh three. Um. But that's that's the basic story. But of course things are pretty murky, and one of the trickiest parts is figuring out the number. What's what's with it? Forty six or forty seven? Why is that contentious? Well, most people agree that there were forty seven ronin who participated in the attack, but only forty six who committed ritual suicide. There was a man named Terasaka Kei Chiman who was the odd man out and also the lowest ranking member of their league. And our second big question about this story is why did Asano attack Kira in the first place. And this is kind of tricky because a Saana would have known that an attack on an official would have had pretty grave consequences for him and for his vassals, for for all of his samurai. And all we know is that Asana shouted, this is for that grudge I've had against you, which I imagine must sound more eloquent in Japanese. But um, the Ronan have a lot of correspondence, and even they don't mention the source of the dispute, so maybe we just don't know what their problem was with each other. But in the legend, Kira has been made into a bureaucratic villain to make it make sense, and we can all recognize the model of the bureaucratic villain who you know, disrespects and impedes various efforts of Asana. Yeah, it definitely helps make the story make more sense. Um. And but we still have a third big question here. Which is why did the Ronan actually go ahead and kill Kira? And they say that they're fulfilling their master's vendetta, but that's not really UM straight Samurai code, because after all, a Sana was the one who tried to kill Kira, not the other way around. And they even have to get a Confucian scholar to try to justify the whole thing to to make it legit. I guess historians have raised other possible motives. Maybe they were angry that Kira hadn't been punished for, you know, whatever his part may have been in the dispute with Asano. Or perhaps they were just trying to get work. And Sarah sudden to me earlier that perhaps revenge looks good on a resume, So we're gonna I am Aurai looking for a job. Yeah, but whatever, the debate makes the incident a really good story, and one that's so popular it's sprouted this whole genre of retellings. UM actually originating from a puppet play, which Katie and I kind of like puppet play. We're very into the center of puppetry arts in Atlanta. UM. But this, this genre, the Loyal League stories, has come up in kabuki theater and books, movies, TV series. Half a million people visit the temple where where all the samurai and their master are interred, and in December, parades of kids dress up as samurai to tell the story, which is that's when it is officially celebrated in Japan. But the interesting part for us is that usually a story that ends with everyone dead on the ground think Hamlet is considered a tragedy, but the Tale of the forty Seven rown in as something that's about beauty and honor and living by a code, and in this story, death and suicide have an entirely different meaning. So if you have some comments on that, we'd encourage you to email us at History Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and let us know what you think. And we also really wish we could have seen this exhibition on samurai that was at the met of late last year and early this year, and it looked so cool. We were talking about the armor and the swords earlier. But um, since honorable death was so important, it was really important how you looked when you when you went down or when you committed supuku, whichever way it was. In the New York Times had a very cool photo gallery that Sarah found and posted on Twitter. You compend us at mist in History if you're looking for us, and the reviewer said, the show of swords and armors perfectly combined to Japanese styles, utter simplicity and outrageous as rotation, which I think is how we can think of the samurai themselves exactly, and that wraps up the tail of the Romans. So again, if you have something to say, feel free to email us, follow us on Twitter, or join our Facebook fan page where we'll keep you updated on what we're working on. And always remember to check out our home page at www dot house stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the stuff you missed in History glass blog on the house stuff works dot com home page