The Fortyseven Ronin

By Murdoch, James

Book Id: WPLBN0000626539
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size: 31.21 KB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	The Fortyseven Ronin
Author:	Murdoch, James
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature, Literature & thought, Writing.
Collections:	Blackmask Online Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Blackmask Online


Citation APA MLA Chicago Murdoch, J. (n.d.). The Fortyseven Ronin. Retrieved from http://gutenberg.cc/

Description
Excerpt: EVERY historian of the Tokugawa age is emphatic on the subject of the great debasement of the moral currency among the samurai class that began in the Regency of Sakai and culminated under Tsunayoshi in the Genroku and Ho?ei year?periods. Reference to this unpleasant matter has been made in the previous chapter; and although detail was not heaped upon detail, as might very easily have been done, enough was said to indicate that the moral fibre of the two?sworded men had indeed degenerated sadly. And yet it was just when things seemed to be moving downhill with breakneck speed that what the Japanese regard as one of the greatest feats of derring?do that has ever been accomplished within the four seas of the Empire was achieved. There is no tale better known in Japan than the story of the Revenge of Ako, or the Loyal League, while the story of the Forty?Seven Ronin, as it is usually known among Europeans, is the only episode in the Tokugawa annals with which foreigners are almost universally acquainted. The incident has become so famous that it has been deemed advisable to devote a short chapter to its consideration.

Table of Contents
Table of Contents: THE FORTY?SEVEN RONIN, 1 -- James Murdoch, 1