Organizer: Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Pomona College Chair: Henry DeWitt Smith, Columbia University Discussant: Tetsuo Najita, University of Chicago
The Ako Incident of 1701-1703 is universally regarded as an archetypal vendetta and the forty-six ronin as exemplary "righteous warriors." But the incident was actually the subject of a noisy debate that began within months of the suicide of the forty-six Ako men and raged for over a century and a half. The debate commenced when leading Confucian scholars of the day offered sharply conflicting opinions on the actions of the main figures in the incident-Lord Asano Naganori, Lord Kira Yoshinaka, and the forty-six ronin-and on the bakufu's handling of the affair.
This panel will examine the controversy surrounding the Ako incident. Using different approaches and representing distinct interpretive communities, the three presenters will offer new readings of the accusations and exchanges the incident generated. Using what is often called a "radical contextualist" approach, Samuel Yamashita will locate the opinions of five of the scholars who wrote about the incident in the first round of the debate-Muro Kyuso (1658-1734), Hayashi Hoko (1644-1732), Ogyu Sorai (1666-1728), Miyake Kanran (1674-1718), and Sato Naokata (1650-1719)-in two broader contexts-what he calls "school relations" and contemporary power relations. He also will argue that interschool competition and a century of bakufu-han relations may explain why Sorai, Hoko, Kyuso, Kanran, and Naokata wrote what they did. Barry Steben will examine the views of the three Kimon school scholars who wrote opinions about the incident-Sato Naokata, Asami Keisai (1652-1711), and Miyake Shosai (1662-1741)-using a contextualizing approach that situates their views within their respective philosophies and what might be called a Kimon school discourse. He will attempt to show that their opinions on the Ako incident are best understood in terms of their views of loyalty, filial piety, and other salient concepts. John Tucker will use a biographical approach to explore the allegations that Yamaga Soko (1622-1685) was involved in the Ako incident and will argue that Sato Naokata and Dazai Shundai (1680-1747) were responsible for implicating Soko. Tucker also will consider the reception of the myth of Soko's involvement and ask why was it so well received and by whom.
Henry D. Smith will serve as the chair of the panel and Tetsuo Najita will be the discussant. Smith is well versed in the incident, and Najita has done extensive work on this incident as well as two others that elicited decisive and draconian responses from the Tokugawa bakufu-the Meiwa incident of 1767 and the Oshio Heihachiro uprising of 1837.
This panel will build on the important double panel on Tokugawa studies at the 1995 AAS meeting and will attempt to encourage better communication among scholars representing different "interpretive communities."
Reading "Revenge" in the Debate on the Ako Ronin Incident
Samuel Hideo Yamashita, Pomona College
The debate on the Ako incident is conventionally dated from 1703, when Muro Kyuso, a Confucian scholar in the service of Kaga domain, wrote a long panegyric entitled "A Record of the Righteous Men of Ako." Hayashi Hoko, head of the Hayashi school, responded almost immediately with "The Doctrine of Revenge," which highlighted the incommensurability of bakufu law and warrior custom. The debate was under way. As copies of these two pieces circulated, others joined the fray, including three well-regarded Confucian scholars-Ogyu Sorai, Sato Naokata, and Miyake Kanran. The conflicting opinions of these five scholars comprise the first round of the debate. Modern scholars who have written about the incident have said relatively little about the controversy it generated and those-Tahara Tsuguo, Kojima Yasunori, Noguchi Takehiko-who have interpreted it simply as different writers' readings of the incident.
In this paper, I will offer another interpretation of the debate, particularly of the first exchange of arguments that took place between 1703 and 1714. First, I will argue that each scholar's view of the incident is best understood in terms of what might be called school relations, that is, the ongoing competition among the four rival Confucian academies-Hayashi, Ken'en, Bokumon, and Kimon-that these five commentaries represent. Second, I will argue that contemporary power relations had a bearing on the debate: on one level, that each scholar's proximity to, or distance from, the shogun and his government explains his stand on the incident, as does, on another level, a century of Tokugawa control and bakufu-han relations.
My paper will suggest a new way to read the debate on the Ako incident. Whereas most modern commentators have approached the debate biographically, reading each commentator's remarks exclusively in terms of that individual's personal and intellectual history, I will use a radical contextualist approach that situates the debate within two broad local contexts, the intellectual field of contemporary Confucian academies and contemporary power relations.
Intraschool Conflicts in the Ako Ronin Controversy: The Case of the Kimon School
Barry D. Steben, National University of Singapore
Although famous for its fidelity to Chu Hsi's Neo-Confucianism, the Kimon school (founded by Yamazaki Ansai) was sharply divided in its reactions to the Ako ronin incident. Sato Naokata condemned the ronin as criminals, while Asami Keisai and Miyake Shosai argued that their vendetta accorded with both Confucian and samurai ethical imperatives. These views, one would expect, were logical extensions of broader differences in these thinkers' interpretations of the Confucian Way. Accordingly, some modern interpreters (Bito Masahide, Tahara Tsuguo, and Sagara Toru) have used Kimon scholars' views on the vendetta to characterize their thought as a whole, grasping the dog, as it were, by its tail. However, as Tajiri Yuichiro has shown with regard to Naokata, the failure to examine the logical relationship between the Kimon scholars' views of the vendetta and their philosophical teachings, and the failure to appreciate the rhetorical and strategic nature of their arguments, have led to serious distortions of the character of their thought.
Tajiri's critique is indebted to Maruyama Masao's insightful 1980 analysis of the Kimon school, which provided a comprehensive view of the ideological conflicts within the school and identified the core issues involved. This paper builds on the perspectives offered by Maruyama and Tajiri, interpreting the Kimon scholars' views of the Ako vendetta in relation to their positions on the fundamental questions being debated within their school-e.g., the relative priority of loyalty vs. filial piety, the ethical value of spontaneous feeling, the acceptability of vassals judging their lords, and the sacred inviolability of the imperial line.
Yamaga Soko and the Forty-Seven Ronin Vendetta of 1703
John Allen Tucker, University of North Florida
Accounts of the Ako incident of 1703 often relate that Yamaga Soko, philosophical pioneer of the Ancient Learning movement and formulator of a system called the "Way of the Samurai" (shido), once taught Ako samurai, implying that shido somehow informed their behavior in the vendetta. Building on the scholarship of Hori Isao, whose biography of Soko scrutinizes allegations linking Soko to the incident, this paper will argue that corroboration cannot be found, apart from circumstantial evidence, for charges attributing the ronin vendetta to Soko's samurai philosophy. Going beyond Hori, my paper attempts to analyze the allegations so as to expose their underlying significance vis-à-vis the politico-intellectual relationships between private Confucian teachers and the Tokugawa bakufu, the imperial court, and fudai and tozama daimyo.
This paper traces the most allegations about Soko's involvement in the Ako incident to Dazai Shundai, a proponent of Ogyu Sorai's politico-economic thought, and Sato Naokata, a follower of Yamazaki Ansai's brand of Neo-Confucian teachings. Despite their differences, both Sorai and Naokata authored essays condemning the ronin as criminals and blaming Soko's teachings for the crime. They did so, I argue, to discredit the Yamaga school, especially in the eyes of the bakufu and among those most concerned with making public their loyalty to it. While the bakufu had rendered the Yamaga teachings disreputable by banning Soko's Seikyo yoroku (Confucian Manifesto) (1675) and exiling him to Ako domain (1666-1675) for its publication, allegations linking shido to the Ako incident accelerated the atrophy of the Soko school in Edo, prompting its retreat to two tozama domains.