Chapter 8 Japan 331Vassal loyalty is the principal theme of the war tales: absolute self-sacrific-
ing loyalty of a warrior for his lord. The 47 ronin exhibited this kind of ulti-
mate loyalty, and also another trait: the blood revenge (katakiuchi). Intent on
following their lord into death, they could not do so until they had rendered
him the final service of avenging his death. Samurai justified the vendetta by
quoting Confucius:
Tzu-hsia [Zixia] asked Confucius, saying, “How should [a son] conduct
himself with reference to the man who has killed his father or mother?”
The Master said, “He should sleep on straw, with his shield for a pillow; he
should not take office; he must be determined not to live with the slayer
under the same heaven. If he meets with him in the market-place or court,
he should not have to go back for his weapon, but [instantly] fight with
him.” (Varley 1994:33)
Loyalty meant to the death. Daidoji Yuzan’s Code of the Samurai begins
with the famous words: “One who is a samurai must before all things keep
constantly in mind, by day and by night... the fact that he has to die.” This
point was not just a theoretical one; hostilities frequently interrupted the unsta-
ble peace of the first four centuries of shogun rule. One entire century, known
as the “Era of Warring States” (1467–1568), was given over to a “culture of
lawlessness” (Berry 1994). The era is known in part through the diaries of per-
sons who lived through, and tried to make meaning of, the destruction of
Kyoto as sometimes hundreds of thousands of warriors fought in its streets and
savaged its neighborhoods, reducing the city to isolated, fortified pockets of
townspeople and the imperial compound to a weedy wasteland. In romanticiz-
ing samurai culture, we must remember all its modes.
Mary Elizabeth Berry opens an account of this century with the diary
entries of a Kyoto aristocrat:
Yakushiji Yoichi Motoichi, the deputy governor of the province of Settsu,
who is a retainer of Hosokawa Ukyo Daibu Minamoto Masamoto Ason,
has rebelled against Masamoto and turned enemy. He is marching toward
Yodo in our province. All of Kyoto is in an uproar over these events; the
exodus of residents carrying their valuables is shocking, people say.Seventeen days later, the day-by-day descriptions of the havoc wreaked by this
adventurer ends with the following:
The castle at Yodo fell at daybreak. The principal in this affair, Yakushiji
Yoichi, whose formal name is Motoichi, has been captured; the leader of
the Shinomiya house and his son have cut their bellies. They say one hun-
dred fourteen heads collected during this incident have been brought back
to Kyoto. The unexpectedly swift victory is miraculous.And finally:
I hear that the prisoner [Yakushiji] Motoichi, age twenty-nine, cut his belly
at dawn. (Berry 1994:2)