大石内蔵助

Ōishi Kuranosuke (1659–1703), chief retainer of the Akō domain in Harima Province, is the central figure of Chūshingura — 'The Treasury of Loyal Retainers' — the most celebrated and most retold story in Japanese cultural history. When his lord Asano Naganori was ordered to commit seppuku after drawing his sword on the court official Kira Yoshinaka in Edo Castle in 1701, and the Akō domain was dissolved, Ōishi resolved to avenge his master. For a year and nine months he concealed his intentions by living conspicuously dissipated in Kyoto, dismissed his wife, and gradually assembled forty-six loyal men who shared his determination. On the night of December 14, 1702, in snow, the forty-seven rōnin attacked Kira's mansion, fought through his guards, and killed him. They then surrendered to the authorities and were ordered to commit ritual suicide — which they did, with perfect composure, on February 4, 1703. The swords of the forty-seven rōnin — particularly Ōishi's own blade — became the supreme symbol of the samurai ideal in Japanese culture: loyalty to one's lord carried past death, expressed through the sword as the warrior's soul. The story immediately entered popular culture through kabuki and bunraku, and has been filmed, dramatized, and retold hundreds of times since. Ōishi's sword was the weapon of a man whose entire purpose was to make it speak once more in the service of his dead lord — the most direct possible expression of the Japanese belief that the sword is the samurai's soul.