Sengakuji Temple / 47 Ronin of Japan
On Monday, May 13, 2019, I visited Sengakuji Temple for the first time. Sengakuji Temple is near Sengakuji Station on the Toei Asakusa Subway Line, just two stops from JR Gotanda Station. It's very easy to find. There are plenty of signs inside the station to direct visitors. There was no admission fee to enter the temple. Entering and wandering around were free. There are two small museums on the property, and a fee is required for those. There is a donation box, and if you want to buy postcards you can. There is also incense for sale to burn at the grave sites.
Sengakuji Temple is a famous Zen Buddhist Temple and school, built in a different location in 1612 by the first Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. After a fire in 1642 the temple was re-built in its present location. Even today, Buddhist students who study at the local university take training to become monks at this temple.
However, Sengakuji Temple is easily best known as the burial site of the 47 Ronin, or the 47 Samurai, called the "Ako Gishi" in Japanese. It involves an incident of honour, revenge, vendetta that transpired over a two-year period, 1701-03. In Japanese history the “Ako Incident” is legendary - sort of like the Gunfight at the OK Corral in the U.S. It is crushing sad.
The feudal Lord of Ako province - found in the present-day Hyogo Prefecture, a little west of Osaka - named Asano Takuminokami was forced to kill himself by ritual suicide after being suckered into a (forbidden) weapons incident within Edo Castle by a rival Lord named Kira Kozukenosuke. Lord Asano's most loyal 47 samurai retainers, led by Oishi Kuranosuke, were disgraced and left masterless, or leaderless. They spent two years plotting revenge against Lord Kira, and in December 1702 they killed him. But they were subsequently ordered to commit "sepukku" ritual suicide themselves. All 47 of them, including Oishi's 16-year-old son Chikara, did that on February 4, 1703, and they are buried here in close proximity to their Lord, Asano. It took that long to execute their revenge because the only access to Lord Kira was in Edo (modern Tokyo), and the Tokugawa Shoguns kept a really tight grip on the country, on their vassals and on their castle town/administrative center. Violence was difficult to perform successfully, and severely punished when it did happen.
The cemetery is small and simple, with a somber atmosphere. There is a modern Buddhist cemetery behind it, off limits to visitors. The graves of the 47 are well visited and tended with incense and offerings. Modern Japanese continue to admire them greatly. What is inside the graves? Bodies or cremated ashes? I don’t know, and I didn’t want to try to ask when I was there. Today, cremation is almost universal in Japan (by custom, not by law), but I don’t know about the eighteenth century. I like the idea of bodily physical remains in a grave. It gives me a firm idea of what I'm visiting and whom I'm remembering to orient myself. I want a grave to be a reliquary more than a mere memorial stone or marker. A memorial is a mere sign - nothing. But a reliquary is a symbol - something with which I can feel an existential connection.
I want a grave to be a reliquary more than a mere memorial stone or marker. A memorial is a mere sign - nothing. But a reliquary is a symbol - something with which I can feel an existential connection.
The problem that keeps screaming through my head, however, is that this is a manifestation of the Japanese adoration of death - murder and suicide based on a cockamamie idea of honour, vengeance, vendetta. It’s a demonic death fetish. Japanese think they are revering the admirable virtue of loyalty and the Bushido (warrior) code, but I keep thinking of/hoping for the brotherhood of man, common human decency and justice; of peace, love and understanding, forgiveness, redemption and the Resurrection. I keep thinking of the 47 ronin as immoral psychopaths and criminals, not admirable saints. Pagans!
I could be wrong. Or, I could be right.