history of japan - Library

a score of years later. The tradition that makes the ronin,
wear coats-of-mail, with the forty-seven characters of the
syllabary for their distinguishing badges, is without any
foundation.
[1] The document (saimon) which the rōnin in Mitford's
story are said to have placed before the tomb is a fiction of
later times. That which Mitford saw must have been written
afterwards. In 1721, Sengaku-ji was burned down and most
of the ronin relics then perished in the flames. The official
account of their doings styled Sengaku-ji Kakiage,
prepared under orders from the Shōgun, is not really
authentic. The Abbot of Sengaku-ji finding no means of
getting any information in his own temple after the fire,
borrowed an account penned from hearsay by Shōten, who,
in 1703, was Abbot of the neighbouring temple of Kogakuji.
A Satsuma man caused a stone to be raised to the
memory of Hayano Sampei, a page of Asano, who killed
himself rather than serve another master, nearly a year
before the execution of the vendetta. On this stone appears
the name of the man who erected it. Hence the story of the
Satsuma man spitting upon Ōishi lying drunk in a Kyoto
gutter. It has no other foundation, but it is current through all
Japan, and not only implicitly credited, but the subject of
numerous paintings by artists of high degree ---J. H. L.
[1] The province of which Kumamoto is the principal town.