history of japan - Library

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CHAPTER VI
THE FORTY-SEVEN RŌNIN
EVERY historian of the Tokugawa age is emphatic on the
subject of the great debasement of the moral currency
among the samurai class that began in the Regency of
Sakai and culminated under Tsunayoshi in the Genroku
and Hō-ei year-periods. Reference to this unpleasant
matter has been made in the previous chapter; and
although detail was not heaped upon detail, as might very
easily have been done, enough was said to indicate that
the moral fibre of the two-sworded men had indeed
degenerated sadly. And yet it was just when things seemed
to be moving downhill with breakneck speed that what the
Japanese regard as one of the greatest feats of derring-do
that has ever been accomplished within the four seas of the
Empire was achieved. There is no tale better known in
Japan than the story of the Revenge of Akō, or the Loyal
League, while the story of the Forty-Seven Rōnin, as it is
usually known among Europeans, is the only episode in the
Tokugawa annals with which foreigners are almost