Revenge of the Ronin
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
March 20, 1703. Today, almost fifty men, scattered around the city of Edo, Japan, are waiting to die. They’re all former samurai who had served the same lord – and they all carried out a deadly revenge attack in his name. Their story will go down in history as the legend of the 47 Ronin. Why did these men decide that to be loyal samurai, they had to die? And how did this moment live on for centuries and become part of the national story of Japan?
Thank you to our guest, Professor John Tucker, author of The Forty-Seven Ronin: The Vendetta in History and translator of Kumazawa Banzan: Governing the Realm and Bringing Peace to All Below Heaven.
** This episode originally aired March 15, 2021.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:03.0 | This podcast contains descriptions of violence and suicide. |
| 0:06.9 | Listener discretion advised. |
| 0:10.1 | History this week. |
| 0:12.6 | March 20th, 1703. |
| 0:16.2 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:18.7 | It's late afternoon, the beginning of spring, and about 50 men are waiting to die. |
| 0:26.9 | Their former samurai, and there's a special place prepared for their death in the front garden of a rich house in Japan. |
| 0:36.0 | Three tommy mats stacked on top of each other, covered with a white |
| 0:39.8 | cloth, white curtains on two sides. It's a ceremonial setting for a ceremonial death. These men are |
| 0:48.7 | going to commit sepuku, which means ritualized suicide. The ritual begins around 4 p.m. |
| 0:56.8 | The men are offered a final cup of sake. |
| 0:59.1 | They get ink and paper to write a note to their loved ones |
| 1:01.6 | or to put their feelings down in a poem. |
| 1:04.4 | And then, one by one, they step up and pull out their swords. |
| 1:12.6 | Traditionally, a samurai would commit Sepaku by slicing his own stomach. |
| 1:17.6 | By the 1700s, that very painful version of the ritual has mostly fallen away. |
| 1:23.6 | Instead, each condemned former samurai has chosen another person, a second. |
| 1:29.3 | That person stands behind him as he pulls out his sword, and at a signal, perhaps the condemned man turns his head just slightly in the second's direction, |
| 1:38.3 | the second pulls out his own sword. |
| 1:41.3 | Before the former samurai's blade reaches his stomach, the second cuts off the former |
| 1:47.0 | samurai's head. It's a more humane way to die. And on this day in March, the whole |
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