＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
There is an explanatory board titled “Akutagawa-juku Avenging Crossroads” near the Ichiri-zuka mound in Akutagawa-juku, an inn town along the Saigoku Kaido Road in Takatsuki City, where I live.
1. “Akutagawa-juku Avenging Crossroads
The explanation board reads as follows
The Akutagawa-juku revenge took place about 300 years ago, in the early Edo period (1603-1868). It began when two young samurai fought over a beautiful boy in the Iwami Province of Yoshinaga (in the southern part of Ota City, Shimane Prefecture) because they had a grudge against him.
The details are not known, but in short, one samurai killed another samurai in the Edo area out of his own nefarious intentions. The son of the murdered samurai, a young samurai named Sukesaburo, was the great-grandson of Kato Sananosuke Yoshiaki, a vassal of Hideyoshi, a naval general in the Bunroku Keicho no Eki and one of the Seven Spears of Mount Sizugatake.
Deeply determined to avenge his parent, he learned swordsmanship day and night from a swordsman in Kyoto. After two and a half years of traveling around the country in search of enemy, he finally saw his enemy enter an inn at Akutagawa-juku, where he was dressed as a monk and accompanied by a shakuhachi (bamboo flute).
At the dawn of a chilly early autumn day, just as the enemy was leaving the inn, a young boy named Sukesaburo leaped forward at this street, shouting out his name in a loud voice and struck down his irreconcilable foe. He was only 14 years old at the time.
A letter was found in the pocket of Hachinojo, who was avenged, stating that he deserved to be avenged because he was the one who killed two people and that the one who avenged him was not to blame. This revenge was widely spread throughout the country as a beautiful story in which both sides upheld the morals of bushido of the time, and it was also treated in books such as “Shoku-kinsei kijin biography” as valuable material in the history of manners and customs.
Incidentally, Nanya, a famous monk of Daitu-ji Temple, was Sukesaburo’s younger brother.
April 1977, Local History Research Society, Written by Nakanishi Shichioka
This explanatory board is located in front of the Sushi Restaurant Yaotsuru Honten, and Akutagawa Ichirizuka is just to the south.
Reading this description, I can clearly understand the sense of accomplishment and relief felt by the 14-year-old young swordsman who, after two years of hardship and suffering, finally met his enemy and successfully defeated him.
On the other hand, I also understand the sense of relief felt by the vanquished enemy. He had been so anxious about when he would be avenged that he had never had a moment to rest. There is no need to run away anymore. He is happy to be avenged by the son of the man he had wronged.
In this case, it was fortunate that the avengers were able to achieve their true intentions in a relatively short period of time (two years or so), but there must have been many avengers who were unable to find an enemy and were not allowed to return to their home countries until they achieved their true intentions. This would mean that they “gave up the rest of their lives for revenge.
In addition, there must have been cases in which they were killed by his enemies in reverse..
2. “Enemy Avenging System” in the Edo Period
(1) History and details of the system of revenge
Enemy avenging or avenging is “a Japanese system from the Middle Ages to the early modern period that allowed a person whose direct ancestors had been killed to take revenge against his/her enemies as a form of private punishment.
In the Edo period (1603-1867), it was institutionalized as “the scope of police power. Basically, it is revenge taken by a child to avenge a parent or other blood-related superior relative.
In the Edo period, the perpetrator of a murder was to be punished by the official power (shogunate or domain) in principle, but when the perpetrator went missing or otherwise the official power was unable to punish the perpetrator, a form of revenge was permitted whereby the official power delegated the punishment of the perpetrator to a person related to the victim.
In the case of samurai, they were required to receive a license from their lord and to notify the magistrate’s office if they were to cross over to another country.
Since a “hostile revenge” is a “duel,” the side that is considered the enemy is allowed to use “self-defense” to fight back. If the enemy side kills the avenging side, it is called “kaeri-uchi” (revenge killing).
The “kasane-gatakiuchi,” in which avenging parties further avenge the death of the avenger, and the “matazoro-katakiuchi,” in which the bereaved family members of the avenged party take revenge on the avenger, were prohibited. This was not surprising, since allowing such a practice would have led to “revenge battles” with no end in sight.
By the way, after years or decades of traveling in search of the enemy, with a few helpers, the person who is avenging the enemy must have had a recurring sense of anxiety and despair, “When will we really find our enemy?”
At such times, a single person could have given up on avenging the enemy and traveled around the country as a “sightseer,” using the money received from the clan.
However, with a few helpers, he would not have been allowed to do so.
In the case of an official search for the culprit, a large number of officials would have been deployed to conduct a thorough and concentrated search in a short period of time, and “physiognomies” would have been posted at every street corner, making it difficult for the culprit to escape.
However, in the case of enemy avenging, since it was a “private search by a small number of people,” it would have been extremely difficult to locate enemies who had fled to other countries, as it was like trying to catch a cloud in the sky. It is said that only a few percent of the 129 cases of enemy hunting in the Edo period that can be confirmed today were successful. Although this is not Basho’s “Nozarashi Kiko,” it would have been necessary for a samurai to be prepared to die in the field, even if it was for the sake of his own honor. There may have been people who lost their lives along the way or even took their own lives.
To use a modern murder investigation analogy, it is like a “special task force” that deploys a large number of investigators to intensively investigate a murder case is disbanded and a small number of investigators continue the investigation in detail (virtually doing nothing), doggedly pursuing a case that eventually “went cold”.
(2) Avenging an enemy that took over 40 years
In the case of Kume Kotaro’s revenge against his enemｙ, his father was killed by Takizawa Yasuemon when he was 7 years old. Later, in 1828, at the age of 18, Kotaro set out on a journey to avenge his enemies with his 15-year-old brother Morijiro and one supporter.. Kotaro continued his journey of revenge against the enemy, taking on the role of a monk and a doctor, and enduring many hardships . In 1857, Kotaro found and defeated Kyuemon, who had become a monk at a temple near Ishinomaki. In fact, the journey took 40 years to complete. Kotaro lived a long life and passed away in 1891 at the age of 81. This is not only the “last avenging of an enemy” for which a record remains, but also the second longest record in history.
The longest time in history was for a woman named Tomase, who avenged her mother’s death in 1853 at the age of 59. Her mother was killed when she was 7 years old, so it took her 52 years to avenge her mother’s death.
(3) Avenging Avengeance Prohibition Order
Avenging (revenge) ceased with the “Avenging Ban Order” (prohibition of revenge) of 1873 (Meiji 6).
3. the oldest incident of hostile action
The “Mayowa no Okimi no Hen” (456), which is found in the “Nihon Shoki” (Chronicles of Japan), Volume 14, Yuryakuki, is the oldest incident of hostile revenge that remains in historical records.
Emperor Ankō, the father-in-law of Mayowa no Okimi, had killed Prince Okusaka (the father of Mayowa no Okimi), and took his mother, Princess Nakasinohimemiko as his wife, raising him as her stepson. The seven-year-old Mayowa no Okimi heard this fact while playing under the palace tower, and stabbed Emperor Ankō to death while he was sound asleep.
After the incident, when asked about his motive, Mayowa no Okimi replied, “I was not aiming for the throne. I was merely avenging my father’s death.
However, the residence was surrounded by the soldiers of Prince Oh-hatuse (later Emperor Yuryaku), the younger brother of Emperor Ankō, and both he and Minister Katsuragi were burned to death, despite the Minister’s pleas for help.
4. the original meaning of “Avenge Edo’s enemies in Nagasaki
The phrase “avenge Edo’s enemies in Nagasaki” is well known. Nowadays, it is generally used to mean “to get revenge in an unexpected place or by doing something out of line.
By the way, what is the origin of this phrase?
This is not derived from a story of “true revenge against the enemy,” but from the following story about an Osaka showman who was successful in Edo but lost popularity to a showman in Nagasaki.
A certain Osaka showman had a very successful bamboo show in Edo, surpassing the popularity of the Edo showman.
At the same time, however, the popularity of Nagasaki’s Dutch ship and Guillaman craft shows in Osaka overwhelmed the popularity of this Osaka showman.
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