Junshi - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

refers to the medieval Japanese act of vassals committing seppuku

Seppuku

is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honor rather than fall into the hands of their enemies , or as a form of capital punishment...

(ritual suicide) upon the death of their lord. Originally it was only performed when the lord was slain in battle or murdered.

Background

The practice is described by Chinese chronicles, describing the Yamato people

Yamato people

is a name for the dominant native ethnic group of Japan. It is a term that came to be used around the late 19th century to distinguish the residents of the mainland Japan from other minority ethnic groups who have resided in the peripheral areas of Japan, such as the Ainu, Ryukyuan, Nivkh, Ulta, as...

(the Japanese), going as far back as the 7th century. According to the Weizhi (Chronicle of Wei), a decree in 646 forbade junshi, but it obviously continued to be practiced for centuries afterwards.

Under the Tokugawa

Tokugawa shogunate

The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...

bakufu, battle and war were almost unknown, and junshi became quite popular with vassals even when their masters died naturally, or in some other way had not met a violent end. There were no fixed rules for junshi, and to some extent it depended on the circumstances, the importance of the lord and esteem in which he was held by his followers, as well as the manner of his death. Junshi could also be carried out irrespective of whether the lord had died of an illness, fallen on the battlefield, or committed seppuku.

Examples

One example is the 1607 suicide of seven pages upon the deaths of Matsudaira Tadayoshi and Yūki Hideyasu

Yuki Hideyasu

was a Japanese daimyo who lived during the Azuchi-Momoyama and early Edo periods. Born the second son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, he established the Echizen Fukui Domain.-Birth:...

. This occurred even at the highest levels of power on occasion. Tokugawa Hidetada

Tokugawa Hidetada

was the second shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, who ruled from 1605 until his abdication in 1623. He was the third son of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate.-Early life :...

was followed into death by one of his Elder Counselors (Rōjū
Roju
The ', usually translated as Elder, was one of the highest-ranking government posts in Tokugawa Japan. The term refers either to individual Elders, or to the Council as a whole; under the first two shoguns, there were only two Rōjū...

), and in 1651, when Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu

Tokugawa Iemitsu

Tokugawa Iemitsu was the third shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada, and the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Iemitsu ruled from 1623 to 1651.-Early life :...

died, thirteen of his closest advisors (including two Rōjū) committed suicide, dramatically shifting the balance of the council, as a result of the political views of those who remained. As a result of junshi being practiced so widely, it was outlawed by a number of daimyo. It was outlawed by the Saga clan in 1661, and then entirely in the version of the Buke Sho-Hatto (The Law for Military Houses) by the fourth Tokugawa Shōgun Ietsuna (1651-1680)

Tokugawa Ietsuna

was the fourth shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty of Japan who was in office from 1651 to 1680. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Iemitsu, thus making him the grandson of Tokugawa Hidetada and the great-grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu.-Early Life :...

entirely in 1663; Junshi was seen by the bakufu to contain certain elements of sedition. The enforcement of this law was strict, and worked in the customary Japanese way by laying the blame for an instance of junshi on the son or successor of the deceased lord whose death had occasioned it. While showing loyalty to their dead lord by following him to death, retainers could at the same time seriously jeapardise the career of his successor, and quite possibly ruin his entire house through the confiscation by the authorities of the fief. The practice continued, however. In 1668, when daimyo Okudaira Tadamasa

Okudaira Tadamasa

was a Japanese daimyo of the early Edo period. He was the son of Tokugawa Ieyasu's son-in-law Okudaira Nobumasa. Due to this family connection, he was allowed to use the Matsudaira surname. He was briefly adopted by Suganuma Sadatoshi; however, this adoption lasted for only five years. Upon...

died, one of his vassals committed suicide; by way of enforcement of the ban, the shōgunate killed the vassal's children, banished his other relatives, and removed Okudaira's successor to a different, smaller, fief (han). Continued instances like these led to a redeclaration of the ban in 1683. This sort of re-assertion of laws, as seen in many other Tokugawa bans on a myriad of other practices, indicates that the ban was not widely followed, nor effectively enforceable.

On another occasion, when Lord Tokugawa Tadakichi, the fourth son of Ieyasu, died in 1607, it was reported that five of his men chose death by junshi.

In 1634, when Lord Satake Yoshinobu

Satake Yoshinobu

was a Japanese daimyo of the Azuchi-Momoyama period through early Edo period. The eldest son of Satake Yoshishige, he was the first generation lord of the Kubota Domain...

was dying, an executive samurai of the lord’s Edo residence admonished his vassals that the lord did not desire them to die after him even though,

...it is the fashion in contemporary society to cut one's belly after the death of the master. They consider such an action a meritorious deed. (Hiromichi.)

Despite Yoshinobu’s death wish, however, two samurai committed suicide after his death.

Likewise, when the famous daimyō warlord Date Masamune

Date Masamune

was a regional strongman of Japan's Azuchi-Momoyama period through early Edo period. Heir to a long line of powerful daimyo in the Tōhoku region, he went on to found the modern-day city of Sendai...

died in 1636, fifteen samurai committed seppuku. In this particular case, six of them were rear vassals whose masters decided to follow the lord even to death.

In 1657, when the Lord Nabeshima Katsushige

Nabeshima Katsushige

' was a Japanese daimyo of the early Edo period. Born to Nabeshima Naoshige, he became lord of Saga-han.-Biography:...

died, twenty-six of his samurai committed suicide.

A late example is General Nogi Maresuke, hero of the Russo-Japanese War

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...

. As the Meiji emperor’s funeral cortege was leaving the imperial palace in Tokyo, the country was jolted by the sensational news that Maresuke had committed suicide along with his wife. What made the news sensational was that Maresuke had disembowled himself in the ancient samurai tradition of junshi to follow his lord in death. Carol Gluck

Carol Gluck

Carol Gluck is an American academic and Japanologist. She is the George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University.-Career:Gluck received her B.A. from Wellesley in 1962. She was awarded her Ph.D...

wrote,

“On first hearing it did not seem possible that one of the best known figures in Meiji national life had committed junshi…. In a nation in the midst of a solemn celebration of its modernity, its foremost soldier…had followed a custom that had been outlawed by the Tokugawa shogunate as antiquated in 1663.”

Inoue Tetsūjirō considered Maresuke’s suicide as a cause for celebration, despite the fact that, from the vantage point of society, it meant a loss of a great man and sadness to many. He also added that Maresuke’s junshi,

“…demonstrated the power of bushidō and speculated that the suicide would exert an extraordinary impact on Japan.”

Various thinkers also regarded it as a signal act of loyalty, and an example to the Japanese in the collapse of traditional morals. Others decried it, Kiryu Yuyu explicitly criticizing it in light of calls to revive bushido

Bushido

, meaning "Way of the Warrior-Knight", is a Japanese word which is used to describe a uniquely Japanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and...

.

Junshi was also considered had the Akō rōnin

Ronin

A or rounin was a Bushi with no lord or master during the feudal period of Japan. A samurai became masterless from the death or fall of his master, or after the loss of his master's favor or privilege....

failed in their mission to kill Kira Yoshinaka. Between 1701 and 1703, the so-called Akō Affair

Forty-seven Ronin

The revenge of the , also known as the Forty-seven Samurai, the Akō vendetta, or the took place in Japan at the start of the 18th century...

furnished how bushidō
Bushido
, meaning "Way of the Warrior-Knight", is a Japanese word which is used to describe a uniquely Japanese code of conduct and a way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and...

should be judged. In 1701, the daimyō of Akō

Ako

Ako or AKO may refer to:*Akō, Hyōgo, a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan*Ako, Cameroon, a town in Cameroon*Ako, the Japanese name of Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky*Ako, the Livonian chieftain of Salaspils, killed in 1206*Alpha Kai Omega...

, Asano (Takumi-no-kami) Naganori

Asano Naganori

was the daimyo of the Akō Domain in Japan . His title was Takumi no Kami . He is known as the person who triggered a series of incidents retold in a story known as Chushingura, one of the favourite themes of kabuki, joruri and Japanese books and films.He was born in Edo as the eldest son of Asano...

, attacked the Master of Ceremonies (Kōke
Koke
A was a noble ranking below a daimyo in Japan during the Edo period. Their lands were assessed at less than ten thousand koku, making them ineligible for the rank of daimyo.Unlike hatamoto, whose duties were military, the kōke had certain privileged missions...

) at the shōgunal court, Kira (Kōzuke-no-suke) Yoshinaka

Kira Yoshinaka

was a kōke . His court title was Kōzuke no suke. He is famous as the adversary of Asano Naganori in the events of the Forty-seven Ronin...

, with draw sword in one of the corridors of Edo Castle, residence of Tsunayoshi, the fifth Tokugawa shōgun. The exact circumstances leading to Asano’s action have never been known, but Asano claimed to have been insulted by Kira. An explanation agreed upon by most commentators of the affair is that Kira had been expecting a douceur from Asano, and that he deliberately gave false or misleading instructions concering a ceremony over which Asano had to preside when this was not forthcoming. Kira received two cuts, neither of them fatal, and Asano was arrested, sentenced to death through seppuku, and carried out his sentence on the day of the attack. When the news reached, the fief of Akō Asano’s retainers discussed what action to take. The bafuku requested the immediate surrender of the fief, and some of the retainers wished to oppose this by barricading themselves in Akō Castle

Ako Castle

is a flatland castle located in Akō, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. The castle now is a national historic site.- History :This Akō castle is not to be confused with an earlier fortification located to the north. When the present castle was constructed, it took 13 years to complete the 12 gates and 10...

, an action known as rōjō, while others wanted to follow their lord in death by means of junshi, this action being called oibara. They were shocked and angered by the fact that Kira was not only still alive but also not punished. One man, Ōishi (Kura-no-suke) Yoshino, took a leading role from the beginning. He was in favor of oibara, but first sent a petition to the bafuku, requesting that the fief be transferred to Asano’s younger brother, Asano Nagahiro, titled Daigaku. Before this petition reached the authorities, however, bafuku officials arrived at Akō and the fief was surrendered. Ōishi repeated his request for the appointment of Asano Daigaku as the new daimyō of Akō, and while the bafuku deliberated, the Akō samurai could take no action for fear of compromising Asano Daigaku. After more than a year, the bafuku decided to confiscate the fief, a move which formally reduced the Akō retainers to the status of rōnin. Ōishi and the men who had previously joined his oibara plan now decided to avenge their dead lord by killing Kira. Had their mission failed, the Akō rōnin had resolved to commit junshi together. A violation of the prohibition against junshi would’ve resulted in the successor of the deceased lord being considered incompetent, and could lead to the confiscation of his fief. Thus, they would’ve committed two criminal offences.

Junshi was sometimes related to the homosexual association

Homosexuality in Japan

Records of men who have sex with men in Japan date back to ancient times. Western scholars have identified these as evidence of homosexuality in Japan.There were few laws restricting sexual behavior in Japan before the early modern period...

of the master and vassal. It was partly in this atmosphere of acceptance of homosexual relationships that the daimyō customarily employed many pages in their castles. The relationships between the master and these boys were not always sexual, but if they were, contemporaries simply regarded such liaisons as a normal part of the warrior’s lifestyle. When these boys grew into adulthood, they often became trustworthy political associates of the lord, rising rapidly through the ranks. Quite often, the former lovers of the lord willingly committed suicide after their master’s death. In such a case, the act of junshi represented the wedding of death and Eros, wrapped in the official ideology of samurai loyalty. Yamaga Sokō

Yamaga Soko

was a Japanese philosopher and strategist during the Tokugawa shogunate. He was a Confucian, and applied Confucius's idea of the "superior man" to the samurai class of Japan...

, a learned Confucian scholar who was primarily known to his contemporaries as an outstanding lecturer on military matters, centered much of his works around the theme of redefinition of the meaning of being a samurai. Feeling little attraction toward the intimate emotional world of master-follower relationships that was often of central importance, Sokō rejected the moral legitimacy of junshi, considering it to be the questionable result of such homosexual liaisons.

Background

Examples

See also