The Media and Politics of Japanese Popular History: The Case of the Akō Gishi

All cultures, from ancient to contemporary, retell tales of heroes of the past, over and over again. Modern Japan seems especially inundated with this kind of popular history, as such stock characters as Yoshitsune, Hideyoshi, Musashi, and Ryōma are endlessly recycled in plays, films, TV specials, and historical novels. How did this pattern come to pass? Why have certain stories persisted and flourished so much longer than others? This essay examines the single case of the 47 Rōnin—known more widely in Japanese as the “Gishi” 義士 (‘Righteous Samurai’) and still more broadly as “Chūshingura” 忠臣蔵 (after the kabuki tradition)—in an effort to probe the historical dynamics of the way in which certain stories have thrived, while others have fallen by the way. The answers are not simple, and I wish here to pursue one particular theme, of the way in which the historical evolution of the changing media of communication has worked in concert with politics to enable certain types of stories to achieve special preeminence. “Historiography” by its very etymology privileges written texts, but a true historiography of popular history forces us to broaden our range to embrace the performing arts and particularly their modern perpetuation in film and television.