| Samurai Movies (30) |
April 28, 2022
|
| [Seppuku 2] In the movie of 'Ichimei', the young ronin worked as a teacher at a small private school. As his students were poor, his income was not stable. As he had a wife and an infant boy, their life was harsh. At that time, samurai's households were distinguished from other households. Nowadays, if the earnings of the husband is not much, housewives can work part time jobs. But, at that time, samurai's wives couldn't work ~for example, as a clerk at a shop, or a waitress at a restaurant. In the same principle, samurais couldn't have second jobs. But, truthfully, poor samurai, such as low ranked samurai, did indeed have side jobs, like making umbrellas. But it was just because their employers overlooked it because they knew that their salaries were too small to live on alone. In addition, wives of poor samurai had some side jobs, like making umbrellas, paper lanterns, kites, and ema: small wooden plaques in which visitors of a shrine or a  temple would receive in order to write one's whishes on the back. The front had a picture of a horse. They would also grow young garden trees, morning glories, goldfish, bell crickets, etc. in order to sell. Actually, wives of samurais did everything by themselves. They would make miso, they would sew their family members' kimonos, they would cook, as well as raise their children. They would also plant and tend their vegetable garden and make pickles, including umeboshi. The young ronin's wife was weak and sometimes laid sick in bed. The young ronin's father would sometimes visit them. But he was also poor and what he could do for the family was limited. One day, the father stopped by his son's house and found his son and his wife panicking because their son had a high fever. They had already asked a doctor once, but the fever didn't subside. The young ronin went to the doctor again, but was told that the infant boy needed expensive medicine, which would cost 3 ryou. The young ronin said that he had an idea. So he went to a han to announce a (fake) seppuku, but was forced to do real seppuku ... This movie was a remake of the movie 'Seppuku' which was released in 1963. Maybe both directors wanted to tell about the absurdity of the samurai world. "But," he thought, in the first place, if they weren't so poor, this tragedy wouldn't have happened. He had read that a lot of hans, even the Tokugawa Shogunate, were poor. Recently, he happened to read a report that a municipality analyzed why their han was poor. It was the 'Date han', now Miyagi prefecture. The reasons were: 1. Their samurai's high salary. 2. Sankin-kotai's cost. 3. Constructions' cost ordered by the Tokugawa Shogunate like the Nikko Toshogu Temple. 4. Famines. 5. Fires, typhoons, floods, earthquakes, and eruptions of volcanoes. 6. Debts from their retainers. 7. Debts from the merchants with which they dealt. 8. Military costs of defending Ezo, now Hokkaido. He was surprised because Date was a 600,000 koku han, the third biggest after the Kaga and Satsuma hans. If Date han had been poor, almost all of the other hans must have been poor as well. The second, third and eighth reasons were because of the Tokugawa Shogunate's strategy to weaken each han's power. The fourth and fifth reasons couldn't be helped. He had read that in the Edo period, from the beginning of the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century, the climate was bad in this country and also throughout the world. For the first, sixth and seventh reasons, as in any era, if governmental costs were high, and because of the costs, their debts substantial, the government would be stuck. (To be continued ...) |
| |
No. 476
*distinguish :区別する
*principle :原理
*truthfully :正直に言えば
*plaque :銘板
*morning glory :朝顔
*bell cricket :鈴虫
*tend :植物などの世話・店番・介護などをする
*subside :引く
*absurdity :ばからしさ
*can't be helped :仕方がない
*substantial :相当な量の