Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 113 - The 47 Ronin

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Grab your butt ladles and get ready for the most epic tale of revenge in history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Allyn, John. 47 Ronin. Tuttle Books. http://chushingura.biz/ http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/chushinguranew/CHUSHINGURA.htm

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. and Ronin-G. These two will hereby be executed by decapitation and their heads put on display. Are you ready to apologize? Are you ready to grumble at my feet and beg for forgiveness? If living means bowing down to the likes of you bastards, I'd rather die on my feet than hell. That did not sound enthusiastic. And as always, I'm Joe. And with me today, 2,000 miles away is Nick. God.

I think it's like 2,000 miles. It could be. It might not be. I don't know. Coming from an undisclosed podcasting shack located on Oahu, Hawaii is me. And I wish I could say Hawaii is like really cool because like I have no idea. I'm not allowed to leave. It looks cool from the window.

Yeah, like what's going on outside looks pretty rad, but like I have no idea. The lizard tells me all about it. Yeah, a bird and a lizard have both moved in to my shack. And I'm not euphemistically using the term shack here. It's a shack. It looks like some kind of converted tool shed that someone put a smoke detector with. And that I have not seen blink, so I'm assuming it does not work. Don't need it.

There's like a closet with a bathroom in it and it has like one of those folding closet doors too like it's not it's not a motel door that slides into the door you know what I mean it's a folding closet door so like if I have to like take a dump it's so small that I have to leave

the door open because like my knees yeah because like my knees won't fit in the room that's looking awesome uh that's how it was uh taking a dump in japan for me yeah you're not a small guy yeah so that was kind of interesting it's either shit in the toilet or shit in the hole in the ground i mean the hole in the ground works it mean, the hole in the ground works. It's a squatty potty, right? It is, but I was confused at first.

I was like, what do I do here? Maybe that's the pit I throw my enemies down. Do I feed something down there? Speaking of Japan, I don't know if you knew this, but that was a solid transition. Props out to Nick. Oh, yeah. Meant to do it.

Nailed it. We're talking about the national story of Japan, the 47 Ronin. Now, I know it's pronounced Ronin. I will not be pronouncing it that way for the length of this podcast because I am not Dr. Yeah, I'm not the doctor we just had on the show a couple weeks back. Who knows what she's talking about? I'm not Dr. McCulley. Yeah, because I'm not the doctor we just had on the show a couple weeks back. Who knows what she's talking about? I'm me. But I did actually consult her about this episode to make sure I was not being a complete idiot.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, so I probably still have some things wrong. I did my best. Most of the story comes from an anecdotal source, which is largely considered to be apocryphal at best. Some people consider it true-ish with some mythology sprinkled in. This story is so popular that it inspired its own genre of kabuki play.

Kabuki play. Yeah. At this point, it's kind of like the virgin birth like there did did somebody get pregnant from god probably not uh no but like there's some dudes probably showed up with some gifts like that probably happened type thing i see what you're saying so there there's a lot of um that's that's actually a terrible comparison i don't know why i picked that uh but like there's a there's a lot of... That's actually a terrible comparison. I don't know why I picked that. But there's a lot of things in here that are definitely true,

that definitely happen. There's government records of it happening, and there's probably a lot of it that did not happen. So don't quote me. It's probably mythology. But that doesn't mean the story's not cool as hell. Awesome. They made a whole movie.

Yeah, they did make a Keanu Reeves movie with the same title. Though I do have to warn you, there is no white guys fighting demons in this episode. I've never seen 47 Ronin, so I didn't know there were demons in the movie. I don't know if demons is the correct term, but some kind of non-realistic beings. Would you say mythological? I feel like that's fair. All right. But even if this doesn't involve strange creatures from another world, it is the most legendary revenge story in Japanese history.

And in my opinion, the best one of all time. Let's get it on. Are you familiar with this at all? I know you've been to Japan. You're in a completely different part of Japan. I was curious if you ever heard about this. Not at all. I've seen the movie title. Alright. This is perfect. In order to

understand this story, you do have to understand a little bit about Japanese governmental history. Which I know sounds fucking riveting. But hold on tight, everybody. If I remember correctly, Tom Cruise. Yes, Tom Cruise is actually the Tokugawa shogunate. Now, most people would unfairly compare feudal Japan,

which this is not feudal Japan, it's the shogunate era but like some most people compare this to medieval europe right like feudal lords pretty much being allowed to do whatever they want as long as they listen to the lord or the king above them who then controlled their entire country right like i like most people are familiar with like the shogun total war games which we've talked about before or you know tom cruise fucking last samurai uh most people are aware of what this looks like it kind of i'm not going to go into it i'm not going to go into it a ton because that's like an entire other podcast series probably um but the comparison complicated it's super fucking complicated oh yeah for me it's it's a lot like trying to understand like

have you ever played any paradoxes uh uh like ultra serious strategy games like crusader kings no or never so it's all right that's not a great comparison then but somebody somebody somebody out there is like yep i get it i immediately understand what you're talking about and that is like it's as if like everyone has a feudal lord like a daimyo who's also falls under a different nearby one because they're kind of a vassal but they also fall under the shogunate who is the ultimate daimyo but he's also the commander of the military but he's not technically the ruler ruler the emperor is the ruler but the m but like the emperor is considered part kind of god so like it's below him to meddle in the daily affairs of mortals so the shogunate who controls the army is also in control of japan but not it's dumb uh

i don't mean to say that's dumb because it's like super interesting if you have the kind of personality that's or or like interest that's into that like i kind of am i do not blame anyone whose eyes just rolled into the back of their head and no longer care about what i'm saying though but i will try to explain this the best way possible because it is important to understand why the 47 ronin happened um so the government we're talking about is called the tokugawa shogunate or the bakufu uh the shogunate was for a lack of a better term a military dictatorship but not really technically they're under the control of the emperor and the shogun was the commander of the

armed forces but like i said the emperor was considered so high above mortals that like fucking around in the daily ins and outs of government was considered below him but what really was is that the shogunate controlled the military so the person who controls the military kind of does what they want and so like even if emperors existed that wanted to meddle in everyday affairs the shogunate like have a seat junior that's what it's kind of sounding like here yeah and that would eventually change with uh you know the uh the name is the meiji restoration where the emperor would become the emperor once again but like that doesn't happen for quite some time um meaning in many

cases the emperor was turned into a puppet something that we're all familiar with on this show of course that would eventually lead to all kinds of wars between people who were on the side of the shogunate and other people who thought the emperor should be in charge. We're not going to talk about that too much. So the emperor controlled the country. Sorry, the shogun controlled the country. And we're talking about a feudal system who were the lords, which most people are probably aware of things like dukes and counts and things like that. But we're going to call them daimyo for the sake because this is Japan. The daimyo controlled large tracts of lands as fiefdoms,

which were inherited down a family line or clans. Something that sticks out from Europe is that the daimyo could really just come from nothing and win their way into that position. You could do something great in the field of battle and be elevated or it also could just depend on how much rice your particular land plot of land could produce for instance in the 80 yeah for in the 80 period the tokugawa that uh tokugawa iyasu uh said that pretty much anyone who could supply 50,000 bushels of rice could be a feudal lord. That rice flex dough, I guess.

That's a lot of rice, which means you're incredibly wealthy, for sure. Obviously, money did exist, but rice was more important because that's how you didn't die. Rice was currency. You don't starve to death if you have 50,000 bushels of rice. Under those daimyo were the samurai. Obviously, as everyone is aware, the samurai were the warrior class,

who swore to serve the daimyo during times of war. Because the daimyo were rich in things like rice, the samurai were actually just normally paid in food. This meant that the samurai... That'd be fucking sweet. just normally paid in food this meant that the samurai sweet yeah uh it also meant that like the samurai survival could be completely dependent on staying within the good graces of their lord or they would starve to death oh i would hate to miss a paycheck right god uh daimyo would command their private armies made up the of the samurai. And I say private armies as in every daimyo

had their own army and they would the shogun would be like, we need the clans of Japan to ally together. Each one would command their own independent army for the most part. There's a lot more nuance to it that we're not going to get into such as inter-clan alliances

and marriages. You know how that shit works. It's any other very feudal country that's ran this way. Turns out aristocracy is bad. Big if true. But the daimyo would control these private

armies made up of the samurai, the backbone of which were actually called the Ashigaru. But they could also be raised up from the samurai class in the case of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who promoted many of his warriors to become samurai. Like regular conscripted spearmen, like, you did a good job out there, buddy.

You're a samurai now. But that changed. Yeah, that changed. Eventually, enough shoguns decided that was bad and decided, like, you can't do that anymore. You're, I don't know, cheapening the brand or something. Though in some domains... Cheapening the brand, huh? Yeah, in some domains, Ashigaro themselves were considered the lowest rung of the samurai class, but in others they weren't.

And when I say domain, I domain i mean like their fiefdom right um yeah so some ashigaru were considered like the lowest of the low for samurai which is above most other people still uh but like i'm trying to figure out what class i'd be in we would definitely be the peasantry oh yeah for sure we're not samurai oh definitely not because like even samurai were considered wealthy because they were direct beneficiaries of their domain even even if a domain is piss poor and a lot of them were they were still better off from the peasantry because they were still getting fed oh yeah i forgot their paychecks is rice gotcha yeah uh and like honor and dumb shit like that uh which is

carries a lot of weight back then i guess i would rather just like i don't know have a house but whatever but maybe a shack yeah maybe a shack in hawaii um in case anybody is wondering where those podcasts and dollars are going does not go far in oahu uh another important part of how the government work was like noble houses could simply up and disappear say if you're a daimyo who died with no heirs and like you had no established heir who's like a cousin you had no direct children no brothers whatever not even a dog yeah daimyo puppy you are now in charge uh honestly probably better ruler than most of the guys we're gonna talk about today uh but uh the the shogun would just confiscate everything that you owned what like yep family domain's gone mine now uh and like they would

then use that opportunity to like right like elevate someone else so like your clan would be gone a new clan would rise up which happened a lot like sometimes you could just like hey my heir is like that guy he's like my like my favorite aid or something and that's that's how it

worked but like if that didn't happen and the shogun confiscate everything you owned your samurai would become ronin, which are cast-outs. They're masterless samurai. This same thing could happen if you're a daimyo, if you pissed off the Shogun. And there's a lot of rules, which we'll get to, that could piss off the Shogun. But this also could be personal slights, not giving him rice that you own fucking his wife definitely fucking his wife yeah don't fuck the daimyo's wife or don't fuck don't be a shogun jody yeah that's a that's a band name i feel like that could work

like an ultimate act of exile like we're all familiar with exile like you're you're gone from the land or whatever so in japan they had the ultimate version of exile and that was the the shogun could just order you to kill yourself and then take everything that you owed yes like you'd you'd you'd have to like commit ritual suicide like we talked about before on the show a few times like you would have to kill yourself because pissing off the show because like pissing off your master and the shogun is the daimyo's master is considered like an ultimate form of dishonor so in order to get your honor back you'd have to kill yourself which is like slicing your belly open um and eventually they realized that like this is really unappealing so they instituted a second, which was as soon as you committed the act of slicing your belly, someone behind you would immediately cut your head off,

so you would die immediately. Still not any better. No. I'd be like, fuck you. You're going to have to cut my belly for me, bitch. I'm not going to do that. It's like all those movies that we've talked about, like Enemy at the Gate, where they just slide them a pistol like you know what to do. I'm like, those uh video like those movies that we've talked like you know enemy at the gates they just slide them a pistol like you know what to do i'm like no bro

you're gonna have to do it i'm a huge coward i can't do that shit you better nut up and shoot me yourself i don't think i'd be able to stab myself with a sword definitely not that shit would hurt for sure i don't think i'd have the commitment no hell no i'd give myself like a paper cut at best and like and still be like oh are you sure this hurts and it's it's not even in me really hoping for that pardon as you just slowly stab yourself and like am i honored yet do i have your honor oh the pain was the point and like you it took so long for people to die this way and you weren't allowed to just keel over and die like the whole way allowed to what

like you could just like like you couldn't like do the the seppuku participation trophy of just slicing your belly open like you had to if you cut yourself and you didn't die which it should be noted you will not die immediately you had to keep cutting yourself and you didn't die, which it should be noted, you will not die immediately. You had to keep cutting yourself until you passed out from the pain or blood loss. So you're just like going to town on yourself until you finally, your body's like, that's it.

We're done here. Like a pre-sliced Thanksgiving ham. Yeah. It's yeah. Like, sure. Except I hope nobody's eating it. Oh,

I hope not. Yeah, no, no, no. And then after all this happened, the Shogun would then confiscate everything you own and cast out your samurai as Ronin.

Because a lot of it was like, people were, now this wasn't always true. This is a very era-specific thing. But like people were worried that if we take in Ronin, they're dishonored, right? Because now they have no master. So you're supposed to kill yourself as well, right? That's the way to get your honor back.

So if I don't kill myself as a Ronan, then the next master will be like, well, I don't want to take him in. He doesn't have any honor. He wouldn't kill himself. So it's like everybody's like... How would you take me in if I'm dead? Right, exactly. That's the the point i have a resume ready i'm ready to start pointed yeah uh i'm willing to negotiate how much rice you're paying me uh but like right that wasn't always the case we'll

get to that though but becoming a ronin, obviously. Remember, there's a good chance that your livelihood and existence depended on being a loyal retainer. Oh, Ronin just sounds so cool. Yeah, I'm Ronin. Right. I think it appeals to, like, the American sense of the samurai, whereas, like, they get to be individualists. But it wasn't good. Not only was becoming a Ronin dishonorable, you were now broke as hell and unemployed.

Nobody would employ you, and nobody was now feeding you. You had no job abilities other than how to cut people with a sword. Because Ronin were supposed to kill themselves upon losing their masters, a lot of samurai recognized how dumb that was and wouldn't do it. A lot of Ronin exists because, I'm not going to kill myself because my boss was a douchebag and pissed off the fucking Shogun. Just because he farted at the dinner table doesn't mean I

have to kill myself. I really wish you understood how close you were to that actually being the case. That's awesome. When it came to the importance of court etiquette. But we'll get there. I promise we'll talk about it because it's ridiculous. Now there is a time where moving

between masters was not uncommon for samurai, but that changed during the Edo period, which we happen to be talking about. Samurai sound like they're in a kennel, and new masters come to find, I don't know, yeah, just a new samurai. They're very much not in charge

of their own lives, even though they're... I mean, nobody sympathizes with the samurai. They're dicks. That's something like, yes, sure, they might talk about honor and everything, but they were fucking assholes. I would, too.

I wore a samurai helmet in Japan. Not comfy. I mean, don't get me wrong. Samurai are cool and all, as an aesthetic and as a history. But, like, they completely exploited the peasantry and treated them like shit. So, like, I have no sympathy for anybody we're talking about during any of this. But, like, so during the Edo time, they changed it where you couldn't switch without your master's approval.

Like, if you're like, hey, I hey i don't know like my wife got a gig with google over in kamakura or whatever like i really like i really would like the pcs over there boss but like you had to have your master's approval right but your master's dead so you couldn't give you approval i feel like i don't think any masters would even agree to it. I don't know. I feel like that's just me. I have no idea how common these transfers were, but I'm willing to bet it wasn't uncommon, but it would require, I don't know, some talking. I don't fucking know.

I don't know about samurai politics, which sounds way cooler than the normal politics we talk about here uh but but the ronin were looked down upon by everyone to include the peasantry uh because like yeah because like the samurai class were highly elevated over the peasantry and the peasantry is like conditioned to honor samurai like don't even look them in the eye when they pass you bow to them you serve them for shit like that so to see a ronin who's cast out from them and looked down by all the other samurai means you think of them as as shit now you wouldn't say that to their face how did they kill you how did they get the memo that this guy's ronin you would you'd be able to tell he wouldn't

be wearing uh the right colors anymore He wouldn't belong to a domain. He would definitely start looking like shit. Cause he wouldn't be, he would have to work. Most importantly, Samurais did not work like it was normal. Jobs were considered so far below their standards that like picking up a trade is like, Holy shit.

Did you hear like Bill fucking is still carrying his swords, but now he's with a night school at the community college, and now he's a welder. You know, like nobody's, to see a samurai plying a normal trade, like weaving, like weaving tatami mats, or even farming,

was considered so far below them. So most of them had no idea how to do anything other than swing a sword. So doing that, they quickly became criminals and mercenaries and fucking bandits. Cause they're like, I can rob people with this sword. I'm going to do that. It makes sense.

I mean, sure. It's the same reason why a lot of people got the military, not to, not to compare modern soldiers with samurai, even though they'd really get hard hearing me say that. It's like, I know how to use a gun. Who's going to hire me to do that? So a lot of people end up working for triple canopy and fucking Dyncor and shit.

The army taught me how to use the cannon of a tank. Not a lot of union jobs with that. I don't think that's going on in the shack these days. No, no, no. Not a lot of union jobs with that i don't think that's going on in the shack these days no no no no not a lot of jobs but i instead of you know becoming a highly paid podcaster uh i could have gone and like worked for triple canopy and made like eight hundred dollars a day i didn't but i could have so like i get. Yeah, and, like, robbing people's fucking wagons as they transport goods is incredibly lucrative. You're a bastard, but you're not going to worry about money too much, right? So, like, it really comes, like, how you're going to weigh...

How are your morals going to outweigh how hungry you are? And I'm really happy that's not a competition I had to have with myself. Which brings us to a daimyo named Asano Naginori. Now, Naginori was the head of the Asano clan, a clan that started when his grandfather paid the shogunate $50,000. Jesus. Yeah. Now, obviously, their currency was not dollars.

It was like Koku, but like, you know, dollars are dollar dollar bills, y'all. He paid for it, which, sure, whatever. That's no different than now. How do you think half the people in fucking the cabinet and whatever administration, like, I got money. That means I'm successful, right? Welcome to America, random fucking landlord ghoul. Think of this as like a franchisee of Japanese power.

That $50,000 didn't exactly get him a whole lot, though, as the Asano clan was considered a pretty small power in the grand scheme of daimyos. Game of daimyos? I don't know. I feel like that could be a show that exists that I'd watch except like maybe keep the dragons out of it

and just make it a good show are you listening HBO I will work for you one thing Daimyos would get to do when they're ruling their weird domains small or big power they'd get appointed to weird,

mostly ceremonial roles within the Shogunate government. Uh, no, these rules would not be paid. Uh, the Shogunate would appoint these people to roles within the court because it would force them to move to the Capitol no matter where they were in the country.

So he could keep an eye on them. This ended up being something of a formalized way of keeping hostages, forcing Lords to rotate in and live in the capital, and when they were back in their domain, a member of their family would take their place and their house in the capital. So if any lords wanted to stand up to the shogunate,

they'd have to fuck around and find out, because like, oh shit, my wife's at Edo Castle or something now, and he'll kill her. Also, this entire process of moving back and forth would not like the shogun's not paying relocation fees it would be footed by the daimyo this meant that would cost up to half of their annual earnings moving their court and retainers back and forth across the country every year or so what the shogun was there's actually a really

good reason is why they did this if you're constantly moving and spending half of your money there's a probably a pretty good reason that you're so poor and tired that you couldn't rally too many people to your cause if the shogun was really unpopular i mean i guess but it worked i mean i guess it it kept the tokugawa as it kept the tokugawa's in power for a very very long time so it was successful i hate this guy but god damn it i'm tired also the tokugawa shogunate is renowned for its long peace so like it worked there wasn't a lot of uh yeah i mean does it suck i mean also you have to remember that we're almost feeling sympathy for feudal lords,

so, like, fuck them. True. I don't extend sympathy for daimyos or lords. It's a podcast rule. It's a good rule. In Naganori's case, he was appointed to the hilariously named Head of Carpentry at the Imperial Court. Head of Carpentry?

Head of Carpentry. It was a ceremonial role, thankfully, because he wasn't a carpenter. I highly doubt this guy could build a chair or something. No, I doubt it. Yeah. He's like, can I hit it with a sword? Yeah.

So, during this time working within the Imperial Court, Naginori had to undergo a training period. Because Imperial Court etiquette was pretty god damn intense, and stepping outside of that etiquette was considered a huge deal. Oh, he's doing rehearsals? Pretty much. And he has like a

coach to do it. Oh, fuck that. And the people in the Imperial Court kind of thought the asano clan was like hillbillies i'm like like the japanese version of that because they like lived out in the countryside oh the alabama of japan sure uh congrats on your football team asano clan these rights included uh like these rights and ceremonies even include include things as simple as eating or drinking or even taking a shit. Like, when you poured sake, you had to pour it in a very specific way, in a very specific order.

If you fuck that up, it's considered dishonorable and brings shame on you. Then you die. Same goes for eating. Oh, you gotta die right, too, which we'll find out. I mean, we already talked about that. You gotta kill yourself in the prescribed way, right right when you kill yourself at the table like you just fucking spill something you're like oh fuck pull the sword out right there no normally you had to like uh sit down write a death poem change into white uh get your ceremonial dagger out then there

had to be witnesses yeah it was a whole there's a whole big thing draw out this poem for say a few years this poem might take me 20 30 years to get right i don't know well it's like at the end of my book contract i have to kill myself so the third book is gonna take the next 60 fucking years shout out to my publisher guys uh but like so like when i say that etiquette included taking a shit, I was not joking. Maids would intend imperial women and men with full ladles. Like, you've been to Japan, so you know, like, they have, like, bidets when you wipe your hands, right? This is kind of like a manual bidet. Manual?

Yeah, so, like, women or men would take a shit, right? And then their attendants, men or women, would come with like a full thing of water and a ladle. So the people would then like just like lean forward and their servants would ladle water onto their butthole. Oh, yes. I remember this. Yeah. this is the first class treatment if you're like Japan Airlines or something. When I was

going through Tokyo, I had the standard bidets but then when I went through the Alabama of Japan, there were dudes in the bathroom waiting for me. It was just some guy named Phil with a ladle? Yeah, he wasn't even Japanese. Hey, you need me to ladle that butthole?

Hey there, brother. I was in the army too. God damn it. Get away. So, like, the rule was on top of that etiquette being bad enough where you have to be, like, the butthole ladle guy. I'm trying really hard to keep it together.

But, like, I keep seeing a visual and it's not going great. I got Shaq madness. So, if Spread your cheeks, sir. So, while they're ladling this butthole, if I can't. i fucking can't this is a this is a fucking job that existed okay all right one more time while they're ladling this butthole

if so the the late the ladler if their upper appendages like their like arms or elbows i'm not even talking about like their ladle hand um touches their lower appendages like their you know their legs during the act of ladling that butthole they would have to quickly retreat out of the room in reverse, right? Like, because they can't turn... Mid butthole ladling. Yes, they would have to quickly apologize. And, like, because turning your back on the ladle-y is dishonorable. And they would have to go and undergo purification. Like, you you know I guess

a guy with another ladle purifying yourselves in the waters of Lake Minnetonka and fucking come back and then continue to ladle that butthole so the dude has to stay in that position the whole time yeah I just can't

so like I think now we have to really care whose squat is stronger? This guy or a fucking Gopnik? They might be squatting a long time, right? Periodically, they have to shit. Gopniks are

just born that way. Imagine a long night of drinking, eating fucking, I don't know, Taco Bell or something, and they just fucking dominate this squatty potty taco bell got franchised in 1600 japan keep up uh and then like you're you're like in the break room or whatever for the like the local butthole later ladlers union and like they they ring the bell and you're like fuck naginori took a shit again and that dude is out drinking all night so you have to go up there and this dude dominated that toilet and you know he's got back splatter and everything and you need like five or six ladles maybe you run out of the

bucket oh man or maybe you had a long night of ladling buttholes because somebody had dysentery and because this is before like penicillin existed and like your legs are fucking tired so you like you rest your hands on your legs and you're like oh shit i have to go purify myself i'll be right back hoss you take a knee oh shit i take i take a knee for this butthole ladling anthem i could talk about this all day but i guess we should probably move on. I fucking love this. That's literally the best thing ever. That's the best job title I've ever heard on this show. The true heroes of this podcast are not Nick. They're not Joe.

They're not Laika. They're not the samurai. They're the everyday butthole ladlers. The fucking butthole ladle union we want lighter ladles i want a five minute break every time i gotta ladle this guy's butthole because you know he's got ibs and that motherfucker's hitting the squatty potty every 10 15 minutes you know what i've been at this job for 20 years and and you've already cut my benefits. This guy's got hairy butthole, so it's like peanut butter coming out of a shag carpet. It's kind of a big deal.

Who brought the Armenian to Japan? Yeah. All right. I've tried to move on from the butthole later like but i feel we're gonna come back to that got to any anyway naginori in the middle of all this was teamed up with another lord named kamiya korachika so these guys were given a job now they're both minor lords from kind of backwoods ass japan are these guys jobs shaking shaking penises after they're done dissing? We already got the Lord

ladling. See, that's how the show actually kept people in line, is by giving them the most degrading jobs on Earth. Alright. I see that you're in command of 500 Samurai. I'm gonna make you ladle my butthole. And you're gonna look up at me while you're

doing it, and you're gonna say, thank you're gonna look up at me while you're doing it you just say thank you sir what a wonderful tea party anyway so like their job was to uh uh arrange a fitting reception for the envoys of the emperor that were coming to ato castle but because these two guys were pretty much there against their will, they were going to be supervised by a high-ranking lord from within the castle. This guy's name was Kira Yoshinaka. Now, Yoshinaka, or Kira, was a toke, or a koke, however you pronounce it. Sorry, Japan. I know we're big over there. Or, sorry, the one Japanese PhD in history that we have that will be listening to this and be like, God damn it, they're pronouncing everything wrong.

Shout out to you. Now, he was the grandmaster of ceremonies of Edo Castle. He was the MC of the shit. This was his nightclub, and he was gonna have uh like ran the way that he wanted to run right this is a position so powerful within the shogunate that he was in charge of transporting the shogun's personal letters to the emperor and he would sometimes represent the shogun himself at lower level meetings oh wow or with or with daimyo's that the the shogun thought that wasn't really worth his time.

Lords appointed to this position almost always came from the oldest, most powerful clans in the whole country. In short, this is not a guy you want to fucking piss off. This is big dick guy. Yeah, this is big dick energy. He will ruin your motherfucking life if you piss him off. And not only only it's like i like the the the last of the mohicans who's like i will wipe your entire seed from this planet

he'll do that but by forcing you to commit suicide uh one of the one of the other functions was teaching people ceremonies when they came to ato castle uh for their designated kidnapping times. Because it was accepted that these guys aren't going to know how this castle ran. It's your job to keep them up to speed. So, like we pointed out before, this story is kind of a legend. So what happened next is kind of up in the air. And it depends on who you think is the good guy or the bad guy here.

Plot twist. They're all bad guys. But anyway, I'll move on. In one case, Kira is corrupt as shit, and he's demanding a bribe so large it deeply offended Naginori. Oh, this guy's asking for a bribe? Oh, yeah.

We'll talk a little bit more about bribery, but yeah. Another is that customs dictated that Naginori give gifts to Kira to show that he was appreciated for teaching him how to do the ceremony and he refused to do so leading Kira to reprimand him for a breach of customs.

Still another telling is Kira is just a fucking asshole. And Kamiya also wanted to kill Kira but was talked out of it by Naganori. Now, either way what happened next is not up for debate. Naginori drew his sword and attacked Kira, slashing him across the face before the two were pulled apart.

Who's pulling a dude with a sword apart from another? What? Probably a Kamiya. I don't know. I mean, there's people all around. I'm not getting between that. He's got a sword. To me, this is like when you try to start a fight, but you keep your arms up and it's like, hold me back! Hold me back!

He knew he wasn't going to kill him. We'll get to that point. A few things here to point out. His sword is gold. It's a reverse blade sword! What up, Kenshin? Now, I consulted with our official podcast PhD, Dr. Pakalian here,

a scholar of Japanese history. Go listen to the episode. What she told me leads me to believe that Naginori was just a fucking idiot and had something of an anger problem. One, the entire shogunate government was ran on graft and bribes. Absolutely every level it was corrupt as hell

and everybody knew it. This is something that a ranking lord of even a minor noble family like his would have absolutely known because his family was enfranchised into the nobility by a bribe. Maybe he just thought he was special in a way, I guess. I don't know. well he he would have

absolutely known that this is how things work it was a openly known fact that you bribe your way through everything it was just an everyday light it's just a part of everyday life this is like you i don't know getting pissed off that you go to the airport and you have to walk through metal detector it's just how things work. You could get mad about it, sure, but then you're going to fucking do it. But he did not. Another is, even if he was ignorant of castle protocol, he would have absolutely known that drawing his weapon and attacking a very high-ranking member of a noble family,

an official within the shogunate government and another samurai family much higher than his own would have immediately ended in his own death which we'll get to and it just seems like a huge no-no yeah it was so Naginori would have been very very very ignorant of castle protocol

I'll give him that much but nobody was ignorant to the fact of drawing your weapon with an Edo castle was a capital offense. I've never been to the castle, and I know not to draw my weapon there. Yeah, uh, obviously. Fucking plebs.

Whenever I go to Edo castle, I run with the proper respectability and do not pull my blade out. The last thing is, Naginori clearly sucked with a sword you because he jumped with a katana uh i'm gonna go with no maybe in texas i don't know hawaii has very strict open carry laws um naginori clearly sucked with a sword because he jumped a man who never drew his weapon and did not expect to be attacked because it's like,

don't you know who I am type energy and only managed to lightly wound him. He didn't even cripple him. Kenshin Himura, this man was not. Anyway, Naginori's transgression was immediately brought to the attention of the shogun, Tokugawa Suninori

Suniyoshi, sorry who immediately ordered Naginori to kill himself furthermore, Naginori had pissed off the Shogun so much that his entire domain was to be confiscated by the government and his samurai to either kill themselves with their master or to become

Ronin. Hold on Shogun bro I gotta write this poem out. It's gonna take me some time. Naganori committed suicide without much of a complaint. Writing a death poem that said, quote, more than a cherry blossom inviting a wind to blow them away. I am wondering what to do with the remaining springtime.

Yep. That's it? It turns out the remaining springtime for him was about 15 minutes. Yeah, not much. He was buried nearby in a temple in what is modern day Tokyo. We'll

get to more of where he's buried in a little bit. Okay. Now, news of this took days to reach Naganoi's domain of Akko because, you know, it's feudal Japan. They weren't exactly going to get a fight. The shogun wasn't going to slide into his DMs and be like, LOL, you're all unemployed now.

To which his samurai retainers were rendered speechless, not only because their boss was dead, because now they were also expected to kill themselves, or consider living horrible, worthless, and unemployed lives and be unable to feed themselves or their families. The retention rate in that samurai clan was low. Many of the samurai demanded that they refuse this order and defend the castle and prepare to fight the shogun's men

when they came to confiscate their late master's estate. What? Which, like, shout out to them. That's pretty ballsy. Others said they should do as their oaths commanded and kill themselves. No. And then there was

Oishi Yoshio. He was the estate's karo, or the head-ranking samurai. He told everybody to shut the fuck up. Let him figure this out. Oishi was a senior figure on the estate. As Karo, he was partially in charge of everything

when Naginori was forced to go to Edo for a scheduled shogunate kidnapping. So, like, all of... He was, like, doing most of Naginori's work. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Okay. And he was highly respected as an honorable man and respected by everybody on this estate. So if you will, this is the Keanu Reeves.

I guess. I don't know, I haven't seen the movie. Oshio turned and looked at them, or Oishi turned and looked at them and was like, whoa. Oishi told the samurai to vacate the castle when the shogutsmen showed up. And they did.

Just like that? Yep. I mean, they were going to listen to him. Hey, that's awesome. He then told his fellow samurai to accept their fate as ronin. And 47 of them did. About 250 others reportedly killed themselves.

Holy shit. I don't know how true that is. That number might be inflated to make the 47 look better or worse. Take it with a grain of salt. Okay. Kiro was not going to rest on his laurels for being a high-ranking shogunate official who just got the guy who made him a little bit uglier killed and his entire family thrown into the street. He was instead worried that the samurai

who refused to kill themselves were going to do something. Oishi was known to be an honorable and right man, and almost everybody was shocked that he seemingly shrugged off and accepted his fate as a ronin. Kira was worried about revenge, which, hilariously enough,

the shogun specifically said the ronin were not allowed to attempt to get revenge right like that was in that was in his orders like oh well i was going to get revenge for you know ruining my entire life but boss said i couldn't it's funny how he's actually scared of that like he saw it coming like kind of how often did it does it happen where r Ronin's just get together and go, hey, let's go do this shit, and it failed? Well, I think he knew Oishi,

and he also knew that the possibility was there. So he reinforced his castle, hired more bodyguards, and dispatched spies to track down and shadow the various Ronin as they began to start their new lives. But revenge was not immediately on their minds kind of instead oishi pled with the case of the asano family to the shogun

through an intermediary so uh because like the the clan already had a an air lined up so like shogun just like pass it down to him they'll apologize for for you know daddy being a dick and then we can all just move on he wasn't even asking to be reinstated as as like the caro he's like please i'm worried about my boss's family because that was his job uh all around sounds like a good guy yeah uh he he's like hyper honorable which like take that with a grain of salt as well uh because there's nothing in this rice a grain of salt as well. Because there's nothing in this... A grain of rice? A grain of rice. Nice. Well done. So a lot of this could just be to fluff up Oishi's

honorable stat. I don't know. So he asked for the family to be reinstated and their domain returned. But the Shogun refused. So Oishi gathered the other 46 Ronin together and they swore a blood oath to kill Kira and deliver his head

to the grave of their dead master. But they couldn't just like, alright, time to storm the keep, boys. The guy had turned his house into the Japanese version of Fort Knox. And they didn't exactly have an army. And they were broke. So they didn't exactly have an army, and they were broke,

so they couldn't hire any extra help, so they were on their own. Yeah, 47 dudes. Yeah. Instead, Oishi told them to bide their time. More so, they couldn't just sit around being the stone-faced samurai that we all picture in our heads right now when we think of that class.

But rather, they would have to become such fuck-ups in the eyes of their fellow samurai that nobody in their right mind would ever see them as threatening and they wouldn't worry about them. So they scattered to different domains and most importantly started doing everything that you would never see a samurai do. At least not. They were partying. At least not what you would expect a samurai to do and then expect to be respected as a person or a warrior. Some of them learned trades and took menial labor jobs.

I know that sounds like it wasn't a big deal, but this is like a general officer or a field marshal or something burning shit alongside a group of privates. Like I said, samurai in good standing were not allowed to hold what we would consider jobs. They knew only choppy boy stuff with a sword. I don't know. This was

a society that took the caste system very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that the samurai had what was called a right to strike, which I guess is a yield stand. Consider it a yield a right to strike, which I guess is a yield stand. Consider it a yield stand your ground law, which meant that they could cut down literally anybody.

It reminds me of Cobra Kai. I don't remember this episode of G.I. Joe, to be fair. Is it Cobra Kai or am I thinking of... I was thinking of Cobra Commander. You're thinking of the Karate Kid. Karate Kid. Karate Kid. Yep, yep. I would feel like that the Cobra Kai would agree with this rule.

This meant that they could literally cut down anyone from a lower class if they just thought it dishonored them. Oh, dude, that's totally the Karate Kid. That's totally the Cobras. You've got to hit someone with that fucking crane kick if they look at you sideways. Sweep the leg. It was considered dishonorable to even look

at a samurai in the eye as you walk past them. Now, regarding that right to strike, it was considered a self defense rule, but it really wasn't. Like, a lot of it had to do with like, what if this person attacked me? But also dishonoring someone was considered like a kind of attack.

Yeah, it's dumb. Kind of like, I don't know, someone not turning the rap music down was considered self-defense in Florida not that long ago. Really? Yeah, that happened. Yeah, some fat pudgy white guy unloaded his handgun into a car with a group of black kids in it

because he wouldn't turn their music down. I believe he actually went to prison after a while but he didn't get like life because it's florida and we're in the united states oh man never yeah never a good story no and no good story starts in florida unless it's like a story of the sem unless it's a story of like the seminal indians just owning the fuck out of some settlers. Remember, getting dishonored was considered a form of attack. The samurai who thought they were being dishonored would just simply have to prove to a government official

that that person that they killed totally had it coming, and they'd be good to go. Now, if you remember that this is a government that ran mostly on bribes, it should not shock you to understand they mostly got away with it. So these samurai would spread out to sell sensi or whatever, and some became monks, which was weird.

Oishi took the game to a whole new level, though. Oishi knew, as the state Karo, that Kira would be keeping a very close eye on him. And Oishi was a sly motherfucker, and he always knew each one of Kira's spies. Like, oh, that's a spy. That's a spy. Now I need to act up.

That's a spy. Like, he was a smart guy. He moved far away from Akko, moving all the way to Kyoto, and left his wife of 20 years. What? Now, he did this because he was worried about, um,

like what his, what had, what happened to his family through all this? Like he, they were still very close friends and top throughout all this, but legally they got a divorce, uh, because he knew all of his dishonorable acts and his eventual murder of Kira

would all fall back on her. I mean, yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. Like throughout all of his dishonorable acts and his eventual murder of kira would all fall back on her i mean yeah it makes sense yeah like throughout all of this they were still talking and she's like oh is she i think you're going a bit far he's like i have yet to begun to peak being a piece of shit now it's time for me to party yes um now i mean that's a fair point uh because it also went into his his shtick if you will because his his plan was to make everybody think he was going to become a worthless whoring drunk so like it looked like he had become such a worthless piece of shit drunk that his wife had just left him which you know works luigi knew that the more he got people talking spreading rumors and what have you uh the more that all of those

are trickled back to kira and more that his spies would see and because villagers and nobles of the tokugawa era apparently chatty fucking kathy yeah they sound like a bunch of fucking gossip queens god yeah this worked really well uh he also would go further than anybody thought to go he did go out and become worthless drunk but in order to get the word out he would have to act like a drunken idiot in public spaces so he went to geisha houses where people could see it uh spent way too much money got drunk and loud and made an ass of himself um like to the point that like other people like god damn uh soon rumors were spreading fast and like uh he was like he would moved from like one place to another throughout the course of the night and like just drink

all night long stumbling from point A to point B verbally and physically accosting people in the street like he would just punch people scream at them I'll ladle it I'll ladle the shit out that butthole uh quite literally that's the job

uh Oishi and his group would frantically move about the city at all hours of the day, hitting up places seemingly at random, but everything was actually planned out. Oh, they were bar hopping. Well, kind of. He went to so many different places that he forced Kira to hire more and more spies to cover Kyoto, as they had no idea where the seemingly drunken, insane person would go next. Kyoto as they had no idea where the seemingly drunken insane person

would go next. As he placed more spies, Oishi would discover them and ensure their next drunken shitbag parade would hit up that place next so they'd have more to report. Oishi also purposely picked out the poorest place in town, like the bars, the tea houses,

or whatever, that someone of his standing should have no business in whatsoever. I like a dive bar i like a good dive bar and actually one of the geisha places that he got drunk at the most still exists to this day really yeah yeah um it's it's a historical place obviously but also it's still a geisha bar so cool sweet um so the spies reported back to kira what they were seeing that this that these like feared group of ronin weren't planning anything, and in fact all they were doing was spending all their money like idiots

drinking and fighting random people on the street who were just trying to go about their way. You wouldn't believe this. These guys are party animals. I mean, most people would recognize what I just explained as just being a lower enlisted person in the military, not a samurai. But the act would not end there.

In one interaction, Oishi runs into another group of his former Akko samurai, a man named Hara Mototoki. Hara began screaming at Oishi for becoming such a disgrace and looked like he was about ready to kill him. And had to be separated by another group group but it was all an act oh nice like they did this all the time another occasion a group of ronin acted concerned for their former boss so they purchased a full-time geisha that would just follow him around and care for him, hoping it would calm them down. But in reality, she was also in on it. This is awesome. This is juicy.

I like this. This is like a heist film. We're at the very end. He's like, ah, but actually this is a better oceans movie. And another act, Oishi pretended to pass out drunk on the side of the road and stay there all

night. Uh, I need to point out that Oishi was not actually, yeah, he wasn't actually drinking because he had to keep his wits about him in order to like make this all look good like this is all very very good planning he did all this in public he could have very easily just got drunk at home he had tons of money that's commitment yeah so like he would just like up get him to go lay down the street and sleep all night so when he was laying on the street, a passing samurai from the Setsuma domain saw

him lying there, was upset that a samurai, even a ronin, was being so dishonorable, and just began to physically assault him, punching, kicking, and spitting on him. Oishi, who, remember, was not actually drunk, did not retaliate. Instead, he just laid there

and got these shit stomped out of him. It's all a ruse. This is commitment to a bit, man. This act of drinking, whoring, and fighting, and all around destroying their reputations went on for 14 months. Fuck that. Now, this is obviously

commitment to the bit, but it's now heralded as like being just so committed to your master to do all this thing all these things um the author of the hagakure which is a really good book i recommend everybody uh reads it's really good um as at least as a historical piece to understand a lot of this stuff pointed out that while he understands why nagadori did what he did he should have just attacked kira because during these 14 months where you're just going around wrecking your life in order to get closer to him what if kira just kills over from a heart attack true and then you're like what do you how do you recover from that you're like guys i was just

kidding i wasn't actually drunk this whole time the time i pissed my pants it was a joke it was a bit it's totally everything's clever ruse i was playing yeah everybody's like all right whatever junior like nobody's gonna believe you yeah like you you've ruined your reputation now you're gonna have to kill yourself for sure uh and you didn't get revenge but But, you know, whatever. That's just one guy's opinion, I guess. Only when Oishi was certain Kira no longer saw him as a threat and let his guard down, did he summon the rest of the band of Ronin to come back together. How did he summon them? He sent them letters.

All of them had stayed in contact this whole time. And a lot of them had slowly migrated towards the capital. Ooh,osing in. Yeah. He'd also moved slowly as ordering weapons and having them shipped to a building near Kira's estate, near Kamakura. It would

have facilitated some suspicion, so he had to do it piece by piece through all of this time. Huh. People might be like, huh, why is that guy ordering so many sets of weapons and armor? Why is he ordering so many handles?

And then the next week, metal. I would assume that Nick Cage's character from Lord of War was somehow involved. Oh, dude, for sure. Had to. So you just see, like, Naginori breach the walls with an M60. Naginori's like, I want the gun from Rambo.

Yes. The first blood. First blood. The only Rambo. In case you were wondering how Oishi made sure people that he was working with, like on the weapon smuggling and stuff, were loyal to him, he did so in the most insane way possible.

He and several other of the ronin dressed up like policemen and confronted him with evidence that they were smuggling weapons that the weapon smuggler that is the merchant said instead like and like the police were like i heard this had something to do with oishi and the weapon smuggler instead said no this is just me trying to make money you can just kill me and my son oh what yeah you think the son was in the back like hold on a sec they can do what yeah so like the kid just got volunteered to get fucking got so like uh like just completely taking blame not ratting them out or whatever uh so then oishi revealed

that they weren't actually cops and like you just got punked oh we got you so good you should see your fucking face you offered your kid rather than selling them out to the cops after that for being unhinged psychopaths the merchant then invited Oishi and his men into their house for dinner to prepare them for their long trip to Kira's estate. Yeah. So, on Genroku 15, or December 14th,

1702, for those with the Gregorian calendar, in the middle of a heavy snowstorm, the 47 ronins set off towards Kira's castle. Before they left, Oishi gave his teenage son, Chikara, the option to leave and return to his mother rather than go through and fight. Now, remember, all of them are going through this fully accepting that they are going to die. Nobody expects to survive this shit.

I wouldn't expect them to survive at all. Chikara chose instead to stay with his father. So, the plan was to split up, and two groups attacked the castle from the front, and one attacked the... Sorry, they split up in two groups. One attacked the front, one attacked the back.

One of those groups was led by Oishi, and the other was led by his son. Front door, back door method the old pig roast the castle uh yeah and like their their signal was a loud drum being played at which point both attacks would be launched simultaneously playing the drum uh i assume the guy from metallica he seems pretty old no then Then he would just sue them for pirating his music.

That doesn't work. Anyway, Lars Ulrich, if you're listening, go fuck yourself. I really like Napster, you bastard. I'm old, alright? I like Napster. Oishi even thought ahead to talk to Kira's neighbors, who were also fellow lords

with samurai at their disposal and like bodyguards and like lookouts and what have you. He knew that they would hear and see the fighting and maybe intervene which would totally ruin their plans because remember they only brought 47 people. Right. So he told them their entire plan and ensured them that they would not be

setting on it any fires to the castle so they wouldn't spread. They wouldn't have to worry about any of that. We're like this isn't going to get out of control. We just came here for Kira. We're Naginori's retainers. Huh. And this is where I totally believe that Kira is an asshole because not a single one of

his neighbors went and warned Kira that nearly 50 men were coming to murder him. Sounds good to me. Alright, just keep it down after midnight, y'all. Yeah. As the battle begins, the Ronin surprise the castle guards who are mostly asleep after a night of drinking.

Because what would you do if you're on fucking night watch in the middle of a snowstorm? The guards rushed out to fight the Ronin without armor or even shoes in the snow, and they fought for over two hours. What?

The Ronin chased them enough, killing or wounding all of them for the cost of only four lightly wounded. Now, some say that they killed like 40 of Kira's samurai. Another said they killed like 20. It's whatever. The fact is they won won and they didn't lose a single one after dispatching kira's guard they found the man himself hiding in a storage shed in his underwear is that what you're doing right now uh yep i'm actually out running a group

of samurai that i pissed off in washington um Kira was terrified and did not even try putting up a fight. I mean, would you? I mean, no, but also you know these guys didn't come to arrest you, right? You might as well take a chop at one of them with a sword so they can stab you real fast

because you're getting stabbed to death. This isn't happening quickly. Do we know that? Maybe it was quick. It was not. I'll tell you why. Hey, it's cold outside. We gotta go.

I will tell you why. Oishi produced Naganori's dagger, the same one that he had used to disembowel himself on the Order of the Shogun. Dude kept it? Oh yeah. Alright. Oishi handed it to Kira

and demanded that he kill himself with it. Huh. Kira refused and began to beg for his life. Oishi, being the bro that he is, committed to the act of ritual suicide, he ordered some of his boys to pin Kira down and ritually killed himself for him

by slicing... by stabbing him repeatedly in the gut and letting him bleed out. some of his boys to pen cure it down and ritually killed himself for him. By slicing? By stabbing him repeatedly in the gut and letting him bleed out? Oh, fuck. I forgot I didn't write the poem. I didn't even start it. Don't worry, bro, I got you. Hey, Jim, Bill, hold this motherfucker down. We're gonna sepiku his ass.

Hey, Ted, write his poem. Yo, my name is Kira and I was was a baby-backed bitch all the way till the end. Doesn't really flow, but whatever. Go fuck yourself. Afterwards, they tore out his insides and cut his head off. Jesus Christ. Maybe he should have done something. Pretending he was going for a gun.

Well, they're not the cops. Oh, that's true. Somewhere in the background, an LAPD guy is like, nah, he's good. He's fine. Yeah, just waiting off in the back yelling. Clear. Oishi's like, did he just say a slur? One of the young Ronin was sent to return to Akko and deliver the news that their master had been avenged.

The rest of the Ronin walked towards the temple where their master had been buried. And they were greeted by throngs of cheering civilians and samurai alike who lined the street the entire way because they knew what had happened. This is a movie. And then everybody cheered. That samurai's name? Albert Einstein. They placed Kira's head on their master's grave, sat down, and waited.

Word of Kira's murder quickly spread back to the shogun, but there was a problem. Pretty much everybody respected and agreed with what Oishi and their rona did, reminding samurai that they were supposed to be warriors not lazy bureaucrats like they had become during the long years of peace during the Tokugawa era

it had been a long time since samurai had been warriors like these guys were fucking I don't know paperwork pushers pretty much people hoped that this return of the warrior spirit of the samurai class from the ronin would mean that they would be pardoned by the shogun himself. And the shogun was about to grant them clemency.

He's like, you know what? I respect your hustle. You're good. What you did was bad ass. Yeah. One of his advisors reminded him that it might not be a good idea to encourage widespread blood revenge killings because the Shogun had ordered so many people to kill themselves. Sir, you're kind of in the hot seat here. It's DJ Khaled in a fucking kimono, sir. You just played yourself. And another one!

Just another revenge killing. Yeah. And another one! Just, blah! Another revenge killing. Rather than order them executed, the Shogun allowed them in to kill themselves in the way that their master had. So they allowed them to die like warriors.

The Ronin had been held under house arrest by various different Daimyo during this decision-making process, like split up into small groups so they could be better watched. And the Daimyo that were watching them supported them and like respected them so much that they waited until midnight like a fucking texas execution hoping that the the shogun would change his mind oh wow so like and the ronin like yeah i'm ready to kill myself let's just do this and the daimyo like wait

wait wait wait wait wait the shogun might come around. I'll give it a second. He's, he might come around. He's a pretty cool guy. Yeah. So on nightfall, uh, that's unfortunately did not happen. All of the Ronin, but one,

the man who ran to Akko, who was not arrested and, and included, uh, he's, he's still at large. I assume he's probably dead by now unless he's the Highlander. And we then fucking, uh, took a gun. Japan itself has bigger things to worry about. Is he still that large? I assume he's probably dead by now unless he's the Highlander.

Then fucking Tokugawa. Japan itself has bigger things to worry about. This included Oishi's 16-year-old son, by the way. All killed themselves. That kid's got more commitment than I do. Yeah. Yeah, if my dad is like, I don't know, like, my dad's like, hey, you want to come buy meat with me in the fucking Eagles Club parking lot?

I'm like, nah, man, I'm going to stay here. They were buried alongside the... Is that where you guys used to get your meat from? A parking lot? Oh, yeah, dude. Like, he had a meat guy that would, like, steal it and then sell it. I mean, we've gotten meat out of like a trunk before but not a

fucking parking lot oh yeah they met up at the eagles club because that was the place that like it was a bar it was like a private club for like poor people i guess but they also didn't mind if he did coke in the bathroom so he was a huge fan oh nice yeah so all of the ronin were buried alongside their dead masters and their graves quickly became pilgrimage sites across Japan for peasants, samurai, and daimyo alike. Wow. And they're still there. Actually, one of the funniest parts about this whole thing is

if you visit Oishi's grave today, you'll see some hints of this. But the first person, or, but the first person, or one of the first people to visit Oishi's grave was that Setsuma Domain samurai who had beaten the shit out of him, and then he killed himself on the spot in Atonement.

What? Yeah. I got mad respect for you, bro. Imagine being the guy in charge of keeping all these graves, like, goddammit, somebody else killed themselves here. The fucking nightkeeper just comes in.

Goddammit. Just mopping up blood and shit. Just pissed off. Somebody get the butthole ladle guy to help me. Hey, he's gonna pick enough problems, man. Don't bring the butthole ladling guy into this. So, the people of japan were pretty pissed about the shogun for uh uh ordering these men to to die so he reinstated the ako

domain like and gave it back to the naginori family or naginori's asano clan which this is important he could have just done all of this at the very beginning like Oishi had asked, and none of this would have happened. Alright. Surprised there weren't more Ronins going after this guy. Eventually Kira's family came to the temple because

they brought his head there and they're like, we need his head to bury him, right? So he Can we have our dude's head back please uh so they went to retrieve his head so he could be buried with his body uh but because it had been checked into the temple by monks it had to be checked out on a ledger by monks as well so even today if you go to the temple there's a ledger there noting that one human head had been removed from a grave. It's like a 2062.

Yeah, yeah, I gotta hand receipt you this motherfucker's head. Hold on, hold on, let me inspect it before you get it. Shouldn't there be a body attached to this? No. What it says right here, it says one head. Well, one head slightly used. So, Nick, we do a thing on this show called Questions from the Legion.

I thought we were going to start butthole ladling. I am not. That's actually, I tried to go to a butthole ladling night school and I don't have the deft touch for it. You'd have to know what the ladler wants the water temp at. I assume it's gotta

be warm, right? Like nobody wants ice cold water poured under their bowl. No, but you know how some people are where they want the shower steaming hot and some people want it just right warm. That's fair. Yeah. So yeah, you know, that's are where they want the shower steaming hot and some people want it just right warm. That's fair. Yeah. So yeah,

you know, that's kind of hard to do. So our question from the Legion today, uh, it has, if we were not a military history podcast, what kind of podcast would you be? I guess we can't even call ourselves a military history podcast all the way. We just cover history now, I guess.

But what kind of podcast would you be if you're not the podcast you currently are? Legos. A Lego-based podcast? Yes. It's just an hour of us pouring Legos out on the floor and stomping on them. This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted. This is what you wanted. That's a very,

that's gotta be a fetish of some kind, right? It has to be. I would probably say a movie podcast because whenever, like one, it's like, I still have to do research, right?

Like, and I, I'm a, I'm a research hog. It's what I enjoy. I'm fucking content pig for research hog it's what i enjoy i'm fucking content pig for research but also like some of our best episodes have been us screaming at movies i think um and they make for great content because there's a lot of terrible movies out there that

we have to keep watching that we do have to keep watching that are also are it's low-hanging fruit right right like we have to scrape through hit like thousands of years of history to find funny donkeys or like badasses or dumb tanks every once in a while or whatever but like movies already got that all laid out for you like somebody hired nick cage again i guess we're watching that movie. Like, you know, it writes itself, which is why there's so many podcasts out there like that.

Um, but yeah, it's low hanging fruit and, and the jokes normally written for you. Right. It's great. The work is done. Nick,

that is the 47 Ronin. How do you feel? Fucking awesome. That was great. Yeah. I really liked it. Not enough yield Japan content on this goddamn podcast, let me tell you. Oh, man.

I love Japan. Would love to hear more. I'd really like to go there and go to the 47 Ronin site. If I do, and I do plan on it because I'm marketably closer now that I'm in Hawaii and the flight is much more tolerable. If Americans are ever allowed to go to another foreign country again after all of this, I'm going to salav squat directly in front of this

temple. It's going to happen. I'm fucking down. It's not disrespectful. It's not like I'm going to pop a gopnik squat right on Oishi's grave or some shit. But nearby. I feel like nearby is fine.

It's a respectful slob squat. You've got to squat one out for your homies, right? A respectable distance. Yeah. It'll be a mournful slob squat. And this squat I show that I am in mourning. Until somebody brings a dagger to you.

I deserve it at this point. Nick, thank you for joining me. Everybody, thank you for joining us. And we will see you next week. Until next week, ladle that butthole, folks. Yes. Later.