For their deceased lord Ōishi [Kuranosuke] and forty-five other samurai-retainers of a daimyo in the Western region band ed together to achieve a single aim and, on the fourteenth of the twelfth month of the fifteenth year of Genroku, carried out their revenge and taken prisoner. The shogun ordered some officials to investigate the matter in detail and consider it closely; he then determined the nature of the crime, issued an order, and had the members of the band kill themselves.

Someone said:

The Three Relationships and the Five Bonds are the basis of courtesy and the principle of enlightenment, and their application does not change depending on the age, ancient or modern, or upon the place, distant or close. Further, our ancestral kings established laws and clarified regulations, spread them throughout the world, and transmitted them to us their heirs.

In particular, the relationships between master and subject and between father and son are the essence of the Three Relationships, the basis of the Five Bonds, and the ultimate of Heaven's Way and human ethics, and there is no place between heaven and earth where one car' escape from them. Because of this those who compiled the Rites said, 'One doesn't live under the same heaven with the enemy of one's master or father. That is, the urge emanates from a firm, irrepressible feeling; there's nothing personal or private about it.

In the circumstances, if you are not to allow revenge, you will in effect go against the law of our ancestral kings and wound the hearts of loyal subjects and filial sons. When it comes to killing avengers, it is worse than trampling upon the law and annulling the meaning of punishment. With such an action, how can you propose to improve human ethics?

I replied:

The righteousness of revenge can be clearly seen in The Book of Rites and Rites of Chou, as well as in Spring and Autumn Annals; also, various Confucian scholars of T'ang and Sung debated it. An especially detailed discussion is given by Ch'iu in his supplement to Lectures on Great Learning. Allow me to debate the matter from my own understanding of what is meant in various books and commentaries.

If you debate it from the standpoint of the forty-six men, carry out revenge with a resolve not to allow the enemy to live under the same heaven was something that they had to do by 'sleeping on a coarse straw mattress with a sword for a pillow.' To value one's life and live with a disgrace is not a warrior's way.

If you debate it on the basis of law, anyone who breaks the law must be put to death. Even if the forty-six men were carrying out the will of their deceased lord, they could not have escaped the fact that they were breaking the law of the land. Their act was willful and defied the authorities. To arrest and put them to death for the general populace and their descendants to see was, therefore, a way of clarifying the nation's legal foundations.

True, the two standpoints are not in the same category, but they can exist as parallel without contradicting each other. Above are a humane ruler and wise counselors, and they clarify the law and issue orders; below are loyal subjects and righteous men, and they express their indignation and carry out their resolve. If because of the law the forty-six men had to submit themselves to death, as they did, why on earth should they have any regrets?

Ancient men said, 'When a peaceful rule lasts long, the people's minds become lax.' It is of course fortunate that we should now have a world comparable to that of Yao and Shun, and that the people should be prospering and enjoying themselves as never before. As a result, however, warriors throughout the land had begun to indulge in munificence and grow negligent, to gather in large numbers and idly chatter their time away, and to learn to be content to be gentle and mild.

At such a time that incident occurred. It woke the men and excited them, made them realize that they must ever be ready to carry out a righteous action, that the ruler can have confidence in his subjects and that subjects can be loyal to their ruler.

from Sato, Legends of the Samurai