Interview with the Translator: Hills of Silver Ruins, Fatalism

Kate: In Book IV of Hills of Silver Ruins, several supporters of Gyousou determine to go down fighting. Better that option than the alternative.

The "go down fighting" trope appears quite often in action/fantasy stories. It does seem to have an undercurrent of fatalism here--less "no man left behind" and more "captain goes down with the ship." Taiki is fully prepared to die (and possibly pay for what he perceives to be his sins).

Is stoic fatalism a trope in Japanese art? Is there any cultural connection to kamikaze pilots? Or was that custom an outlier even by Japanese standards? 

Eugene: This stoic fatalism, to go down fighting against all odds, was once seen as the ideal expression of bushido, the Zen-inspired martial code that underpinned samurai culture. Hence the near deification of historical figures like Minamoto no Yoshitsune and the Forty-Seven Ronin. Both were immediately popularized in the historical dramas of the day. The latter so much so that the government found itself in a quandary.

To review, a young daimyo was provoked by a haughty court official into drawing his sword within Edo Castle, a very big no-no. As punishment, the daimyo was ordered to commit seppuku, his lands were confiscated, and his samurai disenfranchised. A year later, these forty-seven ronin (masterless samurai) carried out a carefully-planned revenge and then gave themselves up to the authorities.

The shogunate couldn't openly condone such actions. Like cowboys slinging guns, it was fine for samurai to carry swords as long as they didn't use them very often, if at all. Yet, they couldn't openly disparage such a spirited execution of bushido ideals. Similar political conflicts, arising out of this surfeit, not paucity, of martial "honor," did not end until the final devastation of WWII.

So the forty-seven were ordered to commit seppuku. And by complying, cut through the Gordian knot. The shogunate could celebrate the values of the ruling samurai class while warning that, take them too seriously and you may have to nobly die for them. This provided a politically tidy conclusion to the affair, and the general public with a satisfactory ending to a great 17th century reality show.

The government sponsored a two-part cinematic version in 1941 and the kamikaze grew out of that late-stage wartime fanaticism. The general public soured on the idea as soon as the war was over, leaving it to the far right and the yakuza to pick up the mantle, though the yakuza only symbolically committed seppuku by chopping off their pinky fingers.

 https://tubitv.com/movies/610633/the-47-ronin-part-1

https://tubitv.com/movies/610632/the-47-ronin-part-2