Asano Naganori was the daimyō of Akō whose actions in 1701 triggered the historical episode later celebrated as the revenge of the forty-seven rōnin. Born in Edo in 1667, he inherited the Akō domain as a child and served the Tokugawa shogunate in the ceremonial duties expected of a domain lord. In 1701 he was assigned responsibilities connected with receiving imperial envoys and worked with Kira Yoshinaka, a senior master of court ceremony, amid tensions whose exact causes remain uncertain.
On 21 April 1701 Asano drew a weapon and attacked Kira inside Edo Castle, seriously violating shogunal rules governing violence within the palace. Kira survived, but Asano was ordered to commit seppuku that same day and the Akō domain was confiscated, leaving his retainers masterless. Forty-seven former retainers later killed Kira in a carefully planned vendetta and were themselves ordered to die by seppuku. The Akō incident became one of Japan’s most famous narratives of loyalty, though later drama greatly elaborated the motives and personal conflicts involved.
In John Allyn’s 47 Ronin, in 1701, Lord Asano Naganori is ordered to receive imperial envoys at Edo Castle and must learn the court's elaborate ceremonial from Kira Yoshinaka. Kira's sustained humiliations drive Asano to draw a blade inside the shogun's palace, an offence punished immediately by forced seppuku and confiscation of the Akō domain. In Laura Joh Rowland’s The Ronin’s Mistress, Japan, 1703. Forty-seven masterless samurai kill Kira Yoshinaka in revenge for the death of their lord, Asano Naganori. In Lucia St. Clair Robson’s The Tokaido Road, after Asano Naganori is forced to commit seppuku for attacking the court official Kira Yoshinaka, his fictional daughter Kinume—known as Cat—loses the protection of her household. Believing that Kira intends to eliminate the remaining Asano family, she disguises herself as a travelling priest and sets out from Edo along the Tōkaidō road to find Ōishi Yoshio, leader of her father’s former retainers. Cat’s journey through post stations, temples, pleasure districts and villages becomes both an escape and an education in Tokugawa society. Pursued by a rōnin hired to capture her, she relies on poetry, disguise and the naginata while the former Asano retainers prepare their celebrated revenge.
