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"The 15th year of Genroku, the 12th month, and 15th day. We have come this day to do homage here, forty-seven men in all, from Oishi Kuranosuké down to the foot-soldier, Terasaka Kichiyémon, all cheerfully about to lay down our lives on your behalf. We reverently announce this to the honoured spirit of our dead master.

They must exhaust every available kindness and civility, as was done in the period Genroku, in the case of the Rônins of Asano Takumi no Kami. The Prince of Higo, after the sentence had been read, caused paper and writing materials to be taken to their room. If the prisoner is light-headed from excitement, it is no use furnishing him with writing materials.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the period Genroku, when Asano Takumi no Kami disembowelled himself in the palace of a Daimio called Tamura, as the whole thing was sudden and unexpected, the garden was covered with matting, and on the top of this thick mats were laid and a carpet, and the affair was concluded so; but there are people who say that it was wrong to treat a Daimio thus, as if he had been an ordinary Samurai.

But in the middle period of the Tokugawa Bakufu the Genroku period, as it is commonly called the tradesman became a comparatively conspicuous figure. This now found a substitute in the haikai, which admitted language taken from purely Japanese sources and could thus be produced without any exercise of special scholarship.

By this stone stands another, graven with a longer legend, which runs as follows: "In the old days of Genroku, she pined for the beauty of her lover, who was as fair to look upon as the flowers; and now beneath the moss of this old tombstone all has perished of her save her name.

If any honourable person should find our bodies after death, he is respectfully requested to open and read this document. "15th year of Genroku. 12th month. "Signed, OISHI KURANOSUKÉ, Retainer of Asano Takumi no Kami, and forty-six others." The third manuscript is a paper which the Forty-seven Rônins laid upon the tomb of their master, together with the head of Kira Kôtsuké no Suké:

They carried two swords with gold mountings and scarlet tassels, so that when they danced in harmony with the flutes and drums the spectacle presented was one of dazzling brilliancy." Thenceforth this "Genroku dance," as it came to be called, obtained wide vogue. The same is true of the joruri, which is one of the most emotional forms of chant.

He allowed himself to fall completely under the sway of his immediate attendants, and, among these, Tanuma Okitsugu succeeded in monopolizing the evil opportunity thus offered. During nearly ten years the reforms effected by Yoshimune steadily ceased to be operative, and when Ieshige resigned in 1760, the country had fallen into many of the bad customs of the Genroku era.