In 1701, the young lord Asano Naganori of the Ako Domain was ordered to arrange a reception for imperial envoys at Edo Castle. His instructor in court etiquette was Kira Yoshinaka, a powerful shogunate official. Whether Kira demanded bribes, whether Asano failed to show sufficient deference, or whether Kira was simply cruel by nature, the relationship curdled. Another lord in the same position, Kamei Korechika of Tsuwano, nearly killed Kira over similar insults but was restrained when his counselors quietly paid Kira off. Asano had no such intervention. When Kira publicly called him a country boor with no manners, Asano drew a dagger in the Matsu no Oroka -- the Great Corridor of Pines -- and slashed Kira across the face. The wound was minor. The transgression was not. Drawing a blade within Edo Castle was a capital offense. Asano was ordered to commit seppuku that same day. His lands were confiscated, his family ruined, his retainers cast out as ronin -- masterless samurai with no lord, no income, and no purpose.

Oishi Kuranosuke Yoshio, Asano's chief counselor, understood that Kira would expect retaliation. So Oishi became someone Kira would stop fearing. He moved to Kyoto and descended into apparent dissolution -- drinking, frequenting brothels, behaving so disgracefully that his own wife reportedly left him. Spies watching on Kira's behalf concluded the Ako retainers had abandoned their duty. Meanwhile, forty-six other former retainers scattered across Japan, assuming false identities as merchants, monks, and laborers. They quietly gathered intelligence on Kira's residence, its layout, its guard patterns. The deception lasted nearly two years. When Oishi was finally satisfied that Kira's vigilance had dissolved completely, the band reassembled in Edo and renewed their oaths at a secret meeting place.

On January 31, 1703, the forty-seven ronin stormed Kira's mansion. Oishi split his force: one group attacked the front gate, led by himself, while his son Oishi Chikara -- just fifteen years old -- led a party through the rear. Before the assault began, they sent messengers to neighboring houses explaining they were samurai avenging their lord, not common thieves. The neighbors, who despised Kira, did nothing to interfere. Archers posted on the rooftops cut off any attempt to summon reinforcements. The fighting was fierce: sixteen of Kira's retainers died and twenty-two more were wounded. But Kira himself had vanished. The ronin searched every room, finding only women and children. Then Oishi checked Kira's bed. It was still warm. Behind a large hanging scroll, they found a hidden entrance to a secret courtyard. In a small charcoal storehouse, cowering among the firewood, was Kira -- identified by the scar on his face from Asano's dagger two years earlier. Oishi knelt before him, offered him the honorable death of seppuku using Asano's own blade. Kira trembled and would not speak. So the ronin held him down and cut off his head.

As dawn broke, forty-six men carried Kira's head through the streets of Edo to Sengaku-ji temple, a journey of roughly ten kilometers. Word spread fast. Crowds gathered to praise them and offer food and drink. At the temple, they washed the head in a well that still exists in the grounds, then placed it before Asano's tomb alongside the dagger. They gave the abbot their remaining money, asked for proper burial and prayers, then turned themselves in. The shogunate divided them among four daimyo lords for custody while deliberating their fate. The forty-seventh ronin, Terasaka Kichiemon, had been dispatched to carry news of the vendetta's success to Ako. On March 20, 1703, the remaining forty-six were ordered to commit seppuku. Oishi Chikara, who had fought at the rear gate, was sixteen years old. They were buried at Sengaku-ji beside their master. Terasaka was eventually pardoned, lived to eighty-seven, and upon his death was buried with his comrades.

The story fractured Japanese opinion from the start. Were the ronin paragons of loyalty, or had they violated the shogun's authority? The samurai scholar Yamamoto Tsunetomo criticized Oishi for waiting two years -- arguing that true bushido demanded immediate action regardless of outcome. But popular sentiment overwhelmed the critics. Within months, the kabuki play Chushingura dramatized the events, and it has been performed continuously ever since. Ukiyo-e masters including Hokusai, Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi, and Utamaro produced hundreds of woodblock prints depicting the raid. The story became Japan's first film subject, adapted as early as 1910. Today Sengaku-ji's forty-seven graves stand in neat rows, each marked with a stone tablet. Visitors purchase bundles of incense at the temple gate and move from grave to grave, leaving thin trails of smoke that drift across the courtyard. The annual Ako Gishi-sai festival on December 14 draws thousands. The date marks the old calendar commemoration of the raid -- a night when a group of men decided that loyalty to the dead outweighed loyalty to the living, and walked knowingly into history.