In episodes 27 (aired July 13th) and 28 (aired July 27th) of the NHK Taiga drama " UNBOUND (Berabou) " (General TV, Sunday 8pm and others), starring actor Ryusei Yokohama , Sano Masayoshi (played by Yamoto Yuma) falls into the trap of "the man who was Joemon" (played by Yano Masato), and his resentment towards Tanuma Okitomo(played by Hio Miyazawa) grows, leading to him slashing at Ochi in the palace. Viewers were also impressed by the fact that Hitotsubashi Harusame (played by Ikuta Toma) is secretly working behind the scenes.
◇ Masayoshi Sano's strong murderous intent: He had smeared monkshood poison on his sword
According to the "Eichu Hasouki," a detailed account of the incident, Masayoshi left behind a statement detailing his motives for the crime. It included the following: (1) He lent the Sano family genealogy to Iechi, but it was never returned. (2) The Sano family had land near the Tanuma family's estate, and a shrine called Sano Daimyojin, which stood there, was renamed Tanuma Daimyojin at Iechi's command. (3) Iechi accepted a bribe of 620 ryo, promising to help him get an important position, but then reneged on his promise. (4) He accompanied Shogun Ieharu on a falconry and shot a bird, but Iechi lied and said that someone else had shot it, humiliating him in front of the Shogun.
The motive for this crime is also mentioned in another document. It was a document sent by the Owari Tokugawa clan's Edo residence to their chief retainer in their home province after collecting information from the shogunate shortly after the incident. Masayoshi's crime was motivated by a grudge, but the shogunate, in order to avoid making the situation worse, declared him to be "insanity" (insanity or mental weakness), and after Ichi died, ordered Masayoshi to commit seppuku.
According to the "Record of Blades Wounded in the Barracks," Masayoshi confessed that he had coated the blade with monkshood poison to ensure that he would kill Iji even if his wound was shallow.
In any case, these documents make no mention of the existence of a mastermind behind the political statements.
Was it a conspiracy by high-ranking officials of the shogunate? The claims of the Dutch trading post chief
The man who claimed the murder was a plot by a mastermind was Isaac Tiching (1745-1812), who was the head of the Dutch trading post in Nagasaki at the time of the incident. Tiching had been keeping an eye on Tanuma Okitsugu's economic policies, and had particularly high hopes for Ichi as a young politician who would lead Japan to opening up. Tiching's account is recorded in detail in "Who erased Tanuma Okitsugu and Ichi, father and son?" (by Hata Shinji and Takenoshita Seiichi, Shimizu Shoin), which closely examines related overseas historical materials, including Tiching's "Illustrated Manners of Japan."
According to Teaching, several of the highest-ranking figures in the shogunate conspired to incite political tactics and cause the incident. If the father and son, Okitsugu and Iechi, who were favorites of Shogun Ieharu, were left alone, the projects they had planned would have progressed. Furthermore, the upstart Tanuma family members were successively appointed to key positions in the shogunate. Teaching suggests that conservative anti-Tanuma factions plotted to prevent this.
Teaching was well-informed about the state of affairs of the shogunate, and it is believed that his source of information was Shimazu Shigehide, the lord of the Satsuma domain. Shigehide was the father of the wife of the 11th shogun, Ienari, and had a close relationship with Ienari's father, Harunari.
He also wrote, "The father is old and will soon die. But the son is still young and has time to implement the reforms they have been considering. There could be no greater blow to a father than to deprive him of his son." This is why he targeted Ito, not Okitsugu.
In the 28th episode of "UNBOUND," Tanuma Yoshitsugu (played by Miyao Shuntaro), Okitsugu's nephew and chief retainer of the Hitotsubashi family, asks, "Why Yamashiro and not my uncle?", to which Harumasa replies while munching on a castella cake:
"Even if we leave the lord alone, he won't have much time left to grow old. Killing the eldest son would be the truest way to weaken Tanuma's power. That's what Sano may have thought." By having Jisei explain the intentions of the mastermind that Teaching saw, it was a scene that reinforced the idea that Jisei was the mastermind.
◇The people around him watched the brutal act. Who benefited from Ichi's death?
The circumstances surrounding the incident were also strange. There were more than twenty people around the scene. Masayoshi called out to Ichi from behind, and when Ichi turned around, he slashed him in the shoulder and then slashed him in the thigh with his sword. Ichi tried to defend himself with the sheath of his wakizashi sword, but Masayoshi's momentum pushed him away and he was slashed three times in the back as he fled. He fled into another room and fell, and was stabbed in the crotch, the sword reaching all the way to the bone, resulting in a fatal injury.
The reason Ichi did not draw his sword from its sheath was because if he fought back with his sword, he would also be punished as a result of the "both parties in a fight are punished."
Ichi crawled and hid in the darkness, and when Masayoshi, who had lost sight of him, stood there in a daze, he was apprehended by the Oometsuke Matsudaira Tadasato. During this time, no one around tried to help Ichi.
The personal notes of Matsuura Seizan (1760-1841), the lord of Hirado Domain, in his "Koshi Yawa" (Yawa), include the following passage: "According to someone who was present at the scene, Taishu (Matsudaira Tadasato) was behind Sano until he raised his sword to cut him down. After seeing Sano cut down Ichi, he grabbed Sano from behind." (Modern Japanese translation) Tadasato was watching over Masayoshi until he achieved his goal.
The sword fight incident drove the Tanuma administration into a corner. Two years after Iechika's death, Ieharu, who had been Okitsugu's backer, passed away, and Okitsugu was dismissed from his position as senior councilor. When Harusame's son, Ienari, became the 11th shogun, Okitsugu sent a letter to the Tokugawa Gosanke criticizing Okitsugu 's politics and demanding that Ienari be punished. Ultimately, the Tanuma family was downgraded from 57,000 koku to 10,000 koku, the lowest rank for a daimyo. Harusame then recommended his cousin, Matsudaira Sadanobu, as senior councilor, paving the way for an "anti-Tanuma" political movement.
Incidentally, Masagen's note was promptly incinerated after the incident. The motive for the crime, as stated in the "Record of the Blade Snatchers in the Eichu" and documents of the Owari Tokugawa family, was a handwritten copy of the note by Tadasato, who had apprehended Masagen, before it was incinerated. The note not only contains Masagen's personal grudge, but also extensive criticism of Tanuma's politics, which were driven by self-interest. The existence of the note established that " Okitsugu and Ichi = evil" and "Seigen = good," and provided legitimacy for Chisei's subsequent political reforms. There remains the suspicion that the handwritten copy of the note was conveniently fabricated.
After the incident, the following rakushu poem was written in Edo: "The plum blossoms blooming in a pot, the cherry blossoms blooming, I hung my head and had Sano cut them down." While the people of Edo worshipped Seigen as a "Great God of Reform," they may have also sensed the power struggle that was brewing behind the scenes. (Text by Komatsu Kenichi)
