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AMHERST
Doris G. Bargen, Professor of Japanese Studies,
LUKE ROBERTS University of Massachusetts Amherst
SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2013
Opening Remarks:
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT SANTA BARBARA Daniel Gordon, Professor of History and Associate HERTER HALL 301, 2-5 PM
Dean of Commonwealth Honors
Luke Roberts is professor of Japanese History at the University College, University of Massachusetts
Amherst
THE VENDETTA
of California at Santa Barbara. His research interests include early
modern Japanese social and economic history from 1500 to 1900.
Among his major publications are MERCANTILISM IN A JAPANESE
DOMAIN (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Presenters:
PERFORMING THE GREAT PEACE: POLITICAL SPACE AND This symposium provides a forum for
OPEN SECRETS IN TOKUGAWA JAPAN (Honolulu: University of 1. Carlin A. Barton (History, University of discussing the motivations, forms of
Hawaii Press, 2012), and JAPANESE FISHERMANS COATS FROM Massachusetts Amherst):
execution, and the resolution and
AWAJI ISLAND, with Sharon Takeda (UCLA Fowler Museum, 2002). consequences of vendettas in ancient
His current project is a biography of Mori Yoshiki, an 18th-century The Vendetta and the Breakdown of the Sacrificial
samurai of the Tosa domain. He is interested in understanding the origins System in Ancient Rome Rome and medieval and premodern
of nation states and specializes in the history of the Edo period. Japan. The speakers will address the
2. Thomas D. Conlan (History and Asian Studies, socio-political, religious, legal, and
Bowdoin College):
ethical ramifications in text and image.
"Slaying for Rudeness (bureiuchi):
The Law and its Application in Tokugawa Japan" The Judicial Function of Violence in Japan (1280-
1595)
In Tokugawa era (1600-1868) Japan it was a capital offence to
be rude to a samurai and it was a samurais duty to cut down a person of 3. Stephen M. Forrest (Japanese, University of
lower status who was deliberately rude. This law, called bureiuchi Massachusetts Amherst):
(slaying for rudeness) or kirisute gomen (permission to cut someone
down) was similar to Tokugawa era vendetta law in that it was If You Want Blood: Vengeance, Virtue, and
government licensed individual violence that was supposed to help Violence in Late-Edo Pictorial Fiction
maintain the social order. Yet violence is inherently disruptive, and the
application of the bureiuchi law was complex. Samurai who used the 4. Luke Roberts (History, University of California at
law were often punished. This talk will analyze actual cases of bureiuchi Santa Barbara):
in the domain of Tosa to reveal what problems it caused and to better
understand how the legal system in Tokugawa Japan actually worked. Slaying for Rudeness (bureiuchi): The Law and its
Laws were a face of the government, but it was a world in which little of Application in Tokugawa Japan
importance should be taken merely at face value.