Late Edo period~Meiji period Donated by the Sakata Chuo Senior High School Alumni Association (Formerly owned by the Shirasaki family)
This doll references a story from the Chūshingura (The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), a series of fictionalized accounts of the forty-seven rōnin and their mission to avenge the death of their lord and master, Asano Naganori.
Kanzaki Yogorō, a rōnin from Ako, received a secret order from his leader Ōishi Kuranosuke to make his way to Edo from Kyoto. While resting at a teahouse in the Hakone mountains, he was repeatedly accosted by a man named Ushigorō, who was an ‘umakata’ (person who transports people and goods by horse). As he had the upcoming raid in Edo to focus on, Yogorō decided not to push the matter and safely extracted himself by writing a letter of apology to Ushigorō.
Later learning that Yogorō had been one of the forty-seven rōnin, Ushigorō was filled with regret, and spent the rest of his life repenting and mourning Yogorō’s death.