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Ishikawa Goemon

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File:Ishikawa Goemon.jpg
Ishikawa Goemon played by kabuki actor Arashi Hinasuke II (painting by Toyokuni III, 1863)

Ishikawa Goemon (石川 五衛門 or 石川 五右衛門, ?-1594) was a semi-legendary Japanese bandit hero who stole gold and valuables and gave them to the poor.

Goemon is notable for being boiled alive in public after a failed assassination attempt on the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. A large iron kettle-shaped bathtub is now called a goemonburo ("Goemon bath").[1]

Biography

There is little historical information on Goemon's life, and thus he has become a folk hero, whose background and origins have been widely speculated upon. In his first appearance in the historical annals, in the 1642 biography of Hideyoshi, Goemon was referred to simply as a bandit. As his legend became popular, various anti-authoritarian exploits were attributed to him, including a supposed assassination attempt against the great warlord Nobunaga Oda.[2][3]

According to one version, Goemon was born as Sanada Kuranoshin in 1558 to a samurai family in service of the powerful Miyoshi clan in Iga Province. In 1573, when his father was killed by the men of Ashikaga shogunate, the 15-year-old Sanada swore revenge and began training the arts of Iga ninjutsu under Momochi Sandayu. He was however forced to flee when his master discovered Sanada's romance with one of his mistresses (but not before stealing a prized sword from his teacher). He then moved to the neighbouring Kansai region, where he formed and led a band of thieves and bandits as Ishikawa Goemon, robbing the rich feudal lords, merchants and temples, and sharing the loot with the poor and oppressed peasants.[4] According to another version, which also attributed a failed poisoning attempt on Nobunaga's life to Goemon, he was forced to became a robber when the ninja networks were broken up.[5]

There are also several conflicting accounts of Geomon's public execution in front of the main gate of the Buddhist temple Nanzen-ji in Kyoto,[6] including but not limited to the following ones:

  • Goemon tried to assassinate Hideyoshi to avenge the death of his wife Otaki and the capture of his son, Gobei. He sneaked into Fushimi Castle and entered Hideyoshi's room but knocked a bell off a table. The noise awoke the guards and Goemon was captured. He was sentenced to death by being boiled alive in an iron cauldron along with his very young son, but was able to save his son by holding him above the oil. His son was then forgiven.[7]
  • Goemon wanted to kill Hideyoshi because he was a despot. When he entered Hideyoshi's room, he was detected by a mystical incense burner. He was executed on August 24 along with his whole family by being boiled in oil.[8]
  • Goemon at first has tried to save his son from the heat by holding him high above, but then suddenly plunged him deep into the boiling oil to kill him as quickly as possible. Then he stood with the body of the boy held high in the air in defiance of his enemies, until he eventually succumbed to pain and injuries and sank in the pot.[9]

Ishikawa Goemon is the subject of many kabuki plays. The only one still in performance today is Kinmon Gosan no Kiri (The Golden Gate and the Paulownia Crest), a five-act play written by Namiki Gohei in 1778.[10] The most famous act is "Sanmon Gosan no Kiri"[11] ("The Temple Gate and the Paulownia Crest") in which Goemon is first seen sitting on top of the Sanmon gate at Nanzen-ji. He is smoking an over-sized silver pipe called a kiseru and exclaims "The spring view is worth a thousand gold pieces, or so they say, but 'tis too little, too little. These eyes of Goemon rate it worth ten thousand!" Goemon soon learns that his father, So Sokei, was killed by Mashiba Hisayoshi (a popular kabuki alias for Toyotomi Hideyoshi) and he sets off to avenge his father's death. He also appeared in the famous tale of the Forty-seven Ronin (first staged also in 1778).

1992 video game The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (Ganbare Goemon: Yukihime Kyuushutsu Emaki). In the English-langauge version Goemon was renemed as "Kid Ying"

Goemon was the titular character of the long-running Legend of the Mystical Ninja (Ganbare Goemon) series of video games, as well as an anime series based on it, and was the subject of Tomoyoshi Murayama's Shinobi no Mono novels, which in the 1960s became a film series starring Ichikawa Raizō VIII as Ishikawa (in the series, Goemon escapes execution and another man is boiled in his place), and of the manga series Kaze ga Gotoku. He also appears as a player character in the Samurai Warriors video game series and in the games Blood Warrior, Kessen III, Ninja Master's -Haoh-Ninpo-Cho- and Throne of Darkness. The character Goemon Ishikawa XIII of the manga and anime series Lupin III, first introduced also in the 1960s, is purported to be Ishikawa Goemon's descendant (the opening sequence in the TV special Burn, Zantetsuken! shows Goemon Ishikawa XIII weeping while watching the famed kabuki performance based on his ancestor's life). He was also a subject of several silent short films such as Ishikawa Goemon Ichidaiki (1912) and Ishikawa Goemon no Hoji (1930), was the villain in the film Torawakamaru the Koga Ninja,[12] and appeared in the taiga drama series Hideyoshi. In 2009, a historical-fantasy version of Goemon was portrayed by Yosuke Eguchi in the film GOEMON, where in an unusual way he is shown as Nobunaga's most faithful follower instead of being his mortal enemy.

Characters nicknamed after Goemon play roles in the tokusatsu series Kamen Rider X and in the manga Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. GOEMON was also a nickname of a Japanese hardcore wrestler in the Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling. The method of poison delivery sometimes attributed to Goemon when he supposedly tried to kill Nobunaga has been featured in the film You Only Live Twice in an attempt to assassinate the sleeping James Bond (killing the ninja Bond girl Aki instead).[13] Ishikawa Goemon also appeared in the 1992 kabuki series of Japanese postage stamps.[14]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ishikawa Goemon.

References

  1. ^ Goemonburo - Goemon-style bath
  2. ^ Joel Levy, Ninja: The Shadow Warrior, Sterling Publishing Company, 2008 (p. 172)
  3. ^ Stephen Turnbull, Warriors of Medieval Japan, Osprey Publishing, 2007 (p. 180)
  4. ^ Template:Pl icon Skośnoocy buntownicy (Focus.pl - Historia)
  5. ^ Andrew Adams, Ninja: The Invisible Assassins, Black Belt Communications, 1970 (p. 160)
  6. ^ 9 Most Outrageous Outlaw Heroes - Oddee.com
  7. ^ Kirainet.com - A geek in Japan — Goemon
  8. ^ The legend of Ishikawa Goemon (including several pictures)
  9. ^ Jack Seward, The Japanese, McGraw-Hill Professional, 1992 (p. 48-49)
  10. ^ James Brandon and Samuel Leiter, Kabuki Plays on Stage: Villainy and Vengeance, 1773 - 1799. Vol. II, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002
  11. ^ Kabuki21: ISHIKAWA GOEMON
  12. ^ Press stills from NINJUTSU GOZEN-JIAI - Vintage Ninja
  13. ^ Shinobi no mono (1962) Movie Online
  14. ^ Template:Jp icon 歌舞伎編 - www.geocities.jp
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