‘Oumi Genji Senjin Yakata’ was written by Chikamatsu Hanji, Miyoshi Shoraku, and the other playwrights in 1769 as a puppet play. ‘Moritsuna’s Battle Headquarters’ is the eighth act of its total ten acts. It based Osaka Winter Battle that happened in 1614. Tokugawa Shogunate Government forbade showing the play about the real incident. Especially, this battle happened by Ieyasu’s plot, so the government was very nervous about it. As the result, its playwrights changed its characters’ name. But audiences knew what this play suggested at that time. However, I’m sure that this play is interesting enough itself even if you don’t know about Osaka Winter Battle.

The cousins participated in the war as their first battle and met each other as an enemy at the battlefield. Kosaburo captured Koshiro alive and Koshiro was demanded to die for his uncle. From the beginning, Koshiro had to die for the sake of his father, though. Koshiro had a secret mission that he kills himself in order to prove the severed head of a substitute as Takatsuna, his father. Koshiro’s grandmother said that his death was very sorry because Koshiro would become a commander who had ability suitable to thousands of soldiers in the future. She said that if Koshiro grow up enough as a commander, he would kill thousands of people who were soldiers or even civilians.

If a commander killed thousands of his enemy, he would be admired as a hero. If a commander killed thousands of his soldiers, he would be condemned as a stupid commander. However, both of them are the same to kill thousands of soldiers, so it is wrong to compare them morally. There is no moral in the battlefield except ‘Bushido’. Koshiro’s grandmother knew it, nevertheless she said like that as a woman who belonged to the samurai class.

The ethics view of samurai society is not only in ‘Moritsuna's Battle Headquarters’, in kabuki plays it isn’t rare case to kill a boy. Always adults around the boy had a reasonable cause to kill him, so a good child has to die silently in kabuki plays. Although its tragedy is emphasized, nobody tries to find a method not to kill the child. I think that such a unreasonableness shouldn’t be accepted.

At the beginning, ‘Bushido’ meant loyalty, piety, bravery, honesty, courtesy, thrifty, and etc. All of them were born in the battlefield. And loyalty and piety are the main thought of them. Loyalty is the morality which makes the fundamental relationship between the lord and retainers. Piety is the morality which makes union of the clan. However, the system changed gradually its essential after the Edo period started, so-called ‘Bushido’ became a pattern. Moreover, in kabuki plays it was shown as a severe sanction.

Moritsuna gave priority on piety as Takatsuna's elder brother more than loyalty, and disobeyed his lord, Tokimasa, so he tried to commit hara-kiri as the excuse at the last of a ‘Moritsuna Camp’. It is because he was a samurai. And adjournment of hara-kiri was proposed by Wada Hyoe who was similarly a samurai. He said that if hara-kiri was committed after Takatsuna recovers, both of piety and loyalty would be respected. It was the reasonable way, and samurai never made anything, even his death, useless. Moritsuna accepted it, and this play finished.

However, I want to care who the substitute of Takatsuna was. He could have had a wife, children, parents, his own family. I wonder if his parents knew his death, or if his wife and his son cried for him. He was also the loyal retainer the same as Moritsuna. ‘Bushido’ was the great philosophy as a moral, but it was very sorry that the great philosophy has vanished now. But I think that we should get angry with such a unreasonableness that children or the substitute were killed. (2005,3,3)