However, due to considerable public support in their favor, the authorities compromised by ordering the rōnin to commit seppuku as an honorable death for the crime of murder.

This true story was popular in Japanese culture as emblematic of loyalty, sacrifice, persistence, and honor (qualities samurai follow called bushidō) that people should display in their daily lives.

The popularity of the tale grew during the Meiji era, during which Japan underwent rapid modernisation, and the legend became entrenched within discourses of national heritage and identity.

[6] To this day, the story remains popular in Japan, and each year on 14 December,[3] Sengakuji Temple, where Asano Naganori and the rōnin are buried, holds a festival commemorating the event.

Mitford invited his readers to construe his story of the forty-seven rōnin as historically accurate; and while his version of the tale has long been considered a standard work, some of its details are now questioned.

[7] Whether as a mere literary device or as a claim for ethnographic veracity, Mitford explains: In the midst of a nest of venerable trees in Takanawa, a suburb of Yedo, is hidden Sengakuji, or the Spring-hill Temple, renowned throughout the length and breadth of the land for its cemetery, which contains the graves of the forty-seven rônin, famous in Japanese history, heroes of Japanese drama, the tale of whose deed I am about to transcribe.

[9] These documents were: In 1701, two daimyō, Asano Takumi-no-Kami Naganori, the young daimyō of the Akō Domain (a small fiefdom in western Honshū), and Lord Kamei Korechika of the Tsuwano Domain, were ordered to arrange a fitting reception for the envoys of Emperor Higashiyama at Edo Castle, during their sankin-kōtai service to the shōgun.

[13] Asano and Kamei were to be given instruction in the necessary court etiquette by Kira Kozuke-no-Suke Yoshinaka, a powerful official in the hierarchy of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi's shogunate.

By some accounts, it also appears that Asano may have been unfamiliar with the intricacies of the shogunate court and failed to show the proper amount of deference to Kira.

At the Matsu no Ōrōka, the main grand corridor that interconnects the Shiro-shoin (白書院) and the Ōhiroma of the Honmaru Goten (本丸御殿) residence, Asano lost his temper and attacked Kira with a dagger, wounding him in the face with his first strike; his second missed and hit a pillar.

After two years, when Ōishi was convinced that Kira was thoroughly off his guard,[18] and everything was ready, he fled from Kyoto, avoiding the spies who were watching him, and the entire band gathered at a secret meeting place in Edo to renew their oaths.

The Ako Incident occurred on 31 January 1703 when the rōnin of Asano Naganori stormed the residence of Kira Yoshinaka in Edo.

[23] After posting archers (some on the roof) to prevent those in the house (who had not yet awakened) from sending for help, Ōishi sounded the drum to start the attack.

(Though Kichiemon's role as a messenger is the most widely accepted version of the story, other accounts have him running away before or after the battle, or being ordered to leave before the rōnin turned themselves in.

)[31] As day was breaking, they quickly carried Kira's head from his residence to their lord's grave in Sengaku-ji temple, marching about ten kilometers across the city, causing a great stir on the way.

[32] On arriving at the temple, the remaining 46 rōnin (all except Terasaka Kichiemon) washed and cleaned Kira's head in a well, and laid it, and the fateful dagger, before Asano's tomb.

The samurai had followed the precepts by avenging the death of their lord; but they had also defied the shogunate's authority by exacting revenge, which had been prohibited.

As expected, the rōnin were sentenced to death for the murder of Kira; but the shōgun finally resolved the quandary by ordering them to honorably commit seppuku instead of having them executed as criminals.

The forty-seventh rōnin, identified as Terasaka Kichiemon, eventually returned from his mission and was pardoned by the shōgun (some say on account of his youth).

[34] The clothes and arms they wore are still preserved in the temple to this day, along with the drum and whistle; their armor was all home-made, as they had not wanted to arouse suspicion by purchasing any.

It was Yamamoto Tsunetomo, author of the Hagakure, who asked the well known question: "What if, nine months after Asano's death, Kira had died of an illness?"

By waiting a year, they improved their chances of success but risked dishonoring the name of their clan, the worst sin a samurai can commit.

The incident immediately inspired a succession of kabuki and bunraku plays; the first, The Night Attack at Dawn by the Soga, appeared only two weeks after the ronin died.

In the play, to avoid the attention of the censors, the events are transferred into the distant past, to the 14th century reign of shōgun Ashikaga Takauji.

Asano became En'ya Hangan Takasada, Kira became Kō no Moronao and Ōishi became Ōboshi Yuranosuke Yoshio; the names of the rest of the rōnin were disguised to varying degrees.

The play contains a number of plot twists that do not reflect the real story: Moronao tries to seduce En'ya's wife, and one of the rōnin dies before the attack because of a conflict between family and warrior loyalty (another possible cause of the confusion between forty-six and forty-seven).

In 1941, the Japanese military commissioned director Kenji Mizoguchi, who would later direct Ugetsu after the war, to make Genroku Chūshingura.

They wanted a ferocious morale booster based on the familiar rekishi geki ("historical drama") of The Loyal 47 Ronin.

In Hirokazu Koreeda's 2006 film Hana yori mo nao, the story was used as a backdrop, with one of the ronin being a neighbour of the protagonists.

[40] However, probably the most widely known woodblocks in the genre are those of Kuniyoshi, who produced at least eleven separate complete series on this subject, along with more than twenty triptychs.