Seppuku he requested a pardon, as a result of which nine of the samurai were spared. This incident was dramatised in a famous short story, "Sakai Jiken", by Mori Ōgai. In the 1860s, the British Ambassador to Japan, Algernon Freeman-Mitford (Lord Redesdale), lived within sight of Sengaku-ji where the Forty-seven Ronin are buried. In his book "Tales of Old Japan", he describes a man who had come to the graves to kill himself: Mitford also describes his friend's eyewitness account of a seppuku: During the Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa Shogun's aide performed seppuku: In his book "Tales of Old Japan", Mitford
Samurai cinema For instance the Sengoku period (1478–1603) saw Japan torn by civil war as daimyō warlords fought for control of land. In the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), peace from civil war meant there were no wars for the samurai to fight and some samurai became ronin, masterless warriors left to struggle to survive. In the Meiji period (1868–1912), we see a decline of the hereditary existence of the samurai and the rise of westernization. In this period the ideal of the samurai and the code of bushido are popularized into the military warrior’s belief. The time frame meant changes in the sorts