plot ideas

[maikeruart]

I was thinking on some details in my head about a book I am working on publishing. Do you guys think, that if say a high ranking samurai (an administrator, right hand man of a lord etc.) had a son, that wrecked hell (outright killing of samurai) in the lords territory, do you think the father in the end would have to commit seppuku, regardless of his rank(lets also say he is not well liked, so the lord would want him out?

Maikeru

[lordameth]

He wrecked Hell? What did he do, kill all the demons? Free all the souls? Make everything happy and pretty?
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My blog on Japanese art & history: http://chaari.wordpress.com

紫水晶殿 - The Amethyst Lord

[kitsuno]

[maikeruart]

[Wave Tossed]

There's a film with a somewhat similar plot. It's called (in English) THE BETRAYAL. In this film, the heir of the chief retainer of a clan ends up murdering a samurai from the neighboring fief by striking him from the rear. The murdered samurai's brother comes to the fief where the murder took place (he does not know who did it) and demands that the murderer be handed over. The fief's chief retainer (the murderer's father) decides that a cover-up is needed because of the fact that the murderer is his heir. The murderer wasn't the actual heir to the clan's lordship; but he was the chief retainer's heir, which is important enough -- during the Edo period, when the daimyo was on alternate attendance in Edo, it was the chief retainer who was in charge of actually administrating the fief in the lord's absence.

In the film, another samurai is talked into taking the rap for the chief retainer's heir. He naively leaves the fief and he supposedly will be cleared and allowed to eventually return. Needless to say, things don't work out as planned and the murderer arranges for his father to die (under rather mysterious circumstances) and he takes over and Our Hero finds himself permanently on the lam. I'll let everyone watch the film to find out what eventually happens in the film, but you get the general idea.

At any rate, it's quite possible that, in your scenario, the father would try to arrange a cover-up. If his son had killed all of the samurai in the fief, the father might very well be punished by the clan's lord for being a higly incompentent administrator in allowing his son to go on this sort of murder spree. I have serious doubts that the clan's daimyo would allow the son to get much further than one murder or perhaps two at the most. Unless the son were to possess some sort of advanced ninjutsu skills that allowed him to continue unnoticed in his serial killing spree.

If the son were a crazed serial killer who isn't stopped until several murders have taken place, he would likely be decapitated once caught. I believe that his father would also have been punished for having raised such a son. The daimyo then would probably do a cover-up stating that everyone died of "illness" because he would not want the Bakufu authorities to know that a serial killer had operated within his fief -- fiefs have been abolished for a lot less.

If the son has killed only one of his fellow samurai before being caught, the father then might quietly arrange for assassination and then state that the son "died of illness" to protect his own family and position.

Anyway, it might be an interesting story: the study of a samurai serial killer. Is that what you have in mind?
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"Walk the thousand mile road, step by step" -- Miyamoto Musashi

[maikeruart]