u/Mammoth-Inspector891

There is a popular story about Ranjatai:

“Only those recognized as the rulers of Japan were permitted to cut off a piece of it and enjoy its fragrance.”

According to this image, receiving permission from the Imperial Court to open the Shosoin Repository, cut a small piece from the famous aromatic wood stored inside, and burn it as incense was almost a declaration that one had been acknowledged as the ruler of the country.

And when you look at some of the names associated with Ranjatai, the story sounds quite convincing.

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Ashikaga Yoshinori, Ashikaga Yoshimasa, Oda Nobunaga, and Emperor Meiji.

The most famous case is probably Oda Nobunaga.

In 1574, Nobunaga requested permission from the Imperial Court to open the Shosoin and have pieces cut from Ranjatai. Even today, a paper label attached to the wood marks the place traditionally associated with Nobunaga’s cutting.

But what exactly is Ranjatai?

Ranjatai is an enormous piece of aromatic wood still preserved in the Shosoin in Nara. Its official name is Ojukuko, while the name “Ranjatai” is written with characters that cleverly contain the characters for To-dai-ji — Todaiji Temple — hidden within them.

The Shosoin itself is an extraordinary historical institution.

Its origins are closely connected with the death of Emperor Shomu in the eighth century, when Empress Komyo dedicated many of his personal belongings to Todaiji. Over time, numerous objects connected with the Imperial Court and the temple were preserved there.

Its collection includes textiles, musical instruments, vessels, furniture, documents, and works of art showing connections not only with Tang China and the Korean Peninsula, but also with cultures further west along the Silk Road.

In that sense, the Shosoin is much more than an ancient warehouse.

It is something like a gigantic historical time capsule, preserving objects that allow us to look directly into the material culture of Nara-period Japan and its connections with the wider Eurasian world.

So the idea of being allowed to cut into an object that had been protected inside such a repository for centuries certainly sounds like an extraordinary privilege.

However, the historical record makes the situation more complicated.

Not everyone who obtained Ranjatai could reasonably be described as the ruler of Japan.

One particularly interesting example is Hatakeyama Yoshifusa, the shugo lord of Noto Province in the early sixteenth century.

Yoshifusa was an important regional lord, but he was neither shogun nor ruler of the country.

Nevertheless, court records indicate that he received Ranjatai from the Imperial Court, apparently on more than one occasion.

Yoshifusa maintained close relations with the court and repeatedly sent money and regional products from Noto as gifts. After receiving Ranjatai, he also sent money in return.

This suggests that Ranjatai was not simply a certificate proclaiming:

“This man is the ruler of Japan.”

What mattered was not only military control over the country.

A person also needed the social standing to maintain relations with the Imperial Court, the ability to participate in the courtly world of ritual and gift exchange, and enough wealth to sustain those relationships.

Receiving Ranjatai could therefore serve as a visible symbol of political access, status, wealth, and connections with the Imperial Court.

The physical condition of Ranjatai itself makes the story even more interesting.

Today, labels identify cutting sites associated with Ashikaga Yoshimasa, Oda Nobunaga, and Emperor Meiji. But examinations of the wood have found many more cutting marks than those three alone.

In other words, the few famous historical figures whose names are attached to the wood were clearly not the only people to receive portions of it.

So the simple formula —

“If you could cut Ranjatai, you were recognized as the ruler of Japan”

— is probably closer to a later popular legend than to the full historical reality.

Of course, when someone as powerful as Oda Nobunaga obtained permission to open the Shosoin and cut Ranjatai, the act carried obvious political significance.

But Ranjatai was never exclusively reserved for men who ruled the whole country.

It may be more accurate to see it as an exceptionally prestigious object that demonstrated something slightly different:

How close could you get to the Imperial Court?

Did your family possess enough status to participate in that world?

And did you have enough political and financial power to maintain that relationship?

Seen from that perspective, Ranjatai is much more than an old piece of fragrant wood.

Who requested it, who received it, who cut it, and what they offered to the court in return all tell us something about the relationship between Japan’s warriors and the Imperial Court over many centuries.

The cutting marks left on a single piece of wood have become a record of political relationships themselves.

It is, in a sense, a piece of political history that still carries a fragrance.

And one final note:

Ranjatai is now an irreplaceable historical artifact. So no, unfortunately, cutting off a piece without permission and declaring yourself the new ruler of Japan is no longer a viable political performance.

In English, death poem is probably the closest translation, although a jisei is somewhat different from simply being someone’s “last words.”

A person might compose one after realizing that death from illness was near, before an execution, or when a warrior believed he was unlikely to survive an approaching battle. Nor were they necessarily improvised in the final moments of life. Some were prepared beforehand.

There was no single required form. Many famous examples by warriors were written as waka, poems following a 5-7-5-7-7 rhythm. Buddhist monks might instead leave a Chinese-style poem or a Buddhist verse, while poets of the Edo period sometimes composed haikai or hokku.

What makes jisei particularly interesting is how differently people wrote about the same unavoidable subject: death.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of the three great unifiers of Japan, is traditionally credited with these lines:

露と落ち　露と消えにし　我が身かな

浪速のことは　夢のまた夢

Like dew I fell,

like dew I shall vanish.

All that happened in Naniwa

is now nothing more

than a dream within a dream.

Hideyoshi had risen from relatively humble origins to become the ruler of almost all Japan. Yet at the end of his life, everything he had built in Osaka — his power, wealth, victories, and ambitions — was reduced to a “dream within a dream.”

Tokugawa Ieyasu, who would establish the shogunate that ruled Japan for more than two and a half centuries, is traditionally said to have left:

嬉しやと　再び覚めて　一眠り

浮世の夢は　暁の空

How pleasant —

to wake once more,

then sleep again.

The dream of this floating world

fades into the dawn sky.

There is something almost conversational about it: waking up, being pleased to find oneself awake, and then deciding to sleep once more.

Yet the “sleep” is death, and the entire human world has become a passing dream at daybreak.

Hideyoshi and Ieyasu were both men who reached the summit of political power, but the tone of the poems associated with their deaths is noticeably different.

And then there is Oda Nobunaga.

One of the lines most commonly associated with Nobunaga is:

人間五十年、下天の内をくらぶれば、夢幻の如くなり

Fifty years in the human world,

compared with the span of heaven,

are no more than a dream or an illusion.

This is often presented as Nobunaga’s death poem.

It was not.

The words come from Atsumori, a piece from the medieval performing art known as kōwakamai. Nobunaga did not compose them.

The Shinchō Kōki, the major contemporary chronicle of his career, famously describes Nobunaga performing this passage before riding out to the Battle of Okehazama in 1560.

Because the passage became so closely associated with Nobunaga’s view of life — and because he himself died violently at Honnō-ji in 1582 — later generations came to associate it with his death as well.

So one of Japan’s most famous “death poems” was not actually a death poem at all.

Jisei were not limited to male warriors.

Hosokawa Gracia, a Christian noblewoman caught in the political crisis immediately before the Battle of Sekigahara, is traditionally associated with this poem:

散りぬべき　時知りてこそ　世の中の

花も花なれ　人も人なれ

Only because a flower knows

when it is time to fall

is it truly a flower.

And only by knowing such a time

does a person remain a person.

The image of the falling flower is familiar in Japanese poetry, but here it is not simply about beauty or the transience of life. It concerns knowing when one’s moment has come.

Another famous example comes from Asano Naganori, whose forced seppuku became the starting point of the historical events later dramatized as the story of the Forty-Seven Rōnin.

He is traditionally said to have written:

風さそふ　花よりもなほ　我はまた

春の名残を　いかにとやせん

More than the blossoms

invited to fall by the wind,

I still linger here,

wondering what I am to do

with my longing for this spring.

This is rather different from the popular image of a samurai calmly accepting death without hesitation.

The poem can be read as expressing regret — a man forced to die while still deeply attached to the world he is leaving.

And that, to me, is one of the most interesting things about jisei.

They should not simply be reduced to the idea that “Japanese people were unafraid of death” or that samurai were expected to die without emotion.

Some looked back on life as a dream.

Some tried to accept death quietly.

Some expressed religious ideas.

Some showed regret.

Others even faced death with humor.

A jisei was not merely a decorative way of dying. At its best, it was a very short final statement about how a person understood their own life when there was almost no life left to live.

A waka gives you only 31 morae — roughly 31 rhythmic units — in which to do that.

If you knew that you could leave behind only one poem of that length at the end of your life, what would you write?

Seppuku is well known as a form of suicide associated with the samurai, but it is difficult to identify a single person as the very first to have done it.

One of the oldest legendary examples is Fujiwara no Hōsuke, a notorious outlaw of the Heian period. According to the Zoku Kojidan, when he was being hunted down in 988, Hōsuke cut open his own abdomen. However, the text was compiled long after the event, so the story cannot be treated as firmly established fact.

Another famous example is Minamoto no Tametomo. In the Hōgen Monogatari, Tametomo is described as being surrounded by a punitive force on Izu Ōshima. After firing one final arrow at an enemy ship, he cuts open his abdomen and kills himself. His death after being pursued is part of the traditional account, but the detailed description of seppuku comes from a later war tale.

By the Nanboku-chō and Muromachi periods, seppuku appears more frequently in records as a method of suicide among warriors. During the Sengoku period, it also became increasingly associated with defeated commanders and with taking responsibility for failure.

A famous example is Shimizu Muneharu during the 1582 Siege of Takamatsu Castle. He committed seppuku as part of the settlement with Hashiba Hideyoshi, in exchange for the lives of the castle's defenders.

By the late Sengoku and early Edo periods, seppuku was no longer only a voluntary form of suicide. It was also imposed as a punishment on members of the warrior class. In 1615, for example, the tea master Furuta Oribe was ordered to commit seppuku after being accused of involvement with the Toyotomi side.

During the Edo period, the procedure became increasingly formalized, with official witnesses, designated seconds, and established rules governing the execution.

So seppuku does not appear to have been a custom invented by one particular person.

Rather, the historical picture is a gradual development: early legendary cases such as Fujiwara no Hōsuke and Minamoto no Tametomo, more frequent examples during the medieval period, wider use among warriors during the Sengoku era, and finally formalization as both ritual and punishment under the Edo shogunate.

Looking for “the first seppuku” therefore tells us less about a single inventor and more about how the practice changed over several centuries.

Up through the Muromachi period, Japanese armor generally followed long-established styles, with traditional designs such as red-laced armor remaining common. But during the Sengoku period, foreign influence, changes in warfare, and increasingly individualistic self-presentation among warriors led to much more varied armor designs.

Date Masamune is one of the best-known examples. The exact origin of the term date-otoko, meaning a stylish or flashy man, is debated, but Masamune later became closely associated with that image. His armor was actually rather restrained by Sengoku standards: a large crescent moon on his helmet and a black five-piece cuirass. Simple, but instantly recognizable. His popularity in modern Japan was enormous as well—the NHK historical drama Dokuganryu Masamune once drew ratings of over 40%.

But this was also the age when helmets appeared that can make even modern Japanese people stop and ask, “Did they really think this looked good?”

Crab claws, butterflies, enormous horns, plants, animals—some helmet ornaments look almost comical today. Yet they were not just random decoration. They could identify a warrior from a distance and express his personality, beliefs, ambitions, or hopes for protection in battle.

And of course, if a mounted warrior wearing one of these bizarre helmets was charging at you with a spear, it probably would not have seemed very funny.

Masamune had his famous crescent moon, but Date Shigezane, another member of the Date clan and a warrior known for his ferocity in battle, used an even stranger design: a huge caterpillar ornament.

The caterpillar was associated with the idea of never retreating, much like the centipede, another creature often used in warrior symbolism. To us it may look bizarre, but for a man living with death on the battlefield, putting such a symbol on his helmet could represent determination, protection, and the refusal to back down.

Once the Sengoku period ended and warriors had fewer opportunities to display individual valor on the battlefield, this fashion for kawari-kabuto—“extraordinary helmets”—gradually faded.

Today, many survive in museums as relics of Sengoku warrior culture.

You can laugh at them, admire them, or wonder what kind of person decided to wear a giant caterpillar or crab claw into battle. Either way, kawari-kabuto are a great example of how much personality and self-expression existed in Sengoku-period armor.