Another vendetta on "Gojoin Plain" near Takebashi and Palaceside Building in the late Edo period took eight years to reach fulfillment.
The incident began in December 1838 (Tenpo 9). Motohira Shoyo, a retainer of town magistrate Torii Yozo, asked sword-school master Inoue Denbe to collect a dubious debt. Denbe refused and scolded him harshly. Motohira bore a grudge and ambushed Denbe in Shitaya, killing him. Denbe's younger brother Dennojo, a Matsuyama domain samurai, and his son Denjuro vowed revenge and came to Edo, but Motohira struck first and had Dennojo murdered.
Now it was Denjuro, who had lost both uncle and father, and Denbe's disciple Koson Tenzen who set out on the vendetta. After the Tenpo reforms, Motohira was taken into custody as a witness to expose Torii's misdeeds, confessed to the two killings, and was imprisoned. Behaving well in jail, he received a reduced sentence and was released in August 1846 (Koka 3). Weakened by long imprisonment and barely able to walk, Motohira tried to leave Edo by palanquin. When it reached Gojoin Plain, Denjuro and Tenzen, who knew of his release, called out and dragged him from the litter. They hacked him to death and fulfilled their vow.
Yoshimura Akira's novel "Vengeance" and other works tell this story, but compared with Mori Ogai's "Vengeance on Gojoin Plain," perhaps because no woman is involved — or because they slaughtered a frail man who could barely walk — this case leaves a less satisfying feeling. In Yoshimura's version, Denjuro later dies of syphilis contracted while wandering. There is a certain pathos to it all.