The Abe Clan

When Lord Hosokawa Tadatoshi dies, the men closest to him must decide whether loyalty requires them to follow him in death. Permission, reputation, and the expectations of their families make that decision anything but private. For Abe Yaichiemon and his sons, even an act meant to preserve honor becomes the beginning of a disastrous estrangement.

Set in seventeenth-century Kumamoto, The Abe Clan traces a divided inheritance, a public protest, and the tightening circle around a household marked for destruction. Friends find compassion at odds with duty, while men ordered to attack discover that an assignment can carry its own accusation. Quiet domestic scenes give way to a crowded, terrible struggle whose rewards expose the values governing both sides.

First published in January 1913, Mori Ōgai’s historical narrative probes the machinery of loyalty with restraint and unsettling precision. This complete English translation includes the retainers’ biographies, the family’s deliberations, and the final reckoning. Thirty-six notes explain names, measures, institutions, and chronology without resolving away the work’s moral tensions.