My Rage Will Go On: Sakura Sōgorō and the Trans-Corporeal/Trans-Temporal Rage of Tokugawa Protest Martyrs

This paper examines the emotion of rage as expressed by Tokugawa protest martyrs (gimin) and complex affective landscapes their rage engenders. Although individual circumstances differ, stories of early modern protest martyrs largely hinge upon the sacrificial deaths of virtuous peasants who engage in “illegal” protests against corrupt feudal lords. The prototypical example of this narrative pattern is Sakura Sōgorō, a seventeenth-century peasant executed by the Sakura domain for the crime of making a direct appeal to the Shogun. Moments before his death, Sōgorō expresses his rage at the corrupt domain lord and makes a vow of vengeance, no matter how many lifetimes it may take. Sōgorō thus articulates his rage in trans-corporeal and trans-temporal terms, assuming that his rage will live on even after his body perishes. This paper argues that it was the trans-corporeal, trans-temporal conception of Sōgorō’s rage that informed his postmortem apotheosis as a kami.