Ishikawa Goemon

Bandō Mitsugorō III. in the role of Ishikawa Goemon in the Kabuki piece Sanmon Gosan no Kiri , color woodcut by Toyokuni I. , 1820

Ishikawa Goemon ( Japanese 石川 五 右衛門 ; * 16th century ; † August 10, 1594 ) was the leader of a band of robbers who was executed in Kyoto , Japan in 1594 .

The historical Goemon is mentioned in two sources that were written some time after his death. On the one hand, in a 1642 biography of Toyotomi Hideyoshi , "Toyotomi Hideyoshi fu" ( 豊 臣 秀吉 譜 , Eng. "Sequence (of the events in the life of) Toyotomi Hideyoshi" ). It reports that Ishikawa Goemon was captured along with his mother and 27 others and executed on Sanjo Street on the Kano River on the 24th day of the 8th month of the year Bunroku 3 (August 10, 1594 according to the western calendar). The second source is a comment by the Jesuit Father Pedro de Morejon on an entry in the 1615 report “Relación del Reino de Nippon por Bernardino de Avila Giron” (German: “Conditions of the Kingdom of Japan by Bernardino de Aviala Giron” ), according to which the leader of the Gang, Ixicava Goyemon, was boiled in oil and his family members and other gang members were crucified.

All other dates and apparent facts that gradually became known about Goemon's life are pure fiction. Legend has it that over the centuries he became a bandit hero of the Azuchi Momoyama era , who - comparable to Robin Hood - stole gold and other valuables from the rich and given them to the poor. As a folklore hero , he was sentenced to death after a failed assassination attempt on Toyotomi Hideyoshi and was boiled alive in oil in front of the Nanzen temple in Kyoto, while still trying to save his son, who was also convicted with him, from the boiling oil. In the 19th century he even became a ninja fighter and at the beginning of the 20th century he was one of the first to establish the ninja tradition in Japan.

The legend of Ishikawa Goemon forms the basis for numerous pieces in the Bunraku and Kabuki theater, such as B. the drama "Sanmon Gosan no Kiri" , as well as the video game series Ganbare Goemon . One of the main characters in the anime and manga series Lupine III is also called Goemon Ishikawa XIII. and is a bandit and swordsman. In addition, in 2009 the director Kazuaki Kiriya produced The Legend Of Goemon, an elaborate feature film version whose strongly fictional plot traces the life of Goemons from 1582 until his death.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ free summary of an article by Sybil Thornton from December 17, 2005 in a thread on the topic of "Ninja", accessed on August 27, 2011
2. ↑ Kabuki Glossary

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Ishikawa is the family name, Goemon the first name.