Students and faculty were treated to a lively talk on Monday as Mary Elizabeth Berry, professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley, gave a lecture titled “Samurai Trouble: Is Loyalty a Virtue?”

Berry’s thesis was that the absolute loyalty associated with samurai is historically unfounded and is instead primarily a construct of Chushingura, an eighteenth century play.

“This play gives me trouble,” said Berry. She proceeded to contrast the play with the historical event that inspired it, then discussed the cause of the play’s popularity.

In 1703, she said, a group of 47 samurai avenged the honor of their dead Lord Asano by killing his rival, Lord Kira. Berry described the incident as fraught with ambiguity. Asano, it seems, had been in the wrong, so the samurai, expecting clemency, turned themselves in following the attack.

Berry outlined how, in the play, the samurai become heroes and their eventual suicides become willful and glorious. Berry asked, since samurai were not previously romanticized figures, “Why did the playwrights choose this treatment?”

According to Berry, the playwrights “dodged the issues” in order to amplify the escapist, fantastic aspects of story. Commoners were drawn to the samurai’s public displays of loyalty and communal destiny in the play as a means of escaping the drudgery of their own responsibilities.

Those responsibilities included filial duty and honoring one’s living and dead ancestors through tireless labor.

“The chief difference was scale,” said Berry. “Filial duty belonged to the family unit, while a samurai’s loyalty belonged to the political party. The stakes were high.”

Not only were the fictional samurai of Chushingura important to commoners, but as they also enjoyed an exaggerated sense of purpose.

“In crisis, the samurai enjoy a freedom from common constraints,” Berry said, “Their action enlarges and justifies themselves.”

Professor Berry characterized this “delusional romance” as dangerous, as it normalized abhorrent treatments of death and promoted a total lack of individual thought. Equating loyalty and ethics, Berry explained, erases difficult choices.

In addition to her lecture, Berry had high praise for Oberlin.

“It’s a joy for me to be here,” she said “I can’t think of another college or university that does [East Asian studies] in the same, serious way. This place looms large in the universe of East Asian studies.”

She acknowledged early on that a sizable portion of the audience consisted of friends of her daughters, Kate and Anne, both of whom attend Oberlin. Berry spoke as if with friends, mixing pop culture references in with her historical insight. At one point she surprised her audience by listing the film Legally Blonde (one of her favorite movies) alongside Medea and Othello.

Taking questions after the talk, Berry even suggested a possible update of Chushingura set at Berkeley and starring herself as Asano, the dean as Kiro and her graduate students as her loyal retainers. Berry added that it could just as well be set in Oberlin.