On the night of the fourteenth of the twelfth month, through heavily falling snow, forty-seven ronin led by Oboshi Yuranosuke, dressed alike in firemen's coats, set out for the mansion of Ko no Moronao.
Yuranosuke split his men between the front and back gates and beat the signal drum: "one beat, two beats, and a roll," the war drum of the Yamaga school. The ronin set up ladders, climbed the walls, broke down the gates and poured into the mansion.
Moronao's samurai, caught off guard, were thrown into confusion, but soon regrouped and fought fiercely. The ronin searched the mansion from end to end, but Moronao was nowhere to be found. When they felt inside the bedding in his bedroom, it was still warm. He could not have gone far.
Near dawn, one of the ronin sensed someone inside the charcoal shed behind the kitchen. When they dragged him out, it was an old man in a white kimono. On his forehead was the scar from En'ya Hangan's sword. It was Moronao.
Yuranosuke stepped before him and courteously announced himself: "We are retainers of En'ya Hangan. We have come to avenge our lord. Prepare yourself." Then, with the very keepsake dagger Hangan had used for his seppuku, he took Moronao's head.
The ronin raised a shout of victory. Yuranosuke took out Hangan's memorial tablet, offered Moronao's head before it and burned incense. "My lord, your wish is fulfilled." The ronin withdrew through the snow toward their lord's family temple.
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In history, late on the night of the fourteenth of the twelfth month of 1702 (in the early hours of the fifteenth), the forty-seven Ako ronin led by Oishi Kuranosuke raided Kira's mansion in Matsuzakacho, Honjo, and killed Kira Kozuke-no-suke. The ronin marched with his head held high to their lord's grave at Sengakuji in Takanawa. At the site of the Kira mansion, preserved as Honjo Matsuzakacho Park, is the "head-washing well" where Kira's head is said to have been washed.