Does Glory fade?

Question

When Samurai do awesome things like going out and beyond what they are expected to do, hunting down traitors, and fortifying the heavenly order of the empire, they earn Glory, which is kind of a measure of fame. In fact, that's exactly what it is.

Glory is a measure of fame, not prestige, and those who have lower Glory than a samurai are in no way obligated to obey him. ¹

The very portion that follows after that snippet is titled Gaining Glory ¹ and explains how glory is gained and for what actions. However, there is no mention of losing glory in that section, or in fact anywhere in the main text of the book. How does Glory fade over time to prevent Samurai that do anything to all have Glory 10.9 at some point?

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1 - L5R Core rule book, p.93

Answer 1

The answer to this is actually not that far, but only noticeable if you carefully read the table belonging to the paragraph gaining Glory. It has (beyond the index) one of the two only mentions of "Losing Glory" in the whole book, the other being in the mentioned paragraph but not elaborating on it. That table contains one entry, that is very relevant but can be overlooked due to the table of 20 entries being sorted alphabetically (instead of by gains/losses) and also the later 12 entries written one point smaller than the top 8 entries - the relevant one being the 10th.

TABLE 2.4: GAINING & LOSING GLORY ¹

Idleness - Lose one Glory point for every week without any Glory gain

As a result, a Samurai that stops doing all those glory-gaining things will slowly sink back to X.0, and then stall there, until such a time they again rise to action and work to further their fame.

Only the act of a close family member having to commit seppuku can harm a samurai's glory rank once achieved.

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1 - L5R Core rule book, p.93