The Historical Foundations of Bushido
by Karl Friday
[Anyone who has ventured into the world of online bulletin boards knows that the quality of discussion ranges widely, not only between different boards and their various forums, but even on the same board at different times. One outstanding example of the "good stuff" appeared on E-budo earlier this year. Participants were discussing the extent to which the concept of bushido accurately reflected aspects of the Japanese warrior culture and whether it was/is actually relevant to the Japanese martial arts, past and present. We're pleased to be able to reproduce Dr. Karl Friday's response here, together with the questions that gave rise to it. Enjoy!]
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Originally posted by Scott R. Brown:
Is there anyone out there with other historical evidence that can confirm or refute these differing opinions.
The two questions are:
1) Did the Bushido code, whether written out or not, exist as a concept in historical Japan?
2) Was the Bushido code used as a means to foster yamatodamashii in the soldiery during WW II?
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"Bushido" is a very tricky term, one of those we're probably all best off just forgetting about. It was scarcely used at all until the modern period (in fact, Nitobe, whose Bushido: the Soul of Japan did more than any other work to publicize the term, thought he had invented it!).
Even as a kind of historiographic term--i.e. a modern label for warrior ideology--"bushido" is a problematic construct. There was very little discussion in written form of proper "warrior-ness," except for legal codes developed by daimyo, until the Tokugawa period. The concept of a code of conduct for the samurai was a product of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Japan was at peace, not the medieval "Age of the Country at War."
At this point, the role of the warrior became a major philosophical problem for the samurai, since they had stationed themselves at the top of the socio-political hierarchy, and yet effectively did no real work, since there were no longer any wars. The samurai of this period were bureaucrats and administrators, not fighting men; the motivation held in common by all those who wrote on the "way of the warrior" was a search for the proper role of a warrior class in a world without war. The ideas that developed out of this search owed very little to the behavioral norms of the warriors of earlier times.
The real problem, though, was that while there was lots of debate, there was little or no agreement. I tell my students that "bushido" belongs to the same class of words as terms like "patriotism," or "masculinity" or "femininity." That is, everyone pretty much agrees that these are good qualities to possess, but few agree on what they actually involve: Is Oliver North a patriot? Is Madeline Albright more or less feminine than Marilyn Monroe? Where does Madonna fit in to this scheme?
The same issues plagued the Tokugawa (and modern) participants in the debate on proper warrior values and behavior. An illuminating example of how diverse opinion really was can be found in the debate over the actions of the famous 47 ronin of Ako (memorialized in the story "Chushingura"). Among other things, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, the author of Hagakure (which the Imperial Army later took as a kind of sacred text on warrior values) was heavily critical of the Ako ronin, calling them "citified samurai." Hiroaki Sato translated and published a lot of the pieces in this debate in his Legends of the Samurai book. Definitely required reading for anyone interested in these issues.
The answer to Scott's second question is "yes and no." Yes, the Japanese government and the Imperial Army and Navy pushed the notion of "bushido" as a way to foster the sort of military spirit they desired from their soldiers and sailors. But no, the code they preached did not have much to do with anything the samurai believed in or practiced. The connection between Japan's modern and premodern military traditions is thin--it is certainly nowhere near as strong or direct as government propagandists, militarists, Imperial Army officers, and some post-war historians have wished to believe. A couple of examples to make this point clearer:
One of the basic tenets that modern writers associate with bushido is that a true samurai was not only willing to risk his life when called upon to do so, but actually looked forward to the opportunity to sacrifice himself in the line of duty. This is the fundamental sentiment to be found in Hagakure, and was the inspiration for Mishima Yukio's eloquent post-war commentary on that text. Hagakure was immensely popular among the officers of the Imperial Army and its often-quoted opening line, "I have found that the way of the warrior is to die," was unquestionably used to inspire kamikaze pilots and the like.
But, however central the willingness to die might have been to twentieth century notions of bushido, it takes a considerable leap of faith to connect this sort of philosophy with the actual behavior of the medieval samurai.
It is not terribly difficult to find examples of warriors who, in desperate situations, chose to turn and die heroically rather than be killed in the act of running away. By the same token, it is not terribly difficult to find examples of this sort in the military traditions of virtually any people at any time anywhere in the world. On the other hand, as one reads the military historical record of early and medieval Japan, one is struck far more often by the efforts of samurai to use deception and subterfuge to catch an opponent off guard or helpless, than by the sort of zealous self-sacrifice that Tsunetomo called for.
A second popular theme among modern commentators on bushido concerns the absolute fielty that warriors were supposed to have displayed toward their lords. The loyalty of a samurai is said to have been unconditional and utterly selfless. It is true that exhortations to loyalty were a major theme in shogunal regulations, the house laws of the great medieval feudal barons, and seventeenth and eighteenth century treatises on bushido, as well. But there are at least two problems involved in interpreting from this that loyalty was a fundamental part of the medieval warrior character.
To begin with, the unrestricted loyalty that subjects owe their rulers is a basic tenet of Confucianism and derives little or nothing from any military tradition per se. Japanese government appeals for loyalty from subjects began long before the birth of the samurai class--as, for example, in the "Seventeen Article Constitution" of Shotoku Taishi, promulgated in 603. The concept predates even the existence of a Japanese nation by hundreds of years, and traces back to the Chinese Confucian philosophers of the sixth to third centuries BC. Japanese warlords who called upon the samurai who served them to render unflinching loyalty were not so much defining proper samurai behavior as they were exhorting their subjects on a traditional and general theme of government.
Furthermore, there is a logical fallacy involved in trying to deduce norms of actual behavior from formal legal and moral codes. It is no more accurate to infer from the writings of lawmakers and moral philosophers that medieval samurai were shining examples of fielty than it is to draw conclusions about the sexual behavior of twentieth century Georgians from the state laws on sodomy. The truth is that selfless displays of loyalty by warriors are conspicuous in the Japanese historical record mainly by their absence.
From the beginnings of the samurai class and the lord/vassal bond in the eighth century to at least the onset of the early modern age in the seventeenth, the ties between master and retainer were contractual, based on mutual interest and advantage, and were heavily conditioned by the demands of self-interest. Medieval warriors remained loyal to their lords only so long as it benefited them to do so; they could and did readily switch allegiances when the situation warranted it. In fact there are very few important battles in Japanese history in which the defection--often in the middle of the fighting--of one or more of the major players was not a factor.
Much of the code of conduct for samurai prescribed by early modern and modern writers, then, was at odds with the apparent behavioral norms of the actual warrior tradition. By the same token, much of the "bushido" preached by the government and the militarists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was at best superficially derived from the "Way of the Warrior" espoused in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Seppuku
Originally Posted by Nakandakari Lobato
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