Friday, March 21, 2014

BUSHIDO

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido
Bushidō (武士道?), literally "military scholar road", is a Japanese word for the way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry.
Bushido, a modern term rather than a historical one, originates from the samurai moral values, most commonly stressing some combination of frugality, loyalty, martial artsmastery, and honor unto death. Born from Neo-Confucianism during times of peace in Tokugawa Japan and following Confucian texts, Bushido was also influenced by Shintoand Zen Buddhism, allowing the violent existence of the samurai to be tempered bywisdom and serenity. Bushidō developed between the 16th and 20th centuries, debated by pundits who believed they were building on a legacy dating from the 10th century, although some scholars have noted "the term bushidō itself is rarely attested in premodern literature."[1]
Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, some aspects of warrior values became formalized into Japanese feudal law.[2]
The word was first used in Japan during the 17th century.[3] It came into common usage in Japan and the West after the 1899 publication of Nitobe Inazō's Bushido: The Soul of Japan.[4]
""n Bushido (1899), Nitobe wrote:
...Bushidō, then, is the code of moral principles which the samurai were required or instructed to observe.... More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten.... It was an organic growth of decades and centuries of military career.
Nitobe was not the first person to document Japanese chivalry in this way. In his text Feudal and Modern Japan (1896), historian Arthur May Knapp wrote:[5] "The samurai of thirty years ago had behind him a thousand years of training in the law of honor, obedience, duty, and self-sacrifice.... It was not needed to create or establish them. As a child he had but to be instructed, as indeed he was from his earliest years, in the etiquette of self-immolation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku#In_literature_and_film
Seppuku (切腹?, "stomach-cutting") is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai.[1]Part of the samurai bushido honour code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honour rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely suffer torture), or as a form of capital punishmentfor samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed for other reasons that had brought shame to them. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a tantō, into the abdomen and moving the blade from left to right in a slicing motion.[2]

European witness[edit]

The first recorded time a European saw formal seppuku was the "Sakai Incident" of 1868. On February 15, eleven French sailors of theDupleix entered a Japanese town called Sakai without official permission. Their presence caused panic among the residents. Security forces were dispatched to turn the sailors back to their ship, but a fight broke out and the sailors were shot dead. Upon the protest of the French representative, financial compensation was paid and those responsible were sentenced to death. The French captain was present to observe the execution. As each samurai committed ritual disembowelment, the violent act shocked the captain, and he requested a pardon, due to which nine of the samurai were spared. This incident was dramatised in a famous short story, Sakai Jiken, by Mori Ōgai.
In the 1860s, the British Ambassador to Japan, Algernon Freeman-Mitford (Lord Redesdale) lived within sight of Sengaku-ji where theForty-seven Ronin are buried. In his book Tales of Old Japan, he describes a man who had come to the graves to kill himself:
I will add one anecdote to show the sanctity which is attached to the graves of the Forty-seven. In the month of September 1868, a certain man came to pray before the grave of Oishi Chikara. Having finished his prayers, he deliberately performed hara-kiri, and, the belly wound not being mortal, dispatched himself by cutting his throat. Upon his person were found papers setting forth that, being a Ronin and without means of earning a living, he had petitioned to be allowed to enter the clan of the Prince of Choshiu, which he looked upon as the noblest clan in the realm; his petition having been refused, nothing remained for him but to die, for to be a Ronin was hateful to him, and he would serve no other master than the Prince of Choshiu: what more fitting place could he find in which to put an end to his life than the graveyard of these Braves? This happened at about two hundred yards' distance from my house, and when I saw the spot an hour or two later, the ground was all bespattered with blood, and disturbed by the death-struggles of the man.
Mitford also describes his friend's eyewitness account of a Seppuku:
There are many stories on record of extraordinary heroism being displayed in the harakiri. The case of a young fellow, only twenty years old, of the Choshiu clan, which was told me the other day by an eye-witness, deserves mention as a marvellous instance of determination. Not content with giving himself the one necessary cut, he slashed himself thrice horizontally and twice vertically. Then he stabbed himself in the throat until the dirk protruded on the other side, with its sharp edge to the front; setting his teeth in one supreme effort, he drove the knife forward with both hands through his throat, and fell dead.
During the Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa Shogun's aide committed Seppuku:
One more story and I have done. During the revolution, when the Taikun (Supreme Commander), beaten on every side, fled ignominiously to Yedo, he is said to have determined to fight no more, but to yield everything. A member of his second council went to him and said, "Sir, the only way for you now to retrieve the honour of the family of Tokugawa is to disembowel yourself; and to prove to you that I am sincere and disinterested in what I say, I am here ready to disembowel myself with you." The Taikun flew into a great rage, saying that he would listen to no such nonsense, and left the room. His faithful retainer, to prove his honesty, retired to another part of the castle, and solemnly performed the harakiri.
In his book Tales of Old Japan, Mitford describes witnessing a hara-kiri:[20]
"As a corollary to the above elaborate statement of the ceremonies proper to be observed at the harakiri, I may here describe an instance of such an execution which I was sent officially to witness. The condemned man was Taki Zenzaburo, an officer of the Prince of Bizen, who gave the order to fire upon the foreign settlement at Hyōgo in the month of February 1868,—an attack to which I have alluded in the preamble to the story of the Eta Maiden and the Hatamoto. Up to that time no foreigner had witnessed such an execution, which was rather looked upon as a traveller's fable.
The ceremony, which was ordered by the Mikado himself, took place at 10:30 at night in the temple of Seifukuji, the headquarters of the Satsuma troops at Hiogo. A witness was sent from each of the foreign legations. We were seven foreigners in all. After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in his face or manner, spoke as follows:
I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honour of witnessing the act.
Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from falling backwards; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand, he took the dirk that lay before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then stabbing himself deeply below the waist on the left-hand side, he drew the dirk slowly across to the right side, and, turning it in the wound, gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the kaishaku, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with one blow the head had been severed from the body.
A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood throbbing out of the inert heap before us, which but a moment before had been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible.
The kaishaku made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of rice paper which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the execution. The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and, crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called us to witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the temple. The ceremony, to which the place and the hour gave an additional solemnity, was characterized throughout by that extreme dignity and punctiliousness which are the distinctive marks of the proceedings of Japanese gentlemen of rank; and it is important to note this fact, because it carries with it the conviction that the dead man was indeed the officer who had committed the crime, and no substitute. While profoundly impressed by the terrible scene it was impossible at the same time not to be filled with admiration of the firm and manly bearing of the sufferer, and of the nerve with which the kaishaku performed his last duty to his master.



Japanese Feudal Laws John Carey Hall, The Tokugawa Legislation, (Yokohama, 1910), pp. 286-319

Ikegami, Eiko, The Taming of the Samurai, Harvard University Press, 1995. p. 278
Bushidō (武士道?), literally "military scholar road", is a Japanese word for the way of the samurai life, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry.
Bushido, a modern term rather than a historical one, originates from the samurai moral values, most commonly stressing some combination of frugality, loyalty, martial artsmastery, and honor unto death. Born from Neo-Confucianism during times of peace in Tokugawa Japan and following Confucian texts, Bushido was also influenced by Shintoand Zen Buddhism, allowing the violent existence of the samurai to be tempered bywisdom and serenity. Bushidō developed between the 16th and 20th centuries, debated by pundits who believed they were building on a legacy dating from the 10th century, although some scholars have noted "the term bushidō itself is rarely attested in premodern literature."[1]
Under the Tokugawa Shogunate, some aspects of warrior values became formalized into Japanese feudal law.[2]
The word was first used in Japan during the 17th century.[3] It came into common usage in Japan and the West after the 1899 publication of Nitobe Inazō's Bushido: The Soul of Japan.[4]

Friday, Karl F. "Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian's Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition" The History Teacher, Vol. 27, No. 3 (May, 1994), pp. 340
In Bushido (1899), Nitobe wrote:
...Bushidō, then, is the code of moral principles which the samurai were required or instructed to observe.... More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten.... It was an organic growth of decades and centuries of military career.
Nitobe was not the first person to document Japanese chivalry in this way. In his text Feudal and Modern Japan (1896), historian Arthur May Knapp wrote:[5] "The samurai of thirty years ago had behind him a thousand years of training in the law of honor, obedience, duty, and self-sacrifice.... It was not needed to create or establish them. As a child he had but to be instructed, as indeed he was from his earliest years, in the etiquette of self-immolation."

Historical development[edit]

Early history to 12th century[edit]

Main article: Bushido literature

Bushidō written in kanji
The Kojiki is Japan's oldest extant book. Written in 721, it contains passages about Yamato Takeru, the son of the Emperor Keiko. It provides an indication of early Japanese military values and literary self-image, including references to the use and admiration of the sword by Japanese warriors.
This early concept is further found in the Shoku Nihongi, an early history of Japan written in 797. The chapter covering the year 721 is notable for an early use of the term "bushi" (武士?) (albeit read as "mononofu" at the time) and a reference to the educated warrior-poet ideal. The Chinese term bushi had entered the Japanese vocabulary with the general introduction of Chinese literature, supplementing the indigenous terms tsuwamonoand mononofu. It is also the usage for public placement exams.
An early reference to saburau — a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person of high rank — appears inKokin Wakashū, the first imperial anthology of poems, (early 10th century). By the end of the 12th century,saburai ("retainer") had become largely synonymous with bushi, and closely associated with the middle and upper echelons of the warrior class.
Although many of the early literary works of Japan contain the image of the warrior, the term "bushidō" does not appear in early texts like the Kojiki. Warrior ideals and conduct may be illustrated, but the term did not appear in text until the Tokugawa period (1600-1868).[6]

"The Zen of Japanese Nationalism," by Robert H. Sharf, in Curators of the Buddha, edited by Donald Lopez, pg 111

William Scott Wilson, Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors (Kodansha, 1982) ISBN 0-89750-081-4

13th to 16th centuries[edit]

From the literature of the 13th to 16th centuries, there exists an abundance of references to military ideals, although none of these should be viewed as early versions of bushido per se. Carl Steenstrup noted that 13th and 14th century writings (gunki monogatari) "portrayed the bushi in their natural element, war, eulogizing such virtues as reckless bravery, fierce family pride, and selfless, at times senseless devotion of master and man."
Compiled over the course of three centuries, beginning in the 1180s, the Heike Monogatari depicts a highly fictionalized and idealized story of a struggle between two warrior clans, the Minamoto and Taira, at the end of the 12th century—a conflict known as the Genpei War. Clearly depicted throughout the Heike Monogatari is the ideal of the cultivated warrior. The warriors in the Heike Monogatari served as models for the educated warriors of later generations, although the ideals depicted by them were assumed to be beyond reach. Nevertheless, during the early modern era, these ideals were vigorously pursued in the upper echelons of warrior society and recommended as the proper form of the Japanese man of arms.
Other examples of the evolution in the Bushidō literature of the 13th to 16th centuries included:

Takeda Shingen, by artistUtagawa Kuniyoshi
The sayings of Sengoku-period retainers and warlords such as Kato Kiyomasa and Nabeshima Naoshige were generally recorded or passed down to posterity around the turn of the 16th century when Japan had entered a period of relative peace. In a handbook addressed to "all samurai, regardless of rank," Kato states:
"If a man does not investigate into the matter of Bushido daily, it will be difficult for him to die a brave and manly death. Thus, it is essential to engrave this business of the warrior into one's mind well."
Kato was a ferocious warrior who banned even recitation of poetry, stating:
"One should put forth great effort in matters of learning. One should read books concerning military matters, and direct his attention exclusively to the virtues of loyalty and filial piety....Having been born into the house of a warrior, one's intentions should be to grasp the long and the short swords and to die."[7]
Naoshige says similarly, that it is shameful for any man to die without having risked his life in battle, regardless of rank, and that "Bushidō is in being crazy to die. Fifty or more could not kill one such a man." However, Naoshige also suggests that "everyone should personally know exertion as it is known in the lower classes."[7]

19th and 20th centuries[edit]

Recent scholarship in both Japan and abroad has focused on differences between the samurai class and the bushidō theories that developed in modern Japan. Bushidō in the prewar period was often emperor-centered and placed much greater value on the virtues of loyalty and self-sacrifice than did many Tokugawa-era interpretations.[10] Bushidō was used as a propaganda tool by the government and military, who doctored it to suit their needs.[11] Scholars of Japanese history agree that the bushidō that spread throughout modern Japan was not simply a continuation of earlier traditions.
More recently, it has been argued that modern bushidō discourse originated in the 1880s as a response to foreign stimuli, such as the English concept of "gentlemanship," by Japanese with considerable exposure to Western culture. Nitobe Inazo's bushidō interpretations followed a similar trajectory, although he was following earlier trends. This relatively pacifistic bushidō was then hijacked and adapted by militarists and the government from the early 1900s onward as nationalism increased around the time of the Russo-Japanese War.[12]
The junshi suicide of General Nogi Maresuke and his wife on the death of Emperor Meiji occasioned both praise, as an example to the decaying morals of Japan, and criticism, explicitly declaring that the spirit of bushido thus exemplified should not be revived.[13]
During pre-World War II and World War II Shōwa Japan, bushido was pressed into use for militarism,[14] to present war as purifying, and death a duty.[15] This was presented as revitalizing traditional values and "transcending the modern."[16] Bushido would provide a spiritual shield to let soldiers fight to the end.[17] As the war turned, the spirit of bushido was invoked to urge that all depended on the firm and united soul of the nation.[18] When the Battle of Attu was lost, attempts were made to make the more than two thousand Japanese deaths an inspirational epic for the fighting spirit of the nation.[19] Arguments that the plans for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, involving all Japanese ships, would expose Japan to serious danger if they failed, were countered with the plea that the Navy be permitted to "bloom as flowers of death."[20] The first proposals of organized suicide attacks met resistance because while bushidocalled for a warrior to be always aware of death, but not to view it as the sole end, but the desperate straits brought about acceptance.[21] Such attacks were acclaimed as the true spirit of bushido.[22]
Denials of mistreatment of prisoners of war declared that they were being well-treated by virtue of bushido generosity.[23] Broadcast interviews with prisoners were also described as being not propaganda but out of sympathy with the enemy, such sympathy as onlybushido could inspire.[24]
Yukio Mishima, the famous writer, was outspoken in his by-then anachronistic commitment to bushido in the 1960s, until his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état in November 1970.

Oleg Benesch. "Bushido : the creation of a martial ethic in late Meiji Japan." PhD dissertation completed at the University of British 

Columbia, 2011.[2}

John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War p1 ISBN 0-394-50030-X
Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won p 6 ISBN 0-393-03925-0
Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan's War, p 334 ISBN 0-07-030612-5
Edwin P. Hoyt, Japan's War, p 356 ISBN 0-07-030612-5
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