ASIAN STUDIES BUSHIDŌ IN TRANSFORMATION Volume VI (XXII), Issue 2 Ljubljana 2018 ASIAN STUDIES, Volume VI (XXII), Issue 2, Ljubljana 2018 Editor-in-Chief: Jana S. Rošker Guest Editor: Luka Culiberg Editor-in-Charge: Nataša Visočnik Proof Readers: Tina Š. Petrovič in Paul Steed Editorial Board: Luka Culiberg, Bart Dessein, Byoung Yoong Kang, Danny Orbach, Tea Sernelj, Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, Jan Vrhovski All articles are double blind peer-reviewed. The journal is accessable online in the Open Journal System data base: http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/as. Published by: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani/Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana For: Oddelek za azijske študije/Department of Asian Studies For the publisher: Roman Kuhar, Dean of Faculty of Arts Ljubljana, 2018, First edition Number printed: 100 copies Graphic Design: Janez Mlakar Printed by: Birografika Bori, d. o. o. Price: 10,00 EUR ISSN 2232-5131 This publication is indexed in Scopus, DOAJ and Cobiss database. This journal is published two times per year. Yearly subscription: 17 EUR (Account No.: 50100-603-40227) Ref. No.: 001-033 ref. »Za revijo« Address: Filozofska fakulteta, Oddelek za azijske študije, Aškerčeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenija tel.: +386 (0)1 24 11 450, +386 (0)24 11 444, faks: +386 (0)1 42 59 337 This journal is published with the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency in the framework of the research core funding No. P6-0243 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. / To delo je ponujeno pod licenco Creative Commons Priznanje avtorstva-Deljenje pod enakimi pogoji 4.0 Mednarodna licenca CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica, Ljubljana 930.85(520)(082) 179.6(520)(082) 355.01(520)(082) BUSHIDO in transformation / [editor-in-chief Jana S. Rošker]. - 1st ed. - Ljubljana : Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete = University Press, Faculty of Arts, 2018. - (Asian studies, ISSN 2232-5131 ; vol. 6 (22), issue 2) ISBN 978-961-06-0086-2 1. Rošker, Jana S. 295552256 3Contents Contents Guest Editor’s Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Luka CULIBERG Defining Bushidō The Way of Which Warriors? Bushidō & the Samurai in Historical Perspective . . . . . 15 Karl FRIDAY Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō: A Perspective from Overseas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 William M. BODIFORD Bushidō as a Hybrid: Hybridity and Transculturation in the Bushidō Discourse. . . . . 51 Masaki SHIRAISHI Historical Backgrounds Proto-historic Background of Martial Arts Schools in Eastern Japan . . . . . . . . . 73 Takamune KAWASHIMA The Evolution of the Ancient Way of the Warrior: From the Ancient Chronicles to the Tokugawa Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Maria Paola CULEDDU Poetic Deception: The Ujigawa Senjin Episode Between Court and Warrior Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Naama EISENSTEIN Modern Transformations Pure Spirits: Imperial Japanese Justice and Right-Wing Terrorists, 1878–1936 . . . . .129 Danny ORBACH Invented Histories: The Nihon Senshi of the Meiji Imperial Japanese Army. . . . . . .157 Nathan H. LEDBETTER Women’s Education at Meiji Jogakkō and Martial Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173 Simona LUKMINAITĖ Bushidō and the Legacy of “Samurai Values” in Contemporary Japan . . . . . . . . . .189 Andrew HORVAT Alternative Approach Role of the Sword Futsunomitama-no-tsurugi in the Origin of the Japanese Bushidō Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211 G. Björn CHRISTIANSON, Mikko VILENIUS, Humitake SEKI 4 Contents Asian Studies in Slovenia Ulice kot prostor skupnostnega povezovanja: primer urbane regeneracije soseske Samdeok v Seulu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .231 Blaž KRIŽNIK Relacijsko sebstvo in moderni subjekt v klasični in sodobni kitajski filozofiji: od etike vlog do transformativnega sebstva. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253 Jana S. ROŠKER 5DOI: 10.4312/as.2018.6.2.5-12 Guest Editor’s Foreword Luka CULIBERG * The Japanese have another cult: the religion of the Samurai. Most of the officers belong to this caste. This religion is codified in the code of honour called Bushido. It is the soul of the Japanese Army, and it causes that fanaticism which the Japanese soldier exhibits on the battlefield. This code is the cause of so many suicides of Japanese soldiers on the battlefield, because they believe they would be dishonoured if they were to be taken prisoner.1 This is how a Slovene daily newspaper Edinost (Unity), published in Trieste, de- scribed the notion of bushidō to the Slovene language readers while reporting on the progress of the Russo-Japanese War in its December 1st issue of 1904. The sympathies of Slovene press at the time were firmly on the Russian side on the conflict, and the Japanese were not described in favourable terms. This mysterious “code of honour” was derided as a “cult” and was recognised as a cause of Japan’s militant fanaticism and later on its imperialism. At approximately the same time, the U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was al- legedly purchasing numerous copies of Bushido: The Soul of Japan, a book written in English by Nitobe Inazō, to distribute among his friends. Though Japanese victory over Russia was received with mixed sentiments in the United States due to the ever growing fear of the “Yellow Peril”, Nitobe’s Bushido nevertheless man- aged to draw enough enthusiasm so that within a decade there appeared nine more editions in English in both the United States and Britain, as well as seven translations into other languages, as William M. Bodiford points out in his paper in the present issue. * Luka CULIBERG, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. luka.culiberg[at]ff.uni-lj.si 1 »Še en kult imajo Japonci: vero Samurajev. Tej kasti pripada večina oficirjev. Ta vera je določena v častnem kodeksu Bušido. Ta je duša japonske armade in povzroča tisti fanatizem, ki ga kaže japonski vojak na bojišču. V tem kodeksu je vzrok tolikim samomorom japonskih vojakov na bojišču, ker menijo, da bi bili onečaščeni, če bi jih sovražnik ujel.« Edinost, vol. 29, no. 333, Decem- ber 1st, 1904, p. 2. 6 Luka Culiberg: Guest Editor’s Foreword The oscillation between fascination and derision directed toward bushidō in the last hundred or so years, both in Japan and abroad, is just one characteristic aspect of this ambiguous “samurai code of honour”. Ever since the notion of bushidō took the centre stage in the discourse on Japanese culture and national character in the Meiji period (1868–1912), various thinkers imbued the notion with the whole gam- ut of ideological interpretations, seeing in it everything from ultimate evidence of Japanese uniqueness on one end, to recognising in bushidō the symbol of Japanese civilized status by virtue of the universality of its ethical postulations on the other. Moreover, this vague and elusive idea of “samurai honour” continues to function as an empty shell for whatever ideological content wishes to occupy its place. The aim of the present issue of the Asian Studies journal is thus to approach the notion of bushidō from as many aspects as possible in order to further unveil some of the mystery informing this notion. The seed that bore fruit in the form of pres- ent issue was planted back in the summer of 2017, when The National Museum of Slovenia featured an exhibition, titled The Paths of the Samurai, displaying samu- rai warrior equipment and related paraphernalia. Among the numerous events accompanying the exhibition, the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Ljubljana, in cooperation with the National Museum, hosted a symposium with the aim to rethink, discuss and further elucidate the tenets that underlie the notion of the so-called “way of the samurai”. The majority of contributions in the present issue are based on papers presented at that symposium. At this point I would first like to express our gratitude to all who came to Ljubljana from abroad to share their valuable insights on the subject; and second, I would like to thank everyone who submitted their contributions, thus making this journal issue possi- ble. I am more than convinced that the final result will serve as a valuable resource not just for the scholars of Japanese history, but for a much wider readership in- terested in the workings of ideology in general. This is all the more so because this ambiguous and popular notion of bushidō seems to have drawn until recently only very limited interest among historians and other scholars focusing on Japan (see Bodiford in the present issue), and only very few academic works have been dedicated to the topic.2 Conversely, it is precisely this “samurai honour” which has the power to fascinate the wider public, giving free reign to the popular imagination. Bushidō, written in Japanese as 武士道, and usually translated into English as “the way of the warrior”, is a word which was practically non-existent until the late 2 One recent notable exception is the book Inventing the Way of the Samurai (2014, Oxford Univer- sity Press) by Oleg Benesch, who unfortunately could not participate at the symposium, however his work is often referenced in numerous articles in the present issue. 7Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 5–12 19th century. Bushi was a general term denoting the samurai or the warriors, while dō is a Daoist concept of “the Way”. There has never been any “Bible of bushidō”, any written code, but there had been isolated texts in the 17th and 18th centuries referring to the idea, most notably by Yamaga Sokō, Yamamoto Tsunetomo and Daidōji Yūzan. However, even though texts by these authors are read nowadays as part of the bushidō canon, they were not widely influential in their own time. For example, Yamamoto’s Hagakure was limited to a very small readership of a few local samurai of the Nabeshima clan in a manuscript form. It had been completely unknown to the general samurai population, and was published for the first time only in the 20th century when the samurai were already a thing of the past. Such texts had therefore extremely limited effect until the early 20th century when they were “discovered” and adopted as the part of new martial ideology of the Imperial Japanese Army. The authors writing about bushidō during the Edo period (1600–1868) were ei- ther producing nostalgic accounts about the samurai of old when the country was still at war, or, conversely, trying to establish and legitimize “the new way of the warrior” suitable for the times of Tokugawa peace. Though members of the samu- rai class still defined themselves as “warriors” during the Edo period, the majority of them did not witness any serious armed conflict. Moreover, while the samurai had fought battles and wars during the previous centuries, their primary goal was to survive and prevail. In those times martial skills, tactics and cunning mattered most. When the circumstances transformed them from fighters into administra- tors of the state, the focus switched to the idea of the samurai ruling by the virtue of their moral example. The idea of samurai honour thus came to the fore. Yet honour is a much more elusive notion than practical martial skills. Only a few months before Tokugawa Ieyasu set the future course for the country and consequently established the new paradigm for the social role of the samurai class with his victory in the battle of Sekigahara in 1600, far away in London the earliest recorded performance of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1 took place. This story of medieval knights and their feuds features, among others, Sir John Falstaff, a fat, corrupt and drunk knight, who instead of a chivalrous expression of fealty to his liege lord feigns his own death in order to avoid combat. Moments before this “dishonourable” act, he lets the audience in on his thoughts about the notion of honour. After asking rhetorically, whether honour can set a broken leg, take away the grief of a wound or perform a surgery, Falstaff declares that honour is just “a word”, and that a word is nothing but air. Honour, as Karl Friday observes in his article in the present issue, is indeed a knotty construct. According to Friday, honour represents a ubiquitous value in 8 Luka Culiberg: Guest Editor’s Foreword the sense that a great many cultures entertain some sort of corresponding ideal, but the substance of honour—the specifics of what behaviours are and are not held to be “honourable”—are peculiar to individual times and places. Honour as an abstract concept represents qualities that are deemed respectable and worthy of admiration, but these qualities are culturally specific, as well as subject to intra- cultural negotiation. For example, in an episode of the TV series House, the doctors treat a patient who had been charged with treason for exposing the details of the U.S. Army killing civilians. A discussion revolves around the issue whether his act of whistleblow- ing was honourable or treasonous. The soldier betrayed his country, because he believed that exposing the truth was honourable, and therefore he accepts the consequences—the charge of treason. However, the protagonist of the series, Dr. House, takes a position much closer to Sir John Falstaff. He believes that plead- ing guilty is not honourable, but stupid, and so, in a manner quite reminiscent of Shakespeare’s character, says: “What is honour? Dying for your country? Getting straight A’s? Killing your daughter because she had the audacity to get raped?”3 Dying for one’s country or exposing that country’s dark secrets, killing an enemy in battle or killing one’s daughter because she was “dishonoured” by getting raped, people hold diverse or even opposite views on what is honourable. Generally, how- ever, people would sooner denounce a certain deed, e.g. killing one’s own daughter, as not being honourable at all, rather than questioning the idea of honour itself. The cynical approach to honour in the manner of Falstaff or Dr. House is cer- tainly not the usual reaction. We still tend to praise this or that deed or person as “honourable”. Honour, as Falstaff observes, might be merely a word, thin air, something that won’t set a broken leg or perform surgery. What he doesn’t realize is that words as bearers of ideologies are nevertheless powerful, and throughout history a word such as honour has had very tangible and material consequences. “Samurai honour”, as is generally understood nowadays, is an invented tradition from the time when the samurai themselves were already a thing of the past. But, as Andrew Horvat notes in his article, the effectiveness of ideologies does not depend on their historical accuracy. If samurai intellectuals during the Edo period were formulating their first ideas about bushidō in order to situate the samurai class firmly in its ruling position within the hierarchical structure of society, the bushidō of a Christian intellectual such as Nitobe Inazō, writing at the beginning of the 20th century, was something completely different. Bushidō in Nitobe’s ver- sion was no longer just an ethical code belonging to a small samurai elite, but was transformed into “the soul of Japan”, ingrained into the fabric of society as a whole 3 House, Episode 15, Season 8. 9Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 5–12 and forming its cultural and ethical foundation, analogous to Christianity in the West. Nitobe explicitly aligned bushidō with the European notion of “chivalry”. If Nitobe’s attempt was to draw parallels between bushidō, chivalry and Christian- ity in order to show the world that Japan should be viewed as a civilization on par with the Christian colonial powers, thinkers like Inoue Tetsujirō saw in bushidō a marker of Japanese uniqueness, separating it from the rest of the world and po- sitioning it above all others. The interpretations overseas were also dependent on the ideological contexts in which bushidō performed its perceived role. In the early 20th century, at the time when Japan was embarking on its colonial enterprise, there had been many negative assessments, as we have seen in the case of the Slo- vene newspaper, as well as positive ones, like the reception of Nitobe’s book in the U.S. Later on, particularly during the Pacific War, bushidō was identified world- wide as the cause of Japanese militarism and belligerent fanaticism. However, af- ter the war and in the context of Japan’s incredible economic development, bushidō was reassessed and reinterpreted, this time as a convenient tool for explaining the Japanese work ethic and loyalty of employees to their employer. Historical samurai did of course possess a certain concept of honour, but it was not codified or understood as bushidō. “Honour” was, just as is true for ideological notions today, a much more fluid and elusive idea, enabling a plurality of ideo- logical interpretations. The ritual suicide of the 46 “loyal retainers”4 became the most iconic canonical narrative of samurai honour, yet the aforementioned author of the “bushidō classic” Hagakure as well as many other scholars at the time were actually extremely critical of the conduct of the so-called Akō rōshi. Was the ven- detta of the 47 masterless samurai the epitome of bushidō, or, as Yamamoto would have it, were they completely lacking in it? Was Sasaki Takatsuna’s deception, when he tricked his rival Kajiwara Kagesue in his race to the battlefield across the river Uji, which Naama Eisenstein describes in her article, honourable? Was that bushidō or not? Even though historical samurai did not have a codified ethical manual, they certainly believed in the idea of honour. There were those samurai who would not hesitate to recognise modern bushidō as their ethical guide, as there were those who held views much closer to those of Sir John Falstaff, and there were all those in between. The present issue of Asian Studies offers impor- tant, revealing and fascinating research, studies and analyses, which will hopefully clarify many such mysteries surrounding this notion. The issue is divided into four sections. The first section, Defining Bushidō, brings together articles dealing with the concept of bushidō itself. Karl Friday looks at bushidō and the samurai behaviour in historical context, discussing the notions of 4 There were 47 rōnin involved in the plot, but only 46 of them performed the ritual suicide. 10 Luka Culiberg: Guest Editor’s Foreword honour and loyalty based on written sources, from the Akō vendetta through nu- merous other historical events and war stories, showing that bushidō was far from an unchangeable and enduring code of behaviour and illustrating the complex- ity of samurai thought and early modern ideals concerning honour and loyalty. William M. Bodiford takes the “perspective from overseas”, discussing lives and afterlives of the notion, which all together add to the construction of the bushidō narrative. He does not simply treat it as a term within this or that discourse, but is concerned with the many “lives” of bushidō as an interpretive concept, deriving its meaning from its relative position within theoretical frameworks, which are constantly shifting. In explaining the elusiveness of bushidō, Bodiford employs the term “traveling concepts”. Masaki Shiraishi, on the other hand, describes bush- idō as a hybrid notion, constructed through the process of “transculturation”. He shows how since the Meiji Restoration it was necessary for the new modernized regime, in order to be maintained, to establish its legitimacy by relying on so- called cultural traditions. This ideological agony in the face of modernization is in Shiraishi’s view apparent in bushidō, which fluctuates between universalism and particularism. In the wave of Western modernization, it was not enough to hold fast to uniqueness of Japanese own cultural traditions. It was necessary to find universally valid criteria or values in Japanese culture. The articles in the second section titled Historical Backgrounds approach bushi dō in its historical manifestations and metamorphoses from the perspectives of archae- ology, history and art history. Takamune Kawashima focuses on the archaeological remains and landscape around the Kashima Grand Shrine, where the oldest evi- dence of martial arts in Japan can be traced. This region, Hitachi-no-kuni, was the border between the centralized ritsuryō state and the regions that lay beyond its control in the early eighth century, and was thus an important location where bat- tles against northern tribal groups took place. According to Kawashima, though Kashima itself was apparently not the place for weapon production, it was, in a sense, the birthplace of martial arts in Japan. Based on shintō beliefs the Kashima Grand Shrine took the initiative for warfare in the ideological and spiritual senses too, heralding the beginning of so-called samurai values. The second article by Maria Paola Culeddu takes us on a long journey in search of the earliest traces of “the way of the samurai” in ancient and premodern writings, from ancient chron- icles of Japan, war tales, official laws, letters, to martial arts manuals and philo- sophical essays. By highlighting some of the bushidō values, Culeddu attempts to answer the questions as to how and why the representation of the bushi changed through history, acknowledging that the samurai were generally not represented as they actually were, but as historical circumstances imagined them to be. In the final article in this section, Naama Eisenstein, on the other hand, focuses on 11Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 5–12 visual representations of samurai behaviour. She takes the example of the famous episode from the Genpei War (1180–1185) as described in the Heike monogatari, and explores how the meaning of this commonly depicted episode changed over time. By analysing visual representations, she proposes possible explanations for the immense popularity of the story, which in our understanding is certainly not one of honour, but rather one of deception. The third part, Modern Tranformations features four articles focusing on modern echoes and representations of bushidō. Danny Orbach traces the bakumatsu “men of high spirit” or shishi and their ideology of “purity of the spirit” as a legitimate motive for illegal acts, and follows its transformation and application in judicial practice during the Taishō and Shōwa periods. He argues that the relative judi- cial leniency to right-wing terrorists in the early 1930s was interlinked with the deep-rooted ideology of subjectivism. This ideology, based on the mythologiza- tion of the shishi, had, according to Orbach, three main tenets: spontaneity, sin- cerity and pure motives, defined as an intention to serve the emperor, the country and the public good. In the second article of this section Nathan H. Ledbetter focuses on the production of Military History of Japan (Nihon Senshi) by the Im- perial Japanese Army as an attempt to tie the new military institution to the samurai tradition—a process of inventing tradition, similar to the one of creating the modern bushidō ideology itself. The interpretations contained in Nihon Senshi, according to Ledbetter, influenced military thinkers and propagated a version of premodern military campaigns that placed regional military forces as national sources of pride. The third article, by Simona Lukminaitė, turns its attention to the development of modern education system and examines how bushidō and martial arts were employed in the education of women in the Meiji period. In its quest for recogni tion of Japan as a civilized and modern state, the Meiji government realized the role of women had to be redefined as well, and many intellectuals argued that women’s education was one of the shaping-factors to the physical and mental development of future generations. Women thus required an upbringing that would address this issue. Physical education was a means to, first of all, liber- ate women’s bodies by allowing physical and mental expression and confidence, in addition to assuring their health and thus ability to contribute to society. At the same time, it was understood as a means for moral and mental training that would ensure good character, especially in the case of martial arts that were seen as capa- ble of balancing the overemphasis of Western learning in the education of wom- en. Finally, Andrew Horvat searches for the legacy of “samurai values” and bushidō in contemporary Japanese journalism and higher education. This legacy, according to Horvat, is not necessarily rooted in actual samurai behaviour, but this in no way diminishes the power of ideological perception regarding samurai behaviour. For 12 Luka Culiberg: Guest Editor’s Foreword example, the part of bushidō Horvat focuses on in his paper is the moral and ethi- cal teachings emphasizing jinkaku or superior character, which Edo era educators hoped to inculcate into generations of peacetime “warriors-turned-bureaucrats”. The expected exemplary behaviour among modern day Japanese journalists work- ing for Japan’s “serious press”, and the stress on the development of jinkaku in contemporary Japanese education are, according to Horvat, evidence enough that these values remain very much alive today. The final section, Alternative Approach, features a paper by authors we could call “the practitioners” of modern bushidō in martial arts. The paper is written by G. Björn Christianson, Mikko Vilenius and Humitake Seki, the 19th generation headmaster or shihanke of the Kashima Shinryū, a Japanese koryū martial arts school. It presents a point of view which situates martial arts and bushidō firmly within Japanese mythology, focusing on a tale about the bestowal of a mythi- cal sword Futsunomitama-no-tsurugi to the legendary first Emperor, Jinmu ten- nō. The article combines archaeological evidence with mythological narratives, taking them at face value, and proposes a theory of the development of a longer, outwards-curving sword configuration suitable for a style of two-handed usage which became part of the kōmyō-ken curriculum within Kashima Shinden Buju- tsu, in which the authors recognise one of the earliest of the interactions between technology and technique that was driving the evolution of bushidō culture. It is our hope that the present issue of Asian Studies will contribute to the recent revival of academic interest in bushidō, and that it will offer readers informative contents with many fascinating insights. I wish you an enjoyable reading. Luka Culiberg, Guest Editor Defining Bushidō 15DOI: 10.4312/as.2018.6.2.15-31 The Way of Which Warriors? Bushidō & the Samurai in Historical Perspective Karl FRIDAY *5 Abstract Modern commentators have too often attempted to treat bushidō as an enduring code of behaviour readily encapsulated in simplistic notions of honour, duty, and loyalty. The historical reality, however, is anything but simple. Samurai ethics and behavioural norms varied significantly from era to era—most especially across the transition from the medi- eval to early modern age—and in most cases bore scant resemblance to twentieth-century fantasies about samurai comportment. Keywords: bushidō, samurai, honour, duty, loyalty, war stories Pot katerih bojevnikov? Bushidō in samuraji v zgodovinski perspektivi Izvleček Številni komentatorji so v modernem času pogosto obravnavali bushidō kot trajen ko- deks obnašanja, ki ga je mogoče zlahka zaobjeti s poenostavljenimi pojmi, kakor so čast, dolžnost in zvestoba. Zgodovinska resničnost pa je vse prej kot preprosta. Samurajska etika in norme obnašanja so se močno razlikovale od obdobja do obdobja – še posebej na prehodu iz srednjeveškega v zgodnje moderno obdobje – in so v večini primerov le bežno spominjale na fantazije o samurajskem obnašanju, ki so se oblikovale v dvajsetem stoletju. Ključne besede: bushidō, samuraji, čast, dolžnost, zvestoba, vojne pripovedi On the fourteenth day of the third (lunar) month of 1701, Asano Naganori, the young and recently named daimyō of the Akō domain (in modern-day Hyōgo prefecture), was serving in the castle of the fifth Tokugawa shōgun, Tsunayoshi. Engaged in arranging a reception for envoys from the imperial court, Naga- nori had somehow run afoul of Kira Yoshinaka, the ranking master of proto- col assigned to instruct him, with the result that Yoshinaka had endeavoured to humiliate him publicly on several occasions. Naganori, who was apparently driven * Karl FRIDAY, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan kfriday[at]mail.saitama-u.ac.jp 16 Karl Friday: The Way of Which Warriors? more by youthful righteous indignation than pragmatism and sound judgement, ambushed Yoshinaka in the halls of the castle, wounding him—albeit not fatal- ly—with his short sword. Shogunal law on such matters was both clear and strict: drawing a weapon within the confines of the shōgun’s castle was a capital offense, whatever the motivation behind it. Accordingly, Naganori was ordered to commit seppuku (ritual suicide), and his domain was confiscated. In the aftermath of this decision by the shogunate, retainers of the now-defunct Asano domain met to discuss their response. Led by the chief retainer, Ōishi Kuranosuke Yoshio, they devised a complex plan for revenge on Yoshinaka, whom they blamed for their master’s demise. In order to allay the suspicions of either the Kira house or the shogunate (who would naturally have been expecting a vendet- ta), the Akō warriors agreed to scatter and lay low for some time, reassembling nearly two years later, after Yoshinaka had long since relaxed his guard. On the fourteenth night of the twelfth month of 1702, they struck. Forty- seven former Asano retainers attacked and killed Yoshinaka in his home in Edo, delivered his head to Naganori’s grave, and then surrendered themselves to shogunal authorities for judgement. After a lengthy debate, they were or- dered to commit suicide. The story of the 47 Akō rōnin ranks among the best-known, and best-loved tales about the samurai. But while the rōnin have long been popularly acclaimed as the ultimate examples of samurai loyalty and honour, the events and the actions of the principals were actually much more controversial at the time than most people re- alise. Far from representing a straightforward, edifying account of samurai virtue, therefore, the Akō Incident actually illustrates the complexity of samurai thought, and early modern ideals concerning honour and loyalty. The shogunate’s decision notwithstanding, public sentiment at the time and since has come down heavily on the side of the rōnin. The story was fictionalised into a stage drama (Chūshingura, or A Treasury of Loyal Retainers) and subsequently served as the plot of a half-dozen or more movies. In like manner, the militarists of the early twentieth century saw the Asano retainers as the very embodiment of samurai virtue. But evaluations of the incident varied widely among the early eighteenth-century “authorities” on proper samurai comportment. There was, to begin with, a great deal of debate within the shogunate itself. Ogyū Sorai, Dazai Shundai and several others censured the rōnin for placing their personal feelings above their higher duty to uphold shogunal law and protect the public order. In contrast, Haya- shi Nobukatsu, Miyake Kanran, among others, praised them for their purity of 17Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 15–31 motive and the selfless nobility of their actions.1 But perhaps the most significant condemnation of all came from Yamamoto Jōchō, the author of Hagakure, which ranks among the two or three best-known and most celebrated expositions of Tokugawa period bushidō. Jōchō judged the rōnin to have been too calculating and rational, and was particularly bothered by their decision to wait to carry out their vendetta, stating that they should instead have rushed to attack Yoshinaka immediately, without concern for the outcome: What if [their intended victim] Lord Kira had died of illness in the in- terim? It would have been a terrible shame. Warriors of the Kamiga- ta region are clever and shrewd in finding ways of being showered in praise [...] they are unable to override the shackles of rational judgement. (Yamamoto 2014, 70–71) All of this points to an important truth: While both scholarly and popular ac- counts of samurai ethics and values frequently presume or imply the existence of a relatively unified and well-defined code guiding warrior behaviour throughout samurai history and beyond, this notion is terribly misleading. The function of warriors, their place in Japanese society, and the purpose and conduct of war evolved and changed many times over the nearly millennium-long epoch be- tween the birth of the samurai and their abolition in the late nineteenth century, giving rise to substantially different visions of proper warrior behaviour from one era to the next. Moreover, ideas about samurai values have been reshaped multiple times during the modern era.2 The “way of the samurai” is not one construct, but many. The difficulties involved in elucidating the essence of “bushidō” begin with the term itself. Scarcely used at all before modern times, the word was so unusual that Nitobe Inazō, whose 1899 tract, Bushido: The Soul of Japan, probably did more than any other single book to popularise the trope in both Japan and the West, was able to believe that he had invented it himself (Hurst 1990, 512–3; Nitobe 1969). Even as a kind of historiographic term—a modern label for warrior ideology— bushidō is a problematic construct, one that has long provoked much pontifica- tion but very little agreement concerning substance. In practical terms, bushi­ dō is perhaps best understood as belonging to the same class of words as terms like “patriotism”, “masculinity”, or “femininity”. That is, most people allow that 1 A complete translation of the shogunate’s debates appears in Hiroaki Sato’s Legends of the Samu­ rai (1995, 304–38). 2 For details, see Benesch 2014. 18 Karl Friday: The Way of Which Warriors? these are desirable qualities to manifest, but few agree on what they actually in- volve: Are Edward Snowden or Daniel Ellsberg true patriots, or does that label more appropriately fit Oliver North or Geert Wilders? Is Angela Merkel more or less feminine than Marilyn Monroe? There was, in fact, very little written discussion of proper warrior behaviour prior to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, marking the concept of a code of conduct for the samurai as a product of the early modern Pax Tokugawa, not the medieval “Age of the Country at War”. The significance of this timing cannot be over-estimated, for the early modern era was marked by two dramatic changes to the lives of warriors—in addition to the end of the fighting that had hitherto been the defining feature of their existence. First, the samurai became—for the first time in their history—a legally-defined social order. That is, warriors were transformed from an occupational group de- marcated mainly by possession of certain skills to a socio-political class in which membership was almost purely hereditary. And second, warriors were moved off the land. This process began in the waning decades of the medieval epoch, as daimyō experimented with ways to make their armies more efficient and their retainers less independent, and continued through the early 1600s. By the mid- seventeenth century, most samurai were living in castle towns, subsisting on sti- pends from their overlords (rather than rents and taxes from villages they con- trolled in the manner of their medieval forebears). By 1700, more than 90 percent of the samurai were living in this manner. These developments radically altered the relationship between lord and vassal. Obligations that until then had been reciprocal became one-sided, and character- ised by vassal dependence. The bonds also became less personal, directed toward the position of the domain lord, rather than to the man himself. Daimyō rapidly came to be seen not as warlords who attracted and held followers by means of personal qualities and achievements, but as the titular heads of the bureaucratic organisations in which retainers were now employed. Loyalty became directed to the domain, as symbolised by the daimyō, marking the beginnings of something more akin to modern patriotism than to traditional feudal loyalty. Under these conditions, ideas about warrior honour and behavioural norms be- came formalised and often quaint. The role of the warrior became a major philo- sophical problem for the samurai, inasmuch as they had stationed themselves at the top of the socio-political hierarchy, and yet had effectively lost their original function. Most samurai of this period were sword-bearing bureaucrats and ad- ministrators, descended from, but only nominally identifiable as, warriors. Ac- cordingly, the motivation held in common by all those who wrote on the “way of 19Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 15–31 the warrior” was a search for the proper role of a warrior order in a world without war. The ideas that developed out of this search owed very little to the behavioural norms of earlier times. Honour, Anachronism & Ethnocentrism Honour is a knotty construct. While analogous concepts are widespread across time and space, “honour” represents a ubiquitous value only in the sense that a great many cultures entertain some sort of corresponding ideal. But the substance of honour—the specifics of what behaviours are and are not held to be “honoura- ble”—are peculiar to individual times and places. When we speak of “samurai honour”, therefore, we must take care to define our terms—and our times. Indeed, even the terminology employed to label the con- struct of warrior honour varied across time, and multiple terms were often bandied about during a single age. The words foreign or modern observers have translated as “honour” include na (literally, “name”), menmoku (“face”), eiyō (“praiseworthy”), giri (“duty”), and a host of others, each slightly different in nuance and connotation. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that throughout the classical, medieval and early mod- ern epochs, honour and reputation lay at the heart of a warrior’s self- perception, and provided the context within which warrior behaviour must be evaluated. A samurai’s reputation, honour and pride were almost tangible entities that took precedent over all other obligations. As a thirteenth-century commentary enu- merating the “seven virtues of a warrior” concludes, “to go forth to the field of bat- tle and miss death by an inch; to leave behind one’s name for myriad generations; all in all, this is the Way” (Kokon chomonjū 9.12.333). Slights to reputation or honour were often catalysts to belligerence and blood- shed. Breaches of etiquette and failure to show proper respect could lead to violent consequences. Anecdotes in the twelfth-century didactic tale collection Konjaku monogatarishū, for example, tell of a warrior who was shot for failing to dismount from his horse in the presence of a higher-ranked samurai, and of another samurai lord ordering the death of a warrior for being rude. Nihon kiryaku, a court-sponsored history, relates that in 989 two warriors in the capital got into a quarrel over drinks and “went to war”, in the process shooting down several of the officers sent to quiet them (Konjaku monogatarishū, 25.4, 25.10; Nihon kiryaku, 989 11/23). Azuma kagami, the first shogunate’s didactic record of its own history, describes even more colourful incidents, such as one that began when Miura Yasumura 20 Karl Friday: The Way of Which Warriors? and some of his relatives were having a drinking and dancing party in a “las- civious house” near Shimoge Bridge in Kamakura, while warriors of the Yūki, Oyama and Naganuma households were having a similar party near the other end of the bridge. At some point during the festivities, Yūki Tomomura took it into his head to practice long-distance archery, and began chasing and shoot- ing at a dog outside the house. Unfortunately, one of his arrows went wild, and ended up in a screen in the house in which the Miura were gathered. Tomomura sent a servant to fetch the arrow back, but Yasumura refused to give it to him, berating Tomomura for his rudeness. An argument quickly ensued, and before long both sides had assembled mounted troops and launched a full-scale battle (Azuma kagami, 1241/11/29). Malicious gossip carried between warriors by third parties could also prompt samu rai to take to the saddle.3 The seriousness with which gossip and personal insults were taken is reflected in the language of shogunal laws: Battle and killing often arise from a base of insults and bad-mouthing of others. In momentous cases the perpetrator shall be punished by exile; in lighter cases, he shall be punished by confinement. If, in the course of judicial proceedings, one party should bad-mouth the other, the dispute shall be settled in favour of his opponent. Further, if his argument is oth- erwise without merit, he shall have another of his holdings confiscated. If he has no holdings, he shall be punished by exile. (Goseibai shikimoku, 358–9) Honour—or conversely, shame—could reach beyond the warrior himself, and even beyond his lifespan. Samurai could prosper through the inherited glory of their ancestors or suffer the stigma of their disgrace. Filial piety and familial hon- our were, in fact, often a cause of private warfare.4 Large-scale vendettas were surprisingly rare, but attempts to avenge slights against family members were common and troublesome enough to merit specific mention in Kamakura law: Furthermore, in the case of a son or grandson who kills the enemy of his father or grandfather, said father or grandfather shall also be punished for the crime, even if he protests that he had no knowledge of it, because the father or grandfather’s enmity was the motive that gave rise to the act. (Goseibai shikimoku, 358) 3 See, for example, Konjaku monogatarishū 23.13, 25.3, and 25.5. 4 See, for example, Suisaki 1079 8/30; Shōmonki (Hayashi 1975, 65); Mutsuwaki 23; Heian ibun doc. 2467; Konjaku monogatarishū 25.4, 25.9; Shōyūki 989 4/4; Azuma kagami 1219 1/27. 21Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 15–31 Medieval warriors might also refuse orders from their superiors, risk the loss of valuable retainers, and even murder men to whom they owed their lives, all for the sake of their reputations. Even a warrior’s life could be of less consequence to him than his name and image, and we find in accounts of early battles numerous sketches of warriors choosing to sacrifice themselves in order to enhance their reputations or those of their families.5 Be all that as it may, the key—and all-too-often-overlooked—point to be born in mind is that medieval samurai honour, early modern samurai honour, and modern ideas about samurai honour, were all distinctly different things. We must, therefore, resist anachronistic or ethnocentric assumptions about the na- ture of “honour”, or about the sort of conduct it might be expected to have engendered. For while honour and shame were central to samurai’s self-perception throughout their history, in the premodern age, both turned on a warrior’s military reputation, which turned first and foremost on his record of victories. Medieval Japanese concepts of honour and of honourable conduct in battle were flexible, and permit- ted successful warriors to rationalise a variety of behaviour that would have been met with considerable chagrin by Tokugawa-era bushidō pundits or twentieth- century proponents of “samurai values”. While some aspects of medieval warrior ethics are very much in harmony with notions of honour, as modern (or Western) audiences understand this construct, others seem shockingly “dishonourable” by contemporary lights. For most of the first seven centuries of their existence, Japa- nese warriors were far more concerned with expediency, self-interest, and tactical, strategic or political advantage than abstractions.6 Some War Stories One of the most famous stories about early samurai behaviour concerns a conflict between two tenth-century warriors, Minamoto Mitsuru and Taira Yoshifumi, recorded in Konjaku monogatarishū.7 In this account, gossip carried between the two ignites a quarrel, resulting in a challenge to combat. The two sides issue 5 See, for example, Konjaku monogatarishū 25.6, 29.5; Kokon chomonjū 9.13.347, 9.12.333; Mutsu­ waki 23, 25–6; Azuma kagami 32-33; Azuma kagami 1180 8/26, 1184 4/21 1205 6/22, 1221 6/6 1241 11/29. 6 Matthew Strickland observes that, “despite drawing on established concepts, honour [is] ultimately a personal issue [...] governed by the conscience and self-esteem of the individual” (Strickland 1996, 125–31). 7 The tale appears in Konjaku monogatarishū, 25.3. 22 Karl Friday: The Way of Which Warriors? invitations to meet at a designated place on a specified day, and then set about putting their troops in order and preparing to fight: On the agreed upon day, the two warbands set forth, coming to face one another across the designated field at the hour of the serpent.8 [...] While all prepared their hearts, readying to cast aside their bodies and disregard their lives, they planted their shields in rows, facing one another at a dis- tance of about one chō.9 Each side then sent forth a warrior to exchange written challenges. As those stalwarts returned to their ranks, there began, as was customary, a flurry of arrows. The warriors did not look back or even hurry their horses forward, but returned quietly—thus displaying their bravery. After this, both sides moved their shields closer together and were about to begin shooting, when Yoshifumi called to Mitsuru. To simply set our respective troops discharging arrows at one another does not serve the interest of today’s battle. Let only you and I learn of each other’s skill. Instead of having our troops engage, how about if only the two of us ride at one another and take our best shots? Mitsuru concurs and, after cautioning his men to stay out of the fight, even should he lose, rides out to engage Yoshifumi alone. The two make several passes at one another, but neither is able to land a decisive shot. At length they agree to call the matter a draw and, having settled their quarrel, spend the remainder of their lives amicably. The behaviour of Mitsuru and Yoshifumi in this tale accords well with the re- ceived wisdom concerning classical samurai warfare, and is, in fact, the principal source cited in support of several key points thereof. But it contrasts vividly with another account, in the same text, about two later tenth-century warriors, Taira Koremochi and Fujiwara Morotō.10 As in the Mitsuru and Yoshifumi story, a dispute over a piece of land festers, fuelled by gossip, until at length a challenge is issued and date and place agreed upon. As the day of battle approaches, Morotō finds himself outnumbered nearly three to one and, apparently determining discretion to be the better part of valour, flees instead to a neighbouring province. The narrator of the tale informs us that “Those who spoke between the two warriors pronounced favourably on this.” 8 9:00–11:00 AM. 9 One chō is approximately. 110 meters. 10 Recounted in Konjaku monogatarishū 25.5. 23Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 15–31 Koremochi, upon receiving this news, determines things to be safe and demobilis- es his men, who have been pestering him to allow them to return to their homes. But shortly thereafter, Koremochi and his household are startled from their sleep by Morotō, approaching with a sizeable force. Morotō’s men surround Koremo- chi’s compound, set fire to the buildings, and shoot down anyone who emerges. When the fire has burned itself out they search the ashes, “discovering men of high and low rank, children and the like—all told more than eighty persons— burned to death.” En route home, Morotō pauses near the home of his brother-in-law, Tachibana Yoshinori, to give his troops a rest, whereupon the men celebrate their victory by gorging themselves on food and sake, until they pass out. Unbeknownst to them, however, Koremochi is not dead. He had escaped by seizing a robe from one of his serving women, and slipping past the attackers under the cover of the smoke 11 “Dropping into the depths of a stream to the west, he carefully approached a place far from the bank where reeds and such grew thickly, and clung there to the roots of a willow”, hiding until the fighting was over and Morotō’s troops had withdrawn. Some of his own troops who had not been in the house later find him, and re-supply him with clothing, weapons, and a horse, while he explains what had happened, adding that he had chosen not to flee into the mountains at the beginning of the attack because he feared that “this would have left behind the reputation of one who had run away.” His men counsel him to wait and reassem- ble his forces before going after Morotō, whose troops still outnumber them five or six to one. But Koremochi shakes off this advice, arguing: Had I been burned to death inside my house last night, would my life exist now? I escaped in this manner at great cost, yet I do not live. To show myself to you for even one day is extremely shameful. Therefore, I will not be stingy with this dew-like life. You may assemble an army and fight later. As for myself, I will go [on to attack] alone. [...] No doubt I will send off [only] a single arrow and then die, but to choose otherwise would be a limitless shame for my descendants. [...] Those of you who begrudge your lives need not come with me; I will go alone. Koremochi and his men thereby fall upon Morotō’s troops, taking them complete- ly by surprise. Drunk and sated, Morotō’s side is able to offer only a half-hearted defence, and is soon utterly destroyed. After taking Morotō’s head, Koremochi moves on to his home, which he puts to the torch. 11 Azuma kagami 1184 4/21 recounts a similar incident involving a warrior escaping danger disguised as a woman, and even getting a friend to impersonate him and draw off pursuers. 24 Karl Friday: The Way of Which Warriors? The protagonists’ obsession with their reputations throughout this tale is note- worthy, but also complicated. The challenge to fight, the agreement on time and place, Koremochi’s refusal to run away at the outset of Morotō’s attack, and his speech to his men after they find him on the morning after all fit well with modern expectations of “honourable” samurai behaviour. But his method of escape from the burning house, his counter-attack, his gratuitous destruction of Morotō’s home, Morotō’s decision to run rather than face Koremochi at the agreed-upon time, and other incidents are a far cry from popular notions of samurai honour. Moreover, in spite of very similar beginnings, the conflicts between Yoshifumi and Mitsuru, and between Morotō and Koremochi proceed in such stark contrast to one another that readers are left wondering if perhaps there could have been two competing warrior ethea during the tenth century. A second possibility is that confrontation between Yoshifumi and Mitsuru, which would had to have occurred about 150 years before the text that records it was compiled, may simply represent a kind of creative nostalgia—an idealised image—of earlier warriors on the part of twelfth-century litterateurs. In any event, two points demand our attention here: First, there is no disre- garding the fact that the tale was calculated to impress the very same audienc- es who regarded Koremochi as heroic. And second, Yoshifumi and Mitsuru’s handling of their feud was clearly exceptional. In other sources, the aplomb with which the early samurai engaged in deceit and subterfuge is striking. The acceptance of both warrior and non-warrior audiences of this sort of behav- iour is still more so. Another incident related in the same text, for example, describes the tactics em- ployed by Taira Sadamichi, a retainer of Minamoto Yorimitsu (944–1021), in hunting down another warrior (Konjaku monogatarishū 25.10). Commanded by Yorimitsu’s illustrious younger brother, Yorinobu (968–1048), to take the head of a certain warrior from a nearby province, Sadamichi initially disregards the order, which was issued publicly, in the midst of a drunken party, and by Yorinobu, with whom Sadamichi had no prior relationship. But some three or four months later, having completely forgotten the whole affair, Sadamichi chances to meet the very man he had been ordered to kill. The two ride along together, engaged in friendly conversation for some time, until the would-be victim, having heard the story of Yorinobu’s order, asks Sadamichi about it. Suddenly recalling the incident, Sadamichi laughs and explains that he has chosen to ignore the command, which he believes to have been foolish and unreasonable. The other warrior relaxes, thanking Sadamichi 25Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 15–31 for his generous attitude. He adds, however, a note of caution lest Sadamichi change his mind, warning him that he would not be an easy man to reck- on with. This bit of arrogance induces Sadamichi to do exactly that. Quietly parting from the man, he rides out of sight to don his armour and prepare himself, only to return minutes later to catch his hapless victim riding along on a spare horse, unarmoured, and shoots him down before he can even reach his weapons. In yet another tale from that text, a warrior slays the man who killed his father by disguising himself as a servant bearing food, sneaking into the man’s room (while he rested in the home of the samurai’s master), and slitting his throat as he slept. And Azuma kagami recounts how the first Kamakura shōgun, Mi- namoto Yoritomo, had one of his men executed for treason by summoning him to his quarters and entertaining him with food and drink, in the midst of which another of Yoritomo’s men, Amano Tōkage, stepped forward with a sword to lop off the unfortunate man’s head. In none of these accounts is there any sugges- tion that this sort of conduct is improper (Konjaku monogatarishū 25.4; Azuma kagami 1185 6/16). The prominent role of deception, ambush and surprise attacks in these anecdotes seems discomfortingly unheroic to modern audiences. But such behaviour is, in fact, one of the enduring themes of Japan’s martial legacy, and can be seen as far back as the Kojiki, in the exploits of Yamato Takeru no Mikoto, and at least as recently as the Pacific War. Artifice and subterfuge in war are not, of course, by any means unique to Japan. Medieval European lords also happily built on tactics of betrayal and deception to secure victory. Matthew Strickland points, for example, to the 1118–1119 cam- paigns between Henry I and Louis VI, fought principally in Normandy, which demonstrated the repeated use of guile in almost every aspect of the fighting. And yet, argues Strickland, few of these acts provoked reproach from the pens of those who chronicled them. On the contrary, knights applauded cunning, guile and surprise, even in tournaments, and acknowledged them as fundamental and ubiquitous elements of war (Strickland 1996, 128–31). Even so, the Japanese attitude toward this issue stands out. For in medieval Eu- rope, betrayal and deception were restricted by conventions of war that sought to regulate fighting to the mutual benefit of both sides in any struggle. They were legitimate only because of legalistic loopholes arising from formalised conven- tions of oaths, truces, declarations and challenges. Knights could exploit surprise and guile without setting precedents that undermined the conventions only when their actions violated no specific promises or agreements. And such tactics were 26 Karl Friday: The Way of Which Warriors? successful mainly when careless enemies failed to take note of the absence of any such prior agreements12 (Strickland 1996, 42–43, 128–31). Japanese custom lacked all such qualifications. Promises and truces were violated with impunity, as Minamoto Yoritomo demonstrated in his destruction of Sa- take Yoshimasa, in 1184: Using Taira Hirotsune, a relative of the Satake, as an intermediary, Yoritomo persuaded Yoshimasa to meet him alone, at the centre of a bridge leading to Yoshimasa’s home. When Yoshimasa arrived at the meeting point, however, Hirotsune abruptly cut him down, causing many of Yoshimasa’s followers to surrender and others to turn and flee (Azuma kagami 1180 11/4). Medieval audiences considered surprise attacks so utterly normal and fair that an early eleventh-century text begins a description of the archetypical samurai, “the greatest warrior in the land”, by informing us that, “he was highly skilled in the conduct of battles, night attacks, archery duels on horseback, and ambushes” (emphasis added) (Shin sarugakki 138). The foregoing points notwithstanding, we need to guard against censorial judgments of early medieval warriors based on ethnocentric or anachronistic standards for behav- iour. Measured against the war conventions of their own time and place, early samurai tactics were no less noble or heroic, and no more treacherous or underhanded, than those of their European contemporaries. Early medieval Japanese rules of engage- ment demanded that warriors concern themselves only with the most efficient ways to bring about the desired result, with the ends justifying almost any means. The notion that certain sorts of tactics might be “fair” while others were “unfair” was not only in- apposite to such deliberations, it was all but extraneous to samurai culture. Shades of Loyalty A second popular theme among modern commentators on bushidō concerns the absolute fealty that warriors are alleged to have displayed toward their overlords. Samurai loyalty is described as unconditional and utterly selfless, extending even beyond the deaths of the principals. And indeed, that is the lesson of Chūshin- gura, Hagakure, and numerous other early modern parables and harangues about samurai values. 12 Brunner (1992, 65) notes that, “The Summa legum of Raymond of Wiener Neustadt contended that to kill someone ‘without a challenge, without open enmity’ (sine diffidacione et sine manifesta inimicitia) was just murder.” But Strickland (1996, 128) qualifies, “Where no prior agreement was involved, however, surprise and guile might be considered perfectly legitimate. Low cunning was not itself dishonourable; what brought shame was perjury of an oath promising to abstain from such acts.” 27Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 15–31 But the Tokugawa period was, as we noted earlier, a brave new world, in which on-going peace, shogunal regulations limiting the size of daimyō retainer bands, and fixed tax rates and daimyō incomes rendered the employment market for warriors all but non-existent. Under these circumstances, daimyō could and did demand unqualified loyalty from their retainers. In earlier ages, however, 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 tenth century through the end of the “Age of the Country” at War in the late sixteenth, 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. Loyalty was, to be sure, also a common trope in shogunal regulations and the house laws formulated by late medieval daimyō. But there are at least two prob- lems involved in interpreting from this that constancy was a fundamental part of medieval warrior character. To begin with, the idea that subjects owe their rulers unrestricted allegiance is a basic tenet of Confucianism and derives little or nothing from any military tradition per se. Japanese government appeals for loyalty began long before the birth of the samurai—as seen, for example, in the “Seventeen Article Con- stitution” of Shōtoku Taishi, promulgated in 603. The concept predates even the existence of a Japanese state by hundreds of years, and traces back to the Chinese Confucian philosophers of the sixth to third centuries BCE. Japanese warlords who called upon those that served them to render unflinching loyalty were not so much defining proper samurai behaviour as they were exhorting their subjects on a traditional and general theme of government. Moreover, attempting to deduce norms of actual behaviour from formal legal and mor- al codes is a treacherous business. Laws and exhortations reflect desired, not actual, behaviour, and attempts of this sort to formulate normative standards often appear in inverse proportion to the prevalence of the behaviour in the real world (Hurst 1990). The standout feature of warrior alliances in this formative age for the samurai was their fragility. While earlier generations of scholars sometimes drew analogies between warrior networks and the land-commendation process through which 28 Karl Friday: The Way of Which Warriors? estates (shōen) were formed,13 the two processes were fundamentally different. For, unlike land commendation arrangements, the bonds between warriors were not supported by written contracts. Commendation instruments exist in abun- dance, but one searches in vain for a single document formalizing a military alli- ance prior to the agreements issued by Minamoto Yoritomo in the 1180s.14 This absence of legal paperwork regulating early warrior alliances was a reflection of the amorphous nature of the lord-vassal bond during the era. Formal arrange- ments under which specified benefices were offered in return for defined military services were slow to develop in Japan, because the ability of warrior leaders to manipulate any forms of carrot or stick in order to recruit, maintain or control fol- lowers was closely circumscribed by their relatively weak political circumstances until well into the early medieval period. For even the most eminent samurai of the classical age occupied only intermediate positions in the socio-political hier- archy, and were dependent on connections with the higher echelons of the court to maintain their political and economic positions.15 Their autonomy in matters of governance and land-holding was limited, which meant that they lacked the right—and therefore the means—to reward or punish their own troops directly. Warrior allegiances were further circumscribed by the multi-tiered, hierarchical structure of the military networks to which they belonged. Warriors in the organ- isations of prominent samurai frequently had vassals of their own, and many of these, in turn, had followers. The loyalties of lower-ranking figures in this complex hierarchy to those at the top were tenuous at best, being buffered at each interced- ing level by the allegiances of their higher-ups. Nor were ideological constraints of much value in holding early warrior allianc- es together. Literary war stories like Heike monogatari, which purport to de- scribe events of the early medieval period, are filled with edifying tales attesting to the fierce loyalty displayed by the warriors of the age. And earlier, more reliable sources do give some hints that the fighting men of this time were not entirely oblivious to the concept of fealty as a virtue. But the real effect of this notion on samurai behaviour was minimal.16 13 See, for example Yasuda 1962, 12–78. 14 As in the case of patron/client relationships between court nobles, a warrior entering the service of another presented his new master with his name placard (myōbu). There is, however, no evidence that the junior party to the arrangement ever received any written confirmation in exchange. For examples of warriors offering myōbu as gestures of submission, see Heian ibun doc. 2467 or Kon­ jaku monogatarishū 25.9. 15 On this point see Mass 1974, 33–35, 45–54. 16 See, for example, Shōmonki 79, 125–9; Konjaku monogatarishū 25.9; Mutsuwaki 23–24; Chōya gunsai 284 or Chūyūki 1114 5/6. 29Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 15–31 Consequently, the integrity of the lord-vassal bond in classical and medieval times tended to be only as strong as the adherents’ perceptions that affiliation worked to their advantage. Warrior leaders could count on the services of their followers only to the extent that they were able to offer suitably attractive compensation— or, conversely, to impose suitably daunting sanctions for refusal. For the most part, medieval warriors viewed loyalty as a commodity predicated on adequate remu- neration, rather than as an obligation transcending self-interest. In the fourteenth century, expectations concerning commitments and fealty be- came closely bound up with distinctions between warriors of varying levels of autarky, which, in turn, hardened into hereditary social categories. Thus warriors of means came to be styled tozama (“outsiders”), while those who maintained strong dependent ties to greater lords were called miuchi (“insiders”). Tōzama were ideologically, as well as economically, autonomous. They chose their battles and leaders according to narrowly-defined personal interests and circumstances of the moment, and were more than ready to desert to other employers whenever they thought they might better their situation by doing so. Only warriors with- out substantial holdings of their own—whose fortunes were therefore inseparable from those of their lords—behaved loyally (Conlan 1997, 42–44). Nevertheless, the bonds between tozama and their miuchi vassals—and to some ex- tent, the categories themselves—were inherently unstable, inasmuch as they hinged on a disparity of resources that kept the vassals unable to challenge their lords. Much like their Tokugawa period descendants, medieval warriors were reliable only in pro- portion to their dependence. Those with minimal holdings often displayed striking loyalty to their overlords; those who possessed, or were entrusted with, extensive lands and followers could—and did—condition their service, and compel greater rewards. Beyond a certain point, retainer dependence—and therefore daimyō control—be- came nominal. Accordingly, a warrior’s military forces grew less and less cohesive as his power and size increased, and his vassals also became landholders of means. Tozama loyalties and military obligations to those above them were even more fluid and contingent. For while miuchi faithfulness might be demanded as an ob- ligation born of dependency, tozama autonomy in military affairs was normative, and tozama services had to be bought. Presumption of autarky freed tozama from any transcendent duty to fight or serve, shifting the burden of responsibility for maintaining allegiance from the warriors called, to the armies that sought to hire them (Conlan 1997, 46–48). At the same time, competition for tozama services whittled away at the very authority it manipulated. The existence of rival emperors, each claiming identi- cal—and exclusive—authority, throughout the fourteenth-century Northern and 30 Karl Friday: The Way of Which Warriors? Southern Courts (Nanbokuchō) epoch, offered warriors a choice of customers to whom to market their support, and thereby sustained the premise that military services had to be purchased from rightfully autonomous contractors, rather than demanded of obedient subjects or vassals. The long-term effects were revolutionary: central authority all but ceased to ex- ist other than in name, leading to the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century world of gekokujō (“the low overthrow the high”) and jakuniku kyōshoku (“the weak are meat; the strong eat”). The instability of this “Age of the Country at War” eventu- ally inspired the restructuring of daimyō rule, which then led to the early modern polity and changes to the warrior order that I described at beginning of this essay. *** To sum up, then: although modern commentators have too often attempted to treat “the way of the warrior” as an enduring code of behaviour readily encap- sulated in simplistic notions of honour, duty, and loyalty, the historical reality is anything but simple. Samurai ethics and behavioural norms varied significantly from era to era—most especially across the transition from the medieval to ear- ly modern age—and in most cases bore scant resemblance to twentieth-century fantasies about samurai comportment. Even in the early modern period, when bushidō became a topic for written pontification, pundits disagreed on the most basic tenets of what it meant to be a proper warrior. Any discussion or exposition of bushidō must, therefore, begin with the question, “the way of which warriors?” References Azuma kagami 吾妻鏡/東鑑 (Mirror of the East). 1968. Shintei zōho kokushi taikei. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan. Benesch, Oleg. 2014. Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Interna­ tionalism, and Bushidō in Modern Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brunner, Otto. 1992. Land and Lordship: Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria, translated by Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Chōya Gunsai 朝野群載総. 1964. Kokushi taikei. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan. Chūyūki 中右記. 1965. Zōho shiryō taisei. Kyoto: Rinsen shoten. Conlan, Thomas. 1997. “Largesse and the Limits of Loyalty in the Fourteenth Century.” In The Origins of Japan’s Medieval World: Courtiers, Clerics, Warriors, and Peasants in the Fourteenth Century, edited by Jeffrey P. Mass, 39–64. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 31Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 15–31 Goseibai Shikimoku 御成敗式目 (Formulary of Adjudications). 1930. In Shinkō gunsho ruijū, edited by Hanawa Hokiichi, 357–5. Tokyo: Meicho Fukyūkai. Heian ibun. 1965. Edited by Takeuchi Rizō, 15 vols. Tokyo: Tōkyōdō. Hurst, G. Cameron, III. 1990. “Death, Honor, and Loyalty: The Bushidō Ideal.” Philosophy East and West 40 (4): 511–27. Kokon chomonjū 古今著聞集 (A Collection of Notable Tales Old and New). 1983. Shinko Nihon koten shūsei. Edited by Nishio Kōichi and Kobayashi Yasuharu, 2 vols. Tokyo: Shinkosha. Kokon chomonjū. 1985. Shintei zōho kokushi taikei. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan. Konjaku monogatarishū 今昔物語. 1971. Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshū, vol. 21–24, Tokyo: Shōgakukan. Mass, Jeffrey P. 1974. Warrior Government in Medieval Japan: A Study of the Kamakura Bakufu, Shugo and Jito. New Haven: Yale University Press. Mutsuwaki 睦奥話記 (Record of the Deep North). 1941. In Gunsho ruijū (Kassen­ bu) 22–32. Tokyo: Zoku gunsho ruijū kanseikai. Nihon kiryaku 日本紀略. 1985. Shintei zōho kokushi taikei. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan. Nitobe Inazō. 1969. Bushido: The Soul of Japan. Tokyo and Rutgers, VT: Tuttle. Sato, Hiroaki. 1995. Legends of the Samurai. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. Shin sarugakki. 1986. In Kodai seiji shakai shisō. Nihon shisō taikei. Tokyo: Iwa- nami shoten. Shōmonki. 1975. Shinsen Nihon koten bunko. Edited by Hayashi Rokurō, vol. 2. Tokyo: Gendai shichō sha. Shōyūki 小右記. 1959. Dainihon kokiroku. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Strickland, Matthew. 1996. War & Chivalry: The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–217. New York and London: Cambridge University Press. Suisaki. 1965. Zōhō shiryō taisei, vol. 12. Kyoto: Rinsen shoten. Yamamoto, Tsunetomo. 2014. Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai. Translated by Alexander Bennett. Rutledge, VT.: Tuttle. Yasuda, Motohisa. 1962. “Bushidan no keisei.” In Iwanami kōza Nihon rekishi kodai 4: 132–60. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. 33DOI: 10.4312/as.2018.6.2.33-50 Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō: A Perspective from Overseas* William M. BODIFORD**17 Abstract Bushidō has had many different lives in many different places around the world. These transformations and afterlives constitute valuable witnesses that offer competing nar- ratives of Japan’s modern development and of its changing roles in the world. Beyond Japan they speak to the multiple ways that the country both inspires and (sometimes) displeases other nations. These lives and afterlives also serve to illustrate the myriad ways that intersections of the local and translocal, the past and present, refract per- spectives. Bushidō is not unique in its ability to assume divergent connotations and implications in accordance with the contours of the frame within which it is placed. Its elusiveness exemplifies the amorphous characteristics of our global world’s no- madic lexicon. Keywords: bushidō, Nitobé, invention of tradition, nomadic concepts Bushidō kot hibrid: hibridnost in transkulturacija v diskurzu o bushidōju Izvleček Bushidō je imel v različnih krajih po vsem svetu različne izpeljave. Njegove preobrazbe in zapuščina so dragoceno pričanje o medsebojno konkurenčnih pripovedih o sodob- nem razvoju Japonske in njenih spreminjajočih se vlogah v svetu. Zunaj Japonske med drugim pričajo o različnih načinih, na katere Japonska navdihuje in (včasih) tudi ra- zočara druge države. Ta življenja in zapuščine služijo tudi za ponazoritev neštetih nači- nov, na katere križanja lokalnega in translokalnega, preteklosti in sedanjosti na novo vzpostavljajo perspektive. Bushidō ni edinstven v svoji zmožnosti, da privzema različne konotacije in implikacije znotraj okvirja, v katerega je umeščen. Njegova izmuzljivost kaže na brezobličnost nomadskega besedišča današnjega globaliziranega sveta. Ključne besede: bushidō, Nitobé, izumljanje tradicije, nomadski koncepti * Revised from a presentation at the University in Ljubljana, 2017, international symposium on Bushi- dō in Transformation. I wish to thank Professor Nataša Visočnik for making this event possible. ** William M. BODIFORD, Professor, Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA, USA. bodiford[at]ucla.edu 34 William M. Bodiford: Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō Essay Bushidō has never been more popular than it is today. Popularity is difficult to measure, but we can gain a rough idea simply by looking at the number of books published in Japan with the word “bushidō” 武士道 as part of their title, which has increased dramatically over the past decade (see Table 1). During the early twentieth century, after Nitobé Inazō1 新渡戸稲造 (1862–1933) first popularized the concept of “bushidō” as “the Soul of Japan” (as he translated the word in the title of his bestselling book), Japan saw a similarly large number of books on the topic, although thereafter the number declined. After the end of the Pacific War the Japanese public ignored bushidō, and from 1945 to 1959 only about seven books with the word “bushidō” in the title were published in the country. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s some interest returned, with an average of about 32 titles published in each decade. Beginning in 2010, however, publishers in Japan began to release an ever rising number of books on bushidō, publishing more than 150 different titles in the space of just seven years. This might simply be due to the advent of online publishing, which has lowered the cost of production. But even inexpensive books will not be published if readers do not wish to purchase them. More important is the fact that interest in bushidō has increased not just inside Japan but throughout the world. Some indication of this can be seen by looking at the number of times that Nitobé’s original English-language book was reprinted in other countries or translated into the languages of those nations (see Table 2). Nitobé published the first edition of his book in Philadelphia, USA, in 1900. Within that same decade there appeared nine more editions in English in both the United States and Britain as well as seven translations: German (1901) by Kauf- mann, Czech (1904) by Karel Hora, Polish (1904) by H. Altenberga, Norwegian (1905) by Hans Brekke, Russian (1905) by A. Salmanovoj, Japanese (1909) by Sakurai Ōson 櫻井鷗村 (1872–1929), and Spanish (1909) by Gonzalo Jiménez de la Espada. No other Japanese author had enjoyed success on this scale, not just in United States or Britain, but across Europe. Thereafter Nitobé’s explanation of bushidō declined in importance, and was all but ignored until the 1980s, when six new translations appeared: Italian (1980) by Rinaldo Massi, Chinese (1982) by Su Guizhen 蘇癸珍, Japanese again (1983) by Naramoto Tatsuya 奈良本辰也 (1913–2001), German (1985) by Rinaldo Massi (again), Malay (1986) by Wong Seng Tong, and Spanish again (1989) by Esteve Serra. Since then its reprinting and translation have continued every decade, and Nitobé’s book has never been so widely read as it is today. 1 I spell Nitobé with an accent in accordance with the way it appears on the cover page of his book. 35Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 33–50 Nowadays even academic researchers show interest in bushidō. Previously scholars of Japan had mostly ignored bushidō or dismissed it as a loose popular construct without analytic value. Their disregard was not unreasonable. Authors writing for the general public had used the word “bushidō” in reference to such disparate phe- nomena that its use in scholarly writing could too easily invite confusion. One rough indication of this lack of interest can be seen by searching for its use in scholarly databases. The widely used academic repository JSTOR (http://www. jstor.org/), for example, currently boasts that it provides on-line access to more than 10 million academic journal articles (most of which are published in Eng- lish) across seventy-five scholarly disciplines. A search for the title-word “bushidō” yields only five results (one in the 1980s, two in the 1990s, and two since 2000). In contrast, a search for the title-word “samurai” (another rather vague term) results in 69 publications, more than twelve times as many. This academic neglect ended in 2014 when Oleg Benesch published Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushidō in Modern Japan (Oxford University Press). Benesch presents a masterful overview of the complex modern history of the term bushidō and all the debates in Japan over its meaning and significance. His book is essential reading for scholars of modern Japanese history and culture. Benesch’s study focuses exclusively on the intellectual history of bushidō within Japan, not its influence elsewhere in the world. He demonstrates that Japanese intellectuals began articulating various interpretations of bushidō even before Nitobé’s English-language book appeared, and that, contrary to our previous understanding, Nitobé contributed little to their debates. According to Benesch, Nitobé’s exposition of the “Soul of Japan” failed to exert much influence within Japan, even after it was translated into Japanese. People who want to better understand how most Japanese have understood bushidō and the role that it played in pre-1945 nationalism, must therefore look beyond Nitobé’s account. For this purpose, Benesch’s work is invaluable. Benesch presents bushidō as an invented tradition of modern Japan. The concept of invented tradition does not refer to the re-invigoration of an existing tradition or the revival of a dormant one. It refers, rather, to the ways that “the modern”—es- pecially modern social organisations and modern ideologies—will harken back to romanticized pristine and timeless past precedents as a mechanism to strengthen group cohesion and forge new identities. Eric Hobsbawm (1983a; 1983b) helped popularize this concept in his analysis of the emergence of nationalism during the period 1870 to 1914 in Europe. Subsequent historians demonstrated its applica- bility to many aspects of modern culture. Numerous Japanese examples serve as case studies in Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, a volume of essays edited by Steven Vlastos (1998). 36 William M. Bodiford: Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō Benesch analyses how educators and public intellectuals transformed the previously obscure term bushidō into an all-purpose label for a wide variety of traits that they linked to a shared national identity, loyalty to the imperial cause, and an ethic of self-sacrifice. His explanation of bushidō as an invented tradition is especially con- vincing with regard to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when ad- vocates of bushidō first grappled with the contradictions of modernity and presented diverse and even contradictory interpretations as they struggled to forge a broad cohesive vision for society. This process of invention was recognised and debated at that time. As early as 1912, for example, Basil Hall Chamberlain (1859–1935) famously dismissed bushidō as part of The Invention of a New Religion. This analysis of bushidō as an invention proves less successful in Benesch’s discussions of the new and diverse contexts in which bushidō discourse has reappeared in recent decades (which Benesch, p. 2, lists as popular culture, politics, sports, economics, business, and natural disasters), when the social and political conditions within and outside Japan changed greatly from those seen when bushidō was invented. The invention of tradition cannot account for the remarkably long-lasting resilience, multi-faceted connotations, and persistent cultural relevance of bushidō as both a term and concept. To better understand these afterlives of bushidō we must examine it not just as a term within this or that discourse, but also its many lives as a concept. While terms typically begin life by referring to concrete references within an identifiable context, they also can assume afterlives as abstract concepts which scholars then use as active interpretive agents of analysis (Hall 1983, 3–4). Interpretive con- cepts derive their meaning or significance less from their context than from their relative positionality within theoretical frameworks, the boundaries of which can shift as individual writers frame topics differently or extend their explanations in new directions. Concepts increase in usefulness by acquiring new theoretical connotations to facilitate intellectual exploration. As new connotations accrue to the same underlying term (bushidō, in this case), this conceptual expansion invites lexicographical dissonance. Readers who lack awareness of the author’s interpre- tive framework can easily misunderstand his or her assertions. Bushidō is not unique in its ability to assume divergent connotations and implica- tions in accordance with the framework within which it is placed. Its elusiveness exemplifies the amorphous characteristics of our global world’s nomadic lexicon, not just in the humanities but also in the sciences and social sciences. There exists, for example, a growing literature on “traveling concepts” (e.g., Bal 2002; Fors- dick 2001; Karp 1997; McGuckin 2005; Saïd 1982 and 1994) and on “nomadic concepts” (Braidotti 1993; Joris 1998 and 1999; Stengers 1987). Olivier Christin (2010; also see 2017) in his Dictionnaire des concepts nomades en sciences humaines compiled a lexicon of common terms (such as: administration; avant-garde; 37Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 33–50 borders; humanitarian; intelligentsia; labour; public opinion; secularize; the West; etc.) that seem simple but convey such conceptual weight so as to pose difficulties for effective communication.2 In a world in which even ordinary words complicate understanding, can it be surprising that bushidō has acquired so many different nuances within and outside Japan? In this essay I will focus on the overseas afterlives of bushidō as a concept. In focusing on its conceptualization, I want to exclude from consideration the roles of bushidō in budō (i.e., Japanese martial arts). Its embodiment in regimes of discipline and performance—the bushidō that Alexander Bennett (2013) says the Japanese people do not know—raises too many complex issues for consid- eration here.3 Before exploring the myriad permutations of bushidō, first I will provide some simple examples of how concepts travel and become nomadic. My examples concern the term “religion”. This word is a good place to start, because Chamberlain already implicated it in the invention of bushidō, and because it is well known and widely used, although most people have only vague ideas about it, while scholars of religion employ it in rather complex and contradictory ways. Moreover, “religion” itself is a concept of rather recent invention (Smith 1998; Masuzawa 2005). Its invention and evolution illustrates how shifting frameworks allow concepts to become more useful: successful concepts perform the intellectu- al work of revealing relationships which otherwise pass unnoticed, while facilitat- ing the construction of new social realities which would otherwise lack coherence. Jonathan Z. Smith (1998, 269) identifies a key characteristic of religion as follows: “it is a category imposed from the outside”—usually by Europeans on other cul- tures they encounter and subjugate. It is a concept that thus travelled from Europe to the rest of the world. In the case of Japan, it was not just imposed from abroad, but also—as demonstrated by Jason Josephson in his masterful The Invention of Religion in Japan (2012, 195–6, 225ff )—became a tool of the Japanese govern- ing elites, who imposed it from above onto their countrymen below. Josephson’s account charts not just how the invention of religion played a key role in the creation of modern Japan, but also how the concept of religion opens a discursive space populated by fellow travellers who provide it with its conceptual, social, and legal power. A précis of a few of his points follows. First, as a conceptual category religion makes it possible to admit the existence of more than one kind of Christianity (i.e., Christian religions as opposed to 2 In their original languages these entries are: administration; avant-garde; frontiere; humanitaire; intelligencija; laïcite; travailt; opinion publique; occident. 3 Regarding this topic, see the works of Gainty 2013, Inoue 1998 and 2004, Shooklyn 2009, and Yuasa 2001, as well as the other essays in this volume. 38 William M. Bodiford: Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō the one religion of Christ). Over time this ecumenicalism would be expanded to admit the existence of religions (plural) as a generic category, within which Christianity could be but one example (even if it always occupies the position of the best example; pp. 15–16). In short, the conceptualization of the term entails the admission of multiple iterations of its referent. Second, this conceptualiza- tion forces the imposition of boundaries, as efforts to refine the concept generate debates over what it includes or excludes. The boundaries of religion necessarily entail creating opposing concepts, such as the non-religious (secular), supersti- tion, and pseudo-religion. It seems only natural, therefore, that early theories of secularization imagined it as a process of disenchantment in which religion would gradually become confined to personal beliefs, while politics, industry, and society, being freed of religious confinement, would follow the march of rational, scientific progress (pp. 95–96; see Figure 1). Third, concepts become nomadic by crossing boundaries and co-opting their opposites.4 Modern societies do not, in fact, see a decline in religious thinking, but instead imbue politics and science with a “regime of truth” expressed by symbols, slogans, ceremonies, and specific ideologies that are all but indistinguishable from the so-called religious (pp. 135–6; see Figure 2.1). Likewise, religions ally themselves with science, reason, and the secular state to work against the superstitious, the pseudo-religious, cults, extremism, radical- ism, or anything else deemed to be dangerous (136, 224ff; see Figure 2.2). These diverse nomadic qualities of religion as a concept (as opposed to the fixed dogma of a given religion) testify to its analytical and social usefulness. Can the same be said of bushidō? What intellectual work does it facilitate? Nitobé’s conceptualization of bushidō certainly had a purpose. He published his English-language book in 1900, a turbulent time halfway in between Japan’s 1895 war with the Qīng Empire of China and its 1905 war with Czarist Russia. Japan was just then beginning to assert itself on the world stage, and sought to escape from the unequal treaties that had been imposed on it by the Americans and Eu- ropean powers. According to his preface, Nitobé (1900, v) wrote Bushido: The Soul of Japan, to answer this simple question: How can the Japanese impart moral ed- ucation without religion? When Nitobé first encountered this question, Europe- ans and Americans regarded any society without religion as immoral, uncivilized, and dangerous ( Josephson 2012, 202–3), and Nitobé thus sought to assuage their fears. He argues that Japanese society rests on a firm moral foundation, which he identifies as bushidō. He describes it in terms of Chinese Confucian virtues, which he explains through examples drawn primarily from European literature (Powles 1995, 109). In this way bushidō serves to bring Chinese and European ethical 4 Josephson uses the Hegelian term sublation (aufhebung). 39Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 33–50 ideals into conversation with one another through the crucible of Japan. Bushi- dō always remains Japanese in character even as it exemplifies the best qualities of Chinese and European civilizations. Nitobé gave life to bushidō as a nomadic concept, which looks back to Japan’s historical past to provide moral direction for its future development, thus addressing the concerns of religious thinkers, but without commitment to any one religious dogma. Its inherent elusiveness allowed readers to flesh out its contours based on their own ideals and expectations of what kinds of teachings would be most suitable for such a moral system. Moreover, through bushidō Nitobé turned Japan’s lack of religion (i.e., Christi- anity) into an advantage. He performed intellectual jujutsu, in which the weak succeed by relying on the strength of their opponent (Hearn 1985, 187, 193). Through his pen the moral sentiments of Japan’s overseas critics not only appeared on Japanese soil, but also travelled back to America and Europe in a secular guise that in the eyes of many rendered them more suitable for modern societies, pre- cisely because they had shed their ties to particular religious’ affiliations. Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), the President of the United States from 1901 to 1909, wrote that he was “most impressed by [Nitobé’s] little volume on Bushido,” from which he especially learned how the samurai spirit “has been and is being trans- formed to meet the needs of modem life” (Burdick 1999, 82). In 1904 Beatrice Webb (1858–1943), the founder of the Fabian Society (an influential British so- cialist organisation dedicated to progressive democratic reforms) lauded Japan as a model of a socially responsible nation and described the country as “a rising star of human self-control and enlightenment” (Holmes and Ion 1980, 320). These statements reveal a major shift in the sentiments of Western leaders and their publics alike. Whereas just a few decades earlier they had regarded the samurai as primitive two-sworded assassins who attacked foreign visitors in cold blood, they now praised the samurai spirit as the animating force behind Japan’s trans- formation into a modern nation (Lehmann 1984, 765–7). People in the West and around the world began to see Japan—and bushidō—as a model of how to harness local cultural ethos to build a successful modern state. This image of bushidō as the successful combination of the East and West found fa- vour not just in Europe but also, and especially, in Asia, where European domination in the form of unequal treaties (China) or colonialization (elsewhere) was still the norm. Many Asian intellectuals and local leaders saw bushidō as the key to Japan’s success in defending itself against the West. One of the earliest non-Japanese advo- cates of bushidō in Asia was Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), a Chinese reform- ist who had been exiled from the Qīng Empire of China (and who lived in Japan ca. 1898–1911). In 1904 he wrote (and published in Shanghai) a book titled Bushidō for China (Zhongguo zhiwushidao 中國之武士道). Liang did not advocate importing 40 William M. Bodiford: Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō bushidō from Japan, but rather advocated that people in China must celebrate their heritage and honour Chinese military heroes to promote their own military ethos (Chen 2010; Liang 1904; Tsai 2010). The fact that the exact same logograms (i.e., 武士道) used to write bushidō in Japanese also are used to write wushidao in Chinese helped Liang to universalize bushidō, and free it from its Japanese context. Eventually similar efforts would appear across Southeast Asia. For example, in 1938 Manuel Quezon (1878–1944), the President of the Philippines, ordered all schools to teach bushidō. He stated that four centuries of colonial rule under the Spanish and Americans had eroded the national character of the Filipino people. They needed something like bushidō to instil moral character, vocational efficiency, and an awareness of the duties of citizenship (Goodman 1987, 62). That same year Luang Phibunsongkhram (1897–1964; a.k.a. Phibun or Pibul), the Prime Minis- ter of Thailand, promulgated a national code of valour, which he called wiratham, and which he had formulated as a Thai equivalent to bushidō (Thamsook 1978, 240). In Spain, José Millán-Astray (1879–1954), the founding commander of the Spanish Foreign Legion and a veteran of Spain’s military campaigns in the Philip- pines, published his own translation of Nitobé’s book (based on the French trans- lation of 1927) with instructions that it be distributed for free to Spanish youth. In the preface to his translation, Millán-Astray states that the Legionnaire Code of Honour (Credo Legionario), which he composed, had been inspired by Nitobé’s book (Beeby and Rodríguez 2009, 222–5). In Southeast Asia, Nitobé’s book was translated into Burmese (in 1942 by Ū Bha Son‘) and into Indonesian (in 1944 by Tun Sri Lanang). Significantly, the post-war leaders of these two countries—Ne Win (1911–2002) of Burma (now Myanmar) and Haji Suharto (1921–2008) of Indonesia—were veterans of local military units organised, trained, and directed by their Japanese occupiers (Lebra 1975). The Pacific War gave the world a new vision of bushidō. In association with Japa- nese military aggression it caused the image of “human self-control and enlight- enment”, once praised by Beatrice Webb, to give way to tales of inhumanity. After 1945 Nitobé’s book fell out of print. It was supplanted by works with titles like: Bushido: The Anatomy of Terror (by Pernikoff, 1943), Knights of Bushido: A History of Japanese War Crimes (by Russell, 1958; reprinted 2002), Beasts of Bushido (by Owen, 1967), or Under the Heel of Bushido (by Sugarman, 2014). As indicated by Russell’s subtitle, these books focus on tales of war crimes and atrocities committed by the Japanese military during the Pacific War. Aside from their contents (which cannot be ignored) these works have at least two noteworthy features. First, they provide no description or conceptualization of bushidō. While all of them use the word “bushidō” in their titles, none of them discuss the term or explain the role it would have played in these episodes. It seems that the authors of these books (and their 41Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 33–50 audiences) regarded bushidō as something obviously loathsome and repulsive, something that did not require any explanation or contextualization. This nega- tive evaluation helps explain why almost no books about bushidō were published in the immediate post-war period. The second key feature of these books about the horrors of bushidō lies in their chronology. They have been published regularly: in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 2000s. Even nowadays when people around the world express a resurgence of interest in the positive image of bushidō presented by Nitobé, the demonic negative image of bushidō still persists. As a nomadic concept it occupies the opposing positions of the civilized and barbaric. Among Japan’s Asian neighbours, at least, the end of the Cold War seems to have given new life to bushidō. Since the 1980s, there has been a remarkable renaissance of interest in Nitobé’s work, and his original English account has been translated ever more often. Library catalogues list at least seven modern translations into Southeast Asian languages: Thai (in 1965 by Sathīan Phantharangsī), Malaysian (in 1986 by Wong Seng Tong), Filipino (in 1990 by Buenaventura Medina, Jr.), Indonesian twice (in 1992 by Yayasan Karti Sarana; and again in 2008 by An- tonius R. Pujo Purnomo), and Vietnamese twice (in 2006 by Trung Quốc and Nguyễn Hải Hoành; and in 2011 by Le Ngo. c Thao). There exist at least eight re- cent translations into Chinese: in 1982 by Su Guizhen 蘇癸珍; in 1992 by Zhang Junyan 張俊彥; in 2003 by Wu Rongchen 吴容宸; in 2004 by Fu Songjie 傅松 洁; in 2006 by Chen Gaohua 陈高华; in 2006 by Zong Jianxin 宗建新; in 2009 by Zhiu Yanhong 周燕宏; and in 2012 by Xu Ying 徐颖. And there are at least two recent translations into Korean: in 2002 by Lee Man-Hee and in 2010 by the Ilbon Go Jon Yongu-ho (i.e., 日本古典研究會). It is too early to tell how Japan’s neighbours will reconcile the negative images of wartime bushidō with the bushidō of timeless optimism depicted by Nitobé. Yet it is safe to say that one of the key features of bushidō lies in its nomadic ability to embody opposing values simultaneously. While this essay focuses primarily on the afterlives of bushidō outside Japan, its conceptualization tends to collapse the dichotomy between inside and outside. Or, rather, in a process that Yoshioka Hi- roshi 吉岡洋 of Kyōto University describes as a kind of “self-colonization” of the Japanese imagination, it facilitates the creation of a new discursive space located in between the inside and outside. While the Japanese escaped the harsh realities of being colonialized (e.g., partition, displacement, or slavery), they nonetheless crafted a quasi-colonial subjectivity in response to the rapid pace of social, politi- cal, and industrial transformations. According to Yoshioka’s analysis, Japanese cre- ated a two-fold “othering” of themselves. On the one hand, they crafted a cultural stereotype of the samurai warrior, which they could see as authentically Japanese while also distancing themselves from it as something other, not themselves. This 42 William M. Bodiford: Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō cultural stereotype can then be examined and debated as made up of either posi- tive or negative examples of traits to be emulated or avoided. Simultaneously, the Japanese have become masters of various technologies, sciences, and arts from all regions of the world, especially Europe. They can thus see themselves as exemplars of Western learning and accomplishments. These exemplars are at once Japanese yet not Japanese. They likewise can be examined and debated as either positive or negative examples of traits to be emulated or avoided. Yoshioka’s analysis shows how the conceptualization of bushidō helps create new discursive spaces for the nomadic identities of traditional versus contemporary, of native versus international, to be examined and negotiated. Perhaps the renewed popularity of Nitobé’s bushidō reflects the growing need among its admirers and critics around the world to engage in similar negotiations. Appendix Table 1: “Bushidō” editions published: Editions (first imprints and subsequent reprints) of books with the word “bushidō” 武士道 in their titles available in Japan, arranged chronologically by date of publication and counted by decades.5 1890s = 3 1900s = 87 1910s = 137 1920s = 9 1930s = 53 1940–44 = 56 1945–49 = 1 (written by a non-Japanese) 1950s = 6 1960s = 27 1970s = 36 1980s = 34 1990s = 64 2000s = 19 2010–17s = 151 5 Based on a title search via the CiNii Database (http://ci.nii.ac.jp/) for Citation Information provi- ded by the Japanese National Institute of Informatics (Kokuritsu Jōhōgaku Kenkyūsho 国立情報 学研究所): http://ci.nii.ac.jp/books/ search?advanced=true&count=20&sortorder=3&type=0&- title=武士道&include_utl=true&update_keep=true . This list includes only works written in Japa- nese with the exception of English-language editions of Bushido: The Soul of Japan – An Exposi­ tion of Japanese Thought (1900) by Nitobé Inazō 新渡戸稻造 (1862–1933) as well as translations of that work in to Japanese and other languages. 43Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 33–50 Table 2: Nitobé editions published Eng- lish Ger- man Czech Pol- ish Rus- sian Japa- nese Span- ish Ital- ian French SEA- sian Chi- nese Ko- rean Slove- nian 1900s 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1910s 4 2 1 1920s 1 1930s 3 1 3 1940s 1 2 1950s 1960s 1 1 1 1970s 2 1 1980s 1 2 1 1 1 1 1990s 2 1 5 2 1 2 1 2000s 9 5 1 2 14 2 1 1 2 5 1 10-17 4 1 9 2 1 1 2 Table 3: Editions and translations of Nitobé’s Bushido: The Soul of Japan published each decade 1900s = 16 English original 9 German trans 1 Czech trans 1 Polish trans 1 Norwegian 1 Russian trans 1 Japanese trans 1 Spanish trans 1 1910s = 7 English original 4 German trans 2 Italian trans 1 1920s = 2 French trans 1 Romanian trans 1 1930s = 7 English original 3 German trans 1 Japanese trans 3 44 William M. Bodiford: Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō 1940s = 3 SEA Burmese 1 SEA Indonesian 1 Spanish trans 1 1950s —0— 1960s = 3 English original 1 Japanese trans 1 SEA Thai 1 1970s = 3 English original 2 Japanese trans 1 1980s = 8 German trans 1 Japanese trans 2 Spanish trans 1 Italian trans 1 SEA Malay 1 Chinese trans 1 1990s = 14 English original 2 German trans 1 Japanese trans 5 Spanish trans 2 Italian trans 1 SEA Filipino 1 SEA Indonesian 1 Chinese trans 1 2000s = 44 English original 9 German trans 5 Polish trans 1 Romanian trans 1 Russian trans 2 Japanese trans 14 Spanish trans 2 Italian trans 1 Danish trans 1 SEA Indonesian 1 45Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 33–50 SEA Vietnamese 1 Chinese trans 5 Korean trans 1 2010–17 = 24 English original 4 Polish trans 1 Russian trans 1 Japanese trans 9 Spanish trans 1 French trans 2 SEA Vietnamese 1 Chinese trans 1 Korean trans 1 Finish trans 1 Slovenian trans 2 Premodern societies Modern societies Public policies warfare religious rational / scientific = secular government „ „ (disenchanted) economics „ „ art „ „ work „ „ friends „ family „ religious = limited sphere individual habits „ „ belief / values „ „ Private values Figure 1. Early theories of secularization 46 William M. Bodiford: Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō Premodern societies no religion / no secular Modern societies both religion & secular Public policies warfare customs + innovations secular = religion as unreal (re-enchantment) government „ „ economics „ „ reinforced by art „ „ religious work „ „ symbolism / motifs friends „ family „ religious = religion as real individual habits „ „ reinforced by belief / values „ „ group practice and Private values individual faith Figure 2.1. Secularization reexamined Premodern societies no religion / no secular Modern societies both religion & secular and Modern societies elimination of the irrational or dangerous Public policies warfare customs + innovations purification rational secular = mandatory called: government „ „ unscientific = violates policy economics „ „ old-fashioned art „ „ superstitious work „ „ barbaric friends „ family „ rational religious = optional called: individual habits „ (i.e., freedom) cults = illegal belief / values „ „ radical Private values work together against the irrational terrorists Figure 2.2. Religion reexamined 47Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 33–50 References Bal, Mieke. 2002. Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Beeby, Allison, and María Teresa Rodríguez. 2009. “Millán-Astray’s Translation of Nitobe’s Bushido: The Soul of Japan.” Meta: journal des traducteurs 54: 218–32. Bennett, Alexander [Benetto Arekisandaa ベネット・アレキサンダー]. 2013. Nihonjin no shiranai bushidō 日本人の知らない武士道 (Bushido that Japa- nese Don’t Know). Bunshun Shinsho 文春新書 926. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū. —–. 2017. Bushido and the Art of Living: An Inquiry into Samurai Values. [Trans- lation of Bennett 2013.] Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture. Benesch, Oleg. 2014. Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, International- ism, and Bushidō in Modern Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —–. 2014. “The Samurai Next Door: Chinese Examinations of the Japanese Mar- tial Spirit.” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 38: 129–68. Braidotti, Rosi. 1993. “Embodiment, Sexual Difference, and the Nomadic Sub- ject.” Hypatia 8: 1–13. Burdick, Dakin Robert. 1999. “The American Way of Fighting: Unarmed Defense in the United States, 1845–1945.” Ph.D. dissertation. Indiana University. Chamberlain, Basil Hall (1859–1935). 1912. The Invention of a New Religion. London: Watts & Company. Accessed November 15, 2017, https://www. gutenberg.org/files/2510/2510-h/2510-h.htm. Chan, Stephen. 2000. “The Construction and Export of Culture as Artifact: The Case of Japanese Martial Arts.” Body & Society 6: 69–74. Chen, Jidong 陳繼東 . 2010. “Zai zhongguo faxian wushidao: Liang Qichao de changshi 在中國發現武士道: 梁啟超的嘗試 (Discovering Bushidō in China: Endeavours of Liang Qichao).” Taiwan dongya wenming yanjiu xue- kan 臺灣東亞文明研究學刊 7: 219–54. Christin, Olivier. 2010. “Introduction.” In Dictionnaire des concepts nomades en sciences humaines, edited by Olivier Christin, 11–23. Paris: Métailié. —–. 2017. “‘Fuyū suru gainen’ o dō toraeru ka 「浮遊する概念」をどう捉える か (How to Capture ‘Floating Concept’).” Translation [of Christin 2010] by Omata Rappō Hitomi 小俣ラポー日登美 and Iyanaga Nobumi 彌永信美. Shisō 思想 1116: 32–54. Forsdick, Charles. 2001. “Travelling Concepts: Postcolonial Approaches to Exot- icism.” Paragraph 24: 12–29. Friday, Karl F. 1994. “Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the Im- perial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition.” The History Teacher 27: 339–49. 48 William M. Bodiford: Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō Gainty, Denis. 2013. Martial Arts and the Body Politic in Meiji Japan. London: Routledge. Goodman, Grant K. 1987. “Nitobe’s Bushido.” In Festschrift in Honor of Dr. Marcelino Foronda, Jr., edited by Emerita S. Quito. Manila: De La Salle University Press. Goodman, Grant K. 1995. “Philippine Bushido.” In Nitobe Inazō: Japan’s Bridge Across the Pacific, edited by John F. Howes, 119–32. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Hall, John Whitney. 1983. “Terms and Concepts in Japanese Medieval History: An Inquiry into the Problems of Translation.” Jounal of Japanese Studies 9: 1–32. Hashimoto, Yorimitsu 橋本順光. 2011. “Soft Power of the Soft Art: Jiu-jitsu in the British Empire of the Early 20th Century.” In Tōyō bigaku to tōyōteki shiyui o tou: shokuminchi teikokuka no kattō suru Ajia-zō 東洋美学と東洋的思惟を 問う：植民地帝国下の葛藤するアジア像, edited by Inaga Shigemi 稲賀 繁美, 69–80. Kyoto: Kokusai Nihon Bunka Kenkyū Sentaa. Hearn, Lafcadio. 1895. “Jiujutsu.” In Out of the East: Reveries and Studies in New Japan, 183–242. Boston: Houghton. Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1983a. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1–14. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. —–. 1983b. “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe 1870–1914.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 263–307. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press. Holmes, Colin, and A. H. Ion. 1980. “Bushidō and the Samurai: Images in British Public Opinion, 1894–1914.” Modern Asian Studies 14: 309–29. Howes, John F., ed. 1995. Nitobe Inazō: Japan’s Bridge Across the Pacific. Boulder: Westview Press. Hurst, G. Cameron, III. 1990. “Death, Honor, and Loyality: The Bushido Ideal.” Philosophy East and West 40: 511–27. Inoue, Shun 井上俊. 1998. “The Invention of the Martial Arts: Kanō Jigorō and Kōdōkan Judo.” In Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, edited by Stephen Vlastos, 163–73. Berekely: University of California Press. —–. 2004. Budō no tanjō 武道の誕生 (The Birth of Budō). Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan. Jensen, R. Geoffrey. 1992. “Jose Millan-Astray and the Nationalist ‘Crusade’ in Spain.” Journal of Contemporary History 27: 425–47. Joris, Pierre. 1998. “Toward a Nomadic Concept of Translation.” Translation Re- view 54: 10–14. —–. 1999. “Nomad Century Ahead.” Boundary 2 (26): 152–5. Josephson, Jason Ānanda. 2012. The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press. Karp, Ivan. 1997. “Does Theory Travel? Area Studies and Cultural Studies.” Africa Today 44: 281–95. 49Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 33–50 Kiku, Kōichi 菊幸一. 2007. “Bushidō and the Modernization of Japanese Sports.” In This Sporting Life: Sports and Body Culture in Modern Japan, edited by William W. Kelly, 39–53. New Haven: Yale University Council on East Asian Studies. Liang, Qichao 梁啟超. 1904. Zhongguo zhi wushidao 中國之武士道 (Bushido in China). Shanghai: Guangzhi Shuju 廣智書局. Lebra, Joyce C. 1975. “The Significance of the Japanese Military Model for Southeast Asia.” Pacific Affairs 48: 215–29. Lehmann, Jean-Pierre. 1984. “Old and New Japonisme: The Tokugawa Legacy and Modern European Images of Japan.” Modern Asian Studies 18: 757–68. Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2005. The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McGuckin, Eric. 2005. “Travelling Paradigms: Marxism, Poststructuralism and the Uses of Theory.” Anthropologica 47: 67–79. Nishigori Hiroshi, Rebecca Harrison, Jamiu Busari, and Tim Dornan. 2014. “Bush- ido and Medical Professionalism in Japan.” Academic Medicine 89: 560–63. Nitobé, Inazō [Nitobe Inazō 新渡戸稻造 (1862–1933)]. 1900. Bushido: The Soul of Japan – An Exposition of Japanese Thought. Philadelphia: The Leeds & Bid- dle Co. Available on-line: https://archive.org/details/bushidosouljapa00nito- goog; https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100334461. —–. 1905 (1900). Bushido: The Soul of Japan – An Exposition of Japanese Thought. Tenth revised and enlarged edition. With an introduction by William Elliot Griffis. And a new preface to the tenth edition. New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Availa- ble on-line: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001597613. 1909. Thirteenth Edition. Available on-line: