What is Bushidō, and Why is it Nonsense?
What if one of Japan’s greatest cultural icons, the samurai, were just a bunch of nonsense? The popularized contemporary story is that these mythical warriors followed an ancient code known as bushidō or “the way of the warrior”. In bushidō, the warrior must aim towards death. They charge onto the battlefield to cut down their enemies with unwavering tenacity. Their lord has decreed it, and in order to be labelled a bushidō samurai, their loyalty must never waver. As they fight in dutiful servitude to their lord, nothing could be sweeter nor bring more pleasure than sacrificing themselves on the field of battle.
Yet, for all its popularity bushidō contains a dark secret. The "way of the warrior" calls back to an ancient samurai code of conduct, but its origins are as foul as they are false. A term based more on myth than historical evidence, and later co-opted as a propaganda tool to contrive the very mindset behind kamikaze pilots.
Origins and History - Heian to Feudal Japan
From the dawn of the samurai to the unification of Japan under one dynasty, history was to witness a most formidable fighting force.
We begin our journey in Japan around the 10th century in what was known as the Heian period. Japanese warfare was conducted by professional men-at-arms known as bushi, meaning martial servitor. In western terminology, bushi are samurai. These samurai weren’t sword-wielding foot soldiers clad in demon armour. They were actually mounted archers with a sword and dagger! In fact, the bow was so common that you never really used your sword unless you ran out of arrows. Sword combat was more of a last resort, and warfare was characterised by heavy usage of bows, horses, and, after 1545, guns.
Nevertheless, Heian bushi were not yet the warrior class that came to define the medieval age bushi, only the beginning. It wasn't until 1185 that this warrior class fully emerged on the surface of Japan.
Tension brewed in the Imperial court among the Minamoto and Taira clans. Following a coup d'état by the Taira clan, Japan plunged into a 5 year civil war, known as the Gempei War. Coming out victorious, Yoritomo Minamoto of the Minamoto clan set up the first samurai government, the Kamakura Shogunate. It was a warrior-ruled government that competed for power against the ever-weakening Imperial court; its formation was a watershed moment in the emergence of the samurai class.
Everything from the start of the Kamakura period (1185) to the beginning of the Edo period (1600) defines and colours the emergence of these terrifying professional warriors.
Through the shogunate, their potential to attain political power through military means developed to such an extent that from 1467 to 1615 (the Sengoku period), Japan was in an all-out civil war for nearly 150 years!
Yet something is missing. In all historical records of the Feudal or Heian samurai, there is no mention of bushidō as a designated code of warrior behaviour.
Historical Inaccuracy: Samurai Culture
The truth of the matter is that bushidō owes as little to medieval samurai as astrology does to science (although I am a proud Taurus). The idea of unending loyalty to your lord was little more than pragmatism. Let me show you what I mean.
Medieval loyalty to one's lord derives little from military tradition and mostly from Confucianism, a philosophy of Chinese origin from around 500 BCE. Confucian teaching came to Japan in the middle of the 6th century, influencing legal documents with heavy references to loyalty, obedience, and filial piety. Although these principles had their place in Confucian philosophy, principles of law rarely tell us anything about the behavioural norms of the time. The fact that loyalty has more to do with Confucian teaching than military tradition merely serves to show that loyalty was part of the Japanese vocabulary of the time, and not a social norm.
In the Feudal era, daimyos (feudal lords) called upon samurai to serve them only through a sense of tradition, government, or simply by payment. It was not through any sense of proper samurai behaviour. According to Historian Karl F. Friday, medieval warriors remained loyal only insofar as it benefited them. Samurai, and especially samurai with vassal-like power, exchanged loyalty for financial compensation. If your daimyo were likely to lose a fight or simply didn’t give you the compensation you deserved, you would have likely defected to another side. Defection was so common in medieval battles that very few were not won with it.
There are, of course, stories in medieval Japanese history when warriors died on the battlefield for loyalty to whomever or whatever. Yet, this is pretty much the case everywhere in history. Nothing in the historical record says that bushidō loyalty meant anything to medieval samurai.
A Story of the Kamakura – Tales of Defection
One of the great examples of samurai defection happened around the year 1333.
Under heavy pressure from those loyal to the Imperial throne, the Kamakura shogunate dispatched armies under Ashikaga Takauji and Nitta Yoshisada to subdue pro-imperial forces and recapture emperor Go-Daigo. Then treachery struck as both commanders turned on the Kamakura shogunate! Takauji destroyed the offices in Kyoto, and Yoshisada marched on Kamakura itself. If that wasn’t enough, Takauji actually changed sides once again, and by 1335 he had destroyed Go-Daigo’s supporters, forcing once and for all the emperor to abdicate for the second time. He then established a new shogunate in the Muromachi district of Kyoto.
The Edo Samurai Bureaucrats - Hagakure Kikigaki 葉隠聞書
So, where did bushidō come from? Bushidō as a code for warrior behaviour actually originates from the Edo period (1600-1868). It was a product of a time when Japan was at peace and not the medieval age of constant war. It is a remarkable realisation that a code describing the "way of the warrior" is written by bureaucrats and administrators, not fighting men. So great is the disparity between the Edo and Feudal era, that these bureaucrats have very little in common with the norms and behaviours of feudal samurai.
In 1716, Yamamoto Tsunetomo laid out the basic tenets of bushidō in his Hagakure. The opening line reads as follows:
"I have come to understand that the Way of the Samurai is that of dying."
Nevertheless, the more we dive into history, the more we discover how little bushidō has to do with medieval samurai. It was designed by men who were no longer at war, who created a code of conduct that nobody except the elite could fulfil. This code of conduct did, however, interbreed with confucian philosophy, especially when we talk about loyalty.
From the Edo Period onward, Confucianism was the dominant philosophy among samurai and was only viable in times of peace. In Confucian thought, moral issues were resolved by throwing selfishness and self-interest into the bin and becoming one with heaven and earth. What’s more, the very principle of virtue (known as yi/righteousness), the very thing which makes all virtues possible, lies in how we relate to others. The relationship begins with the family (filial piety) and justifies the state (loyalty) in a binary relationship, like that of two stars orbiting each other. I couldn’t imagine medieval samurai following a philosophy that talks about the virtues of selflessness or an ethics which begin in the family, when in the Sengoku period families lasted about 30 seconds before you tried to assassinate your brother. I can, however, picture an Edo period samurai being Confucian. It will be this Confucian idea that gets scrambled and muddled in the coming centuries.
Meiji Bushidō – Everyone a Samurai
Photo by Michael DeMarco on Unsplash
Japan's modernisation is very complex. However, the complexity of the situation doubled when industrialisation hit. With the Shogun now deposed and imperial rule re-established, I welcome you to the Meiji restoration (1868-1912). We can now witness the full transformation and power of bushidō.
In order to unite and industrialize a feudal society, Japan used bushidō as a tool of propaganda. The Imperial postscript to the Military (1882) claims that bushidō "should be viewed as the reflection of the whole of subjects of Japan." This is a mind-boggling transformation! The Imperial Army (1868-1945) transformed the ideas of the Hagakure to no longer apply to an elite social class but the whole Japanese population.
In 1900, author, politician, and educator Nitobe Inazo published a book stating that "bushidō is the soul of Japan." What is happening? The term is infiltrating the very core and essence of Japanese national identity. To be Japanese was to be bushidō. Along with this transition, the Imperial Army relished in quoting Hagakure's famous line that the way of the samurai is to die. It’s not a far stretch of the imagination to think that the Hagakure contributed to inspiring kamikaze pilots, or more generally, the attitude of fighting to death during the Pacific Wars. In fact, Philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō created a pocket book edition of the Hagakure for Japanese soldiers to take into battle in the beginning of the 1940’s.
Japanese Identity and Philosophical Cherry Picking
Bushidō’s transformation and mass popularisation is a direct response to increasing economic, political, and intellectual pressure from the West. Japanese sentiment at the time was scrounging for a national sense of identity brought about by a feeling of inferiority from western science and technology. These feelings were amplified by Social Darwinism, which led many theorists, both in Japan and the west, to conduct now controversial studies aimed at finding out which “‘race’ was the most evolved.
By the Late-Meiji period, Japan was increasingly moving towards conservatism and nationalism to combat these pressures. But there was a sentiment brewing that simple tradition no longer had the means to protect nationalism. Japanese philosopher Inoue Tetsujirō 1855-1944, encouraged a return to ancient and "ideal" Confucian principles as a means of safeguarding nationalism. If you think it is counterintuitive to use 'Chinese moral philosophy’ to boost a sense of Japanese nationalism, identity, and morality, then you and Inoue have something in common. To combat this issue, Inoue tampered Confucian terminology for his own purposes by nativizing and appropriating it. Through this, he created his “national morality” i.e., the way citizens should behave.
Confucius tends to link respect for the family to loyalty in the political realm. Scholars have long since debated how these two ideas relate to each other; how respect for one's family legitimizes the government. Our friend Inoue ignores this problem. He felt that Confucian principles remained too close to gemeinschaft (social relations between individuals). He redefined the family in terms of a “national family” with the emperor as the father and fused filial piety with loyalty to form a type of mass patriotism.
“It is with the feelings of filial love and respect for parents that we Japanese people express our reverence towards the Throne of unbroken imperial line”
- a late Meiji ethics textbook.
Inoue went on to exalt Confucian ideas as nationalistic, militaristic, and imperialist with little regard for historical accuracy. Bushidō, as you might have guessed, remained a core ingredient to his national morality. The transformation is akin to saying that to be a warrior, you are loyal and respectful to your father, with the imperial emperor as Japan's Father.
A Nose dive into the Pacific
It is impossible to end this article without mentioning the Pacific war, and to show how bushidō, filial piety, and loyalty may have entered into the minds of one of history’s most unusual warriors, the kamikaze pilot. Those 5000 young men and boys who were facing a hopeless situation plummeted into the Pacific. Sergeant Kazou Arai of the Shinbu special Attack squadron, age 20, writes in his last letter to his parents.
“I as an Imperial subject surely am about to show in a single act both loyalty to the Emperor and filial piety to you”
“For the emperor
I to fall as flower
With joy
In my heart
I will go”
(High school girls from Chiran, Kagoshima, Japan waving cherry blossom branches to bid farewell to Lt. Toshio Anazawa of Japanese Army 20th Shinbu Special Attack Unit in Ki-43 Hayabusa, 12 Apr 1945)
Special attack pilot Lt. Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 Model 33 diving at carrier Essex, at 12:56 on 25 Nov 1944
Shame on him who thinks evil of it
I wonder how seriously these pilots read the Hagakure or how deeply bushidō took root in the mind of a pilot. Yet, it remains painfully apparent that such a mindset was created and cultivated. Confucian blood ran thick in the veins of Japanese soldiers, but it lost all semblance of what it once was. Young boys hurled themselves into oblivion for some divine emperor like good bushidō samurai, bastions of Japan. How is it that such words and stories like bushidō can coerce us? They can make us believe, make us kill, and they make us die, all with the audacity of inventing a history that we are so naive to believe.