SAMURAI HISTORICAL SPIRIT AND MODERN TRANSITION – Part 1
THE BLADE MUST CUT ™
By Cmdr Ty “Yoda” Cunningham, M.S., 10th Dan, U.S. Marshals Service (Ret.) #0481-R
https://alaskankempo.wixsite.com/stonedragonhouse
Samurai, which means “one who serves”1, became a highly developed institution of formal etiquette and purpose. The loyalty of the Samurai is considered to be the highest development of warriorship found in any society. The Japanese art of war became so refined that they built three military governments around such prowess. The power of the Shogun; to instill martial focus on a class of people and eventually to permeate the whole of society with this focus is truly remarkable. The Japanese Art of War and its character in feudal Japan must be analyzed and studied in terms of the man-to-man encounter-whether on the battlefield or in the streets of a city, whether on a lonely mountain road or in a temple, or even within the confines of a man’s house-will facilitate an understanding of Japan warrior spirit. Lafcadio Hearn stated, “About the whole of authentic Japanese history is comprised in one vast episode: the rise and fall of military power”.2
The development of feudal power in Japan covered approximately nine centuries. Down through the centuries, this feudal ideal became the innermost fiber of the Japanese nation and was imbued with the warriors’ particular ideas, ethics, and sense of mission. These elements, which moved the Samurai to act, were rooted in a firm belief in Japan’s origins, in the determination to confirm that belief by military arms, even if it meant death, and in that code of behavior which demanded unquestioning obedience to the commands of one’s immediate superior, who constituted the link with the past and thus would know the ways in which to successfully fulfill the mission. For centuries the feudal way of life was branded into Japanese character. At all levels of Japanese society can be found this doctrine and life. War is what made Japan what it is today. Through these struggles of force, the Samurai brought with him the personal loyalty to his superior and a readiness to fight and die without the slightest hesitation. Hiroaki Sato explains, “...for individual Samurai...had to devise a code of conduct for themselves. The centuries-old notion that honor was of ultimate importance for the samurai and that to uphold this honor he had to be prepared to die was fine-tuned in the Edo period. So was born the proposition enunciated by Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1721): “The way of the warrior, I’ve found, is to die.”3
BEGINNING SPIRIT
The Edo period refined the warrior Samurai to the point that he developed exactness in every thought and deed. A code was developed giving the Samurai a belief structure that was needed to allow him to give complete servitude to his master’s will. This code became known as Bushido, meaning, the way of the warrior. It was this code that allowed the Shogun and Daimyo to build a military government. Without the code it would have been impossible for Japan to have accomplished such a task. Complete fealty to one’s Lord was the hallmark of the Samurai, but why were they so disciplined? Why did they so readily except death? The answer is in their belief structure. Aside from these questions, it is important to clearly state that the concept of dying to the samurai is often misinterpreted by the western mind. In order to understand this commitment to serving one’s Lord, we must look at the components that were absolutely fundamental to the Samurai and the whole of Japan.
Belief is a powerful force and one ofttimes that moves human endeavor when everything else fails. Paramount to the Samurai and a moving desire to success enabled the warrior class to accept the concept of Zen. Zen is a form of meditation which seeks emptiness of thought and action. It is this particular concept that broke the barriers of national lines arriving from China at the end of the 12th century. It is peculiarly interesting that the emergence of Zen was the time that the warrior class peaked at the top of the feudal system of Japan. It is difficult for the western mind to understand any type of verbal description of what Zen could mean and scholars find it easier to discuss what Zen is not.
If Zen can be described in words, then Randall Hassall probably described it best when he wrote:
If Zen has an ultimate goal, it is to see the essence of reality, to enter the “Void.” But the Void of Zen is the opposite of nothingness. It is at once full, complete and empty, like a great empty circle. The spirit of Zen defies logic, reason and analysis. It is, above all, direct awareness of reality through direct action. Zen rejects intellectualizing in favor of flashbulb awareness of truth.4
Zen moved with power into the heart of the Samurai class. Although, its natural philosophy is that of peace, it does have two appealing aspects that the Samurai needed. “1) It calls for direct action without thought, and without looking back; 2) It proposes that the enlightened man is utterly indifferent to life and death. It is therefore natural for the Samurai to pursue Zen.”5 As the warrior class grew and as Zen permeated all warriors within its class, a code of conduct developed, by which a samurai could judge his own worth and honor. This code became a code of duty with Zen as its core.
The code expanded to encompass every moment of life for the Samurai. It became a way of living; a way of warrior conducts in dealing with your superiors as well as everyone you came in contact with. It was a discipline toward action, the way of the warrior. Bushido as a code had at its root the tenet of Giri, which means “one’s duty”. It can also be extended to mean “personal honor”. Japan grew as a feudal society; it was within this system that “class” was a very distinguishing feature. Each class had a different Giri. Samurai were at the top of the class structure and this higher class had with it a higher Giri. It was very demanding and required the Samurai as a warrior class to focus on matters of life and death. The Bushido code developed to the point that it became customary for the warrior to contempt death. This very contempt allowed the Samurai to face death in battle without flinching in purpose. The samurai class and bushido grew to mean “loyalty, bravery, justice, integrity, benevolence and self-sacrifice”. All of this he sought to maintain through direct action in a state of Mushin (“no mind”). That is, what is done is done according to the code of honor, but without consciously thinking about it.”6 Howard Reid and Michael Croucher explain bushido as the spirit of self-sacrifice to do something good. To make an effort to help other people in your world, even if the cost is your life.7
The Samurai’s life was a path to achieve this form of excellence. Each task should be performed by the body without influence from the mind. The mind in turn is responsible for holding fast to its essence, no matter what happens to the body. It was the Samurai’s determination to the code that made him strong, possessing an indomitable spirit in battle. War became the vessel of purification for the samurai. One of feudal Japan’s famous samurai was the great Musashi Miyamoto. In his book Go Rin No Sho (Book of Five Rings), he explains with clarity how to shape the spirit for battle:8
1. Always maintain calm determination.
2. Meet each situation without tenseness, but not recklessly.
3. Keep your spirit settled and firm, but unbiased.
4. With the spirit calm, let the body relax.
5. With the body relaxed, do not let the spirit slacken.
6. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, and do not let your body
be influenced by your spirit.
7. Do not lack spirit nor be over-spirited. Both are weak.
8. Do not let the enemy see your spirit.
9. If you are small in stature, know the spirit of a large opponent, and vice
versa; then do not misled by the reactions of your body.
10. With an open and unconstricted spirit, look at things from a high point of
view.
11. Cultivate your wisdom and spirit: learn public justice, distinguish between
good and evil, study the ways of other arts one by one. When you cannot
be deceived by men, you will have realized the wisdom of strategy.
12. Learn from battle to develop a steady spirit.
These thoughts by Musashi are clearly a picture of the spirit of bushido. They encompass the philosophies of Zen. The one-on-one battle of the Samurai became so refined as a discipline that it permeated the whole of Japan. It became the tool of the powerful provincial lords, the Daimyo. Their code branded a “path” or “way” which fueled a nation. It is this identity that the Daimyo utilized to establish giant provinces of military power for and on behalf of the Shogun.
FEUDAL POWER
The actual feudal structure that was established changed through time. In the 12th and 13th century feudalism was delineated by provincial chieftains and vassalage was based on kinsmen or family ties. The samurai of this era were related in some way to the Lord of the Manor. As time progressed this concept changed to meet the needs of the day. After the fall of the Kamakura bakafu, it became apparent that warfare became prevalent over territorial boundaries. These domains grew under the control of local feudal barons called Daimyo.
Unlike the chieftains of old, the Daimyo held their positions not by legal appointment but through the force of the Samurai who they employed. The Daimyo became very powerful under this system. Constantly looking for war to gain respect and giving no respect unless won through battle. As power begat power, the Daimyo eventually pieced together through warfare, giant provinces, some more powerful than others. Peter Duus gives us an idea as to how many Daimyo existed during these times:
By 1500 the country was divided under the control of two or three hundred Daimyo, the most powerful holding sway over areas as large as one of the old imperial provinces. The weaker, hardly more powerful than the castellians of feudal Europe, controlled only small and easily defended river valleys or basins.9
No matter how big or small each province became, or how powerful each daimyo was, it was the method of rule that remained constant. The daimyo’s power came from the loyalty of his Samurai. It was the samurai that fought for him, that helped protect and expand his domain. Those daimyo that could draw the best and powerful samurai were powerful daimyo; those who did not became weak. The daimyo held his samurai as retainers based on a pledge of allegiance that bonded the samurai to his lord by Giri. Once the samurai gave his oath with his seal, he was granted a fief or portion of land within the domain and control of the daimyo. His only payment was to report for battle when summoned by his lord. This form of feudalism had its problems. With the samurai only owing service in battle, his bond took the form of personal interest in his own security, instead of a monetary agreement. The code of bushido established personal honor for the warrior class and this played into the weakness of Japanese feudalism which the daimyo could not control. If the daimyo could not protect the personal honor of the samurai, it often led to betrayal. It was this shift in power from one daimyo to another that made the Japanese warfare very volatile. This volatility unbalanced the style of warfare from individual prowess and the personal skill of the samurai to large scale organized masses of men willing to fight.
It was this shift that made the daimyo change their battle tactics. The daimyo had to organize his men into a command structure, with generals, captains, knights and knight’s retainers. Samurai warfare was changing and the samurai had to change to this new form of battle or they found themselves masterless.10 The new armies of the daimyo relied on foot soldiers as well as mounted forces. The change in battle strategies made the daimyo supplement his ranks with local peasantry. The separation of the ranks was based on the weaponry that was needed on the battlefield. The samurai carried their two swords and held the higher ranks based on nobility.
The peasants carried spears and other implements and filled the lower ranks. Ruus exhaling the reasoning for why the daimyo made such changes.
According to surveying records of one powerful daimyo who mobilized about 5500 men on his domain, 3600 of his forces were spearman and only 556 were horsemen. The reason for this change in technology of war is obvious. As the injunctions of one daimyo of the late fourteenth century put it, “A sword worth ten thousand pieces can be overcome by one hundred spears worth only one hundred pieces.” Not only was the foot soldier less expensive to maintain, but in massed formations he could vanquish the proud horseman who had so long dominated Japanese history.11
The samurai began to be pushed to the status of a living monument for public emulation. The use of peasantry began to bridge the gap between the warrior class and the peasants until there was one class remaining; Japanese. The development of the musket also aided the use of peasants instead of the honored samurai. In essence, the samurai who carried the sword no longer was superior in battle to a musketeer, which was usually carried by the peasantry. The daimyo was able to cut down the training time needed to keep the samurai in skill as well as the expense of employing soldiers because the musketry could be taught faster to soldiers rather than the life-long pursuit of the way of bushido. The times had changed and began to lead into an age of transition in which Japan could not escape.
The way of the warrior flowed into the consciousness of all of Japan: the farmer, whose rice crop would be taken by the retainers of the local Daimyo, looking up from his work in the fields to gaze at the samurai, their weapons reflecting in the sun; the traveler who pauses by the side of the road and witnesses in silence a duel, often to the death, between two swordsmen; the surging festivals where the Japanese populace stare at the martial arts demonstration which were often a focal point of a festival. Throughout the centuries of Japan’s development, the social significance and drama of a lethal confrontation between the samurai were staged again and again, until these experiences were burned into the very soul of Japan.
The Japanese character was analyzed by Brinkley when he wrote:
Hidden beneath a passion for everything graceful and refined, there is a strong yearning for the pageant of war and for the dash of deadly onset; and just as the Shogun sought to display before the eyes of the citizens of his capital a charming picture of the gentle peace, though its setting was a framework of vast military preparation, so the Japanese of every era has loved to turn from the fencing-school to the arbor, from the field of battle to the society of rockery and the cascade, delighting in the perils and struggles of the one as much as he admires the grace and repose of the other.12
MODERN TRANSITIONING
The leaders of the military class began gradually to accept the fact that every Japanese subject should be heir to the ancient traditions that the military class believed was their own, and began to encourage all countrymen to embrace the idea of Japan as nation of warriors. I believe that we could even classify the military class of Japan, and say, that this class of people completely saturated the national psyche and developed the spirit of a nation. How did this transfer of spirit occur? The question can only be answered by looking at the history of Japan after 1868 or the post-Meiji era. In looking at this period, it should reveal whether the Art of War traditions and the influence of the warrior class had been terminated or only curtailed with the restoration of power to the emperor. Historically, no nation can completely break itself away from it’s past. In Japan, the era of feudalism can hardly be abolished completely. However, the two hundred years of relevant peace under the Tokugawa government also marked a start point to the changing of a nation toward a new governmental focus.
Reischauer so eloquently state that,
...Two centuries of strictly enforced peace under the watchful eye and firm hand of the Edo government have left an indelible mark upon the people. The bellicose, adventurous Japanese of the sixteenth century became by the nineteenth century a docile people looking meekly to their rulers for all leadership and following without question all orders from above.13
The Japanese citizen became thoroughly conditioned to look to the military leaders of the land for guidance and to assume that, because of their position they could be followed without thought. Reischauer continues,
Several centuries of domination by the feudal military class has left patterns of thought and behavior which have not been easy to discard in recent times and which will not be easily erased even today.14
The warrior of feudal Japan, had achieved a position of such importance that his influence was not eliminated, even after the military feudal barons were officially abolished in 1868. The power of the Tokugawa clan and their allies were curtailed by the efforts of other powerful clans of warriors, including the Choshu and Satsuma clans, which in essence, provided the “new” Japan with the nucleus of an Imperial Army destined for greater glories and disasters in the years to come. The restoration of the emperor was a changing of the guard with the establishment of new warriors from throughout the land. It was this new fresh leadership which was to guide the Japanese nation in the times of the modern age. In order to accomplish their task, they embarked on an intense effort to expand the traditional samurai loyalty of the clan to the entire nation on the horizon. This helped to enlarge the “focus” of unquestioning obedience to one’s superior and feudal lord to include absolute fealty to the emperor of Japan. Kurzman pointed out:
...if a man would willingly die for his lord, a person of mortal heritage, they reasoned, then his loyalty to the Sovereign, descendant of the Sun Goddess, could be nurtured to similar extremes.15
Reischauer also portraits this theme when he wrote:
In classrooms and army barracks, the young Japanese was taught to glory in Japan’s military traditions. He came to believe that death on the battle field for the emperor was the most glorious fate of man and to believe in the unique virtues of a vaguely defined “national structure” and an even more vague, “Japanese spirit.” Together the government and army succeeded in a few decades in creating in the average Japanese the fanatical nationalism already characterized of the upper class, and an even more fanatical devotion to the emperor, which had been cultivated by historians and Shinto propagandists and fostered by oligarchs around the throne.16
This warrior feeling became the hallmark of a nation, no longer subject by class. The Meiji Restoration helped to accelerate the military tradition that had permeated the whole of Japanese life to the extent that it had lost its class distinction. The tradition had switched from class to every subject under the throne of Japan. The Imperial Army became the warrior class. Browne wrote of a rebellion when the military class of samurai tried to again seize power from the emperor,
…signified much more than the collapse of feudal opposition to the government and the new order. In the conflict the regular soldiers like Hidenori Tojo and the conscripts who had fought with them had shown that the valor and martial skill which had made the samurai elite such formidable fighters could be found in all the levels of the nation.17
Even though the military spirit and soul of the samurai has switched to a nation, it is that spirit that flickers even today, in the recesses of the martial arts and the Japanese soul. The soul of Japan has moved beyond Japan to the world through the martial spirit. It is not individual; it is collective, rooted in the feudal interpretation of reality in modern times. The past is present in traditional values, and lives on in a national martial ideal. The life of all who practice the martial spirit is dominated by this past as a whole, but it is the single act of a sharpened katana that cut through history with one swift focused blow. For “the blade must cut. ™”
1 Ratti, Oscar and Westbrook, Adele. Secrets of the Samurai: The Martial Arts of Feudal Japan. (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1973), 83.
2 Hearn, Lafcadio. Japan:An Attempt at Interpretation. (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1959), 259.
3 Sato, Hiroaki. Legends of the Samurai. (New York: The Overlook Press, 1995), xxiii.
4 Hassall, Randall. The Karate Experience: A Way of Life. (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1980), 41.
5 Ibid, 42.
6 Ibid, 43.
7 Reid, Howard and Croucher, Michael. The Fighting Arts: Great Masters of the Martial Arts. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 149.
8 Musashi, Miyamoto. The Book of Five Rings: Gorin No Sho. Trans., Bradford Brown, Yuko Kashiwagi, William Barrett, Eisuke Sasagawa (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 35-84.
9 Duus, Peter. Feudalism in Japan. (New York: McGraw-Hill), 63.
10 Ibid, 60.
11 Ibid, 64.
12 Brinkley, Captain F. Japan: Described and Illustrated by the Japanese. (Boston: J.B. Millet Co., 1897),
13 Reischauer, Edwin O. Japan: Past and Present. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), 93-94.
14 Ibid, 55.
15 Kurzman, Dan. Kishi and Japan: The Search for the Sun. (New York: Ivan Obolenski, 1960), 41.
16 Reischauer, 129-30.
17 Browne, Courtney. Tojo: The Last Bonsai. (New York: Paperback Library, 1967), 17.