Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit
April 30, 2018 12:51 PM   Subscribe

"The term bushido calls forth ghosts of Japan's hallowed samurai class. A class so bent on preserving honor, they'd rather slit their own bellies in ritualistic suicide than live a shamed existence. In The Last Samurai, bushido melds with Nathan Algren's soul, curing the troubled American of alcoholism, war trauma, and self-loathing. What powerful medicine! A reinvigorated, purified Algren turns his back on his employers to join rebel samurai bent on defending bushido, their dignified honor-code of loyalty, benevolence, etiquette, and self-control. At least, that's what popular culture would have us believe. In reality the term bushido went unrecognized until the early twentieth century, long after Nathan Algren's fictitious character joined the factual Satsuma Rebellion and years after the ousting of the samurai class. In all likelihood samurai never even uttered the word."
posted by josher71 (26 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is morningstar maces all over again...
posted by Artw at 1:14 PM on April 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


That's an enjoyable debunking (though overlong, repetitious, and badly written: "Like all human beings, samurai morals varied by individual"); a sample:
And what of the sword, the so-called soul of the samurai? Charles Sharam explains, "Prior to [the Tokugawa era], the samurai were in fact mounted archers who were highly skilled with the bow and arrow, occasionally using other weapons if necessary. For the greater part of their history, the sword was not an important weapon to the samurai."
But although I'm sure the general thrust is correct (bushido is a bullshit invention cooked up by Inazo Nitobe and misused by later governments), it seems pretty amateurish, and I'm wondering how much of the details would survive scholarly scrutiny.
posted by languagehat at 1:33 PM on April 30, 2018 [5 favorites]


This article claims to oppose the book because of its lack of research, but then misses some super obvious points and shows the writer themselves isn’t as knowledgeable as they would like to appear. For example:
Depicted as the antithesis of the sword in modern media, firearms came to represent the abandonment of "samurai values." The loud foreign weapons embodied a loud, dirty (literally due to the gunpowder and smoke), dishonorable way of killing from afar. But what about archery, the samurai's original weapon of choice? Though elegant, bows fired projectiles and killed from afar – just like firearms. Shouldn't archery be viewed as just as dishonorable as guns?
The reason firearms were viewed with at least some concern by a ruling warrior class is not because they killed from afar, but because an unskilled peasant was able to use them fairly effectively with minimal training. Using archery - especially from horseback - is and was an incredibly specialized skill that took years of training to be even minimally effective. By the time you acquired that skilled specialized training, you had also absorbed at least some of the ideological training as well and were less likely to disrupt the system. Thus, firearms were a potential class danger, just as they were in the West.
posted by corb at 1:36 PM on April 30, 2018 [40 favorites]


I always wonder what the hell the point of studying 'bushido' is, anyway. If you want to get an idea about how the vast majority of Japanese people lived and thought about living until just a couple of generations ago, Ballad of Narayama tells you all you need to know.
posted by JamesBay at 1:39 PM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


The sword was never a primary weapon on the European medieval battlefield - it's no surprise it wasn't one in Japan, either. They've always been sidearms; weapons you draw when your main, more effective armament was broken or lost. Knights in Europe wielded lances on horseback, or polearms on foot. Common troops would be armed with bows or spears or other melee weapons with reach - much more useful than a sword.

Upon the advent of hand-held gunpowder weapons, the sword did become a primary arm for certain cavalry, but this was only after the use of the pike had been supplanted by massed, musket-armed infantry formations. Romanticized ideas about the sword have skewed the public's concept of its use and inflated its perceived importance in war.

It's more apt to consider the sword as one would a pistol in contemporary warfare; no modern army considers the pistol a primary weapon system - it's there as a backup if your real weapon is rendered ineffective.

although I'm sure the general thrust is correct

I see what you did there.
posted by dazed_one at 2:03 PM on April 30, 2018 [16 favorites]


The rice allowances on which samurai families had lived were replaced by modest cash stipends. Many former samurai had to face the indignity of looking for work. ... the changes pushed some samurai to take action. "Gradually eliminating their stipends and special status… created a large group of disgruntled shizoku (samurai), a number of whom gathered around Saigo Takamori and instigated rebellion."
Slightly less inspiring.
posted by clawsoon at 2:03 PM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


Corb: Good point, and that's definitely true of archery on horseback — other forms of archery were very destabilizing when introduced, though, and do present that sort of "class threat". E.g. the Battle of Crécy, with massed archers using Welsh longbows achieving heavy casualties on mounted knights. (This is admittedly a naive analysis; the French also misused their mercenary forces terribly, essentially sacrificing them to no end whatsoever. But it did seem to lead to a change in tactics for the remainder of the war.) Employed as part of a massed formation and firing volleys, the requirement placed on each individual archer's skill is minimal. Suddenly an army of unarmored peasants becomes much more threatening.

Since longbows and compound bows—which are Middle Eastern in origin, I believe—almost certainly made their way through Asia long prior to the European colonial arrival, it follows that pre-firearm Japanese warfare had already accounted for them in terms of tactics.

Why Kyūdō and other forms of dismounted archery wasn't as threatening to the samurai class as the Welsh longbow was to Continental knights is intriguing, though.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:14 PM on April 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


Why Kyūdō and other forms of dismounted archery wasn't as threatening to the samurai class as the Welsh longbow was to Continental knights is intriguing, though.

AT LAST MY SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE IS USEFUL. (Also, I was just reading about the Battle of Crecy, do you live in my head, check y/n)

So even those massive formation-volleys required a measure of skill and practice - the longbow used at the time for war was a massive beast, with an intense draw weight that ran up to 185 pounds - which would be hard for even a skilled archer today. And skeletons of longbow archers have been found to have significant arm differences.

Why this became a class threat is first that there was already a culture of bow use in England and Wales previous to that time among peasants - giving them a way of getting that specialized knowledge without having to absorb the indoctrination along with it, because they were learning from fathers and friends and people in their towns, rather than the ruling class. But also Edward III in particular in 1363 was worried that OH NO THE BOW WILL DIE OUT BECAUSE PEASANTS LIKE FOOTBALL NOW and so he officially started promoting archery games so he could have more meat for his war grinder, and you see a lot of other royal support for archery throughout the years because even though it was destabilizing, it was really one of the main things England had going for it for a while.

I'm not super familiar with medieval Japan, so I'm not sure if there were any similar cultural notes or encouragement of archery among the peasantry - I could make guesses, but that's all they would be.
posted by corb at 2:49 PM on April 30, 2018 [23 favorites]


So, in Nitobe, we have a man who was born at the end of a historic age, grows up under evangelical Christian education, then writes a book about a glamorous version of that age that never really existed. The idea catches on like wildfire, and despite the man's peaceable intentions, it eventually goes on to provide the popular underpinning for a fascist ethos that emerges triumphant.

I see where this is going, and I'd really like to skip ahead in history to the part where the US is a reformed character among the nations and takes military action very, very seriously.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:53 PM on April 30, 2018 [14 favorites]


Next you're going to tell us that Newton was not bonked on the head by an apple, no cherry tree and Socrates died of old age.
posted by sammyo at 5:13 PM on April 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


So why didn't the archers of Wales and England turn on the Welsh and English aristocracy? Were archer peasantries better off because they were more of a threat?
posted by clew at 5:56 PM on April 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


So why didn't the archers of Wales and England turn on the Welsh and English aristocracy? Were archer peasantries better off because they were more of a threat?

Because a longbow can't really penetrate well made plate armour. You could kill a horse or you might get a lucky shot that goes through a slit in a visor, but, even dismounted, the aristocracy (especially the English, who often fought dismounted) were playing a wholly different game of war than the common infantry. Knights spent a large portion of their lives training to kill people and could afford proper equipment. Professional, non-noble soldiery did appear in the later medieval period, but the average infantry mob was composed of conscripts and levies, serfs and peasants with no real training - no real match for fully armoured and trained aristocracy.

Longbowmen were good at killing horses and other poorly armoured targets. Destroying the mobility of cavalry by killing their mounts enabled a good general to control the battle frontage, as exhibited at Agincourt, through the use of the longbow as an area denial weapon, but weren't (because they couldn't be) used to kill fully armoured knights.
posted by dazed_one at 7:07 PM on April 30, 2018 [7 favorites]


Can I still like Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai? (with Hagakure)

What about the Book of Five Rings?
posted by poe at 7:45 PM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


This is why you surround your longbowmen with pointy sticks.
posted by Artw at 7:48 PM on April 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm not an expert, but from what I've read the thinking of longbowmen as generic peasants is off. They were elite fighters who trained from childhood and needed to be big, strong, and well fed. They were at least semi-pro, too, not feudal levies. The armies got much smaller between Edward I and his grandson Edward III because he switched to this higher quality force. One historian I read even argues the longbowmen were typically mounted (not during combat of course, but they were way above peasant footmen in status.) So it's not peasants didn't revolt because the longbow made them better off, it's the peasants that were better off became longbowmen.

I'm sorry for continuing the longbow derail. The OP is really interesting even if it could be more rigorous. I have relatively little to add, other than it is similar to fundamentalism in some ways: a modern invention that based its appeal on a made up tradition.
posted by mark k at 10:05 PM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


languagehat: But although I'm sure the general thrust is correct (bushido is a bullshit invention cooked up by Inazo Nitobe and misused by later governments), it seems pretty amateurish, and I'm wondering how much of the details would survive scholarly scrutiny.

That's because Tofugu is a website with general culture articles that also tries to market their Japanese language learning aids, but in this case it's generally correct. What you want is Oleg Benesch's book Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan.

For that matter, there's a delicious aside in Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History about the instrumentalization of the story of the 47 ronin of Ako as militaristic propaganda: apparently, the real ronin didn't even like Lord Asano that much but they felt they were unjustly punished, rather than basing their vengeance on a code of honor or the imperial loyalty that was pushed in Taisho/Showa era depictions. The book is a bit dry when it comes to the kamikaze themselves because they come across as insufferable overthinking teens who have read too much German philosophers, but the bits about cherry trees as markers of spring fertility and the ronin are awesome.
posted by sukeban at 11:24 PM on April 30, 2018 [8 favorites]


At the battle of Agincourt, the English longbowmen rode to battle on horseback but dismounted to fight and were not conscripts, but professionals - they were called yeomen and their military employment granted them status. They received the same pay (6 pence per day) as a light horseman, well above the 2 pence per day of a levy spearman and the 3 pence per day of a foot archer (essentially a peasant with a small self bow).

For the sake of completeness: mounted sergeants received 1 shilling per day (12 pence), while knights were paid between 2 and 4 shillings per day.

Source.

/derail
posted by dazed_one at 11:29 PM on April 30, 2018 [6 favorites]


Also, I would like to add that during the Satsuma rebellion, both sides used firearms because Saigo (guy in Western uniform here) wasn't an idiot. The imperial army just had more and better guns.

For that matter, towards the end of the Sengoku era Japan was the biggest producer of matchlocks in the world. They were intensely used in battles like Nagashino. Afterwards, tanegashima matchlocks were still stockpiled in castle armouries, they just weren't used because there were no big uprisings. By the time the isolation period ended, both shogunate and imperial supporters (from the samurai class all of them) realised the military technology gap with the West and set up to close it as fast as they could.
posted by sukeban at 11:39 PM on April 30, 2018 [4 favorites]


> "Newton was not bonked on the head by an apple, no cherry tree and Socrates died of old age."

... One of these things is not like the others?
posted by kyrademon at 1:04 AM on May 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


clew: So why didn't the archers of Wales and England turn on the Welsh and English aristocracy?

You could ask the same question x10 in the gunpowder age, when commanders didn't even wear armour.

My guess for the specific case you're asking about: In addition to the higher base pay that dazed_one mentions above, a major source of potential income for English and Welsh archers was going to the continent, winning some battles, and plundering or capturing nobles for ransom. Archers didn't have the money to set up those expeditions on their own; their aristocrats did.

Why don't wage earners overthrow their capitalist masters? Similar question, similar answers.
posted by clawsoon at 4:13 AM on May 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


(...and not just money: Long-distance communication, coordination with allies, and propaganda, all of which were advantages that aristocrats had and soldiers didn't. When aristocratic control broke down, as it did in parts of France during the Hundred Years' War, routiers went rogue, including some bands which "contained numbers of infantry, particularly English longbowmen". But... uh... back to Japan.)
posted by clawsoon at 6:30 AM on May 1, 2018


> But... uh... back to Japan.

Yeah, while I'm as interested in Agincourt as the next person, this thread is a classic example of Eurocentric hegemony.
posted by languagehat at 6:40 AM on May 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


Some tidbits from the article:
Lucky for Nitobe, honor is in the eye of the beholder, a concept open to interpretation. For example Nitobe cites The 47 Ronin Story as the ultimate example of loyalty, but others interpret it as a cowardly sneak attack.
Famously, Yamamoto Tsunetomo pointed out in Hagakure the greatest weakness in the ronins' plan:
Concerning the night assault of Lord Asano's ronin, the fact that they did not commit seppuku at the Sengakuji was an error, for there was a long delay between the time their lord was struck down and the time when they struck down the enemy. If Lord Kira had died of illness within that period, it would have been extremely regrettable.
Not that a suicide attack would have worked, but that's Yamamoto for you. Of course, Hagakure was a really obscure book written by a hardass grandpa who never saw actual conflict, and when it was rediscovered in 1906 the Taisho and Showa military *loved* it.

By the way, some of the ukiyo-e illustrations in the article go from the kind of apropos (like the several Chushingura illustrations) to the dodgy. This one by Kunisada depicts a very famous gathering scene (video) of five thieves in a kabuki play. The one of Miyamoto Musashi also comes from kabuki. They might as well have chosen the ones that show Musashi fighting tengu or random monsters.
posted by sukeban at 12:31 PM on May 1, 2018 [4 favorites]


(But this one is very badly labeled in the article. It depicts a scene in Chushingura where the chamberlain "Ooboshi" (Ooishi -- they had to change names and move it to an earlier date to avoid censorship) is debauching himself with geisha in a very famous restaurant, the Ichirikitei, which is still open in Kyoto although in a different location. Ooboshi playing a drum in the restaurant is a foreshadowing of when he later calls to attack lord Kira's house with a drum)
posted by sukeban at 12:40 PM on May 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


In case anyone is still following this thread and has knowledge, what affect does this have on the later political movement of Sonnō jōi, since so much of their propaganda was based on samurai thought/action and bushido?
posted by Purposeful Grimace at 11:43 AM on May 3, 2018 [2 favorites]


As I understand it, sonno joi extremists were followers of people like Yoshida Shoin (wiki) but these were part of the kokugaku school that pushed a nativist, Japanese supremacist worldview. Bushido as such hadn't been invented yet, and even less so theorized as a pan-Japanese ethos rather than the ethos of a particular social class like the Japanese military would do after the Russo-Japanese War, although Edo period scholars like Yamaga Soko did theorize about the inherent moral supremacy of the samurai.
posted by sukeban at 2:16 PM on May 3, 2018 [3 favorites]


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