The disciplined duality: When the Japanese samurai held both the sword and the pen

“ They are the men whose minds have been open to learn, from whom sprung the ideas that once made and later overthrew the feudal system, which wrought the mighty reforms that swept away the shogunate in 1868, and restored the mikado to ancient power, who introduced those ideas that now rule Japan, and sent their sons abroad to study the civilization of the west. To the Samurai Japan looks to-day for safety in war and progress in peace. The Samurai is the soul of the nation. In other lands the priestly and the military castes were formed, in Japan one and the same class held the sword and the pen ”

“ In his inmost soul, this samurai felt he had done a good and righteous thing in achieving his vengeance, even though the innocent were sacrificed. Trained as he had been in the harsh school of the samurai, in which self-denial, contempt for pleasure and gain, scorn of death or physical hurt, and the righteous vengeance upon an enemy were esteemed virtues, he was steeled against all fear and pain. ”

“ The Samurai's word was his bond, and he was taught to be gentle as well as brave. Doubtless, some well-marked shades of local colour distinguished Japanese chivalry from that of the West. The practice of suicide (harakiri) as part of the code of honour, where our own ancestors had the duel, at once occurs to the mind as a special feature. Even more so does the absence of gallantry towards the fair sex. ”

“ As the nobility, through long inheritance of power and wealth, became weak in body and mind, the samurai grew to be, more and more, not only the sword, but the brain of Japan; and to-day the great work of bringing the country out of the middle ages into the nineteenth century is being performed by the samurai more than by any other class. ”

“ In time of peace the samurai under a daimyo served their lord in his territorial government as civil officials. They, however, being warriors by nature, had to be constantly trained in military arts, with various weapons, among which swords and spears were preferred as the most practical. Archery had not been abandoned entirely, and the bow and arrow was still held to be the emblem of the noble calling of warriors, but this sort of weapon had never been used on battle-fields since the beginning of the Tokugawa period, so that the art had become on the whole ceremonial. ”

“ Such unspeakable villany is unworthy a Samurai's son. Know, that the duty of every Samurai is to keep watch over the country, and to protect the people; and such is his daily task. For sword and dirk are given to men that they may slay rebels, and faithfully serve their prince, and not that they may go about committing sin and killing the daughters of innocent men. Whoever is fool enough not to understand this will repeat his misdeed, and will assuredly bring shame on his kindred. ”

“ Many a time they must have shed secret tears, overwhelmed with emotion, while standing in the rainfall of bullets. They respected and obeyed the dictates at once of honor and duty in all their service, and shouted Banzai to His Imperial Majesty at the moment of death. Their display of the true spirit of the Japanese Samurai is radically different from the behavior of men who appear on the fighting line with only the prospect of decorations and money before their eyes. ”

“ Scores of examples are recorded of men who, with everything to make existence desirable, deliberately laid down their lives at the prompting of loyalty. Thus the samurai rose to a remarkable height of moral nobility. He had no assurance that his death might not be wholly fruitless, as indeed it often proved. If the sacrifice achieved its purpose, if it turned a liege lord from evil courses, the samurai could hope that his memory would be honoured. ”

“ The term for a rude man is an 'other-than-expected fellow'; and a Samurai is not to be interfered with in cutting down a fellow who has behaved to him in a manner other than is expected. The Samurai are grouped into direct retainers, secondary retainers, and nobles and retainers of high and low grade; but the same line of conduct is equally allowable to them all towards an other-than-expected fellow."— [Art. 45.]
But there is little reason to suppose that Iyeyasu created any new privilege of slaughter: he probably did no more than confirm by enactment certain long established military rights. ”

“ It is not only the foreigner who assaults that philosophy which glorified the vendetta, kept alive private war, made revenge in murder the sweetest joy of the Samurai and suicide the gate to honor and fame, subordinated the family to the house, and suppressed individuality and personality. ”

“ Towards the close of the fifteenth century arose schools of artists in metal, who made it their business to adorn the hilt, the guard, the sheath, and other appurtenances in a manner which is still the delight of collectors. But to the Japanese connoisseur the great treasure is always the blade itself, which has been called "the living soul of the Samurai." ”

“ Blades had been treasured for centuries, handed from father to son, looked upon as the soul of the owner for the sake of which he would refrain from any deed unbecoming a gentleman; some possessed histories going far back into the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the country was at war within itself, around others were entwined romances, and above all, the sword was the faithful friend with which the Samurai might honourably end his life, either in the field or on the mats. ”

“ It follows that of all his possessions the Samurai sets most store by his sword, his constant companion, his ally, defensive and offensive. The price of a sword by a famous maker reaches a high sum: a Japanese noble will sometimes be found girding on a sword, the blade of which unmounted is worth from six hundred to a thousand riyos, say from £200 to £300, and the mounting, rich in cunning metal work, will be of proportionate value. ”

“ The spirit of loyalty and filial piety must be educated before all things. Poem-composing pastimes are not to be engaged in by samurai. To be addicted to such amusements is to resemble a woman. A man born a samurai should live and die sword in hand. ”

“ In feudal days a man's life was at his lord's call, and he might never feel sure that the following day would not be his last, either in fight or by self infliction under orders of the death penalty for some breach, however slight, of the stiff code of Samurai etiquette. Hence his sword was selected and cared for, its edge must be keen enough to cut a man's head at a blow, leaving, if skilfully done, a shred of skin on the throat for the head to hang on the breast. ”

“ That cast-iron guards had no existence cannot be affirmed; they may sometimes have been made for weapons of the most inferior description. But the Japanese themselves deny that cast iron was ever regarded as a suitable material for a sword-guard, its liability to fracture being a fatal objection. The connoisseur—and every samurai was something of a connoisseur in matters concerning his sword—attached more importance to the tempering of the metal than to the fashion of the ornamental chiselling, and in every record of great armourers skill in forging iron heads the list of their achievements. ”

“ Is ours a mere “wild-boar” courage, not to know how to retreat? “Back-roving” (sakaro) was ridiculed by the old warriors of Japan—our modern [155] fighters also despise the idea of retreating. It may be a mistake, but “to show one’s back to the enemy” has always been considered the greatest disgrace a samurai could bring upon himself. This idea is the central military principle of the people of Japan. This note of the Russian general is good testimony to the spirit pervading our ranks, “determined to death” and to fight on with strenuous perseverance. ”

“ At these words his enraged enemies seize him and put him to a death of horrible torture, but he smiles in their faces as he tells them the sweetness of such a sacrifice for his master. Japanese history abounds with heroic deeds of blood displaying the indomitable courage of the samurai. In the reading of them, we are often reminded of the Spartan spirit of warfare, and samurai women are in some ways very like those Spartan mothers who would rather die than see their sons branded as cowards. ”

“ In the days of Ashikaga the Shiogun, when Japan was vexed by a civil war, and prisoners of high rank were every day being put to shameful deaths, was instituted the ceremonious and honorable mode of suicide by disembowelling, known as Seppuku or Hara-kiri, an institution for which, as the old Japanese historian says, “ men in all truth should be very grateful. To put his enemy, against whom he has cause for enmity, to death, and then to disembowel himself, is the duty of every Samurai.” ”

“ It must be observed that the suicide of the samurai was never inspired by any doctrine like that of Hegesias. Death did not present itself to him as a legitimate means of escaping from the cares and disappointments of life. Self-destruction had only one consolatory aspect, that it was the soldier’s privilege to expiate a crime with his own sword, not under the hand of the executioner. ”

“ To drag out such men as these, bound as criminals, and cut their heads off, was intolerably cruel; accordingly, men hit upon a ceremonious mode of suicide by disembowelling, in order to comfort the departed spirit. Even at present, where it becomes necessary to put to death a man who has been guilty of some act not unworthy of a Samurai, at the time of the execution witnesses are sent to the house; and the criminal, having bathed and put on new clothes, in obedience to the commands of his superiors, puts an end to himself, but does not on that account forfeit his rank as a Samurai. ”

“ In the relations of citizenship the same disregard of {56} individual rights was the ancient rule, not merely in the fact that for centuries the smallest details of everyday life were regulated by law, but more seriously in that the Samurai, or privileged class, might "cut down in cold blood a beggar, a merchant, or a farmer on the slightest provocation, or simply for the purpose of testing his sword," while in case of the ruin of their cause it was the honorable and natural thing for soldiers to commit "hari-kiri"--that is to say, commit suicide by disemboweling themselves. ”

“ It is the duty of a samurai to sacrifice his life for the sake of loyalty. After my death my motive for refusing to confess what my lord the Shogun desires will become clear. Tell my father only that I met my doom fearlessly by my lord’s own sword. ”

“ The fact is that, like all systems demanding severe moral discipline, the samurai's habits were apt to degenerate into extravagance. Absolute indifference to death, brusque and haughty manners, immediate and forcible resentment of anything like an insult, openly displayed contempt for whatever is gentle or effeminate, readiness to face any odds in defence of the weak against the strong,—these are traits which, though admirable so long as their display is confined to legitimate occasions, become unsightly when they perpetually seek opportunities for display. ”

“ The samurai’s doctrine was not truth for truth’s sake, but truth for the sake of the spirit of uncompromising manliness on which he based all his code of morality. A pledge or a promise must never be broken, but the duty of veracity did not override the interests or the welfare of others. Generosity to a defeated foe was also one of the tenets of the samurai’s ethics. ”

“ A samurai, with the aid of his paramour, inveigles a rival to a drinking-bout and slays him as he lies unconscious under the influence of wine. A soldier who sees another promoted over his head, devises an elaborate scheme to convict him of conspiracy which he has never contemplated. Such acts, forming the prelude to vengeance achieved in despite of great difficulties and lengthy delays, are almost sufficiently numerous to lower the general standard of the bushi's morality ”

“ It is plainly unfair to take an abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and extravagance—inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine virtue? ”

“ Men no longer took pleasure in books treating of the lives and adventures of beautiful women or the mental feats of renowned scholars. Such studies seemed incongruous amid the clash of arms and under the shadow of the sword and spear. Striking vicissitudes in martial careers, the intrepid deaths or life-long separations of warriors, the rise and fall of principalities—these were the themes of which the Kamakura samurai loved to read. ”

“ Such an appeal to the emotional side of human nature could not fail to undermine the stoicism of the samurai and the morality of society in general. The practice of the military arts went out of fashion, and it became an object with the bushi not only to have his sword highly ornamented, but also to adapt its dimensions to the fashion of the moment, thus sacrificing utility to elegance. ”

“ But the average foreigner takes little interest in the story of the blade or the traditions and superstitions connected with it. For him the attractive part is the furniture of the weapon; the chiselling of the guard as well as of the adjuncts of the hilt, and the remarkable skill with which various metals are combined for the decoration of these objects. There has been no finer work of its kind in the world. The attention it attracts in Europe and America is still very inadequate. A happy description calls the furniture of the sword the jewelry of the samurai. ”

“ Even those who cannot appreciate the artistic forging of the blade, the steel-setting, and tempering, must admire the exceedingly tasteful casting and embossing of the ornamentation, especially [ pg 377 ] of the guard-plates of the sword. They are often veritable works of art, unsurpassed in style and execution.
It is not very many years ago since the men who belonged to the samurai class never showed themselves abroad without being armed with two swords. ”

“ The only military exercise approaching it was the hunting of wild game or the sham hunting which ended in cruelly sacrificing dogs, and even these sports were not practised frequently. That those pieces of Japanese armour, which foreigners can now see in many museums in Europe and America, had been long found to be a sort of thing rather inconvenient to wear in this country, yet had nevertheless continued to be a furniture indispensable to every household of samurai and to be embellished with an exquisite workmanship, proves how academically war had been regarded in those far-off days. ”

“ That war in the past has, when subjected to an ideal, helped in this elevation, as in the development of knighthood and chivalry, the Indian ideal of the Kshatriya, the Japanese ideal of the Samurai, can only be denied by the fanatics of pacifism. When it has fulfilled its function, it may well disappear; for if it tries to survive its utility, it will appear as an unrelieved brutality of violence stripped of its ideal and constructive aspects and will be rejected by the progressive mind of humanity; but its past service to the race must be admitted in any reasonable view of our evolution. ”

“ Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away as “the captains and the kings depart.”
If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues—be it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome—can never make on earth a “continuing city.” Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. ”

“ Much comment has been given lately to the Code of the Samurai,—the Art of Death which makes our soldiers exult in self-sacrifice; but scarcely any attention has been drawn to Teaism, which represents so much of our Art of Life. Fain would we remain barbarians, if our claim to civilisation were to be based on the gruesome glory of war. ”