Volume 26, Number 15 · October 11, 1979
Cult of the Sword
By Richard Storry
Some Japanese Portraits
by Donald Keene
Kodansha International, 228 pp., $15.00
Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
by Tsunetomo Yamamoto, translated by William Scott Wilson
Kodansha International, 142 pp., $9.95
Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879
by Noel Perrin
David R. Godine, 136 pp., $8.95
Gentleman and roughneck—the Japanese warriors of the feudal age can appear in either guise. On the one hand we observe fine feeling, good breeding, and taste; on the other there is the implacable readiness of the samurai to inflict violent death on others, as well as on himself, for what often appear to be trivial reasons. Death, indeed, preoccupied the soul of the samurai throughout his waking hours. And one cliché of the Japanese of the old school is to liken their cherry blossoms to the true samurai. For the indigenous ornamental cherry of Japan, unlike varieties developed in other lands, loses all its petals at the very first gust of wind. There is no hesitation. For the blossom, pink or white, death is 'lighter than a feather.' So it was for the samurai. In time of war he embraced the thought expressed by the sixteenth-century warrior Uesugi Kenshin: 'Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death.' Yet for more than two hundred years, from the first half of the seventeenth century to the middle years of the nineteenth, there was no call to arms. The long Tokugawa peace transformed the fighting man into an armed mandarin, a member of a strictly nonproductive, self-perpetuating bureaucracy.
Review, 3151 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |