Nitobe Inazo (1862 – 1933) had a very impressive career as an educator (Sapporo University, Kyoto University, Tokyo University) and after that as a diplomat/politician (Japanese colonial government in Taiwan, League of Nations, House of Peers). He had studied for 3 years in the U.S. and was married to the American Mary Elkinton. But his fame today seems to rest mainly on a small book he wrote in 1900, "Bushido, The Soul of Japan," in which (as a Japanese Christian) he tried present a unifying, Japanese way of thought that could vie with Western philosophical and religious ideas. In writing this booklet, Nitobe was strongly influenced by Western ideas about chivalry (which never had a place in Japan) and the result is more fiction and fantasy than fact.
[Nitobe and his wife Mary]
Bushido is a modern invention (by Nitobe and others in the 1890s) – even the term ‘Bushido’ was not generally used before modern times, and such a code – or even something resembling it – was never recorded in the house codes of the various feudal domains in the Edo period.
Bushido is popular among some Americans and Europeans, at least when one looks at the large number of books published in English on the subject, but the point is that Bushido is not a mainstream Japanese ideology and definitely not the ideology of the warrior caste (‘samurai’) in the past.
In the Edo period, the dominating philosophy of the samurai class (who were not warriors anymore due to the long peace, but had turned into nonviolent bureaucrats / administrators) was not a non-existent Bushido, but Neo- Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism was a rational, humanistic philosophy centering on filial piety. Other values, such as frugality, loyalty, discipline and trust, were also important (the seven virtues Nitobe mentions as typical of Bushido, are in fact Confucian: rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor and loyalty).
According to original Confucianism, the first duty of each person was towards the parents – that was the meaning of filial piety (in China, where Confucianism originated, the family was in fact more important than the state). Therefore it was one’s duty to preserve one’s life (the body one had received from the parents) and live to a ripe old age – self-immolation, including seppuku, was seen as a great evil. Bushido in fact turns the real philosophy of the samurai on its head. If asked what his personal convictions were, not a single samurai would have told you, “Well, Bushido, of course.” Bushido was pertinently not the ‘religion of the samurai.’
In the chaotic Warring States period in Japan, from the late 15th to the end of the 16th c., when many small states fought with each other for dominance under fierce warlords, personal loyalty between leader and warrior had been important – not a little bit of loyalty, but an absolute and totalitarian form of submission, as the times demanded. Death was seen as the ultimate demonstration of that loyalty, but the vassal received powerful protection and status in return.
In the 17th century, when the long Tokugawa peace started (one of the longest periods of peace in world history), this personal loyalty changed into a rather more general loyalty to one’s domain. There were a few exceptions – for example, a primitive thinker as Yamamoto Tsunetomo with his Hagakure and his philosophy of reckless death – but these were rare and heterodox instances – there was nothing mainstream about the ideas expressed in the Hagakure. The philosophy of death of the Hagakure was in fact unknown in its own time and deeply buried in forgetfulness, until it was unearthed in the early 20th century. And we all know to what terrible excesses the Bushido invented by Nitobe and others has led in the various aggressive wars Japan fought in the first half of the twentieth century, by forging an unholy link between the few Edo period ‘philosophers of reckless death’ with extreme nationalism.
So what about the “Forty-seven Ronin” and other famous samurai stories? Were these not very popular in the Edo period? Yes, but not among samurai. They were popular thanks to the Joruri (puppet theater) and Kabuki, two theatrical forms of the common people (not of the samurai, who had their Noh theater, in which we of course do not find anything resembling the Forty-seven Ronin story). Now Bushido was of course also not the ideology of the common man in the 18th century. Neither was he Confucian. But he liked a good story, and that is what these two types of theater offered: a tale of revenge ending in a battle, murder and mass suicide. Gruesome, but totally unconnected to daily life, as all good stories should be.
Read more about The Ako Incident and the Forty-Seven Loyal Retainers (Chushingura) at: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-ako-incident-and-forty-seven-loyal.html