Martial Arts News Nr. 1 August 2000

Rediscovering Bushido

by Thomas Lindqvist

When you flip through your average martial arts magazine you sometimes find an article dealing with the subject of bushido, the way of the samurai. When reading it you often get the feeling that if the author could have his way we would all be running about the countryside waving our swords in a most elegant fashion. After our training sessions we would all sip our tea quietly and sthe silence would only be disturbed by the soothing sound of water pouring in our japanese garden, and perhaps by the odd question to our wise zen roshi about the mysteries of life, death and the universe. We would all walk with our backs straight and our heads high. We would be kind to all, and when someone disrupted the moral harmony, we would kindly but firmly put them back on the right track. And it goes without saying that we would all have great relations to our parents, as we would have with all elderly citizens. This is the way of the samurai. This is the way it all went down. Really? Of course not! It seems obvious to me that no matter what subject you're dealing with there's always a need to separate the ideal from the real, something that a lot of people within the martial art ranks seem reluctant to do. They are instead caught in a samurai glorification frenzy that only hurt themselves. For they claim to be fond of the samurai traditions, but with their inclination to handle the ideal they create their own modern version of these traditions and thusly stray from the real samurai tradition. First and foremost, bushido was an ideal, and furthermore an ideal that changed depending on time and location. Some aspects of bushido were hard to disagree upon, such as loyalty and courage, it was however a matter of argument wheather or not the samurai should be part warrior and part scholar. Yamato Tsunetomo summed up his views on bushido when he said: "Bushido to wa shinu koto to mitsuketari",meaning: "Bushido consists of dying-that is the conclusion I have reached"

But the concept of bushido is in fact a very intricate one. This is so due to the fact that the term bushido was invented as late as during the relativly peacefull Tokugawa-era by a confucian scholar and samurai named Yamaga Soko. There were of course samurai long before that, and there existed a set of standards for how the samurai should conduct himself. This is today also refered to as bushido, even though the term wasn't invented until later. This means that the same term is used to describe the code of behaviour for a class of people during 800 years! It goes without saying that this creates confusion and misunderstanding, for during these 800 years bushido was bound to change. version created by Yamaga Soko, a version that was developed simply to justify the high status of the samurai even in a time of peace. Yamaga Soko lists a number of admirable charactaristics that the samurai should be in possesion of. He should then function as a rolemodel for the man on the street. Something to look up to. The samurai were now working as government officials, and as such they were required to study among other things the chinese classics, including the work of Confucius and Mencius. They did however almost never participate in actual combat. Some of the rugged old school samurai did not look kindly upon the new breed of so called warriors. They thought of them as soft pencil pushing pansies that wouldn't survive an hour on the battle field. In defence we should mention that the new warriors did practice the martial arts, both hard and passionately, and wheather or not they would be proficiant on the battle field is hard to say. This is not the point really, the point is that there's a whole lot more to bushido than what you normaly read about. It is also important to point out that the zen-poet-warrior was probably not as common as one might think. We have in fact indications that some old school samurai felt that the samurai involvment with religion and art was harmful. One hardcore samurai named Kato Kiyomasa went so far as to order his retainers to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) if he ever caught them performing the noh-dance.

The bushido most frequently refered to today is the version created by Yamaga Soko, a version that was developed simply to justify the high status of the samurai even in a time of peace. Yamaga Soko lists a number of admirable charactaristics that the samurai should be in possesion of. He should then function as a rolemodel for the man on the street. Something to look up to. The samurai were now working as government officials, and as such they were required to study among other things the chinese classics, including the work of Confucius and Mencius. They did however almost never participate in actual combat. Some of the rugged old school samurai did not look kindly upon the new breed of so called warriors. They thought of them as soft pencil pushing pansies that wouldn't survive an hour on the battle field. In defence we should mention that the new warriors did practice the martial arts, both hard and passionately, and wheather or not they would be proficiant on the battle field is hard to say. This is not the point really, the point is that there's a whole lot more to bushido than what you normaly read about. It is also important to point out that the zen-poet-warrior was probably not as common as one might think. We have in fact indications that some old school samurai felt that the samurai involvment with religion and art was harmful. One hardcore samurai named Kato Kiyomasa went so far as to order his retainers to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) if he ever caught them performing the noh-dance.

Todays samurai enthusiasts take the Yamaga Soko samurai ideal and applicate it to todays moral standards and salute it. It is amusing to see how they in rethoric with ninjutsu practioners, claim that the ninja were nothing but dirty killers, since they did not have their code of bushido and sold their loyalty to the highest bidder. Now, you have to decide if it should be with yesterdays or todays moral values that you judge the ninja and samurai. With todays values you cannot persist to glorify the samurai simply because he had his code of honour. The samurai sent the decapitated head of his enemies in boxes across the country. The samurai sacrificed humans to Hachiman, the shinto god of war before battles. The list goes on. There's nothing wrong with admiering the fine aspects of ideal bushido, but when doing so it's only fair to keep in mind that it is the ideal, not the reality. I for one am very fond of the old samurai even though it was natural for them to wear make-up and have gay relations. Oops!