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Samurai were a superfluous burden on Japanese civilization… that contributed little to society but drained a considerable amount of wealth.
The abolition of the heredity system allowed for mobility. Suddenly those in high positions found incentive to work hard. Although a minority, Saigo and other top ranking samurai had the most to lose and rebelled as a result. Nitobe describes the Satsuma Rebellion as a battle of honor, not a rebellion driven by the preservation of class status.
without even looking at this, is it about how like the "book on bushido" was invented after the total decline of samurai in japanese society and itself was basically a proto-fascist masculine screed?
yes. i just read it, though the author didn't go quite that far they did thoroughly dunk and debunk Inazo Nitobe
Nitpick:
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?
This is as stated: a modern depiction, mostly by Imperial Japan during WWII elevating the katana to an almost mythical status. In actuality, the samurai immediately adopted firearms and replaced their bows when possible. Due to issues with Japanese steel making guns expensive and rare, samurai still used bows because it was cheaper. They'd happily take a carbine to use on horseback over a bow any day.
None of the actual samurai saw firearms as dishonorable. Samurai were some of the first adopters of guns as they spread out from China, often importing European ones due to their sturdiness and reliability over locally made weapons. By the time of the Satsuma Rebellion (where the samurai used guns lmao), they had been using firearms for hundreds of years.
Not sure why the author decided to phrase things this way.
But yeah, otherwise a good read dispelling the notion of bushido versus what the samurai were actually like. They were little more than paid goons who terrorized the peasantry. It's no surprise many of them eventually became what we now know as the Yakuza. They had more in common with Ralph Cifaretto from The Sopranos than they did with Katsumoto from The Last Samurai.
None of the actual samurai saw firearms as dishonorable. Samurai were some of the first adopters of guns as they spread out from China,
much like how samurai adopted guns when they started to come out, so too did western knights and men-at-arms. because it's fucking war efficiency. Life isn't a hollywood movie, contrary to the petite bourgeoise reactionary romanticists tend to believe. These were soldiers, warriors, bandits, people. all with agency and a drive to survive whatever conflict they find themselves in. There is no "masculine urge to bleed out in the snow" that shit fucking hurts fuck that.
Yeah I could rant about this forever. Hollywood (and films in general) have really fucked with people's understanding of military history. Some peeves:
People wore 50+ pounds of armor because it stopped things from killing you. When plate armor was developed, people stopped using shields because their armor could protect their whole body. The only way to hurt someone was to get between the joints or areas like slits on a visor. Hollywood depicts swords like they're fucking lightsabres that cut through solid steel.
Soldiers fought in formations because it was the easiest way to get a bunch of people working in unison when there were no radios, night vision goggles, etc. Battles kick up a lot of dust so you can't see anything. People are shouting and screaming. Most importantly? Knowing who was by your sides and behind you was how you avoided getting literally stabbed in the back. Charging one another at full speed doing backflips over shield walls is a good way to have your side panic when people realize they're alone. People fought this way even after rifles were developed because it was more effective than running around on your own or spread out.
Oh yeah, charges? Good way to wear yourself out before the fighting even starts. Formations would run to get in position when they saw openings. Otherwise, they're walking. Ain't nobody going to run into a wall of knives because that's a good way to die.
No really, people don't like dying. They do a lot of stuff to avoid it.
Fire arrows
Swords in general are over represented. Polearms were king on every battlefield across the world for millennia. The Romans were rather unique in their use of the Gladius. Legionaries still carried javelins, however. Otherwise, swords are a sidearm, a last ditch "Oh shit my spear snapped in half when it got stuck" weapon. It would be like if every modern war film had troops using only pistols and no rifles or machine guns.
Anywho. This is probably too long of a comment. I just wish filmmakers did the bare minimum of understanding why our ancestors did what they did. Like you'll spend $500 billion and 3 years making a 4 hour historical epic but won't look up why there was a guy whose entire job was holding up a flag?
Battles kick up a lot of dust so you can't see anything. People are shouting and screaming. Most importantly? Knowing who was by your sides and behind you was how you avoided getting literally stabbed in the back.
PEOPLE ENJOYED WEARING GARISH COLORS AND IT HELPED IDENTIFY FRIEND FROM FOE! NOT DIFFERENT SHADES OF BLACK CHRISTOPHER NOLAN YOU STICK IN THE MUD FUCKER!
People wore 50+ pounds of armor because it stopped things from killing you. When plate armor was developed, people stopped using shields because their armor could protect their whole body. The only way to hurt someone was to get between the joints or areas like slits on a visor. Hollywood depicts swords like they’re fucking lightsabres that cut through solid steel.
an addition to this:
hollywood also depicts arrows as if they punch straight through a breastplate
and also holding a 100+ lb war bow at full draw for like a minute straight without screaming and loosing the arrow wildly as your muscles give out
Bourgeoise media will represent Bourgeoise values. It's about elitism, classism, not honor. Swords is what fancy people used in duels, that's the image they want to present. If you use a word you are seen as high class individual.
The pointier your sword the higher class individual you are.
Good read, but also a general concept that seems to repeat itself across time and space. It’s precisely when the old order has dissolved that propagandists find it the most useful to lionize it. Early medieval writers bemoaning the degradation of society due to the fall of the WRE and its greatness, Nietzsche whining that the new liberal elite lacked the epic heroism of the old feudal order, Chekhov parodied this mentality in The Cherry Orchard.
I guess when the old order finally dies out, then it’s safe for the new order to leverage its mystique.
Modern Russia uses the Soviet Union this way to an extent, although I'm not aware of any mythology built around it.
tl;dr: A westernized son of a samurai extrapolated the already-romanticized imaginary western chivalry of Knights and his own Christian values to samurai, thus attributing to them 'bushido', which bolstered the burgeoning bourgeois and later imperialist state of Japan.
Thank you, trusty base-superstructure my old friend.
Interesting article, thanks for sharing. It indirectly made me realize something: Throughout modern history, Westerners would fantasize about the premodern culture of non-European countries undergoing modernization at impressive rates (Japan, China), lamenting their lost, rose-colored legacy. Yet meanwhile they would ridicule and belittle the so-called "despotic" societies that were lacking behind on the tracks of modernity (Ottoman Empire, India, Africa, literally most of the globe). I think this contradiction in attitude stems from the material threat which the former category poses, contrary to the latter category of countries whose subjects were enslaved and subjugated by the European colonizer. Granted, both the former and the latter attitude share the same orientalistic sentiment which reduces other nations to mere facades that can be easily malleable according to imperialist interests.
I've read Book of Five Rings and Hagukire and they are interesting but yeah the whole mythology is bullshit.
I do find it a little concerning representing Hokkaido as a terra nullius, but in general I really like the article and think it's helpful for understanding cultural perceptions.
I could have sworn that Yamaga Soko, another conservative samurai writing much earlier, had a work that was literally called "bushido" or a near-equivalent, basically talking about what the samurai were supposed to do now that they generally weren't doing much fighting.
Edit: Perhaps the Yamaga Soko work in Japanese is "Bushi no Michi" or something, since the version that I have gives the title "The Way of the Knight" (which is obviously not a great way to translate the title, but the rest of the translation does not feature that weird cultural substitution that I remember).
Edit 2: I looked it up and the Japanese name is "Shido"
Playing Catch-Up: The Meji Restoration
Meiji*
small error but it's in a section title and they should fix it