Men from powerful local families in the eastern frontier lands entrusted with governmental titles formed bands and took up arms to defend their own estates, and helped quell other local disputes with the impending threat of violence. Provincial bands of samurai eventually formed feudal ties bound by a strong sense of identity as warriors. They maintained intense bonds of loyalty born of their shared experience in combat, as well as the promise of financial reward for services rendered. By the time Minamoto-no-Yoritomo set up the first bakufu, or warrior government, in Kamakura in 1192, warriors had already developed their own unique culture based on a ferocious appetite for fame, glory, and honor. Although it was not codified at this early stage, warrior culture was referred to by an array of terms, such as bandō musha no narai (“customs of the Eastern warriors”), yumiya no michi (“the way of the bow and arrow”), kyūba no michi (“the way of the bow and horse”), and so on. The term bushido was not coined until much later, in the 1600s.
To the samurai, martial ability was an expression of individual strength and valor, and symbolic of their distinctive subculture as specialist combatants. From the ninth century (or arguably, perhaps, even earlier), Japanese warriors developed and cultivated an idiosyncratic culture based largely on the ability to utilize violence. Warrior ideals evolved over many centuries. They abided by idioms of honor and upheld bonds of fealty forged between the retainer and lord, for whom—the classic war tales (gunki monogatari) frequently inform us—the warrior would gladly forfeit his life.
Generally speaking, by the Kamakura period (1185‒1333) samurai had developed a distinct ethical code to the extent that they would, ideally, risk or sacrifice their lives to maintain honor. Other members of society were not nearly as enthusiastic about the idea of demonstrating valor to the point of death. They created unique rules of interaction utilizing honorific expressions that directed the relationships between samurai individuals of all rank. It was the adhesive for the political and social life of the samurai. Warriors also developed an unquenchable desire to enhance the name of their families, or ie, and were fiercely competitive in ensuring that their name, or na, would last into posterity. In this sense, the quest to seek honor and avoid shame became inextricably linked to prowess and unremitting courage, and an eventual monopoly of the right to wield violence.
Naturally, as expressions of honor were demonstrated through martial skill and violence, the question of death has always been central to the samurai’s way of life. As is the case with Western medieval knights, the job of killing was certainly not condoned as a moral act in itself, although it was both justified and vindicated in a number of ways. A yearning for posthumous recognition, and an obsession for personal and familial glory, was all the motivation and justification the samurai needed to kill and die for. This provided the emotional impetus to fight bravely for one’s lord (along with the promise of financial reward), and the stigma of cowardice would be too much shame to bear, for both a samurai personally and his descendants.
Despite the honorable depictions of samurai in the popular medieval genre of literature known as “war tales,” greed for land, power, and self-advancement was always prevalent in the larger picture. This peaked at one of the most turbulent times in Japanese history, the Warring States period (1467–1568) where rival warlords, or daimyo, vied to conquer and eventually rule over a united Japan. This was a period where loyalty to one’s overlord was often conveniently flouted in favor of personal advancement, and alliances and promises of fealty were broken as often as they were made.
It was a volatile era in which the rise or demise of a great daimyo, his ie (“house”) and its members was only a treacherous back-stab away. The precariousness of the times led to a proliferation of “house rules” (kakun), laws (hatto), and prescripts defining consummate samurai deportment—obviously an indication that model behavior was far from the norm. Nevertheless, the perilous lifestyle of Sengoku warriors and their exploits were looked upon nostalgically by future generations as “the good old days” where samurai were real men, and those who dared won, or died in the process.
When Japan was finally ushered into an era of peace under the Tokugawa shogunate (1603–1867), samurai were faced with a dilemma. How could the warrior class, constituting just five or six per cent of the total population, justify their existence at the top of the newly-established social order, or shi-nō-kō-shō,12 when there were no more wars to speak of?
A number of military and Confucian scholars started formulating and refining protocols to guide warriors in their peacetime role, which became referred to as “shidō” or “bushidō.” The groundwork for a new system of political thought and awareness emerged over time, and arguments were circulated among the upper echelons of government advocating the centrality of warriors in affairs of state, offering validation for the existence of the privileged warrior class even though peace prevailed.
For example, in his famous military treatise Heihō Kadensho (1632), Yagyū Munenori (1571–1646) clarified how a virtuous ruler maintains the capacity to use military force to protect the masses. Thus, he argued, maintenance of a benevolent military government was vital for the wellbeing of the realm. “At times because of one man’s evil, ten thousand people suffer. So you kill that one man to let the tens of thousands live. Here, truly, the blade that deals death becomes the sword that saves lives.” In other words, the way of war was also seen as the way of peace.
This justification works on a governmental level, but by the time Hagakure was written in the middle of the Tokugawa period, it was the lower and middle tiers of samurai, now fully transformed into non-combatant salaried bureaucrats, who sought meaning to their existence. Prominent scholars such as Yamaga Sokō (1622–1685) and Daidōji Yūzan (1639–1730) provided samurai with standards for achievement in lieu of battlefield feats. Yamaga Sokō asked rhetorically: “The samurai eats food without growing it, uses utensils without manufacturing them, and profits without selling. What is the justification for this?” His solution was that the function of peacetime samurai was to serve his lord loyally, and be a moral exemplar to the commoners by demonstrating dedication to duty—by living in strict observance of protocols of etiquette, maintaining military preparedness through ascetic training in the military arts, while also nurturing aesthetic sensibilities in scholarly and cultural pursuits.
The quest for perfection in daily life and dedication to duty provided samurai with an alternative paradigm for accruing honor other than fighting bravely in battle. It was a far safer and less exciting substitute for war, but the shogunate was content for samurai to be tamed in this way, fearing that the intrinsic volatility of warrior culture could threaten its hegemony if not kept in check.
Interestingly, although the prospect of being killed honorably in battle was no longer a reality, the concept of death was idealized, and manifested in the attitude of self-sacrificing commitment to service and unequivocal loyalty to one’s lord. This could take the form of a self-willed death for some transgression, or suicide through fidelity.
Celebrated episodes during the Tokugawa period demonstrate just how ‘faithful’ a samurai could be to this extent. The most obvious example is the revenge of the 47 Rōnin (master-less samurai). In 1701, Asano Naganori, daimyo of the Akō domain, drew his sword and assaulted Kira Yoshinaka in the Edo Castle while in attendance because of a slight on his honor. Asano was immediately ordered to commit seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) for this serious breach of etiquette. His retainers plotted for two years and enacted a vendetta culminating in the successful assassination of Kira at his mansion. This in turn led to their own termination by ritual suicide. They remain celebrated heroes in Japan to this day as paragons of loyalty.
The propriety of their actions attracted both praise and criticism from all quarters. The reaction shows the complex nature of the Tokugawa warrior’s “community of honor.” Should Asano have showed more restraint when goaded by Kira? To what extent can the sacred line of one’s personal honor be crossed before retaliation is acceptable? Given the inviolability of personal honor for a samurai, should the shogun Tsunayoshi have been more judicious before immediately meting out punishment