Jōchō’s opinion on the incident is representative of his no-nonsense stance with regards to appropriate warrior conduct.
The rōnin of the Asano clan were culpable for not immediately committing seppuku at the Sengakuji Temple [after the night raid on Lord Kira’s mansion]. Moreover, it took too long to exact revenge after their master was killed by the enemy. What if [their intended victim] Lord Kira had died of illness in the interim? It would have been a disgrace. Warriors of the Kamigata region are clever and shrewd in finding ways of being showered in praise. (1-55)
Indeed, Hagakure provides a frank commentary on the multifarious issues that samurai had to contend with as they navigated their way through Pax Tokugawa. The life philosophy of Yamamoto Jōchō highlights the tension and contradictions endured by a warrior subculture that had primed itself for war over many centuries, but was stuck in the limbo of peace.
CONTEXTUALIZING THE CONTENT
The subject matter of Hagakure was dictated by Yamamoto Jōchō. He was born on the eleventh day of the sixth month in 1659 to Yamamoto Jin’uemon Shigezumi, a retainer of the Saga domain. Jōchō talks of his childhood days in Book 2. He mentions that his father was 70 years old when he was born, and given the encumbrance of rearing a child at his age, Jin’uemon quipped that he should like to off-load his new child to a salt merchant. His unit captain, Taku Zusho, advised against such rash disposal of the lad, as his illustrious lineage guaranteed usefulness as a retainer in the future.
Jōchō was first named Matsukame, and when he was nine years of age, he was renamed Fukei when called into service as an errand boy by Nabeshima Mitsushige (1632–1700), second lord of the Saga domain. His father was strict and gave him all manner of laborious chores to build his strength and stamina. Evidently the boy was of weak constitution, and it was said that he would probably not live past the age of 12. Showing the dogged qualities that pepper the text of Hagakure, he spent his youth in personal training to prove his doubters wrong.
Jōchō’s father died when he was 11. Following his father’s passing, he was cared for and austerely educated by his nephew, Yamamoto Tsuneharu, who was actually 20 years his senior. He was made a pageboy of Nabeshima Mitsushige and given the name Ichijūrō at the age of 14. In 1678, he underwent the coming-of-age ceremony (genpuku), taking the name Gon’nojō, and was promoted to the position of close attendant and scribe’s assistant.
Unfortunately, his lord Mitsushige showed displeasure at Gon’nojō’s complicity in his son Tsunashige’s fixation with poetry, and he was temporarily discharged from duty. During this time, he visited his father’s old friend Tannen Oshō, a Zen monk at the Kezōan, and there he was taught the teachings of Buddhist Law. When he was 21, he was administered the kechimyaku, a document that signifies the “bloodline” or succession of various masters in a particular Zen school. He was given the Buddhist name Kyokuzan Jōchō (which can also be read as Tsunetomo). Around this time, he also frequented the abode of Saga’s renowned scholar of Confucianism and thought, Ishida Ittei. The teachings of both these men had a profound effect on Jōchō, and this is evident by the numerous times their wisdom is quoted in Hagakure.
Jōchō married at the age of 24 and was reappointed as an officer of document writing. He was dispatched to Edo in this capacity when he was 28, and then deployed to Kyoto later on. He took his father’s name, Jin’uemon, upon returning to Saga at the age of 33. Five years later, he was sent to Kyoto again by Mitsushige on a special mission to acquire a copy of Kokin-denju, a rare corpus of teachings which illuminated the inner meaning of the poems contained in the tenth century anthology of poetry known as the Kokin Waka-shū (commonly called Kokin-shū). For this purpose, he visited an authority on waka poetry, the nobleman Sanjō-nishi Sanenori, and finally managed to acquire copies of valuable documents for his lord in 1700. Through some premonition, he realized he had to return to Saga quickly, and did so just in time to present the bed-ridden Mitsushige with the prized teachings.
With Mitsushige dying that year, this turned out to be the culmination of Jōchō’s service to his lord, and his greatest exploit. One gets the impression that he strongly regretted that his career was bound by a forced association with the arts. This ultimately prevented him from achieving his goal of reaching the lofty heights of chief retainer, where he dreamt of occupying an influential position to counsel his lord for the good of the domain.
It was Jōchō’s stated desire to martyr himself and commit the act of junshi, or self-immolation, to follow his lord in death. Such a self-willed death was considered to be the highest expression of loyalty to one’s deceased lord, and thought to be an honorable end to the life of a dedicated retainer. To the disappointment of Jōchō however, junshi (or oibara as it was also known) had been prohibited in the Nabeshima domain by decree in 1661, and indeed by the Tokugawa government in 1663. His only recourse to demonstrate his integrity and devotion as a loyal warrior of the Nabeshima clan was to commit a form of “social junshi.” He took the tonsure, shaved his head, and retired to a hermitage in the hills in Kurotsuchibaru.
It was here, ten years later, that Tashiro Tsuramoto visited him to seek his counsel. Jōchō’s wife had already died, and he had no children. Jōchō’s adopted son Tsunetoshi (also named Gon’nojō) died while on duty in Edo aged 38, so it is understandable that Jōchō took a liking to his Nabeshima domain junior, and the relationship they forged was one of deep, almost paternal, respect.
Tsuramoto was born in 1678, and his scholastic talents were recognized from a young age. He was appointed as a copyist for Nabeshima Tsunashige when he was 19, and continued in this role with the fourth lord of the Nabeshima clan, Yoshishige. He was relieved of duty for some unknown transgression in 1709. Despairing, Tsuramoto visited Jōchō at his hermitage in Kurotsuchibaru in the third month of the following year. Deciding to live close to Jōchō, Tsuramoto visited often, and wrote down the stories relayed to him over a period of seven years. The first copy of Hagakure was completed on the tenth day of the ninth month, 1716.
The original manuscript of Hagakure has long since been lost, but important handwritten copies made during the Tokugawa period include the “Kōhaku-bon,” transcribed by Kamohara Kōhaku, who was five years Tsuramoto’s junior, as well as the “Kashima-bon,” and “Koyama-bon” (“Yamamoto-bon” and “Gojō-bon”)—in addition to subsequent copies of these copies, which total around 40. Each copy contains slight differences, and exist in varying degrees of completeness. This translation is based on the Kōhaku version, as this is generally considered to be the closest to the original.
UNRAVELING THE ESSENCE OF HAGAKURE
The content of Hagakure is complicated, and unashamedly contradictory and ambiguous in places. Even the origin of the book’s name is open for conjecture. One theory cites a poem by the famous Buddhist bard Saigyō Hōshi (1118–1190) in the Sanka-shū. “Hagakure ni chiri-todomareru hana nomi zo, shinobishi hito ni au kokochi suru” (“Hidden away under leaves, a blossom still left over makes me yearn to chance upon my secret love this way.”)13 Another hypothesis suggests that “hidden by leaves” was a reference to the secluded environment in which Tsuramoto interviewed Jōchō. Other scholars allude to the fact that Jōchō often makes reference to stalwart service from behind the scenes, or “service from the shadows,” with no desire for recognition. It has even been postulated that the fifth Nabeshima lord, Muneshige, visited Tsuramoto and conferred the title himself.
It would seem that the most plausible of all these theories is the Saigyō one. Nevertheless, it has been discounted by distinguished Hagakure expert, Furukawa Tetsushi,