Bushido

Secondary post-thought came to me, as I finished Bushido: Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe last night. It’s a fascinating read by a man with a fascinating historical perspective. He became an agricultural / economics student in Japan, and converted to Christianity, before leaving the country to pursue more in-depth studies in America. He eventually went on to have a distinguished academic career across the globe while eventually getting into diplomatic relations. He died in 1933, so had witnessed Japan’s foray into modern imperialism and conquest, and constant government reorganization, but did not witness the beginnings of WWII. At one point he took a leave from teaching at university (some say due to a panic attack) and during his “downtime” and recuperation he wrote a book, Bushido, that ended up becoming a huge hit. He wrote the whole thing in English and basically geared the experience towards white western eyes — every step of the way he finds either Christian or western-historical references and analogies to help “translate” the thinking of Japanese traditions to a contemporary western audience. Nitobe relies most heavily on European Medieval traditions of chivalry and knighthood to compare to Samurai and their code of Bushido. Overall, it’s a good brief overview of the various components and ideals behind Bushido — not at all how or where it came from, or the subtle traditions it created, or contradictions it carries. What’s interesting to me is that he seems to be aware that his western audience assumes they are superior (and thus their own traditions and ideals are superior) to the Japanese (this was a time of immense racism of course, even eugenics) - and so he uses their own hallowed stories and traditions to be turned on their head — to crystallize the beliefs of those stories and then illustrate how the Japanese believe in similar rhetoric, but tenfold more intensely. He also uses his discourse on Bushido to explain certain cultural traits of the Japanese that people, you can tell from his introductions, made fun of or were alienated by at the time. And through his explanations he almost subtly, implicitly concludes that if you did indeed think this trait or practice of the Japanese to be odd or stupid then you were just missing the hallowed meaning behind it. It’s almost as if Nitobe wrote this as a sort of catharsis, or perhaps he respected their racist nationalism and sought to meet them on their terms - it’s hard to say. But either way it’s an interesting historical read and gives a broad definition of Bushido (and an accurate, beautiful prediction as to the future of Bushido as well - at the end). The next read for me will be The Demon’s Sermon on Martial Arts which came out of the time period that truly invented and crystallized Bushido in Japan.