Lord, It's the Samurai

[Ross Bender]

Hats off to the creators of this brilliant website, timed to coincide with yet another art show glorifying the samurai, this time at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

http://www.asiansart.org/samurai1.html

The presentation raises in harrowing detail the ethical questions involved in the collaboration of scholars in our field with the mystical magical samurai ethos -- some of my best friends and teachers have written samurai books, but I feel it's time to say enough already.

When I began studies in Japanese history, people always assumed I was studying Zen. Then they wanted to know all about the samurai and ninja turtles. Then it was the geishas. Nowadays it's anime, manga and Japanese pop art in general. Faugh!

Wish we could go back to the good old days when Japan's chief cultural export was Zen, although I'd rather when introducing myself at cocktail parties have the first excited query be "Oh, so do you know all about that fascinating Shoku Nihongi?."

--
Ross Bender
http://rossbender.org

[robin d. gill]

I clicked but got a 505.

 

Will enjoy seeing

 

1) whether the guy on the money (Nitobe) is kindly treated for his effort to draw the East and West together with Bushido.

2) if the New York Times is taken to task for using a picture of a kabuki samurai as an illustration for Genji (a few years back)

3) if miyamoto musashi is included --  "a lone samurai" in a title of a fine book by a friend who knows well he was not but the publisher had to get the book sold so . . .

4) if Well's Utopia with the samurai as global service-oriented administrators gets any attention -- why do we see so little about this?

5) reading Ross Bender's comments i recall the Mariachi musicians about 1976 on the mall in Washington DC whose only interest in the Japanese musicians was whether they all knew karate.

 

The pity of it with the anime is that there actually are interesting cartoonists in japan but we always see the same big-eyed type of pictures . . .

 

Enough, i will try again to google my way to that site!

 

Meanwhile at the feeder by the window a female cardinal with a crest like a cockadoo, no kidding!

--
"Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!"

[Michelle Li]

Thanks, Ross, the site encouraged me to consider a number of things. I'll be going to the exhibit soon and will look to see if there is any effort being made to strike a balance of messages. I have a membership to the museum and it's hard to imagine an exhibit there promoting the idea of violence being good in anyway, but I will be looking at it differently now.  Michelle --- On Mon, 8/31/09, Ross Bender <ross....@gmail.com> wrote:

[Anatoliy Anshin]

While it is true that the image of the bushi is greatly distorted, it is important not to run to extremes and create another distorted image in an attempt to undermine it. This website seems to underemphasize intellectual diversity of the Japanese warrior class, and attribute to it characteristics and motives which would be applicable only to particular groups or individuals at particular periods. In any event, it is necessary to distinguish clearly between the bushi culture of the pre-Tokugawa ages and that of the Great Tokugawa Peace.

 

Anatoliy Anshin 

 

[James Guthrie]

Anatoliy does make a good point in saying we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater with regards to the samurai but his e-mail also raised some toughts I felt compared to share.  It is interesting that we seem to have historically juxtaposed the "best" aspects of samurai from two very different era, into one modern idea of what a samurai was in the popular imagination.  On the one hand, we celebrate the martial valor and loyalty of the Kamakura/Muromachi/Sengoku samurai and on the other, we exalt the scholar warrior of the Tokugawa era.  Ironically enough though, the vaunted samurai loyalty of pre-Tokugawa times is/was in many ways a myth as many of the important battles of that time were decided by a last minute betrayal.  Additionally, while there were many notable scholarly warriors during the Tokugawa period, I think one would find that what made these men notable was that they were not the norm.  Did the samurai as a class have positive traits that helped Japan grow and develop?  Certainly.  However, I believe that the modern myth of the samurai has done Japan as much harm as it has good.
 
BTW, while we're looking at the sources of blame for the modern myth of the samurai, one can't overlook the Japanese historical scholars of the late 19th century.  In their zeal to connect Japan to the West, they sought to associate the samurai with the knights of Europe.  I believe that in doing so they played a prominent role in the modern romanticization of the samurai.  I believe Thomas Conlan wrote a good article on this a few years ago, though I don't know if he ever had it published.
 
Best,
 
James Guthrie
 
 

---

Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2009 08:38:48 +0900
Subject: [PMJS] Re: Lord, It's the Samurai
From: aan...@gmail.com
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

[robin d. gill]

Re. the "ironically" I do do not know who the "we" is that celebrates samurai loyalty, for even popular japanese writers on business and history such as Sakaya Taichi took issue with the myth of loyalty in mass media magazines in the 1990's. 

 

Still, as far as samurai in the Tokugawa go, i think Golownin made it clear that there was something good to be said for them.

 

Sorry, still have not visited that website!

[JL Badgley]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 9:46 AM, James Guthrie<rcg...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> some toughts I felt compared to share.  It is interesting that we seem to
> have historically juxtaposed the "best" aspects of samurai from two very
> different era, into one modern idea of what a samurai was in the popular
> imagination.  On the one hand, we celebrate the martial valor and loyalty of
> the Kamakura/Muromachi/Sengoku samurai and on the other, we exalt the
> scholar warrior of the Tokugawa era.

Is this all that different from the problems in European history
regarding "knights"? You have the warriors from the time of
Charlemange, the Crusaders, tourney fighters such as Rene d'Anjou, and
then the romances like "Le Morte d'Arthur". Yet, for most of the
public, they have a monolithic image of anyone who was a western
warrior in armor as a "knight". We can complain about it all we want,
but I don't think we are going to easily or quickly overcome any of
this.

One of the reasons I like the term "bushi" (or even more specific
terms) when talking about the warriors of Japan is that, for most
people, it disassociates the discussion from the popular images. Even
"bushido" I find to be more connected, in the mind of most, with the
term "samurai" instead of "bushi", at least in my experience.

-Joshua Badgley

[James Guthrie]

The "we" to which I refered was the everyman's notion of the samurai, the popular imagination.  Ask most laymen what they know about samurai and the word loyal inevitably comes up.  When one looks at the books that largely laid the foundation for the samurai in the modern popular imagination: Nitobe's "Bushido," and Yamamoto's "Hagakure," loyalty is prominently spoken of, however misplaced the nation may be.  The fact that popular Japanese writers had to "take issue" with this notion illustrates my point.
 
Best,
 
James Guthrie
 

---

Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:04:57 -0400

Subject: [PMJS] Re: Lord, It's the Samurai

From: robin...@gmail.com
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

[Philip C. Brown]

One problem with English-language writing about samurai is that much of it takes place in the absence of writing about wars in studies of pre-modern Japan.  The omission is so great that despite extensive surveys of English language scholarship, British author Alan Macfarlane wrote in Savage Wars of Peace, that unlike England, Japan did not suffer from major wars in the sixteenth century!  If a serious scholar who is not a Japan specialist can miss the degree to which there was widespred warfare by reading The Cambridge History of Japan and many, many other works by first-rank scholars, we have a serious problem that goes beyond pop culture.

 

On the pop culture front:  With idealized writings like Budoshoshinshu, and Hagakure, etc. readily available, but not similarly extensive writings on the way major battles unfolded -- who ran away, who switched sides to change the tide of battle, etc. -- or material on how most samurai lived (despite the wonderful exception of Musui's Story), countering idealized popular images is a tough task, the efforts of Conlon, Farris, Friday and Hurst, etc. notwithstanding.  Many of my students either don't have the patience to read these authors or, if they do, they accept selectively what confirms their predispositions.     

 

Phil Brown

 

 

---

From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of James Guthrie [rcg...@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 8:11 AM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

[Ross Bender]

If I may be allowed to preach for a moment, the website intervention
is not just about the accuracy of pop culture info on the samurai. It
makes two very serious points:

1) This popularization of the samurai is in the political context of a
"US hegemonic push to remilitarize Japan" in the eighth year of an
unending American war against Asia.

2) Samurai glorification must be viewed in the larger discourse of
orientalism. (See section "Say 'Konnichiwa' to Samurai Soft Power")
The excellent link to a brief youtube presentation on orientalism is
well worth the ten minutes. I was struck by Said's description of
Napoleon's conquest of Egypt -- not only did he bring massive
firepower, he brought a large team of scientists and intellectuals to
construct the culture of the conquered -- shades of Ruth Benedict et
al.

Ross Bender
http://rossbender.org

On Sep 1, 11:06 am, "Philip C. Brown" <brown...@humanities.osu.edu>
wrote:

> One problem with English-language writing about samurai is that much of it takes place in the absence of writing about wars in studies of pre-modern Japan.  The omission is so great that despite extensive surveys of English language scholarship, British author Alan Macfarlane wrote in Savage Wars of Peace, that unlike England, Japan did not suffer from major wars in the sixteenth century!  If a serious scholar who is not a Japan specialist can miss the degree to which there was widespred warfare by reading The Cambridge History of Japan and many, many other works by first-rank scholars, we have a serious problem that goes beyond pop culture.
>
> On the pop culture front:  With idealized writings like Budoshoshinshu, and Hagakure, etc. readily available, but not similarly extensive writings on the way major battles unfolded -- who ran away, who switched sides to change the tide of battle, etc. -- or material on how most samurai lived (despite the wonderful exception of Musui's Story), countering idealized popular images is a tough task, the efforts of Conlon, Farris, Friday and Hurst, etc. notwithstanding.  Many of my students either don't have the patience to read these authors or, if they do, they accept selectively what confirms their predispositions.
>
> Phil Brown
>
> ________________________________
> From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of James Guthrie [rcg...@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 8:11 AM
> To: pm...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: [PMJS] Re: Lord, It's the Samurai
>
> The "we" to which I refered was the everyman's notion of the samurai, the popular imagination.  Ask most laymen what they know about samurai and the word loyal inevitably comes up.  When one looks at the books that largely laid the foundation for the samurai in the modern popular imagination: Nitobe's "Bushido," and Yamamoto's "Hagakure," loyalty is prominently spoken of, however misplaced the nation may be.  The fact that popular Japanese writers had to "take issue" with this notion illustrates my point.
>
> Best,
>
> James Guthrie
>
> ________________________________
> Date: Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:04:57 -0400
> Subject: [PMJS] Re: Lord, It's the Samurai

> From: robindg...@gmail.com

> To: pm...@googlegroups.com
>
> Re. the "ironically" I do do not know who the "we" is that celebrates samurai loyalty, for even popular japanese writers on business and history such as Sakaya Taichi took issue with the myth of loyalty in mass media magazines in the 1990's.
>
> Still, as far as samurai in the Tokugawa go, i think Golownin made it clear that there was something good to be said for them.
>

> Sorry, still have not visited that website!On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:46 PM, James Guthrie <rcg...@hotmail.com<mailto:rcg...@hotmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Anatoliy does make a good point in saying we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater with regards to the samurai but his e-mail also raised some toughts I felt compared to share.  It is interesting that we seem to have historically juxtaposed the "best" aspects of samurai from two very different era, into one modern idea of what a samurai was in the popular imagination.  On the one hand, we celebrate the martial valor and loyalty of the Kamakura/Muromachi/Sengoku samurai and on the other, we exalt the scholar warrior of the Tokugawa era.  Ironically enough though, the vaunted samurai loyalty of pre-Tokugawa times is/was in many ways a myth as many of the important battles of that time were decided by a last minute betrayal.  Additionally, while there were many notable scholarly warriors during the Tokugawa period, I think one would find that what made these men notable was that they were not the norm.  Did the samurai as a class have positive traits that helped Japan grow and develop?  Certainly.  However, I believe that the modern myth of the samurai has done Japan as much harm as it has good.
>
> BTW, while we're looking at the sources of blame for the modern myth of the samurai, one can't overlook the Japanese historical scholars of the late 19th century.  In their zeal to connect Japan to the West, they sought to associate the samurai with the knights of Europe.  I believe that in doing so they played a prominent role in the modern romanticization of the samurai.  I believe Thomas Conlan wrote a good article on this a few years ago, though I don't know if he ever had it published.
>
> Best,
>
> James Guthrie
>
> ________________________________
> Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2009 08:38:48 +0900
> Subject: [PMJS] Re: Lord, It's the Samurai

> From: aans...@gmail.com<mailto:aans...@gmail.com>
> To: pm...@googlegroups.com<mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com>

>
> While it is true that the image of the bushi is greatly distorted, it is important not to run to extremes and create another distorted image in an attempt to undermine it. This website seems to underemphasize intellectual diversity of the Japanese warrior class, and attribute to it characteristics and motives which would be applicable only to particular groups or individuals at particular periods. In any event, it is necessary to distinguish clearly between the bushi culture of the pre-Tokugawa ages and that of the Great Tokugawa Peace.
>
> Anatoliy Anshin
>

> On 9/1/09, Ross Bender <ross.ben...@gmail.com<mailto:ross.ben...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hats off to the creators of this brilliant website, timed to coincide with yet another art show glorifying the samurai, this time at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.
>
> http://www.asiansart.org/samurai1.html
>
> The presentation raises in harrowing detail the ethical questions involved in the collaboration of scholars in our field with the mystical magical samurai ethos -- some of my best friends and teachers have written samurai books, but I feel it's time to say enough already.
>
> When I began studies in Japanese history, people always assumed I was studying Zen. Then they wanted to know all about the samurai and ninja turtles. Then it was the geishas. Nowadays it's anime, manga and Japanese pop art in general. Faugh!
>
> Wish we could go back to the good old days when Japan's chief cultural export was Zen, although I'd rather when introducing myself at cocktail parties have the first excited query be "Oh, so do you know all about that fascinating Shoku Nihongi?."
>
> --

> Ross Benderhttp://rossbender.org<http://rossbender.org/>

[David Pollack]

Though Yamada Yoji's 2002 "Tasogare Seibei" (Twilight Samurai) takes
place at the very end of the Edo period and does revolve around
reluctant swordplay, I think that this film about the wretched life of
a poor samurai clerk can provide some corrective to the pop version of
the "samurai." At least it's another view to add to those of Mifune,
Nakadai and Katsu.

David Pollack

[Kristina Buhrman]

If I may politely dissent on point (1), I'm not sure that the image of the samurai in American pop culture is significantly different now than it was in the late 90s. I'd just argue that the media is easier to find now, and that's partly due to the internet and shifts in how media is distributed (plus the expansion of media industry efforts towards the "long tail," etc). The Japanese government's push into the field, with attentions on promoting soft-power and anime (and cosplay!) export is also new. But a look at the relevant archives of Usenet for martial arts enthusiasts, video game import groups, and of course the anime/manga otaku sections, I even think you won't find much difference in how samurai were referred to in the early 90s as well--which was when I first became aware of it. I think the image has proven pretty stable over the years.

Granted, US policy push for a remilitarized Japan can also be found before 9/11, although I suspect it was generally weaker in the waning years of the Cold War period. (Outside of my area of knowledge, so I can only speculate.)

I thought it was an interesting website, although deliberately on the shocking side. I understand that stance from a message standpoint (as well as from a marketing one), but I found myself going "Yes, but...." throughout the thing. Demonizing the "samurai," for a variety of purposes, has its own history as well.

-Kristina Buhrman buh...@usc.edu
Ph.D candidate
Department of History
University of Southern California

[edward moreno]

Moshi agemasu!… please let me shoot my slingshot from the galleries...

Have I been reading the wrong materials? At least at the less than “academic” level of reading, I’ve never lacked sources to enjoy, literally, the most detailed and exquisite analyses (yes, plural) of Samurai culture, events, and personalities, warts and all.

I’ll begin with the work that from its inception in 1964 to its economic demise in 2008, “The East” magazine offered its international readers. Some of the pieces are exquisite character studies of ordinate and subordinate figures, from the Kamakura to the Sengoku periods, others review ‘samurai characters’ and situations during the Edo period, all the way to the Restoration. Despite the Japanglish, that sometimes crept in, Fumiyo Saienji’s stories in the final issues of TE are delightfully incisive, and marvelously researched.

 

There is also S.R. Turnbull’s serious work on samurai personalities, campaigns, etc. DR. Turnbull never manga-ized, pardon the horrendous neologism, that interesting portion of Japanese History. And of course, neither E. Papinot’s Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan, nor Kodansha’s JAPAN, An Illustrated Encyclopedia, offer spin versions about the S-culture and its byproducts. At least, these sources are more easily accessible to the general public than the more obscure texts.

 

Even the manga, and the exhibits intentionally produced to attract the dilettanti seem to me the mote in the eye, when compared with our never-ending obsession with our own Western hero worship…Or haven’t we ever heard of “Cowboys and Indians?”

 

Oyurushi kudasai, neh?

[William Wetherall]

The Lost Samurai
http://billwetherall.blogspot.com/

First they served their masters and themselves.
Then they served their constructors.
Now they serve their deconstructors and reconstructors.