philosopher Mary Midgley on tsujigiri

[Jordan Sand]

A student in my modern history survey yesterday brought to my attention the essay "Trying Out One's New Sword," by Mary Midgley, which she was reading for an Introduction to Ethics class. Based only on a quick google search, it appears that this essay is quite widely assigned and anthologized. Midgley uses the phenomenon of tsujigiri to challenge moral relativists, asking whether we should accept this samurai "custom" because their "culture" is different from our own. I found the essay's treatment of samurai a ridiculous piece of Orientalism. I suppose the philosophy professors who teach the essay might say, yes, but it's not really about Japanese history, tsujigiri was just a convenient example for her case. As a historian, I find that unacceptable. But in any case, I wonder about the source of her story. Does anyone know something about the genealogy of tsujigiri, which she translates rather poetically "to try out one's new sword on a chance wayfarer," in English-language writing? 

Jordan

--

Jordan Sand
Professor of Japanese History
Georgetown University

[Matt Treyvaud]

Hi Jordan,

Google Books reveals many pre-Midgley uses of "tsujigiri" (with or without hyphen), all treating it as a thing that really happened, many even calling it common. However, in Midgley's memoir, Owl of Minerva, she describes learning the word directly from Carmen Blacker, an undergraduate student at the time "who [later] became a distinguished Japanese scholar and, I think, reader in Japanese at Cambridge."

In Midgley's account, Blacker offers the word as simply "a verb in classical Japanese which means 'to try out one's sword on a chance wayfarer,'" rather than citing a specific source. Alas, Blacker herself passed on in 2009 so the trail beyond that is probably cold now.

Hope this helps!

--Matt

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[Howell, David L]

Dear Jordan,

I’m now curious to read what sounds like a godawful essay. Matt Treyvaud has answered your question, but I’d also note that Mikiso Hane, in his widely adopted textbooks, made frequent reference to kirisute gomen—the notion that a samurai could kill a commoner with impunity for a slight real or imagined. As I recall from my years-ago reading of Hane, he simply states this as a matter of established fact. Taniguchi Shinko’s book, Kinsei shakai to hō kitei, has a thorough and nuanced discussion of actual cases in which samurai killed commoners in response to perceived insults (bureiuchi). Although there are instances in which the invocation of protecting one’s honor worked, it was a far cry from kirisute gomen, much less “trying out one’s new sword on a chance wayfarer.”

David

David L. Howell

Professor of Japanese History
Harvard University

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations
2 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138

tel (617) 495-8367
fax (617) 496-6040

[Luke Roberts]

I remember seeing references to tsujigiri in Japanese documents, mostly in reference to the early seventeenth century, but the references were outrage against the decidedly criminal behavior of lawless ruffians.  It certainly happened, but (please excuse the ugly but truthful reference) was less a custom than “trying out one’s noose on a chance black person” was in our country a century ago.  I haven’t read the essay, but based on the description I would say its use fits the charge of Orientalism.

Even kirisutegomen was highly problematic as I explore in my chapter on Mori Yoshiki in Anne Walthall’s The Human Condition in Modern Japan.  

Luke Roberts

[Kevin Taylor]

Jordan,

This question really got my attention. I'm currently completing a PhD in philosophy but I have a background in Japanese studies and I've been practicing Japanese Swordsmanship since 1999.

In many ways the field of Philosophy seems behind in areas like Orientalism especially when it's a Western scholar using Asia as an example to advance their essay. So I think you're right in finding it unacceptable and I think you're right that many philosophers would say that it's not really about Japanese history. I personally would not use this essay in a class as I believe historical/cultural context is extremely important if we're talking about ethics. Current scholarship coming out of Asian Philosophy is certainly much improved when it's coming from someone with an appropriate background but there are many people using sources like this without the historical context to assist them.

Furthermore, I have been an instructor in Japanese swordsmanship for a while and this story still gets circulated. One of our 8 primary cuts is called kesa-giri, the diagonal shoulder to hip cut often described in tsujigiri. To be academically honest I have never fully investigated the terminology used in Shinkendo but my original instructors from Illinois told me when I was a student that the word kesa came from wandering swordsmen testing their cuts by cutting and robbing monks, taking the name from the monk robes. Regardless of the facticity of the story I find it interesting to note that the story exists in swordsmanship circles too. 

All the best,

Kevin

--

[Sharon Domier]

I see from a search of Google books that the term appears in a number of philosophy books, but of course Japanese history books as well. Catharina Blomberg’s book on the Heart of the Warrior is one example.

 

A quick look at the dictionaries/encyclopedia in Japan Knowledge gives some interesting information. Specifically the Nihon Kokugo Daihyakka Jiten says that the first usage was in the Taiheiki, late 14^th century. Then again in the Sekin Orai (1439-64) and Kanasoshi (1609-17^th cent) and was specifically banned in 1741 by the Bakufu.

 

Sharon Domier

[Anthony Chambers]

This is a fascinating discussion.  As a language & literature type, my first instinct has been to look up tsujigiri and kesagiri in reference books (online, via Japan Knowledge).  Clear definitions and explanations are easily accessible in a variety of sources.

In the case of the kesagiri, it seems that kesa is used figuratively:  the swordsman cuts diagonally from the shoulder to the waist as if putting on a monk's robe.

Edward Said told me that, in his view, Orientalism was much less of a problem in Japanese studies than in Middle Eastern studies; he mentioned Donald Keene approvingly.  He may have been right, but the problem of non-specialists, like Mary Midgley, remains.  William Manchester's biography of Gen. MacArthur comes to mind as another instance.  The bibliography doesn't contain a single Japanese source.

Tony

[chris drake]

Hi,
Tsujikiri/tsujigiri (辻 斬り) was not condoned by samurai culture in general, and it was outlawed as a capital crime by the shogunate in 1602. Before that time there was no central authority strong enough to make such a decree. The penalty in the Edo period was death after being paraded around on a horse. I'm not a historian, but I can remember reading expressions of dismay and anger made by warrior-class writers when discussing cases of arbitrary murders of commoners by rogue warriors. Killings of commoners were occasionally carried out legally if a commoner walked across the street or road just as the procession of a daimyo was approaching (animals were also cut down for straying across the road at a bad time....), since this could be taken as an illegal and deliberate insult to the honor and authority of the warrior class, so the killing of the offender was regarded as an official execution, but, from the little I've read on this subject, in reality most daimyo looked down on this practice, which raised suspicions and doubts about the daimyo's own  wisdom, ability, and appropriateness as an administrator, and daimyo normally sent men ahead of the procession to make sure  nothing "untoward" occurred. Sometimes, however, sword killings in the licensed quarters (遊廓) were ignored by local authorities. This was the exception, however, rather than the rule. The arbitrary murder of commoners was never a practice condoned by moralists or the ruling strata of the warrior class, and the increasing number of tsujikiri crimes in the late Edo period does not seem to have been a direct reflection of warrior-class culture or morality. It's generally thought that the rise in the number of tsujikiri murders late in the Edo period was due mainly to increasing poverty, especially among unattached rōnin, as well as by the general breakdown in social control during that period.

The above is just from ordinary Japanese sources and my own reading experience. At the moment I don't have access to any original documents or specialized works on this subject.  

Chris Drake 

[Paramore, K.N.]

Dear Jordan and all,

 

Good to hear this misconception about Edo period history put in its place. Unfortunately, however, it does seem this practice did happen in modern history. I was fortunate/unfortunate enough to stumble across a book called 日本刀の近代的研究 (小泉久雄著、1933年) while wandering the Todai stacks years ago. I seem to remember an updated version from the early 1940s, too.

 

We don’t have it here in Leiden so I am just going from memory, but the “research” of this book was “modern”, not only because it was conducted in the modern period, but more importantly in the book’s own narrative and style because it used “modern scientific method” – different cases of cutting off (or often simply into) kneeling, restrained people’s heads, necks and shoulders – to produce very “scientific” tables of statistics giving measurements for amount of neck left, depth of cut, size of sword, alloy, maker, etc. And then a very brief description of the process (usually less than 10 characters) also part of the very scientific looking “tables”. The book is constructed as a contribution to practical applied science by providing experiential data from the field that can be used to improve the technology. I am afraid that just the cases listed in this book already constitute a large number, most before 1937, indicating the wide extent of this practice in China even before full-scale war and occupation.

 

I think this modern practice is relevant in considering the origins of English-language misconceptions of the Edo period practice (as discussed by Matt Treyvaud). Whoever initiated the faulty outlook on the behavior of Edo period soldiers in the English language, be it Hane, Blacker, or others, did so seemingly in the mid-twentieth century, at a time when there were many more soldiers wielding this weapon with strange ideas of Edo historical memory in their heads informing identity, action, etc : the modern Japanese historical memory of  “samurai culture”. So erroneous ideas of what militarism and samurai culture were in earlier Japanese history, then actually practiced in the modern period, may have ineluctably informed even educated voices (possibly Hane and/or Blacker) of that time when writing on the earlier Edo period history. In fact, I would imagine that process to be rather natural and nearly unavoidable.

 

Importantly, this practice of relatively random killing of defenseless restrained people with swords in order to test the sword really did happen, only in a completely different time and place to the “samurai history” narrative of early modern Japan.

 

So as we confirm this historical narrative as false for the Edo period, we can also confirm it as still very much part of history. Historical memory (as opposed to factual history) of the pre-modern interacts with history making and reality, and professional historical narratives become ineluctably influenced by a later social reality influenced by earlier historical projections.

 

Best, Kiri.

--

[D. Klens-bigman]

Dear all

I am also not a historian but I have practiced traditional Japanese swordsmanship for about 30 years. As such I have heard of many of the elements of this discussion from various sources, dubious and otherwise. 

There was a custom (though I have never investigated how widely practiced) of testing swords by cutting stacked bodies at the execution grounds (I.e. prisoners who were already dead). I have seen some illustrations of the techniques used. The results (if noteworthy) were then included  as part of the information pertaining to individual swords. I am not sure in any way, however, as to the extent of this practice, or even when it was done. 

Additionally, there are stories of master smith's swords that could cut leaves passing in a stream versus swords that would not cut indiscriminately, with the "life-giving sword" being assigned a higher moral value. Again, this is apocryphal. 

Given beliefs pertaining to blood as being polluting, I should think that indiscriminate killing was frowned upon generally, though I would love to see a comment from Dr. Friday on this subject. 

Deborah

Sent from my iPhone

[robin d. gill]

皆さま、Paramore's note would seem to be about tameshigiri, usually done on the bodies of the executed. Be that as it may, the most common place we who lived in japan in the latter half of the 20c might find tsujigiri would not be in generalizations about samurai by Occidentals but on the Japanese boob-tube -- sadistic lords (of what exact rank i do not recall) constantly practiced tsujigiri in chambara-drama and, thank goodness, received their just reward of getting killed by the hero or sentenced to death before the show ended. The best illustration of what is popularly imagined is found in 4-frame cartoons, where we find people X'd out so to speak w the crossroads the very image of the wound!  Something about a person just walking around being suddenly X'ed out (almost always from behind, though a female victim is not uncommonly shown X'ed out from the front to titillate readers with the bare breasts) is particularly horrid and perfect for black-humor. 

To be serious, I recall at least one Shogun supposedly snuck out to enjoy cutting people down but i forget which one it was . . .  

敬愚

robin d gill

--

"Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!"

[guel...@waseda.jp]

Apropos testing swords:
we had a play at the Kabukiza in Tokyo in January (it ended last
tuesday; I saw it last week) named
Kajiwara Heizou homare no ishikiri, which was first presented as a
joruri in 1730 at the Takemoto-za in Osaka.

A swordsmith needs money and wants to sell his best sword, but it
should be tested on two (living!) bodies.
They have only one prisoner with death penalty, so the daughter of the
swordsmith volunteers as the second
body. The father sends his daughter home and volunteers himself as the
second body.

Kajiwara no Kagetoki tests the sword, but cuts only through the first
body (the prisoner) and as a happy end
buys the sword from the swordsmith.

Best wishes

Niels

[Richard Bowring]

A couple of comments here.

I don’t think the shogunate was established as early as 1602, so I am curious as to where Chris gets this date from. Perhaps this was a Tokugawa house rule. 

On the subject of Midgley, it is highly likely that she did indeed learn of both kirisute gomen and tsujigiri from Carmen Blacker. They were both at Somerville College, Oxford (Japanese was not taught at Oxford at the time but Carmen caught the Japanese bug earlier as a schoolgirl) and one can well imagine the undergraduate conversation. When I had my first classes Carmen in 1966 this ‘fact’ was mentioned and it stuck in my mind as well. It was part of her character to enhance her lectures with a little spice. 

I have not read the offending article and it is obviously wrong to treat this as a cultural norm, but let’s face it there must have been hundreds of cases when a samurai (drunk or otherwise) took it out on a poor unfortunate who happened to cross his path and got away scot-free. As Chris points out, it was a bloody time, as in Europe.

Richard Bowring

[Scheid, Bernhard]

Just one more example that throws some light on Tokugawa house lore: According to one anecdote Ieyasu on his deathbed had the so-called Miike sword “tested” on a prisoner, only to declare the sword the seat of a kami he himself is going to become after his death. (Wim Boot, Death of a Shogun, Shintō in History, Breen/Teeuwen 2000, p. 148). Again this story is from sources compiled about hundred years after Ieyasu’s death, but nevertheless, it is reported as a deed befitting a figure like Ieyasu.  

 

Bernhard Scheid

[Christopher Larcombe]

Dear Group,

 

If I might add my own tangential comment: Iris Murdoch, who was Midgley’s friend and exact contemporary at Somerville (Elizabeth Anscombe [one year above M] and Philippa Foot [a year below] were also there), wrote her play “The Three Arrows” in 1972 (it's first production was in Cambridge). It was republished in 1985, four years after Midgley’s short paper on moral relativism. The play’s setting is ‘medieval’ Japan and its protagonist a ‘Prince Yorimitsu’ (played in ‘72 by Ian McKellen), imprisoned as a result of the political rivalry between ‘General Musashi’ – the Shogun whom Murdoch describes as ‘the real ruler’ of the ‘country’ – and the Emperor ‘Taihito’. There is some genuflection towards historical texture, though it is, for a play purportedly ‘medieval’, anachronistic: Murdoch implicitly invokes the institution of insei in inserting the character of ‘Tokuzan’, an ex-emperor who has taken the tonsure, and whom Murdoch describes as the ‘leader of the Imperial interest’. Whether the play evidences Said’s Orientalism is a question I haven’t explored. And whether Murdoch’s interest in Japan – certainly genuine, especially when it comes to Japanese Buddhism – can loosely be traced back to a source, or more broadly a college milieu, she had in common with Midgley, is a speculation someone better placed than myself might be able to flesh out.

 

Chris Larcombe

This email has been sent from a virus-free computer protected by Avast. www.avast.com

[chris drake]

Richard, thanks for the background information. The date 1602 is taken from the Japanese Wikipedia article and several other online Japanese articles on tsujikiri/-giri. Yes, I assume that at the moment of its formulation, the ban was a Tokugawa house edict made in preparation for Ieyasu assuming the position of shogun. I think it's significant that even as early as 1602 Ieyasu thought it was important to put a stop to a dishonorable practice that had sprung up during the long period of civil wars, a practice that was also capable of creating deep resentment among commoners and thus the threat of serious social unrest and instability.
Chris Drake

[Daniel Botsman]

Dear Jordan and all,

Ujiie Mikito’s little book, Ō-Edo Shitai-kō （『大江戸死体考』）(“Reflections on the Corpses of Edo”?) includes a responsibly researched discussion of tameshi girl (試し斬り）which certainly suggests that this practice formed a significant strand of “samurai culture”.  I don’t have the book with me, but from memory he gives several examples from the early Tokugawa period of Daimyō who were well known for trying out their new swords on human victims.  The sport of it all was enhanced by setting up special challenges of one kind or another—could a standing person be sliced cleanly from head to toe, could a single blow cut through two or even three people, etc.  Of course, as others have pointed out, this kind of sword testing, usually conducted on prisoners or misbehaving servants, is not quite the same as the random street killings suggested by the term tsujigiri.  Still, on of the most memorable examples Ujiie gives suggests that the two did sometimes coincide.   Ujiie cites an account of the life of none other than Tokugawa Mitsukuni, written by one of his close companions, which describes how as a young man he was challenged by a friend to test his sword on a hinin outcast as they were returning from an excursion out of Edo one day.   According to the account, Mitsukuni was initially reluctant to accept the challenge, but eventually felt obliged to drag the man out from his hiding place and kill him on the spot in order to uphold his honor in the face of his friend’s challenge.  The point of the story is mainly to relate how remorseful Mitsukuni later felt about the incident, and it is certainly possible that the whole thing is apocryphal. Having said that, Ujiie emphasizes the fact that it was written by someone who knew Mitsukuni well (again, I am sorry I don’t have the book with me to check the details), and presumably the incident must have been believable for a contemporary audience in order for it to be in any way convincing or compelling?  In any case, I think it would be a mistake to downplay the violence of samurai culture too much. 

In the end, of course, the practice of tameshi girl ends up being most closely associated in the late Tokugawa period with Yamada Asaemon, the rōnin who effectively served as the Bakufu’s main executioner in the 19th century (and, yes, he is eventually immortalized in his own manga series as the “Samurai Executioner”). I have found myself reading up on him again in the last year or so, because I discovered a stash of previously uncatalogued documents in the Yale library, which turn out to be the Yamada family’s records of executions conducted in Edo in the final decades of the period.  With the help of Hirokawa Waka at Senshū University, I have managed to transcribe the documents now and I hope to publish an article about them soon.  Asaemon’s primary duty was to test the swords of the shogun and others on the bodies of executed criminals, but it is clear from the Yale records that even in the late Tokugawa period there were still Bushi around who preferred to test their own swords.  In such cases, it seems that Asaemon would arrange for the body of an executed criminal to be provided for the purpose! 

After the Restoration, moreover, the last Asaemon and his descendants continued to serve as experts on the quality of swords and continued to be highly  respected for their knowledge.  I suspect they had a key role to play in keeping the idea of tameshi girl alive into the 1930s, when the kinds of publications that Kiri mentioned in his post start to appear as part of the modern glamorization of samurai violence. 

Dani Botsman

[Glynne Walley]

There's an episode in Kyokutei Bakin's Nanso Satomi hakkenden that involves tsujigiri.  It's in Chapters 79 and 80.  Two high-ranking samurai have just recovered heirloom swords belonging to their masters' houses, and they're on their way back to their home domains.  Along the way they decide they should test the swords to make sure they're the real thing;  one of them is supposed to have magic powers (leaves fall from trees in the vicinity when it's used on an enemy).  They come across a hinin, and decide this is their chance.  He pleads for his life (Bakin is clearly opposed to the practice), but they scoff and kill him anyway.  Turns out the sword's a fake.  Bummer...

Anyway, I suspect that fictional accounts such as this one, in addition to theatrical depictions and historical testimonies, played a role in keeping the practice alive in the popular imagination. Particularly in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, when Hakkenden was much better known than it is today.

Also, thanks to Dani for pointing out Ujiie's description of Mitsukuni's experience with tsujigiri.  I imagine Bakin might have known of this...and I'm happy to know about it now, too, since I'm writing about this scene in a book I'm working on!

Glynne Walley
University of Oregon

[Nobumi Iyanaga]

Dear Colleagues,

> On Jan 30, 2016, at 2:29 AM, Daniel Botsman <bot...@mac.com> wrote:
>
> ...

>
> Ujiie Mikito’s little book, Ō-Edo Shitai-kō （『大江戸死体考』）(“Reflections on the Corpses of Edo”?) includes a responsibly researched discussion of tameshi girl (試し斬り）which certainly suggests that this practice formed a significant strand of “samurai culture”. I don’t have the book with me, but from memory he gives several examples from the early Tokugawa period of Daimyō who were well known for trying out their new swords on human victims. The sport of it all was enhanced by setting up special challenges of one kind or another—could a standing person be sliced cleanly from head to toe, could a single blow cut through two or even three people, etc. Of course, as others have pointed out, this kind of sword testing, usually conducted on prisoners or misbehaving servants, is not quite the same as the random street killings suggested by the term tsujigiri. Still, on of the most memorable examples Ujiie gives suggests that the two did sometimes coincide. Ujiie cites an account of the life of none other than Tokugawa Mitsukuni, written by one of his close companions, which describes how as a young man he was challenged by a friend to test his sword on a hinin outcast as they were returning from an excursion out of Edo one day. According to the account, Mitsukuni was initially reluctant to accept the challenge, but eventually felt obliged to drag the man out from his hiding place and kill him on the spot in order to uphold his honor in the face of his friend’s challenge. The point of the story is mainly to relate how remorseful Mitsukuni later felt about the incident, and it is certainly possible that the whole thing is apocryphal. Having said that, Ujiie emphasizes the fact that it was written by someone who knew Mitsukuni well (again, I am sorry I don’t have the book with me to check the details), and presumably the incident must have been believable for a contemporary audience in order for it to be in any way convincing or compelling? In any case, I think it would be a mistake to downplay the violence of samurai culture too much.

The episode of Mitsukuni makes think of some stories that were circulating (I am sorry, I cannot quote any sources, and I don't know if this is true at all or not) about Second World War, about some Japanese soldiers who were challenged to do the tameshigiri on some prisoners. Were they "challenged" or "obliged" by their superiors to do that...?

This kind of cruelty or atrocities can be well imagined in war situations, but still, the existence of the concept of "tamashigiri" may have played some role.

Best regard,

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo,
Japan

[Scheid, Bernhard]

Iyanaga-san, many thanks. I think this reflects a certain consensus among previous posts. I feel nevertheless a kind of Orientalism in the original Midgley citation. It lies in the assumption that tsujigiri was an undisputed Japanese custom or even a part of Japanese "mentality". This would imply a kind of structural amnesia, because even if we know that similar kinds of violence existed in our culture as well, we tend to identify with those traditions that criticized it, while in the foreign culture we assume that such criticism did not exist. The Mitsukuni example suggests that things were never that easy.

Bernhard
________________________________________
From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Nobumi Iyanaga [n-iy...@nifty.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2016 4:42 AM

To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PMJS] philosopher Mary Midgley on tsujigiri

[Scheid, Bernhard]

Sorry, I should have thanked Daniel Botsman for the Mitsukuni example...
________________________________________
From: pm...@googlegroups.com [pm...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Scheid, Bernhard [Bernhar...@oeaw.ac.at]
Sent: Saturday, January 30, 2016 4:18 PM
To: pm...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [PMJS] philosopher Mary Midgley on tsujigiri

[Nobumi Iyanaga]

Dear Bernhard-san,

Thank you for your comment.

> On Jan 31, 2016, at 12:18 AM, Scheid, Bernhard <Bernhar...@oeaw.ac.at> wrote:
>
> Iyanaga-san, many thanks. I think this reflects a certain consensus among previous posts. I feel nevertheless a kind of Orientalism in the original Midgley citation. It lies in the assumption that tsujigiri was an undisputed Japanese custom or even a part of Japanese "mentality". This would imply a kind of structural amnesia, because even if we know that similar kinds of violence existed in our culture as well, we tend to identify with those traditions that criticized it, while in the foreign culture we assume that such criticism did not exist. The Mitsukuni example suggests that things were never that easy.

I entirely agree with you. I remember to have read somewhere in 渡辺京二's 逝きし世の面影, that in the Edo period, there was certainly the 身分制度, but there was also a great system of politeness between people of every "mibun", and things such as "kirisute gomen" was something out of question (suggesting that this is rather a myth created in the modern period, when the reality of the Edo period was completely forgotten...). Perhaps he was not quite right, but I am certain that "kirisute gomen" was not something in the "samurai culture"; I think the rare cases were recorded precisely because they were exceptional. -- By the way, this Watanabe Kyôji's book is a really great book that I recommend to everybody.

[Morgan Pitelka]

Thanks to all for delving into this interesting topic raised by Jordan. I agree with the consensus that the Midgley anecdote uses a decontextualized example from Japanese history in a disturbingly Orientalist way. But I also agree with Dani that we should not underemphasize the culture and indeed the threat of samurai violence in the Tokugawa period. 

It is dangerous to totalize certain instances of samurai brutality as somehow monolithically standing in for Japan itself, but we should also avoid the error of sanitizing the samurai as noble patrons of culture (a vision perpetuated in the postwar by the Tokugawa Bijutsukan and various historians and repeated, unfortunately, in many exhibitions of "samurai art"). I wrestle with these issues in my book, which tries to dig into the relationship between elite samurai practices such as displaying art and displaying heads, between exchanges of gifts and exchanges of hostages, and which ends by considering the politics of display in postwar museum exhibitions of the samurai, where, suffice it to say, we find little attention paid to violence. 

Morgan 

[Jordan Sand]

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the stimulating discussion of tsujigiri following my query. I am now particularly eager to read the book by Ujiie that Dani Botsman mentioned, and I think the topic merits more library research, but I haven’t had time to do that, and before we leave it, I’d like to summarize what I came away with from the discussion along with a little more reading on line. I also have one rather rash hypothesis.

My initial question was about the genealogy of references in English to tsujigiri that might have led to Mary Midgley’s using it as a case for her essay on moral relativism. It is intriguing to hear that she first learned the word from Carmen Blacker, apparently when Blacker was an undergraduate. This would have been in the 1940s. As Kiri Paramore reminded us, at the time, there was plenty in the recent behavior of Japanese soldiers with swords to suggest a cultural tradition of capricious violence, and indeed practices like “tameshigiri” are documented among the atrocities of the war. There is, for example, the story of the hyakunin-giri competition between two soldiers in the China War that Ben Uchiyama at Kansas is now writing about. This probably was not what prompted Blacker’s remark, but it would have contributed to the popular perception on which Midgley relies of a uniquely violent samurai culture based on an entirely alien morality. And there was plenty of evidence in samurai history to adduce as well. The story of Tokugawa Japan that we commonly teach of swordsmen to bureaucrats would have resonated less at the time. And indeed, when Midgley came to write the essay “On Trying Out One’s New Sword” in the 1980s, she could readily have confirmed her impression by reading a number of historians.

Midgley’s essay remains Orientalist, in my mind, because, as Bernhard Scheid pointed out, she takes the phenomenon to be normal. In fact, she treats it as normative—morally necessary to samurai. “Tests were needed,” she writes,” lest the samurai fail in his swordsmanship, which would “injure his honor, offend his ancestors, and even let down his emperor.” She refers to killing wayfarers as a “custom” of “Ancient Japan.” She thus takes a single word from an exotic locale, without concern for context or usage, and makes it stand in for a “culture” with no historical evolution. This is a textbook case of Orientalism in the Said’s sense. She would have had a much better example in something like Aztec human sacrifice or perhaps some cases of headhunting—cases where indeed the killing was understood as integral to broadly sanctioned religious or social practices. In fact, even in the way she understands it tsujigiri actually makes her case poorly—but this is unrelated to the historical question we have been discussing. Someone’s scan of a reprint of the full essay is available here:

http://www.ghandchi.com/IONA/newsword.pdf

When I queried the list, before learning the Carmen Blacker story that Matt Treyvaud brought to our attention, I imagined there might have been a longer history of references in Western texts or some nineteenth-century locus classicus on tsujigiri. But just based on a cursory check, neither Kaempfer nor Siebold appears to mention it, and a googlebooks search for instances before 1901 yielded only 5: definitions in two editions of the Hepburn dictionary and three references that appear to be brief in German works of ethnology from the 1880s. The 1874 Hepburn dictionary gives “killed or murdered in the streets.” The 1894 Hepburn dictionary gives “killing or murdering in the streets to try one’s sword or skill.” I don’t know if there is any significance to this amendment in the later edition. In any case, more investigation would be needed to determine whether there is a lineage of Western texts discussing tsujigiri. It is easy to imagine the word having currency among foreigners in bakumatsu, when sword-happy shishi were cutting foreigners and officials down in the streets. The Kokushi daijiten relates that Kumamoto shishi Kawakami Gensai was known as Tsujigiri Gensai because he did lots of slashing while in Kyoto. The entry also refers to him as a “terorisuto.”

Of course, Carmen Blacker would not have needed a Western-language precedent. All she is reported to have told Midgley is that classical Japanese had a word meaning “to try out one’s new sword on a chance wayfarer.” Blacker’s definition matches the one in the Nihon kokugo daijiten and other standard reference works I viewed in JapanKnowledge. Note that this definition has two elements: to cut down a passerby in the street and to do it in order to test a sword or one’s swordsmanship. On the face of it, tsujigiri should simply mean the former, so at some point it acquired additional specificity, including the motive in the attack.

The Kokushi daijiten entry for tsujigiri was written by distinguished Edo scholar Yoshiwara Ken’ichiro. Yoshiwara gives the standard definition including the sword testing, then says it sometimes also occurred as part of a robbery. He lists a prohibition in 1597, frequent incidents in Edo while Iemitsu was visiting Kyoto in 1648, another incident that was punished, then the punishment of hikimawashi and execution recorded in Osadamegaki hyakkajo in 1748. Yoshiwara cites the Koji ruien (also available in JapanKnowledge), which has a one-page entry on tsujigiri. Excerpting a work called Setsuya kandan, that entry tells the story of the tsujigiri in Edo while Iemitsu was in Kyoto in 1648. I could not identify the publication date of Setsuya kandan. It relates that during Iemitsu’s absence, night after night there were incidents in the Bancho Ogawa-cho area in which hatamoto cut down townspeople and artisans in the street, and the machi bugyo struggled to stop the violence. Troubled, the roju sent messengers repeatedly to the shogun in Kyoto. Sakai Tadakatsu, who was accompanying the shogun, told him it could easily be stopped. Sakai had Itakura Shigenori tell the hatamoto that the shogun had heard about the incidents around the hatamoto district and said that this was because the hatamoto were ignorant of the proper way of martial men (budo no kokorogake utoki), that they should examine one another, and if these incidents should be repeated, it would be considered the fault of all the hatamoto. The incidents stopped immediately.

This account mentions no motive for the slashings. It does not indicate that the hatamoto were trying out their swords, although they may well have been doing so. The kokushi daijiten entry for tameshigiri (authored by Shigematsu Kazuyoshi), meanwhile, begins with this definition: “to cut the body of a condemned prisoner in order to test the edge of a sword. In the early Edo period it was done by tsujigiri.” It then indicates that tameshigiri was officially done by machi doshin, then became the special work of Yamada Asaemon.

From these entries, it appears to me that at some point after the lawlessness of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the words tsujigiri and tameshigiri became conflated. I admit I don’t have any sources to prove this, and Dani Botsman’s interesting example is one case in which the street killing was indeed for the purpose of testing a sword, or anyway for sport. I am curious to see what Ujiie says about the origins of the formal practice of tameshigiri at the execution grounds. But in any case, without reading more, here is my rash hypothesis: that the bakufu may have caused this semantic slippage by introducing formalized tameshigiri as a response to hatamoto violence. Early Edo-period cases like the hatamoto slashings of 1648 could have been caused by any number of things in addition to the desire to test one’s sword, including gang warfare with machi yakko, revenge, robbery, drunken brawling, and mere sadism. Since it appears that the practice of tameshigiri at the execution grounds was formalized over time, and Shigematsu’s entry for tameshigiri states flatly that it replaced tsujigiri, it is easy to imagine formalized tameshigiri being presented by the authorities as a substitute for tsujigiri at the same time that they cracked down on random slashing in the streets. This would have retrospectively conferred a small degree of martial honor on the outlaw behavior of bakufu retainers by saying, in effect, “we recognize that a samurai must test his sword; here is the proper means to do it.” My point is that this could well be a retrospective rationalization, regardless of the actual reason for the street killings. That would explain why the term tsujigiri at some point subsequently came to refer specifically to killing to “test one’s sword.” It is also conceivable that the inclusion of “to test one’s sword” in the definition of tsujigiri is entirely modern.

All this is only to say that a lineage of ways of imagining and defining the act of tsujigiri has yet to be fully traced, and that Mary Midgley heard the one-line definition conflating it with tameshigiri that had become standard at some point in this process and imagined it to describe an accepted ancient practice in Japan.

Jordan

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[Beatrice Bodart-Bailey]

For what it's worth, Kaempfer describes the testing of swords on corpses after the execution of two smugglers on Deshima as follows:

"Each corpse was wrapped in a coarse rush mat, the heads were tied into a third mat, and all was hauled from the island to the execution ground at Magome, a village  situated outside the city. It is said that young fellows use the bodies to test the sharpness of their swords, until they have been cut into pieces half the length of a finger, after which they are permitted to be buried."

(Kaempfer's Japan, Tokugawa Culture Observed, p. 223)

Beatrice.

Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey

Professor emeritus Otsuma Women’s University

Visiting Professor, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU

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[Beatrice Bodart-Bailey]

Sorry for the late addition. Somehow Bernhard's mail of January appeared in today's in-box.

Beatrice.

Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey

Professor emeritus Otsuma Women’s University

Visiting Professor, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU

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[Radu Leca]

Dear all,

Since this topic has been briefly revived, and apropos Kiri's message and Orientalism, this might be of use:

In Ian Fleming's 1964 novel You Only Live Twice, James Bond retorts to his nemesis Blofeld's comment of "Have you ever heard the Japanese expression kirisute gomen?" with "Spare me the Lafcadio Hearn, Blofeld."

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn

Enjoy the summer,

Radu Leca

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