Ohayou
January 2023

The samurai fuels Western fantasies about Japan even more than the geisha. A fearless warrior, extraordinarily brave, a master in combat, loyal to the death, of impeccable honor, a protector of the weak, and selfless. The samurai is an ideal hero, admired by many Westerners for his exceptional qualities.

Unfortunately, this is a myth, an invention of the late 19th century designed to present a dazzling image of Japanese tradition to both Westerners and the Japanese themselves. Here’s what Shin’ichi Saeki, a professor of history at Aoyama Gakuin University and a specialist in medieval Japan, has to say about it:

“For the Japanese of today, medieval samurai lived by upholding the principles of bushidō, that is to say, a moral code well-known even in our modern world. Readers—whether Japanese or Western—might be surprised by the depictions of these warriors in The Tale of the Heike, especially the behaviors characterized by deceit or betrayal. But as is well understood, the very word ‘bushidō’ did not exist during the time of The Tale of the Heike.

In fact, the concept as it is known today is, in many of its aspects, a modern construction. Trying to understand the behavior of medieval warriors through the lens of bushidō as we interpret it today leads directly to historical misinterpretations. Such misinterpretations are frequent in today’s Japan—and not only in Japan. They are often found in best-selling Japanese literature and Hollywood films.

Today, many idealize medieval warriors by attributing to them a moral code as defined by Nitobe Inazō, believing that the samurai depicted in The Tale of the Heike must have been like that. But these representations of Japan’s warriors of the past are based on a fictional tradition entirely invented in the 19th century.”

^{Shin’ichi, Saeki. Figures du samouraï dans l’histoire japonaise. Revue Annale.
Paris : École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2008/4.}

Samurai did exist, but they were never these symbols of courage, respect and honour.

The term 侍 appears in Japan for the first time in a text in the 10th century. It comes from the verb 侍う and means ‘one who serves’, implying the emperor or high-ranking nobles. It does not necessarily designate a warrior: a chamberlain, a simple servant, is also a samurai. The specific term for warriors is 武士. The 武士道 is therefore logically ‘the way of the warrior’. Kurosawa Akira’s iconic film 七人の侍 uses the samurai kanji in its title.

侍
Samouraï.

侍う
Saburau – to serve.

武士
Bushi – warrior.

武士道
Bushidō – way of the warrior.

七人の侍
Shichinin no samurai – The Seven Samurai.

It makes sense, the film tells the story of seven warriors who take on a village to defend it against robbers. Cinema has been a crucial vector of the image of the samurai for the western public. He will make popular in the West the character of the samurai brave, loyal, subject to a code of honor and extraordinarily skilled in handling weapons. Kurosawa restores the image of the Japanese, which was very negative after the Second World War.

The samurai staged by Kurosawa become models not only of Japanese heroes who are the bearers of an ancestral tradition, but also of western heroes who would adopt, whether or not they knew it, this supposed ancestral tradition.

Alain Delon, hitman in Le Samouraï by Jean-Pierre Melville in 1967. The detective Harry, played by Clint Eastwood in 1971. Rambo, where Stallone is a samurai figure in 1982. Forest Whittaker in the beautiful Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai by Jim Jarmusch in 1999, are some examples. Aren’t George Lucas’ Jedi the fantasized samurai of future times? Jean-Luc Godard said of cinema: “It is not a true image, it is truly an image”.

The samurai is therefore a servant in the 10th century, but not necessarily a warrior, a bushi. The term samurai will be used only for bushi from the Edo period, which begins in 1603. Warriors become samurai when the war is over! Japan and its paradoxes. But why?

The bushi, warriors, will see their importance grow during the 10th and 12th centuries. They will become archers to fight first against the Ainu, who are excellent riders. Bushi are not the first to do so, so they will learn, imitate and improve.

They will also set rules: how to ride, how to shoot, how to do both, what lifestyle to adopt. But nothing to do with precepts of morality, rules of life or conception of honor. It is the beginning of bushidō, which was logically called 弓 馬 の 道. Today, it is a martial art that is called 流 鏑 馬.

弓馬の道
Kyūba no michi – the way of the bow and the horse.

流鏑馬
Yabusame – the style of the arrow on horseback.

At that time, however, according to historians, there was a real notion of chivalric fighting. But with the help of conflicts, bushi became more and more numerous, and mass battles more frequent. It should also be noted that at the time everyone could carry a weapon, including peasants, and thus become warriors. This will no longer be the case at the end of the 16th century, and it will be of paramount importance for the future.

There is no central power in Japan at that time. Of course, there is the emperor, but his power is symbolic. He has been relegated to a religious figure linked to Shintoism for several centuries. He is, in short, the guardian of traditions.

The dominant religion is Buddhism, but it is not a central power in itself. It does not deal with administration but with meaning, with spirit.

The 大 名, the provincial governors from the military hierarchy, multiplied at the beginning of the fourteenth century. They are growing in power and conflicts between them break out more and more numerous to culminate in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, during the terrible Sengoku era. There is also the 将 軍.

大名
Daimyo – big name.

将軍
Shōgun – general.

The term appeared in the eighth century, it designated the military commander appointed by the emperor to fight at that time against indigenous populations who refused to submit. It becomes, in the 12th century, the title that designates the one who is supposed to govern Japan, the military dictator, under the 幕 府 of Kamakura. Minamoto no Yoritomi takes the title in 1185 after winning the Genpei War, which began five years earlier due to a disagreement over imperial succession.

幕府
Bakufu – shogounal government.

But the shōgun is far from ruling all of Japan in the 12th century, it will only be the case at the beginning of the 17th century with the advent of the Tokugawa clan, which marks the beginning of the Edo period and the end of medieval wars. Between these two dates, a lot of blood will be spilled. It is the time of warlords and warriors, whose cruelty and lack of limits or morality are far from the image of bushidō that will be invented in modern times. The only way warriors can lead is their own and their clan’s. This is especially true during the 戦 国 時 代 era.

戦国時代
Sengoku – period of the country at war.

This era began in 1477 and ended in 1573 when the warlord Oda Nobunaga deposed the last shōgun of the Ashikaga clan and took his place. During these almost one hundred years of incessant warfare between the warlords, it is estimated that the total number of victims exceeded one million! This shows the terrifying ferocity of these battles, which also affected the peasants, as villages were often razed to the ground or pillaged. Kurosawa’s film The Seven Samurai is set in this period.

From this century of war and slaughter would emerge three men who would be essential to the future history of Japan. They are known as the three great unifiers of Japan: Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1534-1598) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616). Their stories, achievements and misdeeds are recounted in a series combining re-enactment and history entitled Age of the Samurai.

The three have in common the ambition to expand their territory, which is the case of all the warlords of the time, but at the same time to have a future vision of Japan as a unified power, which is not the case for other warlords.

In his book The Warriors in the Rice Fields, Pierre-François Souyri quotes Shōha (1522-1600), a monk and tea master, who describes the three unifiers of Japan’s method in three haikai.

Nobunaga, the terrible:
If he does not sing,
Let’s kill him now,
The cuckoo!
Hideyoshi, the clever one:
If he does not sing,
Let’s make him sing,
The cuckoo!
Ieyasu, the patient;
If he does not sing,
Let’s wait for him to sing,
The cuckoo!

Bibliography

• Souyri, Pierre-François. Nouvelle histoire du Japon. Paris : Perrin, 2010.
• Souyri, Pierre-François. Les guerriers dans la rizière. La grande épopée des Samouraïs. Paris : Flammarion, 2017.
• Shin’ichi, Saeki. Figures du samouraï dans l’histoire japonaise. Revue Annale. Paris : Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2008/4.