Lord It's The Samurai | Myth, Militarism and Man-Boy Love

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Enter the world of the samurai, where more than seven centuries of martial rule are reduced to a single Disney-like trope of gentleman-warrior myth. Military prowess meets cultural connoisseurship in an ideal of masculine perfection--selling militarism as beauty in a time of war.

Neither harmless nor innocent, it masks a real history of violence and domination that extends well into the 20th century.

Below are a just few examples of the context hidden behind the gentility of fine weaponry, paintings and ceramics.

WHO WERE THEY?

“Not exactly what we thought they were,” historian Thomas Conlan tells us, based on his extensive studies of their battlefield diaries.

“No more courageous or loyal or wise than anybody else. They were just more privileged,” says Japanese history scholar Harold Bolitho, whose essay "The Myth of the Samurai" [pdf download] breaks it all down.

It turns out that the popular image of the samurai is just that: largely myth.

MOTIVATING THE MYTH

Where did the myth come from? Like most, it began as a highly motivated selective exaggeration and censorship of actual history. In terms of relative influence on the image of samurai that we're familiar with today, it can be traced to a couple of important texts: Hagakure [download] (1720), (aka Book of the Samurai), and Bushidō: Soul of Japan (1899).

The former was written by an undistinguished career secretary who himself never raised a sword in combat, at a time when samurai felt a need to justify their own privileged existence, well over a century after fighting had ceased. In that sense, the real meaning of the text comes after the fact: it's less about actual warrior conduct than it is about ideology.

The same is true, only more so, for the latter text, written in English almost two centuries later in a context of fervent nationalism by a leading proponent of Japanese colonialism who also served as a national spokesperson to the English-speaking world. [Author Nitobe Inazo, a devout Quaker, is memorialized on the ¥5,000 note.]

As Japan struggled to define itself on the international stage at the turn of the 20th century, Nitobe refashioned the Way of the Samurai as the essence of Japanese national character, in what can be described of as an act of self-
colonization.

Both texts went on to become instrumental in the totalitarian state militarism of the 1930s and '40s, which ultimately culminated in the disaster of the Asia-Pacific War (WWII) and the loss of tens of millions of human lives.

This exhibit not only fails to address or even acknowledge the dangerous history of samurai myth/bushido ideology, but instead by romanticizing the so-called "softer side" of cultural refinement while censoring the historical context of abject violence, takes it even further by aestheticizing it, at a time of war no less.

MYTH DURING WARTIME

It's not hard to come up with other examples of military cultures that were also highly aestheticized. But it's unthinkable that a museum today would choose to showcase the weaponry and uniforms of, say for example, the Nazi Wehrmacht, without putting them in the historical context of what they were actually used for.

Why does the samurai get a pass? And why now to celebrate a culture of violence?

Our country has been at war for more than eight years now—over twice as long as our involvement in WWII—with no end in sight. On one hand daily life is business as usual, and yet the inhumanity of war denied by this exhibit is all too evident in the very real toll it's taking on our own returning troops:

Record high suicide rates (120 vets a week in 2005, and only rising since then), soaring rates of desertion (up 42% between 2006 and 2007), mental illness (almost 40% of vets from the ongoing wars receiving VA care have one or more mental disorders), and violent behavior (in one brigade in Colorado, the murder rate is more than 100 times that of the surrounding population).

Misogynist violence is similarly epidemic (a 2004 study of vets found that 71% of the women said they were assaulted or raped while serving) and rarely brought to justice (court martial in less than 7% of reported cases in 2007, with an estimated 80% of cases going unreported).

No myth here, and it hasn't changed since the times of the samurai: it's universal and real, how war dehumanizes everyone.

Aestheticizing violence, normalizing war.

The museum may not want you to see it, but there is blood on those swords.

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SPOT THE SAMURAI

In 1899, Bushidō, the way of the samurai, was refashioned in a context of Japanese nationalism, and went on to become part of a state militarism that led to a whole host of war crimes and death for tens of millions across Asia and the Pacific in World War II.

Bushidō spirit lives on today in karōshi (death from overwork), social acceptance of suicide (nearly 100/day in June 2009), and entrenched patriarchy. »More

Say "Konnichiwa!" to Samurai Soft Power

Join the allied forces of Orientalism and Japanese nationalism as we promote the stereotype of virtuous oriental warrior, in ‘soft power' service of a U.S. hegemonic push to remilitarize Japan.

As regional instability grows, so does the perceived US rationale for a strong ally, and we're seeing samurai soft power wielded here and elsewhere: at "Art of the Samurai" in Southern California and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and on PBS's NOVA documentary Secrets of the Samurai Sword. »More

Samurai in the News

What it really means to be Daimyō for a Day

Samurai headlines during the exhibition's run:

Incidents involving swords are "not as out of the ordinary as you would imagine" here in the city.
—SFPD Captain James Dudley

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Who were they? | Way of Sword | Way of Tea | Way of Boys | Modern Bushidō | Konnichiwa! | Daimyō for a Day

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WHO WERE THEY?

MOTIVATING THE MYTH

MYTH DURING WARTIME

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SPOT THE SAMURAI

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Say "Konnichiwa!" to Samurai Soft Power

Samurai in the News

What it really means to be Daimyō for a Day

Samurai headlines during the exhibition's run:

Who were they? | Way of Sword | Way of Tea | Way of Boys | Modern Bushidō | Konnichiwa! | Daimyō for a Day

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