17 ms·

Bushido: Way of Total Bullshit

225 points by hunvreus 10y ago

danso 10y ago
If the concept of Bushido didn't become popular until Japan's modernization (at the end of the 19th century)...how much of Japan's conduct in WW2 (notably, the fighting until death) can be attributed/blamed to this misinterpretation of samurai history? Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Kamikaze [1], I was surprised to read that the concept of suicide attacks only became formalized late in the war (June 1944), rather than something ingrained in the Imperial Japanese fleet from even before the start of conflict. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze#Beginnings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze#Beginnings OT: I really love the posted article's massively deep footer, which also looks good on mobile. I frequently have trouble designing nice footers around a long list of links and I'm bookmarking this site as a place to copy from.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jbooth 10y ago
  If you're talking about Japanese conduct during the war, I'd find the rampant war crimes a lot more notable than the fighting until death.
  - bbotond 10y ago
    Can someone knowledgeable about Japanese culture explain why those war crimes were so common?
    - berntb 10y ago
      Was Japanese war crimes really worse than the European standards in pre modern times? From my Swedish history, see the 30 year war (for a viewpoint not covered well in Swedish schools, google Polish deluge). To me it seems the main difference is that Sweden didn't have the same technological resources a few centuries earlier... Edit: The obvious point is -- does present Swedish culture explain why historical atrocities were so common...?
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >Was Japanese war crimes really worse than the European standards in pre modern times? Or the bombing of 250.000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagashaki to make a point for the post-war era?
        cheriot 10y ago
        > to make a point for the post-war era? AFAIK, American WW2 leaders saw it as a choice between invading and dropping nukes. Is there evidence to suggest otherwise?
        Ygg2 10y ago
        Same can be said of any decision.
        peteretep 10y ago
        ELI5 how the decision making behind letting the Rape of Nanking happen relates to the decision to drop the bomb.
        Ygg2 10y ago
        It doesn't need to relate. It just needs to rationalize any action taken by some group.
        coldtea 10y ago
        The US could not care less about the Rape of Nanking.
        berntb 10y ago
        Then please explain the rational calculations for e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre (This atrocity was part of an invasion, not a total war with an enemy that didn't follow the laws of war.) Edit: The brother comment referenced the same example while I was off for a coffee and to find a wikipedia link. :-)
    - awesomepantsm 10y ago
      I'd guess it has more to do with fascism than the Japanese in particular. See: Nazis.
    - barry-cotter 10y ago
      Sure! Japanese people are human and the base morality that evolution has endowed us with. This divides humanity into two groups, in group and out group. Morality only applies to the in group. It takes a lot of acculturation and education to expand an individual's conception of the in group is, from family/tribe to nation/culture to humanity. As such, any sub-culture that can take over the public sphere of a culture will have little difficulty getting people to dehumanise the other, and once they're dehumanised people have little more difficulty committing atrocities than they do slaughtering animals. As you may have noted none of this is specific to Japanese culture. That's because in this respect we're a lot weirder than they are in historical perspective. If you want a good overview of man's violence towards man and it's decline I recommend Better Angels of Our Nature, Stephen Pinker.
      - bbotond 10y ago
        Thanks for the explanation. The book looks quite interesting. But that still doesn't explain why the armies of Western nations seemingly committed less and less serious atrocities. Or is that just an illusion because "history is written by the victors"?
        cjslep 10y ago
        Ugly points in the USA's history: Trail of Tears. Slavery. Battle of Blair Mountain. Japanese Internment. Kent State. Jim Crowe. Abu Gahrib. Guantanamo. Drone Strikes. Global Surveillance. History is written, there's just more eye-catchy things to get distracted over. Game of Thrones. Brexit. Reality TV. Concerts. Drugs. Sex. Food. Cars. Video Games.
        daemoncoder 10y ago
        Beginning to sound like Billy Joel - We Didn't Start The Fire
        lgieron 10y ago
        Add colonialism (The Phillipines, Central/South America) and assasinations of a bunch of inconvenient leaders of sovereign states.
- duskwuff 10y ago
  Discussed in the article. Read the section titled "FASCISM – NITOBE'S UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE".
- iwontreddit 10y ago
  > how much of Japan's conduct in WW2 (notably, the fighting until death) can be attributed/blamed to this misinterpretation of samurai history? Japanese soldiers' "fighting to the death" nonsense was myth invented many years after WW2 by allied "historians" to justify the mass murder of japanese soldiers by the allies. It's not that the japanese weren't willing to surrender. It was that the allies ( unfortunately out of extreme racism ) wouldn't allow japanese soldiers to surrender. If you dig a little past the history/propaganda and look at the raw data/facts/etc of the pacific war, you will learn how brutal the pacific war was. And how racist the allies were towards the japanese soldiers. Nearly every japanese soldier who was wounded was butchers and killed as were nearly all japanese POWs. It was called the "no prisoner policy" of the allied soldiers. And if you want to read about some more base aspects of the pacific war, go read about the mutilation of the japanese soldiers by the allied soldiers. Some real sick shit. The more you learn about the real nature of ww2, you realize that there was no good side in that war. Just two evils fighting each other.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    Really no good side in most wars. Winning wars requires evil in one form or another.
    - mercurial 10y ago
      No, but while all sides in war end up committing war crimes of one form or another, you definitely have systems in which this is a feature, not a bug. Large-scale massacres of civilians have been a regular staple of the Japanese armed forces during WWII (particularly the Army). And the pattern of abusing civilians of the so-called "co-prosperity sphere" and terrible treatment of POWs was not a case of isolated incidents.
  - Apocryphon 10y ago
    Who was responsible for the mass suicides in the Battle of Okinawa?
    - akeruu 10y ago
- ekianjo 10y ago
  > Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Kamikaze [1], I was surprised to read that the concept of suicide attacks only became formalized late in the war (June 1944), rather than something ingrained in the Imperial Japanese fleet from even before the start of conflict. You don't lose planes for fun.
hoodoof 10y ago
Related but at a tangent - after a lifetime of interest in karate I came to realise that most of the stuff taught at karate is not practical. Katas and karate punches and kicks - most of this better thought of more as dancing or ceremonial. A bit like Tai Chi - except that Tai Chi claims no real world martial value. The myth remains however of karate being great self defence training. Our local karate club is packed with ever more kids going every week to learn pointless moves, with parents thinking the kids are learning to defend themselves.
- knowtheory 10y ago
  for what it's worth, there are a bunch of combat tai chi practitioners out in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcc0jNJwgJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcc0jNJwgJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQnuWY13ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQnuWY13ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iw4xFD-47Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iw4xFD-47Q
  - pluma 10y ago
    It's sad to see so many people think that Tai Chi is just meditative shadow boxing. It's really more about fluid/soft and hard movements, developing an intuition for how your opponent will move and using an attacker's force against them. I've seen people finding it very useful as an influence in HEMA where 9/10th of the difficulty lies in reading your opponent to know when and how they will attack. It's also immensely useful for demonstrating the importance of footwork, as the last video you link to (by the English-speaking Wing Chun instructor -- even if his style isn't "really" Tai Chi) shows very beautifully.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Aikido is far better in that regard. Edit: I mean that it's more usable in real life.
  - blahi 10y ago
    This couldn't be further from the truth. Sorry I'm not pointing to "evidence" but what you are saying is like laser tag guns are far better than AK-47.
pierrec 10y ago
I was immediately very interested by one of the references, which extensively compares five different versions of Nitobe's book: the original (English) and 4 translations (in Spanish, French and Japanese). They study the overall texts as well as side-by-side passages in detail, and show how the seemingly innocuous translations are each tainted by the motives and environment of each translator and author. I'm always fond of translation studies and this one is captivating. English version here (the original is in Spanish... we'll have to trust the (apparently uncredited) translator on this one) http://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/2010/v23/n2/1009160ar.html http://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/2010/v23/n2/1009160ar.html
hoodoof 10y ago
HN mods need to rewrite title to "Bushido seems not to be what people think it is."
- GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
  Doesn't the existing title say the same thing but in a more pithy way? As an aside, it seems that Project Gutenberg has the text of Nitobe's book that the article discusses: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12096/12096-h/12096-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12096/12096-h/12096-h.htm
- dang 10y ago
  It's baity but maybe high-enough-quality bait that we can indulge it.
- BoysenberryPi 10y ago
  Why? Does the language bother you for some odd reason?
  - hoodoof 10y ago
    Have you not noticed that HN often rewrites titles to be more factual about the content of the target?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
Aelinsaar 10y ago
Chivalry, Bushido... the reality of knights wherever they cropped up and under whatever name, is that they abused people beneath them, and each other. A lot.
markpapadakis 10y ago
Related, and an excellent write up on Shalin Monks: Demythologizing Shaolin Monks( https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4516 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4516 )
knowtheory 10y ago
So, the only academic paper in the sources in the post is a PhD thesis which appears to be the entire argument undergirding this post. If you're interested in the subject, that might be a good place to start: https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0071589 https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/...
- pierrec 10y ago
  While it might be a more authoritative place to start, it's not the only academic paper in the sources, and it's definitely not the entire argument undergirding this post. I for one appreciate when he pulls out a citation that make you raise an eyebrow.
  - knowtheory 10y ago
    Hey! You're right, i'd missed https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/2921 https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/2921 I guess i'm super conservative about sourcing when reading arguments made about historical topics (and academic papers at least tend to make it clear whether or not their sourcing is primary, secondary, or what). Especially when it comes to claims of what the common perception was at any particular point in human history i am always curious to see not what someone's narrative is, but what they're building their case upon. (also as an aside the use of The Last Samurai as a lens or touchstone for discussing bushido was a bit weird to me given how prevalent the notion of bushido is. But maybe i'm just sad that that's the go-to reference.)
    - pierrec 10y ago
      You're still missing one... https://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/2010/v23/n2/1009160ar.html https://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/2010/v23/n2/1009160ar.html (While not 100% about the original version of Nitobe's book, they still analyze it and provide a bunch more references concerning it). Yeah, there's a good chance The Last Samurai might currently be the most popular lens through which people view bushido right now (Americans at least). I share your sadness but I'm sure most people actually have multiple points of reference on the concept. Would be funny if it continued to evolve into something completely different (something featuring Tom Cruise?)
cyberferret 10y ago
Interesting that the author mentions that the term "Bushido" wasn't really a thing until last century. I was sure I saw the term mentioned in the writing of Miyamoto Musashi, but I assume that might have been a modern translators interpretation. (I read the English version, not the native Japanese one). Also, some of my favourite graphic novels by Stan Sakai, Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima seem to mention the term too, but seeing as they are modern writers, I assume they 'westernised' their dialogue to suit.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  > Interesting that the author mentions that the term "Bushido" wasn't really a thing until last century. I was sure I saw the term mentioned in the writing of Miyamoto Musashi, but I assume that might have been a modern translators interpretation. (I read the English version, not the native Japanese one). I'm not sure about the author level of Japanese, but when he said that the term "bushido" was not used but the terms "bushi no michi" existed before, well it's the exact same thing. 武士道　is bushido and 武士の道 is bushi no michi. The exact same writing, but a slightly different expression. It can't be that far off of a concept.
- shiro 10y ago
  The term "bushido" itself can be seen from late 16c literature (甲陽軍鑑, written between 1575 and 1586, is said as the first written appearance of the word), but initially it meant more practical skills of combat or survival. I don't have Miyamoto Musashi's book at hand but I suspect if he used the term it had the similar meaning.
  - arca_vorago 10y ago
    I have a couple different translations and I am pretty sure it just references budo or if it says bushido anywhere it would be a mistranslation.
- twblalock 10y ago
  The use of the word in its modern sense is a modern development. It was used before, but to signify different things. In other words, while the samurai had concepts about the warrior ethos, which they may have called bushido (among other things), the concepts they understood and wrote about were different from the concept of bushido espoused by Nitobe Inazo, who was criticized for being ahistorical by his Japanese contemporaries.
ekianjo 10y ago
Citing Mamoru Oshii as a kind of expert on bushido is completely laughable. How does anything he says about the subject gives him any kind of authority ?
titanix2 10y ago
I recently (3 months) started iaidô[1] in my Japanese university club, and one thing that struck me was how few "bullshit" talks we had about the discipline. In contrast, when browsing for clubs in my country, each website was filled with a last a few paragraphs saying how spiritual the art is, how it is all about discovering yourself and the truth of the universe. People of my club are more interested in it because katana are cool than the bushidô spirit or something -- basically nobody ever talked about it. Anyway, when everybody train I cannot help to feel the underlying military spirit of the it, and how in a society like Japan it can quickly turn the way it turned in WWII. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido
- cyberferret 10y ago
  I just starting Kendo training here at a local dojo. Our instructor is very adamant and clear at almost all training sessions that the skills we are learning with the bamboo and wooden swords are NOT usable in a self defence or martial capacity at all. Rather that our studies are for mental focus, fitness and spiritual calmness. These are the exact reasons I took up the study of this art. In my younger days, I studied Tae Kwon Do for years, but as most other have said here - it has no real practical value in a street fight either, aside from extra fitness, flexibility and general peripheral awareness which may serve as an advantage in a conflict situation.
  - titanix2 10y ago
    I wonder how much the unusability is actually related to weapon carry right. I mean, of course sword skill is useless for defence if you cannot carry a sword with you. If it were otherwise, like in pre-Meiji Japan, I'm sure kendô skill would be better than nothing. But given that by the time warriors were taught real military fighting and not martial art in the modern meaning, the question is a non starter. So I agree with you and your teacher. Interestingly enough, from the 6 different clubs (aikidô, karate, iaidô, nippon kenpô, shaolin temple box, sumô) that were demonstrating their art at some event, the most effective or useful one seemed to be... sumô and nippon kenpô. The sumô dudes were very strong and had serious skill for putting done someone on the ground. The boxer kicks were pretty serious too. On the other side, the way people falled on aikidô kata seemed pretty fake, not to mention the karate dudes fighting thin air.
mcguire 10y ago
I haven't read Nitobe, but Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure mentioned in the article, which was weirdly popular a few years back, is a horrible piece of propaganda written by someone who has about as much contact with war fighters as Nietzsche.
- twblalock 10y ago
  Hagakure was written during the Edo period (1600-1868), during which time there were very few battles fought, and samurai were mainly bureaucrats and government functionaries living on fixed pensions. The book is an attempt to maintain warrior culture in the face of the reality that samurai no longer had any occasion to fight.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    ...collected from a mid-level bureaucrat in the early 18th century who apparently never had the opportunity to be willing to die for his lord, and which didn't become popular until the early 20th century.
euske 10y ago
Fun (though unverifiable) fact: No one reads Inazo Nitobe, or that "Hagakure" thing in today's Japan. It looks like these are mostly for Westerner's consumption. "Bushido" today is often taken as some weird/quaint moral code that is often depicted comically. It could be interesting for a historical viewpoint, but I don't think these historic texts are very useful to explain the modern-day Japan. It's a bit like reading Jefferson while trying to understand Trump.
- toyg 10y ago
  But the point is that they were widely read at some point, so they shaped the culture in ways that are now ingrained. It's like Homer's epics: nowadays they are mostly restricted to students of literature or historians, but their influence on Western culture throughout history is massive.
- panglott 10y ago
  Actually, I wonder if de Tocqueville has anything to say about Trump.
jzelinskie 10y ago
I've never read any of their blog posts before now, but Tofugu makes another product called WaniKani, that I've been using daily for 6 months now. It's basically flashcards for Kanji memorization, but it creates a regimen and has great third-party mobile applications that give you reminders to continue making progress. Without it, I definitely wouldn't have the will power to keep studying.
optforfon 10y ago
(I got through about half the article) I think making the analogy to Christianity and chivalry is simply a way for Nitobe to communicate the way samurai were percieved and it seems a bit dramatic to lay it all at his feet as some kind of grand manipulative agenda. The Meiji era (and the Taisho era after it) were times of a very bizarre "formalization" of japanese culture. Like other comments mention, things like karate, kendo, ekinaba, art of sword making, etc. etc. were all formalized and unified under one umbrella at this time. Before say "karate" you'd have different schools teaching different martial arts under different names around the country. I actually don't have a very good grasp on why this happened
ommunist 10y ago
The real bushido of modern Japanese, at least of generation born in 70-ies, is their work ethics. I worked with JICA team for 3 seasons, I never seen people that commited and self-sacrificing to work as these people were. And I hope, I will never see again. Life is so much more than work.
lunchTime42 10y ago
Medieval War Principals meet modern weapons. People charged in with horses and protective amuletts at verdun. But where butchering a village was hard work in medieval times, modern weapons make it the flick of a switch. Add to that a culture where non-fullfillment of expectations is a huge shame and extererior pressure upholds all the norms, and you get japans behaviour during the ww2.
kbart 10y ago
Every nation rewrites its history according to contemporary needs and cherry picks (or creates) sources to support it. A good example of today is Russia, where Stalin cult is resurgent and not so honorable history facts (pact with Hitler, Holodomor etc.) are being suppressed or played down[1]. 1. http://www.economist.com/node/10102921 http://www.economist.com/node/10102921
- RyanMcGreal 10y ago
  Next you're going to tell me that George Washington never actually chopped down a cherry tree! http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth/ http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/cher...
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    This is explicitly lampshaded in TFA. [EDIT:] Honestly though, since this allowance comes so late and is not connected back to the main narrative, it does undermine the whole mess. Next up, a hard-hitting takedown of Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson...
- gritzko 10y ago
  http://i.imgur.com/6eUoctT.png http://i.imgur.com/6eUoctT.png The history gets rewritten all the time. It is simpler to define and understand it as geological depositions of bullshit. Archeology is a bit better. (The same, but without the bull- part, literally.)
jdpigeon 10y ago
Does this apply to the 'Bushido Shoshinsu' written by Shigesuke? That's the one I'm familiar with with and it didn't seem to have any Christian undertones.
gadders 10y ago
Other modern inventions that people think are ancient: 1) Scots wearing different patterned kilts to denote clans. This was mostly invented by Sir Walter Scott 2) Druid rituals. Druids were wiped out by the Romans, and the only accounts left of their rituals are Roman. What we now think of Druid rituals are a mixture of Roman writings and stuff made up in the 19th century.
kabouseng 10y ago
Very much similar to the African concept of Ubuntu, which is nothing more than a modern popularized dreamed up concept.
digi_owl 10y ago
I am not surprised. It seems that a certain subset of the European elite embraced the samurai as a symbol of what Europe lost with the shift from Feudalism to Democracies. Note how you can see something of the same with how knights and related honor codes gets embraced by extremists across Europe (in particular in times of hardship). Similarly, the post-ww1 British administrators of what became Irak elevated the bedouin on a pedestal[1]. And the region is paying the price to this day. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-385e-808f-c9c7c38d1cb7 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-...
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
I haven't read the book referred to in the article but I've for example read Mishima's Runway Horses - which also draws on historical circumstance from the Shinpūren Rebellion (1876). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinp%C5%ABren_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinp%C5%ABren_Rebellion Does that not exemplify similar values as us (Westerners) expect from the term 'Bushido'? Was the former a very rare isolated incident and not actually representative of samurai ethos?
- rpenm 10y ago
  Mishima was as influenced by ultranationalism and the bushido mythos as anyone - to the point that he committed suicide during an attempt to restore the emperor. I don't think his writing counts as counterexample.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
ivanhoe 10y ago
This is not such a unique story, same is for instance with yoga, no one in India really did yoga as we think of it today until the end of 19th century. Same story with the free masons, they were re-invented in 17th century with no evidence whatsoever of having any resemblance to the original order. One could also argue that pretty much all religions in the world also fall into this category.
epicaricacy 10y ago
Bushido is a lie, Cowboys never had shoot outs, ninjas are overrated... At least pirates were sort of legit. Jury is still out on zombies.
- lagadu 10y ago
  Zombies are also bullshit. Until the uprising in a few weeks, that is.
mendelsd 10y ago
Masaki Kobayashi made a couple of subversive films in the 1960's that present a very dark view of Samurai culture. These films [1][2] are excellent. [1] in particular is exquisite (and tied for the Jury Special Prize at Cannes in 1963). [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056058 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056058 [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061847 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061847
Practicality 10y ago
Stunning and eye-opening. I had no idea. Seems all cultures are pretty much the same on this front, then.
michaelbuddy 10y ago
As in any time period, people are nostalgic for the past, especially when Japan's borders were opened (against their will) you're going to have that kind of reaching towards better days of 'ole. Sakura-colored glasses. There's also the art of Japan (and everywhere else). Art idealizing the "history" depicted, curators of that art (many of those part of religious institutes) and history communicating the history narrative, furthering the legend. It's a group effort this ruse of history. When the narrative sounds good and doesn't really contradict any other popular opinion, who is going to argue against it? 160 years later, here we are.

225 points by hunvreus 10y ago

danso 10y ago

If the concept of Bushido didn't become popular until Japan's modernization (at the end of the 19th century)...how much of Japan's conduct in WW2 (notably, the fighting until death) can be attributed/blamed to this misinterpretation of samurai history? Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Kamikaze [1], I was surprised to read that the concept of suicide attacks only became formalized late in the war (June 1944), rather than something ingrained in the Imperial Japanese fleet from even before the start of conflict. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze#Beginnings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze#Beginnings OT: I really love the posted article's massively deep footer, which also looks good on mobile. I frequently have trouble designing nice footers around a long list of links and I'm bookmarking this site as a place to copy from.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jbooth 10y ago
If you're talking about Japanese conduct during the war, I'd find the rampant war crimes a lot more notable than the fighting until death.
- bbotond 10y ago
  Can someone knowledgeable about Japanese culture explain why those war crimes were so common?
  - berntb 10y ago
    Was Japanese war crimes really worse than the European standards in pre modern times? From my Swedish history, see the 30 year war (for a viewpoint not covered well in Swedish schools, google Polish deluge). To me it seems the main difference is that Sweden didn't have the same technological resources a few centuries earlier... Edit: The obvious point is -- does present Swedish culture explain why historical atrocities were so common...?
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >Was Japanese war crimes really worse than the European standards in pre modern times? Or the bombing of 250.000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagashaki to make a point for the post-war era?
      - cheriot 10y ago
        > to make a point for the post-war era? AFAIK, American WW2 leaders saw it as a choice between invading and dropping nukes. Is there evidence to suggest otherwise?
        Ygg2 10y ago
        Same can be said of any decision.
        peteretep 10y ago
        ELI5 how the decision making behind letting the Rape of Nanking happen relates to the decision to drop the bomb.
        Ygg2 10y ago
        It doesn't need to relate. It just needs to rationalize any action taken by some group.
        coldtea 10y ago
        The US could not care less about the Rape of Nanking.
        berntb 10y ago
        Then please explain the rational calculations for e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre (This atrocity was part of an invasion, not a total war with an enemy that didn't follow the laws of war.) Edit: The brother comment referenced the same example while I was off for a coffee and to find a wikipedia link. :-)
  - awesomepantsm 10y ago
    I'd guess it has more to do with fascism than the Japanese in particular. See: Nazis.
  - barry-cotter 10y ago
    Sure! Japanese people are human and the base morality that evolution has endowed us with. This divides humanity into two groups, in group and out group. Morality only applies to the in group. It takes a lot of acculturation and education to expand an individual's conception of the in group is, from family/tribe to nation/culture to humanity. As such, any sub-culture that can take over the public sphere of a culture will have little difficulty getting people to dehumanise the other, and once they're dehumanised people have little more difficulty committing atrocities than they do slaughtering animals. As you may have noted none of this is specific to Japanese culture. That's because in this respect we're a lot weirder than they are in historical perspective. If you want a good overview of man's violence towards man and it's decline I recommend Better Angels of Our Nature, Stephen Pinker.
    - bbotond 10y ago
      Thanks for the explanation. The book looks quite interesting. But that still doesn't explain why the armies of Western nations seemingly committed less and less serious atrocities. Or is that just an illusion because "history is written by the victors"?
      - cjslep 10y ago
        Ugly points in the USA's history: Trail of Tears. Slavery. Battle of Blair Mountain. Japanese Internment. Kent State. Jim Crowe. Abu Gahrib. Guantanamo. Drone Strikes. Global Surveillance. History is written, there's just more eye-catchy things to get distracted over. Game of Thrones. Brexit. Reality TV. Concerts. Drugs. Sex. Food. Cars. Video Games.
        daemoncoder 10y ago
        Beginning to sound like Billy Joel - We Didn't Start The Fire
        lgieron 10y ago
        Add colonialism (The Phillipines, Central/South America) and assasinations of a bunch of inconvenient leaders of sovereign states.
duskwuff 10y ago
Discussed in the article. Read the section titled "FASCISM – NITOBE'S UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE".
iwontreddit 10y ago
> how much of Japan's conduct in WW2 (notably, the fighting until death) can be attributed/blamed to this misinterpretation of samurai history? Japanese soldiers' "fighting to the death" nonsense was myth invented many years after WW2 by allied "historians" to justify the mass murder of japanese soldiers by the allies. It's not that the japanese weren't willing to surrender. It was that the allies ( unfortunately out of extreme racism ) wouldn't allow japanese soldiers to surrender. If you dig a little past the history/propaganda and look at the raw data/facts/etc of the pacific war, you will learn how brutal the pacific war was. And how racist the allies were towards the japanese soldiers. Nearly every japanese soldier who was wounded was butchers and killed as were nearly all japanese POWs. It was called the "no prisoner policy" of the allied soldiers. And if you want to read about some more base aspects of the pacific war, go read about the mutilation of the japanese soldiers by the allied soldiers. Some real sick shit. The more you learn about the real nature of ww2, you realize that there was no good side in that war. Just two evils fighting each other.
- mathattack 10y ago
  Really no good side in most wars. Winning wars requires evil in one form or another.
  - mercurial 10y ago
    No, but while all sides in war end up committing war crimes of one form or another, you definitely have systems in which this is a feature, not a bug. Large-scale massacres of civilians have been a regular staple of the Japanese armed forces during WWII (particularly the Army). And the pattern of abusing civilians of the so-called "co-prosperity sphere" and terrible treatment of POWs was not a case of isolated incidents.
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  Who was responsible for the mass suicides in the Battle of Okinawa?
  - akeruu 10y ago
ekianjo 10y ago
> Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Kamikaze [1], I was surprised to read that the concept of suicide attacks only became formalized late in the war (June 1944), rather than something ingrained in the Imperial Japanese fleet from even before the start of conflict. You don't lose planes for fun.

hoodoof 10y ago

Related but at a tangent - after a lifetime of interest in karate I came to realise that most of the stuff taught at karate is not practical. Katas and karate punches and kicks - most of this better thought of more as dancing or ceremonial. A bit like Tai Chi - except that Tai Chi claims no real world martial value. The myth remains however of karate being great self defence training. Our local karate club is packed with ever more kids going every week to learn pointless moves, with parents thinking the kids are learning to defend themselves.

knowtheory 10y ago
for what it's worth, there are a bunch of combat tai chi practitioners out in the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcc0jNJwgJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcc0jNJwgJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQnuWY13ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQnuWY13ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iw4xFD-47Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iw4xFD-47Q
- pluma 10y ago
  It's sad to see so many people think that Tai Chi is just meditative shadow boxing. It's really more about fluid/soft and hard movements, developing an intuition for how your opponent will move and using an attacker's force against them. I've seen people finding it very useful as an influence in HEMA where 9/10th of the difficulty lies in reading your opponent to know when and how they will attack. It's also immensely useful for demonstrating the importance of footwork, as the last video you link to (by the English-speaking Wing Chun instructor -- even if his style isn't "really" Tai Chi) shows very beautifully.
mirimir 10y ago
Aikido is far better in that regard. Edit: I mean that it's more usable in real life.
- blahi 10y ago
  This couldn't be further from the truth. Sorry I'm not pointing to "evidence" but what you are saying is like laser tag guns are far better than AK-47.

pierrec 10y ago

I was immediately very interested by one of the references, which extensively compares five different versions of Nitobe's book: the original (English) and 4 translations (in Spanish, French and Japanese). They study the overall texts as well as side-by-side passages in detail, and show how the seemingly innocuous translations are each tainted by the motives and environment of each translator and author. I'm always fond of translation studies and this one is captivating. English version here (the original is in Spanish... we'll have to trust the (apparently uncredited) translator on this one) http://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/2010/v23/n2/1009160ar.html http://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/2010/v23/n2/1009160ar.html

hoodoof 10y ago

HN mods need to rewrite title to "Bushido seems not to be what people think it is."

GrumpyYoungMan 10y ago
Doesn't the existing title say the same thing but in a more pithy way? As an aside, it seems that Project Gutenberg has the text of Nitobe's book that the article discusses: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12096/12096-h/12096-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12096/12096-h/12096-h.htm
dang 10y ago
It's baity but maybe high-enough-quality bait that we can indulge it.
BoysenberryPi 10y ago
Why? Does the language bother you for some odd reason?
- hoodoof 10y ago
  Have you not noticed that HN often rewrites titles to be more factual about the content of the target?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

Aelinsaar 10y ago

Chivalry, Bushido... the reality of knights wherever they cropped up and under whatever name, is that they abused people beneath them, and each other. A lot.

markpapadakis 10y ago

Related, and an excellent write up on Shalin Monks: Demythologizing Shaolin Monks( https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4516 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4516 )

knowtheory 10y ago

So, the only academic paper in the sources in the post is a PhD thesis which appears to be the entire argument undergirding this post. If you're interested in the subject, that might be a good place to start: https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0071589 https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/...

pierrec 10y ago
While it might be a more authoritative place to start, it's not the only academic paper in the sources, and it's definitely not the entire argument undergirding this post. I for one appreciate when he pulls out a citation that make you raise an eyebrow.
- knowtheory 10y ago
  Hey! You're right, i'd missed https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/2921 https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/2921 I guess i'm super conservative about sourcing when reading arguments made about historical topics (and academic papers at least tend to make it clear whether or not their sourcing is primary, secondary, or what). Especially when it comes to claims of what the common perception was at any particular point in human history i am always curious to see not what someone's narrative is, but what they're building their case upon. (also as an aside the use of The Last Samurai as a lens or touchstone for discussing bushido was a bit weird to me given how prevalent the notion of bushido is. But maybe i'm just sad that that's the go-to reference.)
  - pierrec 10y ago
    You're still missing one... https://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/2010/v23/n2/1009160ar.html https://www.erudit.org/revue/ttr/2010/v23/n2/1009160ar.html (While not 100% about the original version of Nitobe's book, they still analyze it and provide a bunch more references concerning it). Yeah, there's a good chance The Last Samurai might currently be the most popular lens through which people view bushido right now (Americans at least). I share your sadness but I'm sure most people actually have multiple points of reference on the concept. Would be funny if it continued to evolve into something completely different (something featuring Tom Cruise?)

cyberferret 10y ago

Interesting that the author mentions that the term "Bushido" wasn't really a thing until last century. I was sure I saw the term mentioned in the writing of Miyamoto Musashi, but I assume that might have been a modern translators interpretation. (I read the English version, not the native Japanese one). Also, some of my favourite graphic novels by Stan Sakai, Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima seem to mention the term too, but seeing as they are modern writers, I assume they 'westernised' their dialogue to suit.

ekianjo 10y ago
> Interesting that the author mentions that the term "Bushido" wasn't really a thing until last century. I was sure I saw the term mentioned in the writing of Miyamoto Musashi, but I assume that might have been a modern translators interpretation. (I read the English version, not the native Japanese one). I'm not sure about the author level of Japanese, but when he said that the term "bushido" was not used but the terms "bushi no michi" existed before, well it's the exact same thing. 武士道　is bushido and 武士の道 is bushi no michi. The exact same writing, but a slightly different expression. It can't be that far off of a concept.
shiro 10y ago
The term "bushido" itself can be seen from late 16c literature (甲陽軍鑑, written between 1575 and 1586, is said as the first written appearance of the word), but initially it meant more practical skills of combat or survival. I don't have Miyamoto Musashi's book at hand but I suspect if he used the term it had the similar meaning.
- arca_vorago 10y ago
  I have a couple different translations and I am pretty sure it just references budo or if it says bushido anywhere it would be a mistranslation.
twblalock 10y ago
The use of the word in its modern sense is a modern development. It was used before, but to signify different things. In other words, while the samurai had concepts about the warrior ethos, which they may have called bushido (among other things), the concepts they understood and wrote about were different from the concept of bushido espoused by Nitobe Inazo, who was criticized for being ahistorical by his Japanese contemporaries.

ekianjo 10y ago

Citing Mamoru Oshii as a kind of expert on bushido is completely laughable. How does anything he says about the subject gives him any kind of authority ?

titanix2 10y ago

I recently (3 months) started iaidô[1] in my Japanese university club, and one thing that struck me was how few "bullshit" talks we had about the discipline. In contrast, when browsing for clubs in my country, each website was filled with a last a few paragraphs saying how spiritual the art is, how it is all about discovering yourself and the truth of the universe. People of my club are more interested in it because katana are cool than the bushidô spirit or something -- basically nobody ever talked about it. Anyway, when everybody train I cannot help to feel the underlying military spirit of the it, and how in a society like Japan it can quickly turn the way it turned in WWII. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iaido

cyberferret 10y ago
I just starting Kendo training here at a local dojo. Our instructor is very adamant and clear at almost all training sessions that the skills we are learning with the bamboo and wooden swords are NOT usable in a self defence or martial capacity at all. Rather that our studies are for mental focus, fitness and spiritual calmness. These are the exact reasons I took up the study of this art. In my younger days, I studied Tae Kwon Do for years, but as most other have said here - it has no real practical value in a street fight either, aside from extra fitness, flexibility and general peripheral awareness which may serve as an advantage in a conflict situation.
- titanix2 10y ago
  I wonder how much the unusability is actually related to weapon carry right. I mean, of course sword skill is useless for defence if you cannot carry a sword with you. If it were otherwise, like in pre-Meiji Japan, I'm sure kendô skill would be better than nothing. But given that by the time warriors were taught real military fighting and not martial art in the modern meaning, the question is a non starter. So I agree with you and your teacher. Interestingly enough, from the 6 different clubs (aikidô, karate, iaidô, nippon kenpô, shaolin temple box, sumô) that were demonstrating their art at some event, the most effective or useful one seemed to be... sumô and nippon kenpô. The sumô dudes were very strong and had serious skill for putting done someone on the ground. The boxer kicks were pretty serious too. On the other side, the way people falled on aikidô kata seemed pretty fake, not to mention the karate dudes fighting thin air.

mcguire 10y ago

I haven't read Nitobe, but Yamamoto Tsunetomo's Hagakure mentioned in the article, which was weirdly popular a few years back, is a horrible piece of propaganda written by someone who has about as much contact with war fighters as Nietzsche.

twblalock 10y ago
Hagakure was written during the Edo period (1600-1868), during which time there were very few battles fought, and samurai were mainly bureaucrats and government functionaries living on fixed pensions. The book is an attempt to maintain warrior culture in the face of the reality that samurai no longer had any occasion to fight.
- mcguire 10y ago
  ...collected from a mid-level bureaucrat in the early 18th century who apparently never had the opportunity to be willing to die for his lord, and which didn't become popular until the early 20th century.

euske 10y ago

Fun (though unverifiable) fact: No one reads Inazo Nitobe, or that "Hagakure" thing in today's Japan. It looks like these are mostly for Westerner's consumption. "Bushido" today is often taken as some weird/quaint moral code that is often depicted comically. It could be interesting for a historical viewpoint, but I don't think these historic texts are very useful to explain the modern-day Japan. It's a bit like reading Jefferson while trying to understand Trump.

toyg 10y ago
But the point is that they were widely read at some point, so they shaped the culture in ways that are now ingrained. It's like Homer's epics: nowadays they are mostly restricted to students of literature or historians, but their influence on Western culture throughout history is massive.
panglott 10y ago
Actually, I wonder if de Tocqueville has anything to say about Trump.

jzelinskie 10y ago

I've never read any of their blog posts before now, but Tofugu makes another product called WaniKani, that I've been using daily for 6 months now. It's basically flashcards for Kanji memorization, but it creates a regimen and has great third-party mobile applications that give you reminders to continue making progress. Without it, I definitely wouldn't have the will power to keep studying.

optforfon 10y ago

(I got through about half the article) I think making the analogy to Christianity and chivalry is simply a way for Nitobe to communicate the way samurai were percieved and it seems a bit dramatic to lay it all at his feet as some kind of grand manipulative agenda. The Meiji era (and the Taisho era after it) were times of a very bizarre "formalization" of japanese culture. Like other comments mention, things like karate, kendo, ekinaba, art of sword making, etc. etc. were all formalized and unified under one umbrella at this time. Before say "karate" you'd have different schools teaching different martial arts under different names around the country. I actually don't have a very good grasp on why this happened

ommunist 10y ago

The real bushido of modern Japanese, at least of generation born in 70-ies, is their work ethics. I worked with JICA team for 3 seasons, I never seen people that commited and self-sacrificing to work as these people were. And I hope, I will never see again. Life is so much more than work.

lunchTime42 10y ago

Medieval War Principals meet modern weapons. People charged in with horses and protective amuletts at verdun. But where butchering a village was hard work in medieval times, modern weapons make it the flick of a switch. Add to that a culture where non-fullfillment of expectations is a huge shame and extererior pressure upholds all the norms, and you get japans behaviour during the ww2.

kbart 10y ago

Every nation rewrites its history according to contemporary needs and cherry picks (or creates) sources to support it. A good example of today is Russia, where Stalin cult is resurgent and not so honorable history facts (pact with Hitler, Holodomor etc.) are being suppressed or played down[1]. 1. http://www.economist.com/node/10102921 http://www.economist.com/node/10102921

RyanMcGreal 10y ago
Next you're going to tell me that George Washington never actually chopped down a cherry tree! http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/cherry-tree-myth/ http://www.mountvernon.org/digital-encyclopedia/article/cher...
- jessaustin 10y ago
  This is explicitly lampshaded in TFA. [EDIT:] Honestly though, since this allowance comes so late and is not connected back to the main narrative, it does undermine the whole mess. Next up, a hard-hitting takedown of Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson...
gritzko 10y ago
http://i.imgur.com/6eUoctT.png http://i.imgur.com/6eUoctT.png The history gets rewritten all the time. It is simpler to define and understand it as geological depositions of bullshit. Archeology is a bit better. (The same, but without the bull- part, literally.)

jdpigeon 10y ago

Does this apply to the 'Bushido Shoshinsu' written by Shigesuke? That's the one I'm familiar with with and it didn't seem to have any Christian undertones.

gadders 10y ago

Other modern inventions that people think are ancient: 1) Scots wearing different patterned kilts to denote clans. This was mostly invented by Sir Walter Scott 2) Druid rituals. Druids were wiped out by the Romans, and the only accounts left of their rituals are Roman. What we now think of Druid rituals are a mixture of Roman writings and stuff made up in the 19th century.

kabouseng 10y ago

Very much similar to the African concept of Ubuntu, which is nothing more than a modern popularized dreamed up concept.

digi_owl 10y ago

I am not surprised. It seems that a certain subset of the European elite embraced the samurai as a symbol of what Europe lost with the shift from Feudalism to Democracies. Note how you can see something of the same with how knights and related honor codes gets embraced by extremists across Europe (in particular in times of hardship). Similarly, the post-ww1 British administrators of what became Irak elevated the bedouin on a pedestal[1]. And the region is paying the price to this day. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-385e-808f-c9c7c38d1cb7 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/2989a78a-ee94-...

forgotpwtomain 10y ago

I haven't read the book referred to in the article but I've for example read Mishima's Runway Horses - which also draws on historical circumstance from the Shinpūren Rebellion (1876). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinp%C5%ABren_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinp%C5%ABren_Rebellion Does that not exemplify similar values as us (Westerners) expect from the term 'Bushido'? Was the former a very rare isolated incident and not actually representative of samurai ethos?

rpenm 10y ago
Mishima was as influenced by ultranationalism and the bushido mythos as anyone - to the point that he committed suicide during an attempt to restore the emperor. I don't think his writing counts as counterexample.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

ivanhoe 10y ago

This is not such a unique story, same is for instance with yoga, no one in India really did yoga as we think of it today until the end of 19th century. Same story with the free masons, they were re-invented in 17th century with no evidence whatsoever of having any resemblance to the original order. One could also argue that pretty much all religions in the world also fall into this category.

epicaricacy 10y ago

Bushido is a lie, Cowboys never had shoot outs, ninjas are overrated... At least pirates were sort of legit. Jury is still out on zombies.

lagadu 10y ago
Zombies are also bullshit. Until the uprising in a few weeks, that is.

mendelsd 10y ago

Masaki Kobayashi made a couple of subversive films in the 1960's that present a very dark view of Samurai culture. These films [1][2] are excellent. [1] in particular is exquisite (and tied for the Jury Special Prize at Cannes in 1963). [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056058 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056058 [2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061847 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061847

Practicality 10y ago

Stunning and eye-opening. I had no idea. Seems all cultures are pretty much the same on this front, then.

michaelbuddy 10y ago

As in any time period, people are nostalgic for the past, especially when Japan's borders were opened (against their will) you're going to have that kind of reaching towards better days of 'ole. Sakura-colored glasses. There's also the art of Japan (and everywhere else). Art idealizing the "history" depicted, curators of that art (many of those part of religious institutes) and history communicating the history narrative, furthering the legend. It's a group effort this ruse of history. When the narrative sounds good and doesn't really contradict any other popular opinion, who is going to argue against it? 160 years later, here we are.