The Last Samurai, a great Hollywood epic, tells the story of Katsumoto, a rebellious samurai who dedicates his life to fighting the forces he believes are corrupting Japan’s traditional values.
As seen through the eyes of United States Army Captain Nathan Algren (who is hired by the Imperial Army of Japan to help fight the rebels, but is held captive by them) , Katsumoto and his group of rebellious samurai personify the honorable warrior: fearless, dedicated to his duty, hardworking and disciplined, but also educated and benevolent with his captive .
After witnessing the nobility of the samurai, Algren switches allegiance to help Katsumoto on his fateful mission.
From Hollywood blockbusters to Japanese TV dramas, The samurai has been portrayed over the years as a model of physical excellence and rec moral attitude, for whom honor and loyalty are more valuable than life itself.
This image of the samurai, although not historically accurate, is deeply rooted in the popular imaginary due in large part to a small book written in English by Inazo Nitobe, at early 20th century .
“Bushido: The Soul of Japan”, which was first published in 1895 and became an international bestseller in its At the moment, it has just been republished as part of the Great Ideas series by Penguin publishing house.
Although it is one of the innumerable books written on bushido (“the way of the warrior”), Nitobe’s book remains the most influential source for those seeking to understand a value system that continues permeating many facets of today’s Japanese society.
Be good Through his book, Nitobe, a converted agricultural economist, educator, diplomat, and Quaker who was Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations between 1919 and 1929, he tried to explain to Westerners (including his American Quaker wife Mary) the moral values that underpin Japanese culture.
Representation of a samurai dating from 1860. Nitobe attributed these values to bushido , which he defined as the code of moral principles of the samurai.
Bushido According to the author, he instructed the samurai to have a strong sense of integrity and courage to execute that justice. He preached benevolence and courtesy, truthfulness, honor and loyalty to a higher authority.
“ The sense of honor , which implies a vivid awareness of personal dignity and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai… ”Nitobe wrote.
The benefits (and dangers) of “Gaman”, the art of patience and perseverance that defines the society of Japan The reality was somewhat different and historians have criticized Nitobe’s description of the samurai as highly romanticized .
“The samurai and the daimyo (feudal lords ) didn’t really live a life of honor and loyalty, ”says Sven Saaler, a professor of modern Japanese history at Sophia University in Tokyo. “If the opportunity arose, they would also kill their master and take his place.”
The context In his seminal work, Nitobe, who came from a family of samurai, also stated that the values of the samurai were shared by everyone in Japan: “(The) spirit of bushido permeated all social classes ”, he wrote.
“Chivalry is a flower, no less indigenous to the land of Japan than its emblem, the cherry blossom,” Nitobe wrote. Contrary to what Nitobe claimed, in the Edo period (1603 – 1868), the samurai were vilified by abuse their privileges in a time when their martial skills had become obsolete due to gone to two centuries of social stability.
However, Nitobe’s goal in writing his book was not to provide a historically accurate account of the samurai, but to show the world that Japan had a similar value system to Christian morality.
Nitobe made constant references to European philosophy and literature and compared the bushido with the gallantry of the European gentlemen .
“Chivalry is a flower, no less indigenous to the land of Japan than its emblem, the cherry blossom,” Nitobe wrote.
According to Saaler, Nitobe sought to counteract racism and fears in the West in the face of the “yellow danger” by shaping the image of the samurai and, by extension, of the Japanese, not only as brave but also as chivalrous.
Only four years before the publication of his book, Japan had emerged victorious in its war against China of 1894 to 1895. That military success, which astonished the Western powers of the time, was quickly followed by Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905.
The rise of a nation Nitobe’s book aimed to counter fears that Japan would one day become a threat to Europe and “build a very positive image of Japan as a militarily strong country. but civilized who behaved in a civilized way in the war ”, explains Saaler.
In many film productions and television shows the samurai stands out for his heroism and righteousness. According to Eri Hotta, historian and author of Japan 1941: C ountdown to Infamy , the book was also “an attempt to place Japan on an equal footing with the best of Western powers so that could claim the right to own colonies. ”
The international acclaim his book received suggests that Nitobe achieved his goal of documenting Japanese values and thus improving the country’s image in the West.
And it appeared at a time when interest in Japan was growing: after its military victories over China and Russia, the work found an avid audience among Western readers who were impressed and perplexed by the Japan’s astonishing rise .
For Western readers, courage, moral rectitude and other values of bushido described in Nitobe’s book provided a compelling explanation of how a small, and hitherto unknown country, could defeat its much larger neighbors is and apparently more powerful.
The impact on the US “Nitobe’s book offered a way to explain the source of Japan’s growing power,” says Lance Gatling, author of The Kan or Chronicles , book (to be published soon) about Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo .
Image of a samurai in her armor, in Japan, in 1882. “It was one of the first western books on Japanese culture and it sold a lot “.
Gatling found a copy of Bushido in the Arkansas Public Library, in the United States, which had been printed in 1900, just four years after its initial publication.
The appeal of bushido as a moral code even caught the attention of the then President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, who was an enthusiastic judo practitioner.
Japan through Einstein’s eyes: 6 reflections (and one is on happiness) In a letter to diplomat and politician Kentaro Kaneko, dated 13 April 1904, Roosevelt wrote: “ I was very impressed the small volume about Bushido . I have learned quite a bit from what I have read about the fine samurai spirit. ”
Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scouts , wrote that one of the goals of the Boy Scouts’ plan was “to revive some of the standards of the gentlemen of yore, which contributed as much to the moral tone of our race as … Bushido … has done and continues to do so for Japan.”
Inaccurate In contrast to the enthusiastic reception it received abroad, the work was widely criticized in Japan for being inaccurate, according to Oleg Benesch, author of the book Inventing the Way of the Samurai.
Nitobe’s work helped to idealize the image of the samurai outside of Japan. However, his international success was celebrated in Japan, and by planting the idea that the moral rectitude of Japan gave him the right to join the privileged group of western colonial nations, Nitobe’s book “made the Japanese believe that they were all inheritors of higher values and that they had to make sure to correct evil,” Hotta noted.
“It was important to Japan’s self-image.”
After WWII, the bushido , which was associated with Japan’s militarism, became “a target of popular resentment” within Japan, Benesch wrote.
More recently, the bushido has seen renewed interest and Nitobe’s book gained international recognition again in the decade of 1980, when the world sought to understand the source of the rapid economic and technological advances of modern Japan.
Ikigai: the Japanese word that can hold the key to happiness in life and at work Read Teng-hui, the recently deceased former president of Taiwan, reminded the Japanese public of the importance of a of the book in a memory of 2006, in which he detailed how that book influenced his own life and thinking.
However, aside from those intermittent bursts of interest , Nitobe and his former best-seller are not as well-known names in Japan.
Even those who remember Nitobe identify him more often as the face of the 5 bill. 000 yen that circulated between 1984 and 2004.
Confucianism Many of the values that he identified as the teachings of bushido : Courtesy towards others, great respect for personal honor, self-control , and loyalty to a higher authority remain central to the Japanese view of good behavior.
The Japanese soccer team is called: “Blue Samurai”. The bushido is widely invoked in sports, with the Japanese national baseball team nicknamed “Samurai Japan” and the men’s national soccer team called “Samurai Blue.”
But The prevalence of bushido values in Japanese society is a reflection of the continuing influence of Confucianism rather than Nitobe’s book, according to Yukiko Yuasa, assistant professor from Teikyō Heisei University in Tokyo.
Why the legacy of Confucius has been so influential for millennia “Many of the teachings that appear in Nitobe’s book are part of Japanese behavior, so people don’t have to read the book to learn about those values,” he says.
However, Nitobe’s book continues to inform the world of the values that remain fundamental to Japanese society.
Therefore, it can be expected that “Bushido: the Soul of Japan ”will help the world understand Japanese culture for many years to come.
This article was originally published in English on The BBC Collection and you can read here
Now you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss our best content.
Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!