Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a highly respected samurai who served in the Nabeshima clan, whose leader was Nabeshima Mitsushige, of whom he speaks in the work that has been studied. The term samurai comes from an old Japanese verb that means “the one who serves”, in this order of things, the samurai are then those warriors who serve the chief of a certain clan, an idea that Tsunetomo will repeatedly emphasize throughout his work. , Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai, divided into 12 chapters of which a summary is made later.
The work was dictated by Tsunetomo to one of his apprentices while he was retired in a monastery after the death in the year 1700 of his boss, Nabeshima Mitsushige, who prohibited “seppuku” (suicide consisting of the insertion of the samurai’s own sword in the womb in order to die with honor) in 1660, preventing his servants from carrying out this practice after his death.
The Hagakure (term that means “hidden among the leaves” or “fallen leaves”) was written between the years 1710 and 1717, during the government of the “shogunate” of the Tokugawa, which began after the battle of Sekigahara and lasted until the year 1868 , when the Meiji regain power taking advantage of the economic and social crisis. This shogunate was the last military shogunate of the three that existed (the previous two were the Kamakura shogunate and the Ashikaga shogunate); initiated by Ieyasu Tokugawa, a historical figure in Japan, born in 1542 in a time of instability due to civil war, he was educated at court, and over time, after allying with his territorial neighbor, he achieved great power and influence; the shogunate had the military and political power of the country and carried out various reforms and measures during the more than 200 years they were in power. Some of these measures included the division of society into classes, the unification of the country after the war, and the adoption of xenophobic policies (after Ieyasu’s death) that would end with the expulsion of foreigners, revulsion for “what is outside” and the closing of the country in front of the world.
The samurai, before the arrival of the Tokugawa shogunate, controlled small estates, but given the difficulty of maintaining these territories and protecting them, they decided to swear allegiance to different “daimyos” who did have the resources to protect the land. After the unification of 1600, many samurai forgot these lands and settled in cities where they had the right to keep their two swords, although they did not use them too much because a large part of them were removed from military activity, assigning them different positions. in the public administration becoming part of the bureaucracy, or even leaving them without a job (although in either case, the samurai received an annual salary for having been landowners).
During this shogunate the samurai will change radically, something that the author of the studied work harshly criticizes throughout the story. “Private revenges of honor or loyalty were harshly punished in favor of a larger concept of social order” (Gordon, Andrew, A modern history of Japan: From Tokugawa times to the present, Oxford University Press (2003), p. fifteen). As previously mentioned, a large number of samurai became bureaucrats, and to be part of the bureaucracy, they had to work and perfect their calligraphy, which they had begun to cultivate after abandoning arms, and become literate. All this led to a progressive disappearance of the well-known samurai caste: “during the Tokugawa era, barely 6% or 7% of the population was from samurai families” (Gordon, Andrew, A modern history of Japan: From Tokugawa times to the present, Oxford University Press (2003), p. fifteen).
The book
The Hagakure collects a series of ideas of Tsunetomo influenced by Confucianism, such as the ideas of honor, respect and loyalty; on the other hand, he shows us the ideas of a person whom he quotes frequently and who is of great importance, Yamamoto Jin’emon, whose teachings he exposes. In addition, in several chapters, he tells us stories related to people from his clan and with people he had heard of, such as Mr. Naoshige, Nabeshima Tadanao, Mr. Takanobu or Narutomi Hyogo, characters whose names give rise to the different chapters that we find in the work studied. Likewise, as the work unfolds, he uses these stories to show his opinion and give, at certain moments, some advice directed above all to those servants who want to serve their masters in an impeccable manner, thus the most relevant advice that gives to the servants is that they always give their lives for their master, but first meditate and internalize the idea of death, since one, to be a good servant, must have assumed this reality; He also gives other advice related to respect for deities and parents, and compassion when correcting a person of equal or higher rank, first showing the guidelines to follow in these cases so as not to make enemies by ridiculing the person to which has been corrected.
In this order of things, we can then divide the work into three different parts: a first part that collects the first two chapters talking mainly about his ideas and his thought; a second, which includes from the third chapter to the eleventh, where he tells us certain stories related to different people; and a third and last part with which the work concludes emphasizing the importance of the study of history by the servants so that they can understand everything that their clan has gone through, the importance of the veneration of the gods themselves and of the ancestors themselves and their teachings, the need to understand that there must be a cohesion between the upper and lower classes for the survival of the clan and the great importance of being a servant of a lord, being a samurai and everything that entails. In this last chapter he also exposes his four particular vows: “never leave or leave the path of the samurai or bushido, be useful to the lord or chief, be faithful to parents, and show great compassion and act for the good of humanity. ”.
Confucianism
During the Asuka Period, the country opened its borders, assimilating the foreign Buddhist culture and with it other influential forms of thought in that geographical part of Asia such as Confucianism, used mainly in China, the main country from which they will acquire such thoughts as well as the writing.
Confucianism is a philosophical system that supports the idea of heaven and a creative engine (as Aristotle proposed and as is believed in Christianity, Islam…). It was the main thought of the Tang dynasty of China and this dynasty used this thought to make the most of human resources. Confucius believed that each person should do his best to get the most out of the role he has had to play in society. Confucianism promulgates seven moral values that are: fidelity, altruism, the feeling of belonging, emotional balance, respect for rituals, intelligence and prudence, and finally, love and respect for parents. In addition, it establishes certain relationships that are also discussed in the work, such as the relationship between the father and his son, the one between the lord and his servant or the one between the elderly and the young.
Some of the key ideas of Confucianism are justice, benevolence understood as “love for others” and filial love. Confucianism influenced through these ideas in what we know as the “Bushido” or “the way of the warrior”.
Bushido is an ethical code that many samurai followed incorruptibly. The seven values of “Bushido” are influenced by the ideas of both Confucianism that have already been discussed, as well as Buddhism, Zen and Shintoism. The seven values advocated by Bushido are the following: justice, honor, courage, benevolence, respect, honesty and loyalty.
These seven values are embodied with great forcefulness in the Hagakure, thus seeing the great influence of certain thoughts, especially Confucianism, on Tsunetomo. In the work, we find justice always related to the idea of honor, a samurai has to do justice when he or his lord has been defamed, to maintain honor then, either he commits “seppuku”, or he takes revenge; benevolence or compassion when speaking of language, on how to take care of it and not offend the people to whom one speaks to avoid making enemies, but at the same time be honest, since this is one of the seven values; the respect that is strongly linked to filial love, when he defends the importance of respect for parents; courage, when the author tells us that a good samurai should not fear losing his life for his lord, one should be brave and sacrifice himself for him in order to show his loyalty, another of the seven values of Bushido to which he gives special importance throughout the work.
An abysmal difference can be observed between what we know as philosophy and Eastern thought. Throughout history, most of Western philosophy has been based on the question of how to achieve happiness, on the eudemonic question. From the classical philosophers such as Aristotle (the first to speak on this subject in a substantial way) or those of the Hellenistic schools of philosophy such as the Cynic, Epicurean or Stoic. But no European philosopher or philosophical school spoke forcefully about how to act, that is, about the moral principles that people should follow, until the Enlightenment arrived. With the Enlightenment several philosophers propose different ethical models (not related to religion as it had happened during the Middle Ages); Rousseau will propose the way of acting in society through his “social contract”, Hume will speak of ethics and its relationship with causality; but perhaps the most historically important is Kant. Immanuel Kant proposed an ethical model based on his so-called “categorical imperatives”, which had a great impact on Western thought and were held in high esteem for years until Friedrich Nietzsche questioned everything that was established. And this thought had a greater impact in Europe than the thought of the bushidodue in part to the racist attitude of Europe and in part to the Eurocentric vision that ignored (and continues to ignore today) everything that was not non-Western, taking everything as if it were inferior thoughts or ideas.
Impact of the work and the thought it reflects; current thinking in Japan.
The Hagakureis a work that reaffirms the importance of the values of the bushidoas a means for a warrior to achieve perfection in his job or position, something that, as mentioned before, according to Confucius, all human beings should try to achieve (perfection in the social position that has been granted) . But, as the warrior caste they formed was disappearing…