The Hagakure and Understanding Its Deeper Meaning

[Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] if you were able to pluck a samurai out of time bring him before you and ask him what is being a samurai like what is expected of the ruling warrior class in feudal japan well your answer would vary largely because the identity and structure of what made up a samurai shifted over the entirety of the almost seven centuries they dominated japan sure there are commonalities courage selflessness wisdom etc but their mindset and how one must conduct themselves in society changed throughout not only the ages but also regionally across the country from a samurai during the edo period to a samurai during the kamakura period a samurai who was serving a clan in a rural environment versus a samurai who was serving a clan in a much more urban environment this of course works provincially a samurai located in say tosa versus a samurai located in yamashiro basically there is not one single way that the samurai thought and conducted themselves over the entirety of their existence think of it like this a soldier today would have plenty in common with a soldier from 200 years ago but it is easy to understand that they would have also had a lot of differences as well we consider them both soldiers but they are not the same this can also be said for the samurai which makes it a little tricky to get into their mindset and understand them on a deeper level yet if there is one window we can use to appear into the mindset of specific samurai it is of course through their own writings and records giving us a clearer idea of what they believed and how they lived their lives and when it comes to samurai writings there is often no more popular text than yamamoto sunitomo's hagakure there is also miyamoto musashi's famous book of five rings which i will get to in a separate video but for this one we will be examining the hagakure which is easily one of the most complete deep dives into the brain of a samurai it is one of the clearest depictions of two separate ideas of what samurai were being that it was written in the early edo period a time of great peace that directly followed the sengoku jidai japan's greatest age of war tsunetomo's writing reflects this heavily showcasing the samurai class facing an identity crisis as the battle-hardened warrior society had transitioned into an age of peace where many began to lose their sense of what it meant to be a samurai in the first place so with that said let us dive into the hagakure and understand what it can teach us but also let us dispel myths about it as well so that we can form a clearer idea of what it really is and what it represents yamamoto tsunatomo was born in 1659 and was a samurai of the nabeshima clan of hisan province a family that had risen to prominence in the later years of the sengokuchi dai under the stalwart leadership of nabeshima naoshige it would be naoshige's grandson and third daimyo of the nabeshima clan nabeshima mitsushige that tsune tomo would come to serve faithfully throughout his life he proved to be a great man of literature who devoted his time to being a former clan librarian later even being summoned to ido and kyoto where he handled his lord mitsushige's books however his lord eventually came to die in the year 1700 being that the practice of junshi committing sipuku to follow one's lord into death had been prohibited by the tokugawa shogunate in 1663 sunitomo instead opted to shave his head and live out the remainder of his years as a monk in seclusion mourning the loss of his lord it was here living out his twilight years that he put all of his knowledge and wisdom he had gained from his life of service and reading of literature into various writings which later after his death would end up being brought together into a 12-part compilation that became known as the hakakure meaning hidden among the leaves these writings were meant to form a conception of how to think and act like a samurai not just living in the ero period but also specifically as a samurai of the nabeshima clan in fact he found it important that his work reflect that his thoughts were largely the mindset of a samurai from the nabeshima clan and not just anyone it is obvious that first and foremost he intended his writings to be read by future generations of nabeshima samurai which is further significant to him because he firmly believed that much of the broader teachings many samurai had been taught were secondary to the local customs of one's own clan specifically tsune tomo states shakyamuni confucius kusanoki no masashige and takera shingen never serve the house of ryazoji nabeshima as retainers so they do not fit in with the customs and style of our house this illustrates that tsunetomo firmly believed that the traditions of one's own clan far outweighed the teachings of those who were foreign to your house later even reinforcing this idea that one should take pride in their heritage and remain true to their roots never conforming to the ways of other places although he does state that once one fully understands the way of one's own house that then they should consider themselves free to study the ways and teachings of others who are not from your domain tsunitomo's belief in this mindset is evident throughout the hagakure being that many of its passages are stories from the history of the clan and the region each accompanied by a message and sometimes metaphor attached to them aimed at helping the reader learn lessons about what it means to be a dutiful honor bound samurai with a heavy emphasis on being the best most diligent and loyal samurai you can be for your lord but it is important to note that these stories are done in two different ways largely through stories of events during the peaceful idol period when either mitsushige or his father katsushige were heads of the nabeshima clan the other way is stories from the life of naoshige during the late years of the sengokujidai and it is here we begin to see traces of one of the more dominant concepts in the book the differentiation between the modern samurai living lives of peace during the edo period and samurai of over 100 years prior who had endured japan's most brutal age of war and it is the samurai of the singoku period that tsunetomo believes had superior spirit when compared to the weak-willed generation of samurai living in his own time in fact tsunitomo goes great length to describe just how much the samurai of the edo period have fallen away from their warrior role and have become more and more feminine it was the valorous samurai of the single kujidai that built tsunetomo's modern japan and it is obvious he looks up to them the most an example of this is in his continued praise for now shige at one point stating lords sought out retainers who knew how to be of use and the whole house cohered together the hardships that lord naoshige endured to achieve this were more than words can describe there were many times when he got himself covered with blood and many times when he prepared himself to commit sepuku but his fortune was strong and he was able to keep the house going to tsunatomo it is this resolute attitude and willingness to give up one's life at a moment's notice that he believes is being lost as the idol period goes on this same concept gets commented on time and time again throughout the hakakure and in one of the most interesting occurrences he does so regarding the tale of the 47 ronin i'm not going to go into detail here regarding what the story is if you do not know it but what is important to know is that tsunetomo believed revenge to be a very noble and just action in aims to save face and uphold one's honor however he thinks that if revenge is to mean anything at all it must be carried out immediately and that waiting to act will in turn only hurt one's reputation his belief is that a true samurai should act with revenge immediately and without concern for one's own well-being and in that he criticizes the actions of the 47 ronin who took their time with their own revenge but this is only an element of how he considers a samurai's mindset should be from time to time he does in fact reference the idea of bushido the way of the warrior which he says that all samurai should strive to follow even in an age of peace of course bushido was an informal idea the concept existed but it was really more of an overarching term that consisted of many values that samurai already were thought to live by it wasn't this official code that many today like to believe it was rather when tsunetomo references bushido he does it in a callback to the warrior lifestyle the samurai should continue to live by even in this age of peace this was something that was seen to have been done time and time again throughout the idol period as many samurai like tsunetomo tried desperately to cling to their outdated warrior role and use nostalgic callbacks to a bygone age of war in particular he uses the idea of bushido to showcase how the stern level-headed and dutiful mind of a samurai can continue to serve faithfully and with eagerness even in an age without conflict for the most part this is what the hagakure is lessons from the past largely within but also from outside the nabeshima domain along with other common ideas of the role samurai should strive to fit into during this period of unprecedented peace tsunatomo wanted his writing to help influence future generations and help in the preservation of what a samurai's mindset should really be but believe it or not his writings went largely without much attention for many years taking a long time before they were actually published and even then being mostly ignored until the rise of imperial japan where it finally caught the attention of militarists who saw it as a prime piece of literature that instilled a great sense of duty and honor sunitomo's lessons and ideas on being ready to give up one's life at a moment's notice and act with conviction in pursuit of upholding faithfulness to one's lord found new homes in the minds of japanese soldiers and importantly kamikaze pilots following the end of the war it is said that the japanese may have even tried to hide the book lest it be discovered and banned by the united states during their occupation of japan as the u.s may have found and considered it to be a piece of nationalist propaganda of course later it would also come to heavily influence the nationalist author and poet yukio mishima who would attempt a military coup to restore the emperor and destroy japan's new constitution in 1970 which would in the end result in his suicide by to this day the hakakure has continued to be viewed in japan as one of the most significant and cherished literary works throughout the history of the country being a fascinating portal into the mind of a samurai trying to teach others how to uphold their own warrior identity in a warless age and it is important to remember that this was in large part made up of tsunetomo's own opinions his idea of what a samurai from hisane province should be in the idol period may differ heavily from what a samurai across the country in say kai province may think let alone samurai in larger cities such as ido or osaka and that concept is reinforced by his own words when he explicitly states that this is a work made up by and mostly for samurai of the nabeshima clan so often do we see the hakakure being called the book of the samurai the art of the samurai the code of the samurai or really anything else that tries to prop it up as this definitive idea of what a samurai was or how to be one in reality it is none of those things it is the singular viewpoint of yamamoto tsunetomo a samurai of the nabeshima clan living in the ido period although it is a collection of his own experiences stories he was told and things he had read he uses these all to help reinforce his own opinions he had formulated using them to help illustrate what he thinks a samurai's mindset should be and how a samurai should act and he did this largely to just perhaps help future generations of the clan and even though it is full of great wisdom philosophy and insight we can't necessarily say that it was how all summer i thought as i've tried to explain many times throughout my videos the mindset of the samurai continued to shift and change over the roughly seven centuries they ruled japan tunitomo's ideas surely would have differed from that of a samurai 300 years prior let alone just a hundred years after his death the samurai evolved over time not only in how they fought but also their customs and culture what they considered honorable and dishonorable everything about their mindset shifted over the ages sure there were always commonalities things valued that were maintained throughout all centuries of samurai authority but it is impossible to say that all samarai were the same specifically when you are comparing samurai who had only known war to samurai who had only known peace and that is the truth which is the deeper underlying message ingrained within tsunetomo's writings with that said the hagakure is fascinating and i do encourage everyone who has not already read it to go out and read it there is so much great wisdom knowledge and philosophy to be found within all i can say however is that when you do read it approach it with the understanding of yamamoto to netomo's mindset a samurai fighting to maintain his identity in an ever-changing japan thank you for watching and don't forget to like subscribe and ring that notification bell if you enjoyed this video and found it to be most interesting [Music]

Channel: The Shogunate

Views: 50,608

Keywords: Samurai, Japan, Hagakure, philosophy, spiritual, review, literature, writing, History, Education, Bushido, Katana, Honor, lifestyle, Mind, mindset, peace, teach, shogun, Shogunate

Id: lB28xJC0E1w

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021