The Real Rules for Samurai
This lecture offers a critical look at the idea of “bushido”—the so-called way of the Japanese warrior—as it has come to be known in the West. Although it was very much a real and influential concept, it had almost nothing to do with the actual samurai warriors of Japan’s militant past. “Bushido” was actually an idea created in the modern period by Nitobe Inazō, born to promote an idealized view of Japan’s history to the West and to its own people. In lieu of “bushido,” it offers a survey of some of the “real” rules for the Japanese warrior classes at the height of their age of war: the house codes of the Sengoku era.
Sources quoted and consulted in preparing this lecture, and suggested further reading:
Brown, Roger H. “Yasuoka Masahiro’s ‘New Discourse on Bushidō Philosophy’: Cultivating Samurai Spirit and Men of Character for Imperial Japan.” Social Science Japan Journal 16:1 (2013): 107-129.
Conlan, Thomas Donald. “The Nature of Warfare in Fourteenth-Century Japan: The Record of Nomoto Tomoyuki.” Journal of Japanese Studies 25: 2 (Summer 1999): 299-330.
Farris, William Wayne. Heavenly Warriors: The Evolution of Japan’s Military, 500-1300. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.
Friday, Karl F. “Bushidō or Bull? A Medieval Historian's Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition,” The History Teacher 27:3 (May 1994): 339-349.
Hurst, G. Cameron III. “Death, Honor, and Loyalty: The Bushidō Ideal,” Philosophy East and West 40:4 (Oct 1990): 511-527.
Mass, Jeffrey P. “The Origins of Kamakura Justice.” Journal of Japanese Studies 3:2 (Summer 1977): 299-322.
Nitobe, Inazo. Bushido, the Soul of Japan. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12096/...
Varley, Paul. Warriors of Japan as Portrayed in the War Tales. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994.
Wilson, William Ritchie. “The Way of the Bow and Arrow. The Japanese Warrior in Konjaku Monogatari.” Monumenta Nipponica 28:2 (Summer 1973): 177-233.
See also the associated lecture video, “The Historical Development of the Warrior Class in Japan: Samurai Across the Ages” and its source list, also on this channel.