Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure
We’ve been looking the disorientation and foundationlessness in 19th Century Europe that followed from capitalism, the Enlightenment, modernity, globalization. Nietzsche thought this nihilism could be the start of an entirely new way of living, a post-human way of living, if only people realized that they had no foundation for their beliefs and way of life and gave themselves their own foundation through creative and critical thought about our values and purpose. Through the 19th and 20th Century, as people became more conscious of the opening of possibilities and their own agency in creating a new world and a new way of life, we see several broad political themes emerge across the globe. Centrists worked toward creating responsible institutions which included checks, balances, and safeguards, like democratic republics and welfare capitalism. Leftists looked at ways to radically reimagine how we live and form communities in the Communist and Anarchist movements through this period. The right wing tended instead to retreat into an imaginary past when nobody had to (or was able to) ask questions about how to live and what is good or bad, forming the basis for the fascist movements that surged during this period.
This week we’ll be looking at how the global crisis in meaning of the 19th and 20th Century created a vulnerable population that could be mobilized by totalitarian governments. To do so, we’ll be reading a philosophical text that supported the rise of Shōwa nationalism from the time of the Meiji Restoration into Hirohito Japan—although it was not intended to, and had in fact been written 200 years earlier!
Hagakure, “In the Shade of the Leaves,” was put together by Tashiro Tsuramoto around 1710 using the notes he had taken down from Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s comments on the way of a warrior (bushido). Yamamoto (1659–1720) was a samurai at a time when feudal Japanese traditions were beginning to lose their cultural strength, and we can see in his writing nostalgia for the past solidity of conviction and despair for the loss of center and direction following from social and cultural changes. When Yamamoto’s master, Mitsushige Nabeshima died in 1700, Yamamoto lamented that the ban on seppuku (ritual suicide) meant that he could not follow his master in death, and he chose instead to isolate himself and disappear from public life as the closest alternative available.
The nostalgic view of the true believer at the end of an era is likely to be an exaggerated and romanticized perspective, and I advise you not to take this text too seriously as representative of the commonly accepted views of 17th/18th Century Japan. Instead, I want to read this as a text about nostalgia for an idealized past that never really existed. We seek out such invented pasts at times of uncertainty and nihilism, and it is not accidental that Hagakure suddenly became a popular text centuries later. As you’ll see, the text outlines a way which provides a feeling of certainty, grounding, and peace that comes through obedience and cutting off thought rather than through the hard work of critical thought and self-reinvention. The feeling at the end is not much different from what our other authors have sought out, but it comes at an immense cost.
Hagakure first entered publication at the end of the 19th Century, in the Meiji era. After the 1868 coup that ended the Tokugawa shogunate (military dictatorship) restored Imperial rule, Japan went through a period of great change, during which Japan’s isolationist policies came to an end, and Japan went through industrialization and the adoption of a parliamentary constitution. Emperor Meiji was something of a figurehead, and the parliament had little power, so in spite of the trappings of change, this was also a time of militaristic consolidation of power, and the printing and popularization of Hagakure both met an appetite for an imagined idealized past full of certainty and stable values and also fit the political trend toward totalitarianism.
These trajectories continued into Imperial Japan’s involvement in WWII, and copies of Hagakure were carried by kamikaze pilots.
Supplementary/Alternate access
A PDF version can be downloaded here.
Yamamoto Reading+Response A
Read this selection and listen to the commentary when indicated by the black arrow on the side, then submit your Response.
Your Response should have three parts:
a. Words: Write down three words you learned (or learned more about) from the reading.
b. Ideas: Write down three ideas or concepts you learned about (or learned more about) from the reading
c. Prompt: Write a short response (100–200 words, minimum 100 words required) to the prompt in the reading.
Yamamoto Reading+Response B
Read this selection and listen to the commentary when indicated by the black arrow on the side, then submit your Response.
Your Response should have three parts:
a. Words: Write down three words you learned (or learned more about) from the reading.
b. Ideas: Write down three ideas or concepts you learned about (or learned more about) from the reading
c. Prompt: Write a short response (100–200 words, minimum 100 words required) to the prompt in the reading.
Yamamoto Activity
Narratives of conviction are dangerous and seductive, and the feeling of power, strength, and purpose can substitute for considered belief and even lead us astray from our own values. In a minimum of 400 words, identify and discuss passages in Hagekure that give you a feeling of strength or power. To what extent and in what way do they offer solutions to temptations or problems in your life that are unhealthy, problematic, or tend to diminish your autonomy and self-control, even though they might make you feel more powerful and more in control? How does this help you think about ways of thinking you need to avoid?
“USS BUNKER HILL hit by two Kamikazes” by Marion Doss is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0