Samurai by Michael Wert

Author:Michael Wert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

These precepts did not necessarily apply to lower-ranking warriors but to elite men like Imagawa. Only the upper echelons of the warrior community had access to an education that allowed them to read the Chinese classics (in fact, familiarity with Chinese philosophy can help the modern student of samurai history understand warrior ideals). During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, military governors and warlords used Imagawa’s letter in their own clans and adopted it to create similar teachings. The Imagawa letter reached the peak of its popularity during the Tokugawa period (1600–1868), an age of peace when warrior education focused on management and civil learning, not military skill.

Warrior thought is also reflected in the teachings of Hōjō Sōun, a fifteenth-century warrior loyal to the Imagawa clan during the Warring States era. He was not directly related to the Hōjō clan of the Kamakura period (1185–1333) but consciously adopted the surname in order to inherit their powerful legacy—warriors idealized the past. His teachings spread throughout all warrior ranks in the lands he controlled, including such aphorisms as these:

•Rise early in the morning. If you wake up late your servants will be negligent and they will be of no use to you. Your public and private affairs will go into disarray. Your lord will forsake you. Think carefully about this.

•Do not think that you should have fine swords and clothes like others have. Just be sure they do not appear slovenly; that’s enough. You’ll be ridiculed if you borrow what you don’t have or spend too much effort on such things.

•In seeking good friends, find those who are good at writing and learning in general. Bad friends to exclude are those who play go, shogi [a form of chess], the flute or the shakuhachi [an end-blown bamboo flute]. It is not a shame to be ignorant of those pursuits. These are simply ways to pass the idle time. The good and bad of a man is determined by the friends he keeps. [Then, quoting the Analects of Confucius,] “When three men walk together, among them, I have teachers. I choose to follow what is good about the good man, and learn to better myself from the bad man.”

•Of course you should know the ways of culture [bun] and war [bu], along with the military arts [literally, “bow and horse”]; there is no need to write more about this. From antiquity it has been the rule that civil culture is on the left and military learning is on the right; one must practice both.7

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