Samurai: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Wert

Author:Michael Wert [Wert, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780190685096
Google: VuEsEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Japanese warlords brought back with them Korean slaves, especially artisans and intellectuals. Among them were potters who were forced to establish Korean ceramic workshops in Japan. In fact, Hideyoshi’s invasion was also called the “pottery war.” Why did daimyo want intellectuals and potters? What was the connection between warfare and culture?

Warrior “values”

From the beginning, elite warriors depended upon connections to Kyoto that required some degree of cultural literacy. A significant number of shoguns during the Kamakura era came from Kyoto noble families with no military identity as such. Warrior regimes in Kamakura and then in Kyoto, as well as small local governments, drew talent from middling noble families. Thus it should be no surprise that elite, literate warriors participated in and patronized art in its many forms—from art collecting and poetry writing to the funding of Buddhist temples, statues, and religious artwork. The city of Kamakura even had its own Zen Buddhist temple system that mirrored the one in Kyoto.

For warriors with court rank ambitions, writing was essential for interacting with elite nobility and clergy. But we should not think of poetry in the modern sense of the term—as a leisure activity, a pastime with no function beyond observations about contemporary society. Poetry in premodern Japan could be used to comment on current events, but more important, poetry demonstrated one’s knowledge of classical Chinese and Japanese literature. Good writing, in content and in form—handwriting mattered—was a means for noblemen in Kyoto to climb the career ladder. The monk Jien exchanged poetry with Yoritomo, which led to a mutually beneficial relationship; Jien needed to secure rights for his estate and Yoritomo wanted information from him. People also wrote poetry together as a social activity, linking one poem to another; an elite warrior could expose himself to public humiliation if he failed to write adequately.

As warriors took up permanent residence in Kyoto during the Muromachi period, they deferred to courtier sensibilities. They intensified the adoption of aristocratic culture into their own families, using Chinese learning when creating their own clan rules, and forming a parallel set of warrior etiquette that mimicked aristocratic traditions. In other words, nascent warrior culture and identity had its roots in noble culture.

One text that imparts what it meant to be a proper warrior is a letter purportedly written during the early fifteenth century by a military governor, Imagawa Ryōshun, to his son. It emphasizes the importance of nonmilitary learning, respect for the clan over the individual, and the way to manage a clan and its properties. The text was not written in a historical vacuum; some themes had appeared in earlier warrior texts for elites. Buddhist notions of the respect for life and Confucian ideas about proper behavior when interacting with others punctuate Imagawa’s letter, as they did many early East Asian writings. The Imagawa “house code” includes these precepts:

• As you do not understand the arts of peace, your skill in the arts of war will not, in the end, achieve victory.

• You like to roam about, hawking and cormorant-fishing, relishing the purposeless taking of life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.