Legends of the Samurai

By Hiroaki Sato

This authoritative history of Japan’s elite warrior class separates fact from myth as it chronicles centuries of samurai combat, culture, and legend.

In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato examines the history of these medieval Japanese warriors, as well as the many long-standing myths that surround them. In doing so, he presents an authentic and revealing picture of these men and their world. Sato’s masterful translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports, and arguments are accompanied by insightful commentary.

With incisive historical research, this volume chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai's historical origins to his rise to political power. A fascinating look at Japanese history as seen through the evolution of the samurai, Legends of the Samurai stands as the ultimate authority on its subject.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468301373

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

A samurai with a deep, wide-brimmed hat is walking through an apparently deserted field. Suddenly, more than a dozen bandits with drawn swords spring out of the surrounding grass, encircle him, and demand prompt surrender of his swords and other valuables, or else. The samurai indicates compliance and starts to take off his haori, the outer jacket, and the bandits relax a little. That instant he draws his sword and cuts down ten or so of them with lightning speed. The remaining few run away, screaming for their lives. The samurai takes out a tissue from his breast, wipes the blood off his sword, puts the sword back into its sheath, and resumes his walk as if nothing has happened.

Or–

A famous swordsman visits a daimyo at his mansion. A r nin, a master-less samurai, who happens to be staying there, is confident of his own swordsmanship; upon learning who the visitor is, he asks him to teach him some fighting techniques. Teaching is a euphemism for a serious match. The swordsman declines. But the daimyo shows interest, and at his urging the swordsman finally agrees to fight with wooden swords. Out in the garden the two men face each other and a moment later strike – with their wooden swords hitting each other’s body, apparently simultaneously.

The swordsman says, Did you get that?

The r nin says, It was a draw, looking exceedingly pleased that he’s had a draw with a famous swordsman.

But the swordsman calmly says, "No, I won."

Upset and angered, the r nin asks for a rematch. He gets it, and exactly the same thing happens. The two men’s blows appear simultaneous.

Exactly the same exchange occurs again: The r nin says it was a draw, and the swordsman says he won.

The r nin becomes outraged. And the daimyo shows greater interest, half disbelieving what the swordsman has said. The r nin now insists on another match – this time with real, steel swords. The swordsman declines but is again overruled by the daimyo. But as soon as the two men face each other, the fight is over–with the r nin keeling over, his head split in two. The swordsman walks up to the daimyo and shows that part of his body which the r nin’s sword seemed to have struck. Part of his outer jacket is slightly cut, but not the clothes underneath, let alone his flesh.

Such may be your images of the samurai: a fantastic killing machine or a preternatural user of the sword. They are, indeed, typical of the stories of samurai endlessly spun in modern Japan as well, albeit of a particular period. I cite them at the outset, however, to make two things clear.

First, this book, Legends of the Samurai, aims to show the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from a variety of angles, so it does more than assemble tales of samurai demonstrating their martial skills. Such tales, in fact, make up a minor portion of the volume, mostly collected in Part One.

Second, for such stories and some of the others, I have tried to select those versions given in the times as close to the actual incidents as possible, rather than modern retellings. Still, difficulties remain. Even if we are to lay aside the case of one mythical hero, Yamato Takeru,†1 the time gap is often great. For example, in recounting the story of Yorozu, † a would-be shield of the emperor, the compilers of the Nihon Shoki (History of Japan) were recalling, in 720, an incident of nearly 140 years earlier. There is also the urge, which seems to exist in every age, to turn a man or his actions into a legend, either to fulfill narrative convention or out of the weakness to yield to fantasy. This may at times obscure what really happened and how contemporaries viewed it.

The two vignettes cited above, both concerning the swordsman Yagy J b Mitsuyoshi (1607-1650), may illustrate the point. Mitsuyoshi’s reputation as a swashbuckler probably began to stir imaginations of the popular story-telling variety not long after his death, yet the stories are already clearly exaggerated. The modern fiction writer Kaionji Ch gor , while retelling the second anecdote in an essay entitled Heih sha (Martial-Arts Experts),2 makes an interesting case about swordsmen as killers. A swordsman during the Tokugawa Period (1603-1868), he says, had only four compelling reasons to be engaged in killing: when ordered by his lord, the shogun in particular, to kill a criminal or someone marked as a danger; for revenge; in a quarrel; and when he ran into a robber or bandit with murderous intent.

Of these situations, quarrels may not be worth our contemplation, Kaionji says. A good swordsman would have studiously avoided any argument that might lead to sword-brandishing. Most robbers and bandits were likely to be poor swordsmen, so that if a real swordsman ran into one or two of them, he would probably have subdued them without killing them. As for acts of vengeance, few great swordsmen are known to have been involved in them. Finally, government orders to kill someone were issued to swordsmen only in the early part of the Tokugawa Period. This explains why most of the famous swordsmen are known not to have killed a single person, Kaionji concludes.3

THE BOW BEFORE THE SWORD

I started this Introduction with anecdotes of a swordsman, but the swordsman is not synonymous with the samurai. The sword was a vital weapon for him from the very beginning, of course. Yet, until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when foot soldiers began to eclipse horsemen in battles and swordsmanship began to be pursued as a skill, the bow and arrow were the samurai’s primary weapon. In a telling episode in Heike Monogatari (The Tale of the Heike), Japan’s greatest military narrative that took its final shape in the fourteenth century, Commander in Chief Minamoto no Kur Yoshitsune† (1159-89), during the shore battle at Yashima in early 1185, drops his bow in the water and struggles to retrieve it even as the enemy soldiers on the boats try to strike him off his horse and his own men urge him to abandon it. When he finally retrieves it and returns to the beach, some veteran warriors openly complain:

That was a terrible thing to do, sir. Your bow may be worth a thousand, even ten thousands of gold, but how could it be worth risking your life?

It isn’t that I didn’t want to lose the bow itself, Yoshitsune replied. If my bow were like my uncle Tametomo’s and required two or three men for the stringing, I even might have deliberately dropped it for the enemy to take. But mine is weak and feeble. If the enemy had taken it, he would have jeered at me, saying, ‘See, this is Minamoto General Kur Yoshitsune’s bow!’ I wouldn’t have liked that. That’s why I risked my life to get it back.

In H gen Monogatari (The Tale of the H gen Era), an account of a military clash in 1156, Yoshitsune’s uncle, Tametomo (1139-70), is depicted as a bowman so powerful that after his capture his arms were dislocated at the shoulders with a chisel, lest he use his bow again. Indeed, bowman (yumitori) continued to be used as an honorary title for a distinguished warrior long after the sword superseded the bow. The warlord Imagawa Yoshimoto† (1519-60), who was called The Number One Bowman of the Eastern Sea, is one such example.

THE SAMURAI AND HIS ORIGINS

The word samurai derives from the verb saburau, to wait on, serve, and in an early legal usage it meant a personal attendant. It isn’t clear exactly when its meaning narrowed to designate mainly an armed attendant, then a certain type of warrior. Still, by emphasizing the original meaning of attendant or servant, one can note the singular fate of the samurai as warrior: Even after he became the de facto ruler of Japan in the twelfth century, de jure he remained subordinate to the supreme civilian, the emperor. The highest position he could aspire to, sei-i tai-sh gun, commander in chief to subjugate the barbarians, or shogun, was indeed technically no more than the emperor’s military deputy and an emergency position at that.

As in most countries, warriors had existed in Japan since time immemorial. But the type of warrior that would go on to found a government separate from the imperial court is thought to have come into being after the efforts to establish a centralized governing body were made in the seventh and eighth centuries and the governmental system of T’ang China was adopted.

One of the eight ministries set up in the process was Hy bu Sh , the Ministry of Military Affairs. Copying the Chinese example, a great many local military units were also created. Unlike China, however, Japan, far smaller and a congregation of islands, had only a few groups that were potentially threatening to the central government. At the same time, the burden imposed on anyone drafted was considerable. He was unable to engage in productive activity during his service. The soldierly gear specified by law to be acquired and carried by each man at his own expense, of course, made a long list. One man taken, one household lost was the saying.

In time the numbers of defense outposts and the soldiers manning them were reduced, with the men relieved of duty allowed to return to farming. In their place men from relatively well-to-do families, who were adept at using bows and riding horses, were selected. These men were each provided by the government with two footmen and adequate provisions, and required to hone their martial skills whenever possible. Although there were more institutional changes made along the way, these gentleman-soldiers, so to speak, are said to have become the main ancestors of the samurai warriors.

By the tenth century some gentleman-soldiers had formed near-autonomous local groups. Several won notoriety as outlaws, one, Taira no Masakado (d. 940), going so far as to declare himself Emperor. Some others–such as Minamoto no Mitsunaka† (913-997), whose conversion to Buddhism is described with a comic touch elsewhere in this book–created their own spheres of influence and wealth but maintained close ties with the central government, often serving as provincial governors. In either case, they were on the whole centrally oriented. Masakado turned against the imperial court and established his own, it is said, because he could not get a post he wanted in the imperial police as a means of furthering himself in the government. He was killed by warriors sent by the court.

As may be expected, within each such group close master-servant relationships developed. Protection of land holdings was a major factor. Equally important was the fierce loyalty born through shared experiences of life and death. Of special significance in this regard were the Former Nine-Year War (1051-62) and the Latter Three-Year War (1083-87), both fought to subjugate the powerful clans in the northern regions of Mutsu and Dewa. Mainly through these wars the Minamoto clan, also called Genji in Sinified form, consolidated its power and established itself as leader of the eastern region, the Kant . Through a series of similar though less spectacular achievements, the Taira clan, also called Heiji or Heike in Sinified form, would establish itself as the prevailing force in the western region, the Saigoku or Saikai. Both clans traced their origins to the imperial house.

THE ASCENDANCE OF THE SAMURAI

As noted, samurai status changed in the second half of the twelfth century. The change came in two stages.

First, in 1156, then in 1159, there were brief armed clashes in Kyoto, the seat of government. They were the direct results of power struggles within the imperial house. Both Minamoto and Taira warriors took part in them, with members of the clans divided in intermingling webs of alliances. In the end the Taira clan, led by Kiyomori (1118-81), emerged victorious, and the rival Minamoto clan was vanquished.

But the military outcome of the clashes was a lesser part of the story. In 1160, the year after the second conflict, Kiyomori was appointed sangi, imperial advisor, a position in the Great Council of State and the first such honor accorded to a warrior.

This had historic import: The admittance of a warrior to the highest circle of governance signaled the end of the status of the samurai as the court aristocrats’ mercenaries or, in Karl Friday’s catchy phrase, hired swords.4 Kiyomori would go on to become the prime minister in 1167 and wield enormous power in other ways as well.

The next stage of the shift in samurai status was the consequence of another military confrontation, again between the Minamoto and Taira clans, but this time prolonged and nationwide. In 1180 the Minamoto clan, led by Yoritomo† (1147-99), who was then in exile near Kamakura, raised an army against the Taira and defeated them in 1185. This war was also fought in the name of a variety of imperial orders and for court-mandated causes. But Yoritomo was different from Kiyomori. Kiyomori accumulated and exercised power at the center of the government. Yoritomo, in contrast, generally stayed aloof from imperial polity. It was toward the end of 1190, more than five years after the destruction of the Taira clan, that he visited Kyoto to have an audience with the emperor, Gotoba (1180-1239), and the retired emperor, Goshirakawa (1127-92). During the visit he was appointed gondainagon, acting major councilor, as well as taish , major captain–the highest rank–of the Inner Palace Guards, Right Division. But he resigned from both posts the next month. In 1192 he was appointed shogun but resigned from it two years later. Evidently his interest lay in creating, as he did, his own government.

The government he established would later be called the Kamakura Bakufu–bakufu being a word which originally meant the field headquarters of a general in war. Thereafter, until the imperial restoration in 1868, this form of government within the government would be the real power, with the court, in Kyoto, relegated to being the source of honors and the seat of national ceremony and ritual.5

THE AGE OF WARRING STATES

The Kamakura Bakufu lasted until 1333 when Emperor Godaigo† (1288-1339), advocating absolute imperial authority, briefly won the day. More than a century earlier, in 1220, the feisty Emperor Gotoba had entertained a similar notion and raised an army against Kamakura, but his troops were trounced and he was exiled. Godaigo was luckier. Though arrested and exiled at the early stage of his attempt to regain his authority, he was able to return from exile, destroy the Kamakura government, and become, rightfully, the Supreme One. But his mismanagement-in particular his rewarding court nobles far more sumptuously than warriors-bred discontent in no time. Ashikaga Takauj† (1305-58), who had turned traitor to the Kamakura and joined Godaigo’s cause, soon rebelled. In a series of battles, he defeated Godaigo’s commanders, among them the ablest and the most dedicated soldier Kusunoki Masashige† (1294-1336). He elected a man of his choice emperor and forced Godaigo to surrender the imperial symbols, the three divine treasures: mirror, sword, and jewel. In 1338 he had himself appointed shogun.

The shogunate started by Takauji was headquartered in Kyoto, and continued for fifteen generations, until the time of Yoshiaki (1537-97). But from start to end this administration was wracked by dissension and revolts. Three main reasons may be advanced for this.

For one, Godaigo, not exiled the second time but allowed to escape, established his own court in Yoshino, in present-day Nara. This Southern court, which existed in parallel with the Northern court, in Kyoto, until 1392, helped fuel the schisms in and outside the Ashikaga Shogunate, not only during its existence but for a long time after its demise as well. For another, the placement, in Kamakura, of the shogunate deputy for the Eastern region, called the Kant kub , created similar problems: It encouraged suspicions, invited rivalries, and promoted shifting allegiances. Finally, the organization of the central administration emphasized deputization and group decision-making. Such an arrangement might work if the leader had firm authority or economic backing. Ashikaga shoguns often lacked both.

The decade-long civil strife called the nin War (1467-77) was touched off when the eighth shogun, Yoshimasa (1435-90), disagreed with his wife, Hino Tomiko (1440-96), on his successor and the several clans designated to serve as shogunate deputies took strong partisan positions. The war dragged most of the governors and other local men of power into taking sides with one or the other of the two antagonists at the center, but it was only the first clear breakdown of the Ashikaga shogunate. By strengthening already manifest local assertiveness and independence, it directly led to the second, larger round of chaos: Japan’s sengoku jidai, the age of warring states, when men with means or talent openly fought among themselves for control or expansion of territory.

Well over a century of battles for local hegemony tore Japan. Brutalities perpetrated during the period were astonishing at times, no doubt. At the same time, however, the country remained on the whole fluid and open, rather than static and closed, and occasionally produced unconventional, rationalist attitudes. Asakura Takakage (also Toshikage: 1426-82), a small landowner-samurai who became the governor of a domain and who is therefore regarded as a forerunner of the age of warring states, left a house law. Here are some of its articles:

Cited in full elsewhere in this book are similar but somewhat more down-to-earth house lessons left by H j S un† (1432-1519). S un was not unlike Takakage: Originally a r nin, he rose to become an illustrious warlord.

THE SAMURAI UNDER THE TOKUGAWA

Chaos eventually seeks unity. With as many as 150 warlords in place by the mid-sixteenth century, the desire to become the overlord of them all was inevitable. Oda Nobunaga† (1534-82) was the first to pursue the desire in earnest and achieve notable success. When he was assassinated in the midst of his work, one of his generals, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98), took over and completed the task. Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), one of Hideyoshi’s five commissioners at his death, made the unification his own by, among other things, having himself appointed shogun and founding his bakufu in Edo, present-day Tokyo, in 1603.

The shogunate that Ieyasu founded lasted for a quarter of a millennium, the longest of the three military governments. The system collapsed in the end as internal economic stresses mounted and foreign pressures to break its isolationist policy, adopted early in the seventeenth century, proved impossible to resist. Nonetheless, the period is distinguished by a singular lack of military strife. Two administrative measures helped achieve this peace: hostage-taking on a vast scale and codification of hierarchy and behavior.

The hostage-taking system, called sankin k tai, serving the lord in shifts, required daimyo–lords with holdings or annual revenues of 10,000 koku or about 50,000 bushels of rice or more–and Tokugawa vassals with the rank of hatamoto, aide-de-camp, to spend every other year or half of each year in Edo, under the direct supervision of the central government. Asano Naganori† (1667-1701) was fulfilling his Edo-residence requirement when he acted in a manner that would touch off what was to become the most famous vendetta in Japanese history. (It may be added, as a reminder of the status of the imperial court at the time, that the incident occurred while Naganori was a member of the committee to receive the purely ceremonial annual messengers from Kyoto.)

The division of the entire population into four classes–samurai, farmers, craftsmen, and merchants, in that order–and the detailed ranking, set and made largely hereditary within the samurai class, was not always enforced as rigidly as is often assumed. The merchants, the lowest rung of the ladder, in no time took the upper hand of the samurai, the highest, in economic life. Within the samurai class, too, there was a good deal of freedom, as witness Arai Hakuseki† (1657-1725): A man from a samurai family working for a small local lord, he rose to the exalted position of shogunate counselor. Still, the class system and the hereditary ranking arrangements blocked social mobility and, shall we say, unrest, to a remarkable degree.

The lack of military action came with the creation of civilian bureaucracies, and both peace and civilian life forced the samurai to justify himself as warrior. The Confucian scholar Nakae T ju (1608-48) made an early attempt to provide the samurai with philosophical underpinnings for his existence. In his treatise Okina Mond (Questions and Answers with an Old Man), he has two imaginary men engage in the following Socratic discourse:

Someone asked: They often say that literary and martial skills are like the two wheels of a cart, the two wings of a bird. Does this mean that ‘literary’ and ‘martial’ are two different things? How do you define ‘literary’ and ‘martial’ in this context?

The Master replied: "Ordinary people have a great misunderstanding about ‘literary’ and ‘martial.’ By ‘literary’ they mean the ability to compose poems in Japanese and make verses in Chinese, the ability to write well, and being mild and delicate in temperament, whereas by ‘martial’ they mean training in and knowledge of the bow and horse, martial arts, and military strategy, and being rough and stern in temperament. They seem right, but they are utterly wrong.

"By nature, literary and martial skills are a single virtue, and they are not separate from each other. Just as the creation of heaven and earth, completed in a single breath, has two elements of yin and yang, so human nature, made of a single virtue, has two elements of ‘literary’ and ‘martial.’ This means that having literary skills without having martial skills is not truly being literary, and having martial skills without having literary skills is not truly being martial. Just as yin is the root of yang, and yang the root of yin, literary skills are the root of martial skills, and martial skills the root of literary skills.

"To rule the nation well and correctly follow the five ethical principles,6 with heaven as warp and earth as woof, is the ‘literary’ task. If, however, there appears someone who is not afraid of heaven’s order and commits evil, cruel, immoral acts and thereby blocks the ‘literary’ path, it will be necessary to punish him with a penalty or raise an army against him and subjugate him, so that the nation may be governed in unified peace. That is the ‘martial’ task. This is why the Chinese character for bu (wu, martial, military) is made by combining the two characters of hoko (ko, halberd, weapons) and yamuru (chih, stop block).7

Arguments such as this, stressing the essentially civilian nature of military rule, were powerful and became the backbone of the Tokugawa government. This was not adequate for individual samurai, however, and they had to devise a code of conduct for themselves. The centuries-old notion that honor was of ultimate importance for the samurai and that to uphold this honor he had to be prepared to die was fine-tuned in the Edo Period. So was born the proposition enunciated by Yamamoto Tsunetomo† (1659-1721): The way of the warrior, I’ve found, is to die.

DECAPITATION AND DISEMBOWELMENT

Two practices are likely to attract the attention of anyone reading samurai accounts: beheading and disembowelment. The Japanese practice of decapitating an enemy soldier was probably copied from early warfare in China where a soldier was rewarded with promotion by a single rank for taking the head of a worthy enemy in battle. The expression shuky o ageru, take a head and raise a rank, derived from that reward system.

The origins of disembowelment remain obscure, though a number of instances are reported in China and elsewhere. One curious thing is that the earliest extant Japanese document referring to disembowelment attributes the act to a female deity. Explaining the name Harasaki (Belly-tearing) Swamp, the Harima no Kuni Fudoki (Topographical Reports on Harima Province), compiled in the early eighth century, says it is so called because the Deity of Hananami’s wife, the Deity of mi, pursuing her husband, reached this place, but finally becoming resentful and incensed, tore her own belly with a sword and submerged herself in the swamp.

Whether or not they knew that the first to perform the act was a female deity, by the eleventh century the samurai had adopted belly-cutting as a means of showing courage or avoiding the disgrace of submitting themselves to indignities in the hands of their enemies. The practice appears to have become widespread in the fourteenth century. Disembowelment was also used to follow one’s lord in death. In the seventeenth century the Tokugawa government took it up as a form of penalty for a disgraced samurai–a way for a samurai to honorably dispatch himself.

Slitting open one’s belly in itself seldom brings immediate death, and failure to die from self-inflicted wounds can be excruciating and messy. In recognition of this a prescription at one time dictated cutting the belly horizontally, then vertically, followed by a coup de grace: stabbing or cutting the neck. General Nogi Maresuke (1849-1912), who committed suicide on the day of the funeral of Emperor Meiji (1852-1912), is believed to have followed this procedure.

But to carry the three steps to the necessary end requires uncommon fortitude. This led to the arrangement of having or providing a second, kaishaku or kaishakunin, whose role is to cut the head off at one of two points.

In one approach the kaishaku performed decapitation at the very moment the condemned samurai, seated, craned his neck as he leaned forward to take the short sword or dirk placed on a ceremonial tray a few feet in front; this procedure did not entail actual disembowelment. In the most stylized form of this approach worked out during the Tokugawa period, a fan was often substituted for the short sword.

In the other approach the kaishaku waited until the man he was to help completed the first or the second of the three steps. This was the approach that a samurai named Taki Zenzabur chose for his own disembowelment on March 2, 1868, graphically described by Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843-1929), Secretary of the British Legation in Edo:

After we had sat quietly thus for about ten minutes footsteps were heard approaching along the verandah. The condemned man, a tall Japanese of gentleman-like bearing and aspect, entered on the left side, accompanied by his kai-shaku or best men, and followed by two others, apparently holding the same office. Taki was dressed in blue kami-shimo of hempen cloth; the kai-shaku wore war surcoats (jimbaori). Coming before the Japanese witnesses they prostrated themselves, the bow being returned, and then the same ceremony was exchanged with us. Then the condemned man was led to a red sheet of felt-cloth laid on the dais before the altar; on this he squatted, after performing two bows, one at a distance, the other close to the altar. With the calmest deliberation he took his seat on the red felt, choosing the position which would afford him the greatest convenience for falling forward. A man dressed in black with a light grey hempen mantle then brought in the dirk wrapped in paper on a small unpainted wooden stand, and with a bow placed it in front of him. He took it up in both hands, raised it to his forehead and laid it down again with a bow. This is the ordinary Japanese gesture of thankful reception of a gift. Then in a distinct voice, very much broken, not by fear or emotion, but as it seemed reluctance to acknowledge an act of which he was ashamed–declared that he alone was the person who on the fourth of February had outrageously at Kobe ordered fire to be opened on foreigners as they were trying to escape, that for having committed this offense he was going to rip up his bowels, and requested all present to be witnesses. He next divested himself of his upper garments by withdrawing his arms from the sleeves, the long ends of which he tucked under his legs to prevent his body from falling backward. The body was thus quite naked to below the navel. He then took the dirk in his right hand, grasping it just close to the point, and after stroking down the front of his chest and belly inserted the point as far down as possible and drew it across to the right side, the position of his clothes still fastened by the girth preventing our seeing the wound. Having done this he with great deliberation bent his body forward, throwing the head back so as to render the neck a fair object for the sword. The one kai-shaku who had accompanied him round the two rows of witnesses to make his bows to them, had been crouching on his left hand a little behind him with drawn sword poised in the air from the moment the operation commenced. He now sprang up suddenly and delivered a blow the sound of which was like thunder.8

It is said that the writer Mishima Yukio (1925-70) was determined to follow the same approach, but as he cut deeply into his belly his muscles tensed and he bucked up and his kaishaku was unable to cut his head off with a single stroke as planned.

THE SAMURAI AND POETRY

Ancient and classical tales of samurai, like some other Japanese narratives, are sprinkled with verses. Incorporating verses into narratives is a notable feature of Buddhist scriptures, and ancient Chinese historians and other writers liked to place them at strategic points of their stories. The chroniclers and storytellers of ancient Japan were familiar with both and may well have picked up the rhetorical device from them. In later periods, the ability to compose poems became part of a gentleman’s education, and the custom of writing a verse in preparation for death developed. As a result of all this, the relationship between the samurai and poetry writing became nearly inseparable.

In the seventh century–some scholars say even earlier–the two units of five and seven syllables became the basis of Japanese versification. At first, long verses were written by repeating the 5-7-syllable combination indefinitely, but the tanka, short song, made up of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, became the most widely used poetic form by the ninth century.

Not long after it became standard in versification, the tanka developed a tendency to break up into two hemistiches or sections of 5-7-5 and 7-7, and poets, in pairs, began to compose the two separately and link them, often reversing the order of the sections, composing 7-7 first, 5-7-5 second. So was born the poetic form of renga, linked verse. Later, the linking of the 5-7-5- and 7-7-combination would be repeated up to fifty times to make a sequence consisting of a hundred verse sections. Often as many as a dozen people took part in composing a single such sequence.

One way of understanding renga, in its minimal combination of two sections, might be to imagine yourself and a friend of yours composing something similar to a children’s riddle but in a poetically sophisticated form, say, a heroic couplet: One of you will say the first line, the other promptly completing the poem by saying the second. Puns are essential. Let us look at an example.

In the Heike Monogatari there is a story about the poet-warrior Minamoto no Yorimasa† (1104-80) shooting down a fantastic beast that comes to the roof of the Imperial Palace in a dark cloud and gives the emperor nightmares.9 Grateful for Yorimasa’s bowmanship, the emperor rewards him with a sword. Taking the sword to hand it over to Yorimasa, Minister of the Left Fujiwara no Yorinaga (1120-56) steps down the stairs. At that moment, up in the sky a cuckoo, a prized bird of summer, calls a couple of times. Thereupon the minister comes up with the following 5-7-5:

Hototogisu na o mo kumoi ni aguru kana

A cuckoo makes himself known above the clouds

Yorimasa, respectfully kneeling at the bottom of the staircase, responds with a 7-7:

yumiharizuki no iru ni makasete

as the crescent moon is eclipsed

If composed by one poet, this would be a tanka, and a pretty good one at that. The fact that two composed it turns it into a renga, and the use of puns makes it a worthy one. In Yorinaga’s hemistich, na o aguru means both to call and to establish one’s reputation, and kumoi, both clouds, where clouds are and the Imperial Palace. So the 5-7-5, though seemingly an impromptu description of a natural phenomenon, is also a great compliment paid to Yorimasa meaning, You, our trusty warrior, have established your reputation even with your Sovereign.

Similarly, in Yorimasa’s completing hemistich, yumiharizuki, moon arched like a bow, means the moon at any time between the new and full moons but, in particular, the crescent moon; it also puns on a drawn bow; iru means both to be eclipsed and to shoot; finally, makasete indicates the process of something happening as well as the state of no effort exerted. So the 7-7, again seemingly innocuous, is also a self-deprecating response meaning, Sir, I just drew the bow and shot, no more.

Composing longer renga sequences became the rage among samurai during the fourteenth century and, even though they came with complicated rules, their popularity continued throughout the age of warring states. The warlord Hosokawa Fujitaka (later Y sai: 1534-1610), who was a learned scholar and poet, recalled how his fellow warlord and poet Miyoshi Ch kei (1523-64) would act in a renga session:

[Ch kei] would sit like a statue, keeping a fan placed by his knees, slightly aslant. If it was extremely hot, he would very quietly pick up the fan with his right hand, open it deftly by four or five ribs with his left hand, and use it close to himself lest he make noise. He then would close it, again with his left hand, and place it back where it was. He would do it so precisely that the fan would not be off its original position even by the breadth of a single straw of the tatami.10

It may be amusing to note that Ch kei was one of the more notable hustlers among the warlords and did quite well as a result of his hustling.

This admiring portrayal of Ch kei tells us one important thing about classical verse composition in Japan. Renga, as a group game, placed the utmost value on the participants’ observance of protocol, etiquette, and rules. A large part of the enjoyment lay, apparently, in the sense of participation, both in a given group and in tradition as a whole. As far as we can tell from actual compositions, the content was of secondary value or it was of primary value only insofar as the poet was able to display his grasp of traditional dictates.

The sense of tradition was no less vital in the composition of renga’s parent, the 5-7-5-7-7-syllable tanka. I shall cite three examples.

In the seventh month of 1183, the Taira clan abandoned the capital and fled west in the face of a large Minamoto army advancing from the east, taking with them the young emperor, Antoku (1178-1185), and setting fire to houses in their retreat. However, one of the top Taira commanders, Tadanori (1144-1184), rode back to pay a farewell call to his teacher of poetry, Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114-1204). As the Heike Monogatari tells the story, when he was admitted into Shunzei’s room, he said:

"You have kindly guided me, sir, in the way of poetry for many years, and I have never regarded it as less than most important. Yet, for the last few years there has been turmoil in Kyoto, and the country has been torn, the whole affair involving the fate of our house. In consequence, even while I did not want to neglect my study, I was unable to come to you every time. His Majesty has already left the capital. Our clan is now doomed.

I had heard there would be an anthology and thought that should you extend your indulgence to me and include perhaps a single verse of mine, that would be the greatest honor of my lifetime. But soon the world was thrown into chaos, and when I learned the compilation was suspended, I was greatly aggrieved. When the world calms down, sir, you are likely to resume the compilation of the imperial anthology. Should you find anything appropriate in the scroll I’ve brought here with me and be indulgent enough to include just one verse, I would rejoice in my grave and would protect you into the distant future.

When he had left, he had taken with him a scroll in which he had assembled and written 100-odd poems that he thought were good from among the ones he had composed over the years. Now he took it out of the joining of the body plates of his armor and reverentially gave it to Lord Shunzei.

Shunzei, the supreme arbiter of poetry of his day, had indeed received, in the second month of the same year, a command from Retired Emperor Goshirakawa to compile the seventh imperial anthology of Japanese poetry. The Heike goes on to say that he did include one of Tadanori’s poems in Senzai Sh , the anthology he finished after the world calmed down, but listed it as poet unknown, because Tadanori, by then dead, was an enemy of the imperial court.11 So what was the poem like? Did it describe an aspect of a warrior’s life? Confusion of a powerful clan whose fortune was suddenly reversed? Sufferings of people caught in military strife? No. It went:

Sazanami ya Shiga no miyako wa arenishi o

mukashi nagara no yama-zakura kana

The capital of Shiga of rippling waves has turned wild

but mountain cherries remain as of old

In 667 Emperor Tenji (626-671) had moved the nation’s capital to tsu, in Shiga, on the west bank of Lake Biwa, but it was abandoned a year after his death. By Shunzei’s time Shiga had long become an utamakura, poetic place name, and the poem, composed on the set topic of Blossoms in My Home Town, is a typical one combining imagined nostalgia for an abandoned capital and the contrasting beauty of unchanging cherry blossoms. Indeed, it is safe to assume that none of the 100-odd poems Tadanori assembled with care went beyond the topics and diction deemed proper by the dictates of court poetry.

Another example comes from Hosokawa Fujitaka, and it may have been intended to be his farewell to the world:

Inishie mo ima mo kawaranu yo no naka

ni kokoro no tane o nokosu koto no ha

In the world that today remains unchanged from ancient times

leaves that are words retain seeds in the human heart

This Fujitaka wrote in 1600, when his castle was surrounded by an overwhelming enemy. He sent it to the imperial court, along with a record of what he had learned as secret transmissions about the first imperial anthology of Japanese poetry, Kokin Sh , compiled in the early tenth century. By that time the tradition of handing down certain interpretations of obscure words and phrases in the anthology had been firmly established, and no one at the time had a greater grasp of such transmissions than Fujitaka, warrior though he was. Emperor Goyozei (1571-1617), known for his keen interest in learning, was aggrieved at the prospect of losing such a scholar; he at once took steps to save the man, which in the end succeeded, even though Fujitaka initially refused to submit himself to such an unwarrior-like surrender.

As written in such circumstances, this poem has no hint of military overtones or the suggestion that it was composed by a samurai driven up against the wall. Instead, it is characterized by an obvious allusion to the Kokin Sh : the opening phrases, inishie mo ima mo, refer to the title of the anthology where kokin is a Sinified way of saying inishie, ancient times, and ima, now, while the second half of the poem directly refers to the opening sentence in the preface to the anthology: Japanese poetry has its seeds in the human heart, and takes form in the countless leaves that are words.

A far more recent tanka, written by a latter-day samurai, again shows the importance of poetic tradition. On March 17, 1945, Lieutenant General Kuribayashi Tadamichi, commander of the Japanese forces defending Iwo Jima, telegraphed three tanka to the General Headquarters before charging into the enemy with the 800 soldiers remaining under his command. This is one of the three:

Ada utade nobe ni wa kuchiji

ware wa mata natabi umarete hoko wo toramuzo

Foe unvanquished, I won’t perish in the field;

I’ll be born again, to take up the halberd seven more times!

The 70,000-man U.S. assault on Iwo Jima began on February 16. During the 36-day battle that followed, all but a thousand out of the 21,000 Japanese defenders of the island were killed, while the American forces suffered a total of 25,851 casualties, of whom 6,821 were killed, died of wounds, or were missing in action.12

General Kuribayashi’s verse alludes to the words of the warrior Kusunoki Masashige’s brother, Masasue, before the two stabbed each other to death: the words expressing the hope to be reborn seven times to avenge the emperor, which had long become a nationalist slogan.13 It may be said that the general’s sentiment, along with the poetic form and diction he chose, was hopelessly anachronistic: Just imagine all those modern weapons of destruction used in that battle, and he was talking about taking up a halberd! But there is no doubt that in the act of composing the poem, Kuribayashi was expressing his desire to be part of Japan’s age-old tradition.

I should also mention verse written in Chinese in accordance with Chinese prosody, called kanshi. My examples will be two of the better-known ones composed by Nogi Maresuke, a general mentioned earlier as having committed disembowelment on the day of an emperor’s funeral.

Nogi commanded an army in both the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). In both wars he was ordered to attack Lüshun, which, in those days, was called Port Arthur in the West. He wrote one of the two poems in early June 1904, when, leading the Third Army to Lüshun he passed through Nanshan, where a great battle had just been fought and Katsuyori, one of his two sons, had been killed. It reads:

Mountain and river, grass and tree, grow more barren;

for ten miles winds smell of blood in the fresh battlefield.

Conquering horses do not advance nor do men talk;

outside Jinzhou Castle, I stand in the setting sun.

When he wrote this poem Nogi had no way of knowing that he would shortly plunge into a prolonged series of savage battles. Even though in the war ten years earlier he had taken Luxu in a single day, subduing the Russian fortress at the same place would take him more than four months. In the end the Russian and Japanese armies threw a combined total of 145,000 soldiers into the battles, of whom 78,000 became casualties, 18,000 killed. Nogi wrote the following poem toward the end of 1905 as he and his army prepared to return to Japan.

Emperor’s army, a million, conquered the powerful foe;

field battles and fort assaults made mountains of corpses.

Ashamed–how can I face their fathers, grandfathers?

We triumph today, but how many return?14

TRANSLATION

A translator of old Japanese chronicles, tales, and records faces several vexing problems, most of which converge in a single question: whether to try to preserve the nuances of the original writings or ignore them for readability. I have elected to take the former course because my aim is to reproduce the original writings in English, rather than to retell them–unless of course the act of translation itself is thought to be the retelling process.

Among the more obvious problems are the old custom of one man changing his name several times in his lifetime, as happens, for example, with the warlords Takeda Shingen† (1521-73) and Uesugi Kenshin† (1530-78), and the custom of referring to a single man by changing official titles, as happens most notably with Minamoto no Kur Yoshitsune. Calling Shingen and Kenshin by their mature names throughout the English translation will misrepresent not only the original accounts used but also their lives, in which name-changes played significant roles. In a similar way, calling Yoshitsune uniformly by his name when he is referred to by changing titles will violate the delicate sense of development and change, thereby doing injustice to the remarkable military commander and those who meticulously tried to record his moves.

Though with no direct bearing on translation, two other aspects may prove rough going for some readers: the listing of names that occasionally appears and, related to it, assumption of knowledge on the reader’s part.

First, about name listing, it may well be remembered that for the warriors participation or nonparticipation in a given military action determined their reputation and rewards. This explains why old military chronicles and narratives accord as a matter of fact a prominent position to soroe, the lineup, of the participants. A prime example in Western literature is found in Book Two of the Iliad. In writing a biography of his former lord, Oda Nobunaga, ta Gy ichi (1527-1610?) even used a new paragraph when he listed more than a certain number of people who engaged in a military action.

Second, a vital part of any enumeration of names is the enumerator’s sure knowledge that someone who finds the listing of value will recognize some of the names listed and the context in which they appear or that the reader, at the least, will know a good deal about the principal figures in a