bowing to expediency, the leaders of the military class gradually acknowledged that every Japanese subject was heir to the tradition they had considered their own for so many centuries, and began to exhort their fellow countrymen to think of Japan as a nation of warriors. At the same time, they discovered new and effective ways of translating that tradition into political patterns of conduct, which the nation adopted and applied with irresistible zeal in such countries as Manchuria, China, Malaysia, and the Philippines. These patterns endured without serious challenge until the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945, when it became apparent that the defeat of the Japanese military effort had precipitated the collapse not only of a firm belief in a particular government policy, but actually of the entire moral universe of the Japanese nation. The identification between government policy, subject to the vagaries of political and military convenience, and the morality of the nation, which is of a more stable nature and has deeply rooted collective interests to promote and defend, had become so absolute in Japan that defeat on the battlefield left most Japanese “entirely disoriented” (Dore1, 162). It seemed incredible to them that such a fate could have befallen the heirs of a divine past, a nation tracing its origins back to the dawn of human history, or that the “way” (michi) of the race had not triumphed over all others, which, being foreign, had automatically been considered imperfect.
Today, surveys of many kinds—anthropological, sociological, political, and religious—have documented (and are continuing to follow) the astounding recovery of Japan from the disastrous effects of World War II. The positive side of their tradition helped the Japanese to “endure the unendurable” and to bravely face and survive the occupation, to close their depleted ranks and rebuild an industry in shambles, and to speedily reassume a position of prominence in the modern world. The military virtues of the past were applied to reconstruction with the intensity that had made the Japanese fearsome foes on the battlefield, making them, in turn, skillful and tireless competitors in world markets.
But the spirit of the bushi flickers restlessly in the dark recesses of the Japanese soul. Dore, in his study of city life in Japan, has noted in detail the tremendous difficulty encountered by the Japanese in attempting to shift their concept of morality and traditional values from the social ethic of the country, rooted in the feudal interpretation of reality as proposed and enforced by the bushi, to an individual morality based upon a personal interpretation of reality and a man’s individual responsibility within it. Even today, the life of a Japanese subject is dominated by society the way an enlisted man’s life is dominated by the army. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, the compactness of Japanese society, like the protective but monolithic embrace of a modern army (or of a military clan in days gone by), dictates from above and from without that which is to be believed, the ways in which relationships are to be structured, how individuals must behave in order to fulfill their obligations. Duties continue to be emphasized, while rights are muted and still seek concrete expression in new laws or customs and, above all, in a new spiritual conviction of the individual’s value and independence within the group, originating from deep within that individual’s being—a conviction which will sustain him when his group and its leaders, in their historical evolution, pass through the tragic crises which afflict all national groups. That spiritual certainty does not necessarily have to agree with the external dictates of the group, expressed in laws or customs, and may even be in opposition to pronouncements made in the name of the group by the individuals in power. In Japan, perhaps to a degree rarely encountered in other sophisticated cultures of the past or present, “morality is not summoned up from the depths of the individual” (Maruyama, 9), but is still to be sought elsewhere in society—thus being easily identified with and supplanted by external power. It must be added, in this context, however, that Japanese society is not (and has never been) alone in confronting this problem.
Classic tradition, hence the military tradition of the country, confronts the Japanese today. The artistic expressions of that tradition are quite revealing. The fearless retainer of a feudal lord, the much-heralded samurai, or the independent masterless warrior, the ronin, still cut their way through a maze of evil with slashing swords in kabuki and in countless adventure movies (chambara). Dore tells us that even today, in neighborhoods such as Shitayama-cho, salesmen appear in samurai garb and shout the virtue of their wares using the sharp jargon of the Tokugawa warriors. The martial pattern of the feudal tradition can still be detected by Western observers of the Japanese business world today in that particular relationship between the employer on one side, with his paternalistic but authoritarian attitude, and the employees in their orderly but feverishly dedicated ranks on the other. It is reflected in the formation of colossal industrial complexes which have elicited “both apprehension and envy” abroad, their combined power bearing a striking resemblance to the prewar cartels (zaibatsu). In this context, most analysts of Japanese industry, in fact, have come to realize that the element which worked exceedingly well for the Japanese was their time-honored “traditional approach” applied to industrial productivity. We are told by De Mente, on page 51 of the March-April 1970 issue of Worldwide Projects and Industry Planning, that surveys carried out by the Oriental Economist in 1968 and 1969 revealed that the largest corporations in Japan had never relinquished the traditional management system, “but had actually strengthened it over the past 10 years.” This system remains, in essence, that which it has been for centuries: a vertical clan system under the guidance of the patriarchal leader, geared to operate smoothly and efficiently for the welfare of the “clan.” This ever-present awareness of the past in all forms of Japanese life, according to Dore, “is not surprising in view of the recency of the feudal past contrasting so clearly with the whole tenor of modern urban life” (Dore1, 245).
This awareness cannot be expected to fade away or be replaced by a less rigidly organized conception of man’s loneliness in the heart of creation, by an increased awareness of the self as a responsible agent capable of individual decisions which might clash against the dicta of the clan, the house, the family, or, finally, society, until that feudal tradition has been reevaluated and redefined. “Real tradition,” wrote Yves Montcheuil, “is constitutive, not constituted” (Brown, 60). It grows as men evolve individually, as well as collectively. It adapts to new circumstances of time, place, and culture, and it stimulates new responses which themselves become a part of that tradition. It does not force the present into the rigid mold of the past, nor does it apply unyieldingly to the present values developed during an era which contituted only a phase of the national development. A constantly enriched and enriching tradition would not, in brief, impose a system of ethics developed and accepted by the military clans of feudal Japan upon the whole country and, progressively, upon the rest of the world under professed principles of brotherhood and universal harmony within the human family (hakko-ichiu). That system of ethics, that martial code, represented only one particular interpretation of reality and of man’s role in it. Even a cursory glance at Japanese history, after all, provides ample evidence that other interpretations predated and then coexisted with those of the military class—interpretations which were less successful perhaps in teaching a man how to use a sword, but no less admirable and often more useful in helping him to comprehend the true dilemma of his existence.
Considering the great significance assigned by the Japanese people to their military tradition, then, the qualification of “martial” (bu) so freely attributed to almost all the specializations of the art of combat in the doctrine of bujutsu finds its own semantic justification. It was much more selectively applied during the feudal era, when the warrior generally used it in reference to those arts which were his professional prerogative or when he extended it to include other arts still rather strictly correlated to the former. Its use increased with the progressive expansion of the military tradition among all classes of Japanese subjects and their striving toward total identification with it.
It is undeniable that the feudal warrior played the major role upon Japan’s national stage. It was, after all, the warrior who used those methods of combat, often with consummate skill, as he strove to rise to power in the face of an armed and equally determined opposition. It is also true that, consequently, he was the indirect activator of an intense interest in bujutsu on the part of members of other classes of Japanese society, who were forced to learn his methods
