of which saw them as brute instruments of power cleverly manipulated by ambitious masters, while the other praised them as the embodiment of all those virtues a man could ever hope to attain—it has been left for a few observers to view the samurai as the sadly uncomfortable example of that rigid conditioning to which historical circumstances can subject man if and when he slides into an unreserved commitment to any dogma or creed, especially one which future historians, with the broad irony of hindsight, will reveal to have been less noble than it had once appeared.
It is, in fact, the unreserved quality of the retainers’ commitment which makes them appear as much the victims of history as its protagonists, since they usually honored their bond to the bitter end—even to the extent of laying down their lives whenever the occasion demanded. This observation seeks to embrace the positive and negative characteristics of the samurai equally, within a comparatively balanced vision of their position in history. It does not, however, absolve their leaders from a large measure of responsibility for the conditioning and use made of the samurai and his skills down through the centuries. These leaders must bear a greater part of the burden of responsibility for the excesses of the buke, because they were in positions of great power where the options for good or evil on a large scale were often substantial and because, in positions of eminence, there were more opportunities to study, to observe, and thus to draw conclusions whose ethical imperative must have been insistent—even if widely ignored.
As the specific translation of the term “samurai” clearly denotes, such warriors were men who served a master; therefore, the primary function they were professionally called upon to perform was that of carrying out any and all orders issued by those superiors to whom they had pledged their loyalty and that of their families. This obligation bound each retainer directly to the leader he had chosen or inherited as his lord and who had accepted his oath of loyalty and service. The relationship between the retainer and his lord in feudal times was so binding and exclusivistic that it actually proved a serious obstacle to the further development of the military class, for when the various leaders fought among themselves (as they did for centuries), their cohorts of warriors, for the most part, followed them unquestioningly into one decimating battle after another—until at last the Tokugawa, through cunning, astute alliances, and the effective application of military might, succeeded in uniting all the clans under their suzerainty. This tie between retainer and master also constituted a serious obstacle to national unity after the restoration in 1868, when it was necessary to transfer the bond of loyalty from the clan leader to the head of the Japanese national family, the emperor. Such a transferral of loyalty necessitated an intense phase of reeducation which was, understandably, a turbulent one marked by armed clashes between the conservative retainers of the traditional clans and those of the progressive forces of the emperor, who represented the “new” Japan.
The warrior of feudal times pledged his loyalty in a ceremony whose rites were drawn from the indigenous religion of Japan, Shinto, with its emphasis on the cult of ancestors. Gaspar Vilela, S.J., (1525-72) wrote that the pledge was inscribed on a scroll (kishomon) with a brush dipped in the warrior’s own blood (keppan), then burned before the deities venerated by that particular clan, the ashes being dissolved in liquid and subsequently swallowed. The pledge, naturally, was duly inscribed in the clan’s records, and the retainer, his family, and his dependents became totally identified with their master, whose desires and wishes became, from that moment on, their own. So all-encompassing was the bond thus established that when a master died (even of natural causes) many of his retainers took their own lives in order to follow him in death as they had followed him in life. This type of self-immolation was called junshi, and it often left a clan decimated by the loss of many of its most valiant vassals. In fact, this practice became so common that it had to be forbidden by law and the proscription enforced by the inflicting of harsh penalties upon the retainer’s family if he defied the law. And many a master, in order to safeguard his own family, had to explicitly forbid his retainers to commit mass suicide if and when he should die.
This custom, although it became less common, never disappeared entirely, however. One of the most famous episodes in Japanese literature dealing with the feudal period is that of the mass suicide of the forty-seven ronin after they had avenged their lord. The most notable modern case may well be that of Count Maresuke Nogi (1849-1912), the great general who took Port Arthur from Russia in 1905, losing two sons unflinchingly in the Russo-Japanese War: he committed ritual suicide upon the death of Emperor Meiji, and his wife followed her lord as he had followed his.
In battle, the retainer fought under his direct superior’s command, carried out his orders, and protected any attempted retreat; if his superior decided to escape capture by committing ritual suicide, the retainer acted as his second (kaishaku), who had the duty of shortening the agony of a self-inflicted, mortal wound by severing the dying man’s head with a single sword cut. Usually the retainer would flee with his master’s head to prevent enemies from making a war trophy of it, in accordance with the martial customs of the age. Often, however, a retainer would enable his master to escape capture by donning his lord’s armor and riding off, drawing the enemy away from his master; or a retainer disguised as his master would allow his own head to be cut off and dragged away by another retainer whom the enemy was certain to pursue, while their master made good his escape.
If ordered to fight to the bitter end by his master, a retainer would do so; or, if permitted, he might choose to follow the ancient custom of those martial tribes whose members never willingly allowed themselves to be captured. Since time immemorial, Japanese warriors have always displayed a marked preference for death over capture. In his studies of Japanese culture, Joao Rodriguez, S. J., (1561-1634) noted how the warriors of a besieged lord, when they were on the verge of being overwhelmed by the enemy, would slay their women and children, set fire to their last stronghold, and then take their own lives. Exceptions to this practice were generally due to a special pledge to save the progeny of their doomed master for the purpose of future revenge. The custom has been explained by historians as being a direct result of the traditional concept of mass responsibility which exempted no one in the clan from the consequences of its leader’s decisions or actions. It is conceivable that the widespread practice of exterminating not only individuals, but their entire clan as well, might have helped to stimulate the custom of anticipating such an end by taking one’s own life, thus making it a privilege generally extended to every member of the warrior class. It was common practice, for example, when a warrior on the battlefield realized the futility of his efforts, for him to retreat to a nearby grove or some other isolated spot and take his own life while his enemies stood by—often assisting in the ritual.
In feudal Europe, the problem of dealing with prisoners had evolved into an institution of the art of war which successive ages endeavored to refine even further under the civilizing influence of reciprocal laws and customs regulating armed conflict among nations. International law, for example, may be said to embody the highest expression of this interpretation of conflict which had been shared by the Greeks and the Romans during the classic ages of both Mediterranean cultures and which even Islam, centuries later, had come to accept. Provisions were eventually made, and recognized as binding, concerning the status and the treatment of prisoners of war, who were thus protected, to a certain extent, from the dangers intrinsic in the position of a military man whom the fortunes of war, and not necessarily cowardice, had placed at the mercy of his foes. According to certain scholars with whom the authors tend to agree, such a development in the art of war was possible in Europe because of the large-scale, mutual involvement which forced almost all nations to adopt supranational concepts of warfare.
Japan, on the other hand, with its persistent and prolonged isolation from the international community, had neither been exposed to such ideas nor developed them independently. Clannish feudal customs and notions about the collective responsibility of the social unit were thus retained in modern Japan
