effectiveness solely within the broad dimensions of general warfare. Early chroniclers of bujutsu, after all, had made a distinction of sorts when they listed the following specializations of the art of combat as the exclusive arts of the warrior, hence as arts of war: archery, spearmanship, swordsmanship, horsemanship, fortifications, and use of firearms and military seamanship (which included swimming). Among the methods of unarmed combat used by the warrior in a subsidiary manner, the same chroniclers mention the art of suppleness, or jujutsu. A substantial number of specializations are omitted from these military records—a fact that should not surprise us, since from the standpoint of a warrior, the art of the war fan could hardly be compared to archery, nor the art of the wooden staff to the science of firearms. Why, then, this determination so apparent in the general doctrine of bujutsu, and so widely displayed by almost all masters of arts and disciplines of combat, to use the adjective “martial” (bu) to qualify all these methods?
At least a partial answer, we feel, may be provided by an examination of the importance assigned by the Japanese to the military tradition in the history of their country. Before we proceed to discuss these traditions in the following paragraphs, however, we must briefly reiterate that the art of war as strategies involving large numbers of men in massive confrontations on the battlefield is not a part of this study. Our primary concern here is individual combat—the art of direct and personal confrontation between two (or a few) men and the weapons, the techniques, and the attitudes used therein. We shall not plunge into the doctrinary debates concerning the degree of sophistication of the Japanese art of war, which, in the opinion of certain authors, was rather rudimentary. Brinkley, for example, while describing the individual warriors of Japan as composing “the best fighting unit in the Orient, probably one of the best fighting units the world ever produced,” added in the same paragraph that “it was, perhaps, because of that excellence that his captains remained mediocre tacticians” (Brinkley1, 172). Repeated references may be found in ancient treatises on warfare to the high level of development of the art of war in China and to its major theorists, such as General Sun-tzu, who repeatedly emphasized the social, massive character of combat in war and the absolute predominance of masses and logistics in defeating an enemy. But in the centuries preceding the Momoyama period (1568-1600), Japanese armies were still “made up of small, independent bands of soldiers who fought more as individuals than as units of a tactical formation” (Wittfogel, 199). This was the way the Japanese warrior of one clan fought against the warriors of another clan; this was the way he fought against the Koreans during the first, legendary invasion of the Asiatic mainland; and this was the way he faced the invading Mongolian hordes in 1274 and 1281. The individual character of the art of war was still very much in evidence in the colossal confrontations at Sekigahara, witnessed by William Adams (1564-1620), and at Osaka Castle in 1615. “Feudal Japan,” Wittfogel concludes, perhaps a trifle sweepingly, “like feudal Europe, failed to develop the art of war” (Wittfogel, 199).
The individual character of the art of war in feudal Japan, so romantically emphasized in national sagas and by chroniclers of the age, actually facilitates our study of the particular specializations of bujutsu, for it allows us to adopt the individuality of direct, personal confrontation as our primary term of reference. In turn, the matrix of our study of all the possible applications of bujutsu will be the man-to-man encounter—whether on the battlefield or in the streets of a teeming city, whether on a lonely mountain road or in a temple, or even within the confines of a man’s home. And this will also facilitate our inclusion of all the weapons, techniques, and attitudes devised to resolve the problems of individual confrontation.
The Military Tradition in the History of Japan
The extensive use of the qualification “martial” in the doctrine is explained by the extraordinary, some authors would say excessive, importance assigned by the Japanese even today to their military tradition, to the function of the military class in shaping the destiny of the nation, and to the ethics adopted by this class to justify its existence and policies. This importance is based upon the fact that, when we refer generically to the martial experience of Japan, we refer to one of the longest and most ancient involvements of a nation in such a dimension. As Lafcadio Hearn aptly pointed out, “About the whole of authentic Japanese history is comprised in one vast episode: the rise and fall of the military power” (Hearn, 259).
A panoramic survey of the events through which that power expressed itself with varying degrees of subtlety for almost nine centuries is found in chart 2 (p. 33) and in greater detail in Part 1. Down through the centuries, then, the innermost fiber of the Japanese nation was imbued with the warrior’s particular ideas, ethics, and sense of mission. These elements, which spurred the bushi to act on the stage of history, were rooted in a firm belief in Japan’s divine origins, in the determination to confirm that belief by force of arms, even if it meant death, and in that code of behavior which demanded unquestioning obedience to the commands of one’s immediate superior, who constituted the link with the divine past and thus would know the ways in which to successfully fulfill the mission implicit in those distant origins. For centuries these truths, as well as the way of life they represented, were inculcated into the Japanese character, seeping down to all levels of society and coloring every stage of the national development. It was a process of relentless indoctrination from above, both conscious and unconscious, which began in earnest at the end of the Nara period, with the emergence of the warrior clans whose services proved invaluable (although ultimately costly) to the feuding clans of the court nobles (huge) and the emperor (tenno) during their bitter power struggles. The bushi brought with them their simple ideas of excellence, translated concretely into personal loyalty to one’s immediate superior, and a readiness to fight and die without the slightest hesitation. These ideas, according to generally accepted historical records, contrasted vividly with the highly sophisticated and introspective patterns of the culture of Nara.
The contrast and resulting friction was ultimately resolved through force of arms. Many aristocratic clans were totally destroyed, and the few nobles who survived were deprived of any effective influence, being restricted to the representational precincts of the imperial court, together with the emperor. Also destroyed were the huge monasteries and libraries which contained the essence, the distillation of Heian culture: its scriptures, its records, and its works of art. By 1600, the slate had been almost wiped clean. From that point on, the Way of the Warrior flowed both brutally and subtly into the consciousness of the entire population: the farmer, a large portion of whose rice crop would be appropriated by the retainers of the local daimyo, or provincial lord, looking up from his hoeing to gaze at a group of samurai, their weapons glinting in the sun as they ran rhythmically alongside a palanquin bound for Edo; the chance traveler who paused by the side of the road, a silent witness to a duel, often to the death, between two swordsmen; the surging, excited populace at the festivals held at various times during the year, staring wide-eyed at the martial arts demonstrations which were often a focal point of such festivals. In thousands of incidents, both minor and of great social significance, the drama of a potentially lethal confrontation between one man and another was restaged again and again, until this particular form of human experience was burned almost indelibly into the Japanese soul.
Actually, during the Tokugawa period, the traditions of the military class, under the guise of a continuation of ancient culture, so thoroughly conditioned the national character that Western observers of the age were led to describe the Japanese people as being “naturally addicted to wars.” The intensity of warfare and civil strife in Japan astounded even those observers who, it must be remembered, came from a Europe which was not at that time (nor had ever been) a haven of peace. Griffis, in a paper presented to the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1874, noted how endemic warfare had been in Japan, indicating that war was considered “normal” and peace the “exceptional condition of its inhabitants” (Griffis, 21). The same author also emphasized the contrast between the delight the Japanese took in calling their country the Land of Great Peace and, for example, the names of streets in Edo—names such as “Armor,” “Helmet,” “Arrow,” “Bow,” and “Quiver,” all related to implements of war. In his analysis of the Japanese character, Brinkley wrote as follows:
Hidden beneath a passion for
