of the actions of certain eminent warriors of the Saga domain. Because of its somewhat guileless critiques of local dignitaries, and the effete ways of metropolitan “Kamigata” warriors of Edo and Kyoto, Hagakure was treated cautiously as a “forbidden text,” and secretly circulated only among members of the Saga domain until it was thrust into the limelight and popularized in the militaristic atmosphere of the 1930s and 1940s. The content was considered too inflammatory for Hagakure to be openly endorsed within the Saga domain, and it was not even used as a text in the domain school, Kōdōkan, where young Saga warriors were educated. Given the book’s far-reaching recognition today, however, it has become a source of great pride for the people of modern-day Saga Prefecture.
Modern interest in Hagakure transpired through a resurgent fascination in the traditions of bushido, ironically after the samurai class had been dismantled as Japan embarked on its quest to modernize. Although the samurai class was brought to an end during the Meiji period (1868–1912), it did not mean the end of bushido as a gripping, emotive force. Many samurai traditions, including the martial arts, were briefly suspended in the early Meiji surge of modernization, only to be revived from the mid-1880s. At this time, the cultural pendulum began to swing in a more blatantly nationalist direction, where Western technology was complemented by “Japanese spirit” (wakon-yōsai).
By the later 1880s, as Garon observes, “intellectuals, local elites, and officials broadly agreed on the need to foster ‘a sense of nation’ in the masses if Japan were to modernize and compete with Western rivals.”5 It is precisely in this period that questions of “Japaneseness,” that is, the essence of what it meant to be Japanese, became a prominent matter of debate. In many ways, the Japanese were feeling their way as they attempted to form a national identity, and according to Doak, this epoch signified the “first important moment in Japanese nationalism when culture, as a code for conceptualizing the collective identity of the Japanese as a single people, was mobilized in agendas that spanned the political spectrum.”6
Prominent scholars such as Inoue Tetsujirō sought to bind bushido to the service of the state by associating it with patriotism and devotion to the emperor. His contemporary, the passionate Christian Uchimura Kanzō, reinterpreted the meaning of bushido, equating it with loyalty to Jesus Christ. The most influential bushido commentator of modern times is undoubtedly Nitobe Inazō. He published Bushido: The Soul of Japan in English, in which he portrayed a Christianized account of bushido for Western readers as the backbone of Japanese morality, and suggested it was a perfect base upon which Christianity could be grafted and evangelized in Japan. He stressed such virtues as honesty, justice, courtesy, courage, compassion, sincerity, honor, duty, loyalty, and self-control. He argued that bushido had evolved among the feudal warriors, but its values had been inherited by all echelons of Japanese society.
With momentous popular and symbolic appeal, bushido and other vestiges of warrior culture, such as the traditional martial arts, seemed an increasingly irresistible, albeit highly romanticized, feature of the cultural makeup of the Japanese nation. Harumi Befu referred to this phenomenon as the “samuraization” of the Japanese people, in which “characteristics such as loyalty, perseverance, and diligence that were said to be held by a small (but elite) segment of the population—the samurai—were gradually extended through propaganda, education, and regulation to cover the whole of the population.”7
In particular, Hagakure’s underlying theme of absolute loyalty to one’s lord to the extent that a warrior must be prepared to die in the course of duty, a notion symbolized by the legendary phrase, “The Way of the warrior is to be found in dying” (Bushidō to iu wa shinu koto to mitsuketari) fitted well with Japan’s burgeoning militarism because, as Ikegami points out, of the “combination of the cult of death with the ideal of faithful and efficacious devotion to the public good.”8
The first time Hagakure was published in print and became known outside the province of Saga was in March 1906. Elementary school teacher Nakamura Ikuichi compiled a selection of aphorisms and published them in book form. It was not until 1935 that the entire text was published in Kurihara Arano’s Hagakure Shinzui (“Essence of Hagakure”), followed by the carefully annotated Hagakure Kōchū (“Hagakure collation”) in 1940. It was from this juncture that Hagakure finally emerged from the mists of obscurity. Its popularity was further facilitated by prominent Japanese philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō and ethics historian Furukawa Tetsushi’s combined work, Hagakure, which was also published in 1940 by the major publishing house Iwanami Bunko. This pocket-sized, three volume set made Hagakure available to the masses. Although there was no major Hagakure boom per se, it was still a popular read among soldiers mobilized by the Japanese war machine.9
Following the phenomenon of the suicidal kamikaze pilots, and the actions of Japanese soldiers in World War II who were feared for their fanaticism in the face of death, books such as Hagakure were later subject to intense criticism as being tools for militaristic propaganda that sought to instil Japanese youth with an indomitable sense of patriotism, and prepare them to sacrifice their own lives for the emperor and the mother country. Hagakure provided a powerful and emotive creed for wartime ultranationalists, in no small part due to its one-dimensional affirmation of loyalty to the point of sacrificing one’s life by entering a ‘death frenzy’ (shini-gurui) of deadly fury. Was this, however, an accurate interpretation of Hagakure’s true intent?
Foreign and Japanese critics in the postwar period blamed bushido as representing all that was most detestable in Japanese wartime behavior. Many Japanese renounced bushido as part of the misguided militaristic ideology that resulted in Japan’s ensuing defeat and shame, and also as unsuited to a new post-war democratic society.
In this context, Hagakure became by association a book at the root of intense controversy. Depending on one’s point of view, Hagakure represents a mystical beauty intrinsic to the Japanese aesthetic experience, and a stoic but profound appreciation of the meaning of life and death. Conversely, it may be regarded as a text that epitomizes all that is abhorrent in terms of mindless sacrifice, as well as a loathsome depreciation of the value of life and blind obedience to authority.
It is fair to say that Hagakure is a vastly misunderstood book both inside and outside of Japan. Perhaps this is why Yamamoto Jōchō implored Tashiro Tsuramoto to burn the text upon completion to prevent it from getting into the hands of those who could never appreciate it for the spirit in which it was written. This directive seems almost prophetic in light of the conflicting appraisals it has been subjected to in the modern era.
In Japan, a wide range of pundits, ranging from distinguished scholars to jingoistic right-wing ultranationalists, lazily quote from Hagakure to both highlight Japan’s supposed “uniqueness,” as well as attempting to draw a tenuous connection between the noble culture of the samurai and the spirit of modern Japanese people. Likewise, judging from the various steadily-selling foreign language translations available outside Japan, there are many non-Japanese who are captivated with the romanticism of Japan’s feudal past and notions of bushido, maybe as a curio, or perhaps hoping to find some useful tenet of wisdom. There are also people who totally disregard Hagakure as nefarious nonsense used as a medium for malevolent brainwashing by the Japanese military.
Foreign scholars of Japanese history and culture tend to take a sceptical view of the modern cultural nationalistic constructs of bushido as “invented tradition.” The historical value of Hagakure—as a window into the complex, sometimes incredibly violent, but generally peaceful world of Tokugawa period warriors—is often dismissed as being the radical, seditious ramblings of a disgruntled old curmudgeon, grumpy at the degeneration of the age. All of these attitudes, positive or negative, are understandable. But if read with a sympathetic understanding of the man and his times, the content of Hagakure
