the concept of death was idealized, and manifested in the attitude of self-sacrificing commitment to service and unequivocal loyalty to one’s lord. This could take the form of a self-willed death for some transgression, or suicide through fidelity.
Celebrated episodes during the Tokugawa period demonstrate just how ‘faithful’ a samurai could be to this extent. The most obvious example is the revenge of the 47 Rōnin (master-less samurai). In 1701, Asano Naganori, daimyo of the Akō domain, drew his sword and assaulted Kira Yoshinaka in the Edo Castle while in attendance because of a slight on his honor. Asano was immediately ordered to commit seppuku (ritual suicide by disembowelment) for this serious breach of etiquette. His retainers plotted for two years and enacted a vendetta culminating in the successful assassination of Kira at his mansion. This in turn led to their own termination by ritual suicide. They remain celebrated heroes in Japan to this day as paragons of loyalty.
The propriety of their actions attracted both praise and criticism from all quarters. The reaction shows the complex nature of the Tokugawa warrior’s “community of honor.” Should Asano have showed more restraint when goaded by Kira? To what extent can the sacred line of one’s personal honor be crossed before retaliation is acceptable? Given the inviolability of personal honor for a samurai, should the shogun Tsunayoshi have been more judicious before immediately meting out punishment to Asano for breaking castle protocol which prohibited the drawing of weapons? Should he not have punished Kira as well for being the other party in the altercation? Should the 47 Asano retainers have abided by the strict law preventing retribution, or were they justified in their actions? Was their vendetta motivated out of loyalty to their wronged lord, or for maintaining the reputation of their clan, or were they driven by egocentric desires to uphold their personal pride and names in their community of honor? Should they have been executed as criminals instead of given the chance to die honorably by their own hands? All of these questions were important considerations of the day.
Jōchō’s opinion on the incident is representative of his no-nonsense stance with regards to appropriate warrior conduct.
The rōnin of the Asano clan were culpable for not immediately committing seppuku at the Sengakuji Temple [after the night raid on Lord Kira’s mansion]. Moreover, it took too long to exact revenge after their master was killed by the enemy. What if [their intended victim] Lord Kira had died of illness in the interim? It would have been a disgrace. Warriors of the Kamigata region are clever and shrewd in finding ways of being showered in praise. (1-55)
Indeed, Hagakure provides a frank commentary on the multifarious issues that samurai had to contend with as they navigated their way through Pax Tokugawa. The life philosophy of Yamamoto Jōchō highlights the tension and contradictions endured by a warrior subculture that had primed itself for war over many centuries, but was stuck in the limbo of peace.
CONTEXTUALIZING THE CONTENT
The subject matter of Hagakure was dictated by Yamamoto Jōchō. He was born on the eleventh day of the sixth month in 1659 to Yamamoto Jin’uemon Shigezumi, a retainer of the Saga domain. Jōchō talks of his childhood days in Book 2. He mentions that his father was 70 years old when he was born, and given the encumbrance of rearing a child at his age, Jin’uemon quipped that he should like to off-load his new child to a salt merchant. His unit captain, Taku Zusho, advised against such rash disposal of the lad, as his illustrious lineage guaranteed usefulness as a retainer in the future.
Jōchō was first named Matsukame, and when he was nine years of age, he was renamed Fukei when called into service as an errand boy by Nabeshima Mitsushige (1632–1700), second lord of the Saga domain. His father was strict and gave him all manner of laborious chores to build his strength and stamina. Evidently the boy was of weak constitution, and it was said that he would probably not live past the age of 12. Showing the dogged qualities that pepper the text of Hagakure, he spent his youth in personal training to prove his doubters wrong.
Jōchō’s father died when he was 11. Following his father’s passing, he was cared for and austerely educated by his nephew, Yamamoto Tsuneharu, who was actually 20 years his senior. He was made a pageboy of Nabeshima Mitsushige and given the name Ichijūrō at the age of 14. In 1678, he underwent the coming-of-age ceremony (genpuku), taking the name Gon’nojō, and was promoted to the position of close attendant and scribe’s assistant.
Unfortunately, his lord Mitsushige showed displeasure at Gon’nojō’s complicity in his son Tsunashige’s fixation with poetry, and he was temporarily discharged from duty. During this time, he visited his father’s old friend Tannen Oshō, a Zen monk at the Kezōan, and there he was taught the teachings of Buddhist Law. When he was 21, he was administered the kechimyaku, a document that signifies the “bloodline” or succession of various masters in a particular Zen school. He was given the Buddhist name Kyokuzan Jōchō (which can also be read as Tsunetomo). Around this time, he also frequented the abode of Saga’s renowned scholar of Confucianism and thought, Ishida Ittei. The teachings of both these men had a profound effect on Jōchō, and this is evident by the numerous times their wisdom is quoted in Hagakure.
Jōchō married at the age of 24 and was reappointed as an officer of document writing. He was dispatched to Edo in this capacity when he was 28, and then deployed to Kyoto later on. He took his father’s name, Jin’uemon, upon returning to Saga at the age of 33. Five years later, he was sent to Kyoto again by Mitsushige on a special mission to acquire a copy of Kokin-denju, a rare corpus of teachings which illuminated the inner meaning of the poems contained in the tenth century anthology of poetry known as the Kokin Waka-shū (commonly called Kokin-shū). For this purpose, he visited an authority on waka poetry, the nobleman Sanjō-nishi Sanenori, and finally managed to acquire copies of valuable documents for his lord in 1700. Through some premonition, he realized he had to return to Saga quickly, and did so just in time to present the bed-ridden Mitsushige with the prized teachings.
With Mitsushige dying that year, this turned out to be the culmination of Jōchō’s service to his lord, and his greatest exploit. One gets the impression that he strongly regretted that his career was bound by a forced association with the arts. This ultimately prevented him from achieving his goal of reaching the lofty heights of chief retainer, where he dreamt of occupying an influential position to counsel his lord for the good of the domain.
It was Jōchō’s stated desire to martyr himself and commit the act of junshi, or self-immolation, to follow his lord in death. Such a self-willed death was considered to be the highest expression of loyalty to one’s deceased lord, and thought to be an honorable end to the life of a dedicated retainer. To the disappointment of Jōchō however, junshi (or oibara as it was also known) had been prohibited in the Nabeshima domain by decree in 1661, and indeed by the Tokugawa government in 1663. His only recourse to demonstrate his integrity and devotion as a loyal warrior of the Nabeshima clan was to commit a form of “social junshi.” He took the tonsure, shaved his head, and retired to a hermitage in the hills in Kurotsuchibaru.
It was here, ten years later, that Tashiro Tsuramoto visited him to seek his counsel. Jōchō’s wife had already died, and he had no children. Jōchō’s adopted son Tsunetoshi (also named Gon’nojō) died while on duty in Edo aged 38, so it is understandable that Jōchō took a liking to his Nabeshima domain junior, and the relationship they forged was one of deep, almost paternal, respect.
Tsuramoto was born in 1678, and his scholastic talents were recognized from a young age. He was appointed as a copyist for Nabeshima Tsunashige when he was 19, and continued in this role with the fourth lord of the Nabeshima clan, Yoshishige. He was relieved of duty for some unknown transgression in 1709. Despairing, Tsuramoto visited Jōchō at his hermitage in Kurotsuchibaru in the third month of the following year. Deciding to live close to Jōchō, Tsuramoto visited often, and wrote down the stories relayed to him over a period of seven years. The first copy of Hagakure was completed on the tenth day of the ninth month, 1716.
The original manuscript of Hagakure
