in a calamity, but remained behind the scenes when not needed. “Exceptional warriors (kusemono) are dependable men. Dependable men are exceptional warriors. I know this through considerable experience. Dependable men can be relied upon to keep away when things are going well, but will come to your aid without fail when you are in need. A man of such temperament is most certainly a kusemono.” (1-132)
The presence of the kusemono is pervasive throughout Hagakure. The kusemono is the archetypical warrior whom Jōchō aspired to be, and the unnamed hero of the book. It is the kusemono who embodies the essence of Hagakure’s bushido.
CONCLUSION
This introductory chapter was written with the intention of contextualizing the myriad of influences that resulted in the writing of, and subsequent fascination with, this collection of guileless but sometimes quixotic aphorisms known as Hagakure. Controversial from the beginning, modified interpretations of the text’s mentality in the twentieth century made the book particularly useful for stirring ultra-nationalistic sentiment and inculcating militarism. Consequently, Hagakure temporarily became a “forbidden text” of sorts again in the aftermath of World War II. Gradually, though, Japan entered a period of renewed interest in Hagakure from the 1960s. Renowned historians such as Furukawa Tetsushi and authors such as Mishima Yukio acclaimed Hagakure as representing the most exquisitely “beautiful” aspects of Japanese culture that had been indiscriminately purged in the immediate post-war period.
Western interest in the book was also piqued with a growing fascination for samurai culture and philosophy, especially following Japan’s rise as an economic superpower in the 1980s. In recent years, a handful of translations into modern Japanese have become available, as have several English language translations that seek to introduce the “wisdom” of Hagakure to a wide international readership.
Given the historical importance of the work for understanding the samurai psyche, it is hardly surprising that a number of English translations have already been published. This begs the question as to why it is necessary to produce yet another. Although the extant translations are reliable to varying degrees, they often tend to gloss over the finer nuances in the original Japanese. In addition, to date there have been no complete translations of Hagakure in book form. This book is by no means complete, but it is the first to contain translations of all the vignettes in the first two books. These two are particularly important as they were dictations of Yamamoto Jōchō. The remaining books were comprised of information possibly from Jōchō, but a considerable portion of the material was collated elsewhere by Tashiro Tsuramoto. In the third section of this translation, I have included a selection of these later aphorisms which I find interesting, or have used in previous research.
This translation is based on the Hagakure version contained in Saiki Kazuma (et al eds.), Mikawa Monogatari, Hagakure (Nihon Shisō Taikei 26), which I consider to be the most academically rigorous. It is based on the aforementioned Kōhaku Book and makes exhaustive comparisons with the other extant copies, providing many notes which aid in the understanding of the obscure references in the text. I have incorporated relevant notes in the hope that this translation of Hagakure will facilitate the reader’s understanding of this complex yet profoundly interesting window on human experience in eighteenth-century Japan, when warriors struggled to find equilibrium between their honor and the dictates of social order.
Finally, I would like to thank Professor Lachlan Jackson, Professor Uozumi Takashi, Professor Yamaori Tetsuo, Trevor Jones, and my research assistant for this project, Remi Yamaguchi, for their opinions and invaluable assistance in completing this translation.
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1 Bushidō (武士道)—literally “the Way of the warrior.” “Bushi” is the common Japanese word denoting warriors in academic circles, although “samurai” is probably better known in the West. Nowadays, both terms are used interchangeably; however, the word samurai is used most frequently in this book.
2 Tsunetomo is written with the kanji characters 常朝. When Tsunetomo took the tonsure following the death of his lord in 1700, he began using his Buddhist name, Jōchō, which uses the same kanji characters in their on reading. Discussions of Hagakure are divided as to which reading is used. As Hagakure was written after Jōchō became a monk, throughout my translation he is mostly referred to as Jōchō rather than Tsunetomo.
3 The Saga domain is also known as the Hizen domain and Nabeshima domain. It is located in the Hizen province in the modern-day prefecture of Saga on the southern island of Kyushu. The region was originally controlled by the Ryūzōji clan, of whom the Nabeshima were originally vassals. Nabeshima Naoshige became the guardian of Ryūzōji Takanobu’s son, Takafusa, when he was killed in battle in 1584. In 1590 Toyotomi Hideyoshi allowed the Nabeshima clan to usurp the region, and the Ryūzōji hegemony was superseded with Naoshige becoming the first Nabeshima daimyo of the fiefdom.
4 Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai, p. 297
5 S. Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, p. 8
6 Kevin Doak, A History of Nationalism in Modern Japan: Placing the People, p. 195
7 H. Befu, Japan: An Anthropological Introduction, pp. 50–52
8 Ikegami, Op. Cit., p. 288
9 Koike Yoshiaki, Hagakure–Bushi to Hōkō, p. 44
10 Motoki Yasuo, Bushi no Seiritsu, p. 1
11 Karl Friday, Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan, p. 6
12 Although the lines were often blurred and inter-class mobility certainly existed, shi-nō-kō-shō represented the social strata enforced by the shogunate which placed samurai at the top of the pyramid, followed by farmers, artisans, and merchants respectively.
13 William R. Lafleur, Awesome Nightfall: The Life, Times, and Poetry of Saigyo, p. 653
14 See the timeline for a chronological list of events outlining the history of the Saga domain from the time of the Ryūzōji clan and the transition to the Nabeshima clan.
15 Olivier Ansart, “Embracing Death: Pure will in Hagakure,” Early Modern Japan: An Interdisciplinary Journal v. 18, (2010): pp. 57–75
IDLE TALK IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT16
Our first meeting was on the fifth day of the third month,
in the seventh year of Hōei (1710).17
