Ayamachitewa aratamuruni habakaru koto nakare.
If you make a mistake, don't hesitate to correct it.
Japanese proverb
Japanese proverb
Gishi
(Falsified History)
Lies,
Damned Lies and Martial Arts History
It is
unfortunate that no literary wit in Japan took on the mythos of
knighthood with the ferocity and brilliance of Cervantes with Don
Quixote; the often hilarious skewering of delusional and self-serving
behavior and oceans of justification masquerading as chivalry (as it
never really existed) still resonates.
By
contrast, Japanese men-at-arms have had the opposite in authors like
Nitobe (who did not train in combative arts and married an English
Quaker), author of Bushido (at best, an apologist tract, at worst
deliberate obfuscation of feudal-era history; it is not hard to
imagine that he would have found himself at a loss to explain Japan's
bloody past to those in his new social circle and so sought ways to
compare bushi to the similarly mythologized knights errant of
Europe), and Herrigal, author of Zen in the Art of Archery (a German
national who, despite living in Japan for some time, never attained
any level of proficiency in the language and was, by his own
teacher's accounting, 'confused' about what was being shown- any
implicit meaning, Herrigal seems to have ascribed to 'Zen' even when
that was not remotely the point); not to mention Ratti and
Westbrook's fantasy, Secrets of the Samurai, and untold other
material that helped to forge some fairly heavy misconceptions.
Due in to books of this
type, the party line (in English, at least) has for more than a
century been that the warrior caste (bushi or samurai)
were protectors of peasant farmers, exemplars of decency and
morality, holding honor above all things while adhering to the
ancient bushido (warrior way.) It is, as Capote said, “pretty to
think so” however, it's wrong; romantic, but wrong nevertheless.
While
there certainly were folks who distinguished themselves as paragons
of virtue, they were not the norm. In fact there was a 150+ year
period in which the easiest way to get ahead was to either kill your
boss outright or switch allegiances part-way through a battle and
pick-up the pieces after. Even the Tokugawa family (who ruled Japan
for over 200 years) did this to ascend to power*.
It
bears mention, of course, that it's not just the cultural stuff that
were hit with a veneer of untruth either. Applications (jumping,
spinning and flying kicks were used to unseat cavalry, oi tsuki from
karateka bored holes through armor, re-purposed farming implements
were the first line of defense against brigands, etc.) and
personalities (Ueshiba Morihei studied a number of arts that
contributed to Aikido's creation and he was called O Sensei due to
his excellence as an instructor) both received the treatment as well.
So what?
Why does this matter, after all, they're just stories and if they
have inspired generations of students, who are we to mess with the
natural order? Where's the harm? It's simple- many of the stories
that we read and heard as a young people were of uncompromising
loyalty, fealty and honor; of invulnerable masters accomplishing
improbable feats. If part of a traditional transmission includes
passing on lore (providing cultural context) are we not doing our
juniors and students disservice by continuing to perpetuate fiction?
Perhaps it's time for us, as a community, to not take as gospel the
many stories (or even the meanings of forms) that we've inherited,
and to make research an important component of our training...
perhaps strongly encouraging our juniors to do the same. Yes, it's a
lot of work and in the short-term, we lose a single (but important)
component of tradition. What we gain though is better understanding
of not just the history of our arts but the context in which they
came to be (and with that, how and why they were designed to work as
they do.) Who knows, we may come across some great new stories...
and heck, maybe these un-embellished bits of history will be things
that we can proudly pass on- not as myths, but as true and important
parts of the living traditions that we devote so much time and effort
to practice, study, embody and teach.
Yours in
the joyful spirit of research,
Jigme
Jigme
Chobang Daniels, instructor
Aoi
Koyamakan Dojo
*Tokugawa
Ieyasu (who established the dynasty) promised his terminally ill
mentor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, that he would serve as one of five
regents to Toyotomi's son, Hideyori, ensuring the latter's succession
to the role of Shogun. Instead, following the death of Toyotomi in
1598 and his most loyal regent in 1599, Tokugawa reneged on his
promise, and continued to consolidate power; in 1600, victory at the
pivotal Battle of Sekigahara, heralded the last major hurdle to
uniting most of the Japan into a single nation, under single rule, as
begun some 40 years earlier by Oda Nobunaga and continued by
Toyotomi.
So
happy-endings all around, right? Except, what of the young son,
Hideyori? His castle was attacked by the Tokugawa government in two
famous campaigns (responses to claims that he'd been disloyal by
actively plotting an insurgency- charges that seem to have been
baseless) and was forced to commit seppuku (a form ritual suicide
'reserved for the bushi' that entailed disemboweling oneself with a
knife while 'attended' by a trusted swordsman to act as kaishaku
[second] whose job it was to remove the head [while leaving a flap of
skin to prevent the head from rolling away] after the requisite cut
had been made but before the principal could utter a cry or otherwise
dishonor himself) in 1615, just a few months shy of his twenty-second
birthday.
