By the Sword

by Richard Cohen

  From the early 1600s, disembowelment became the usual sentence imposed upon a samurai found guilty of a capital offense. The act was normally performed by driving a knife into the left side of the abdomen, drawing it across to the right, and giving it a final upward twist toward the chest. It was sometimes considered an appropriate gesture of bravado to draw out part of the entrails and leave them hanging. Since even a deep cut did not lead to immediate death, it became the practice to engage a “second” to administer a sword blow that would end the suffering. The suicide would sit cross-legged, rip open his stomach, then extend his neck, ready for decapitation. Ideally the second did not cut entirely through but left just enough flesh and skin to hold the head to the body and prevent it from rolling away.21 This embrace of extreme suffering was evidently related to the deep demand for self-mortification in Zen and to the belief that the samurai should display his courage by undergoing an ordeal that mere commoners could not face. Referring to the defeated rebels of 1876, Mishima wrote, “They knew that poison was the most effective way to commit a hasty suicide, but they spurned this womanish means of putting an end to life.”22a

  There was a reason why disembowelment was the chosen form. Hara (the abdomen), as well as being the body’s physical center, was deemed the site of man’s inner being, where all his cardinal qualities were concentrated. Just as in the West one feels things first “in one’s guts,” for the Japanese it was his stomach where the core of a man’s most precious emotions lay, even his very soul.b Mishima related seppuku to the concept of makoto (sincerity):

  I cannot believe in Western sincerity because it is invisible, but in feudal times we believed that sincerity resided in our entrails, and if we needed to show our sincerity, we had to cut our bellies and take out our visible sincerity. And it was also the symbol of the will of the soldier, the samurai; everybody knew that this was the most painful way to die. And the reason they preferred to die in the most excruciating manner was that it proved the courage of the samurai. This method of suicide was a Japanese invention and foreigners could not copy it.24

  Mishima wrote these words in 1966. In November 1970 he marched into the Japanese Eastern Army headquarters and, railing to a demoralizingly indifferent crowd against both capitalism and the radical Left, committed seppuku. In his own mind, at least, he had proved himself the perfect follower of the bushido, to its ideal deadly end.

  During the Second World War the same samurai spirit was invoked by kamikaze pilots (kamkaz, “the divine wind,” was the typhoon that in 1281 had destroyed Kublai Khan’s fleet, thus saving Japan from invasion). In 1944 a young air force lieutenant named Nagatsuka, overhearing doubts about a plan to ram Ki-27 fighters into American B-29s, evoked the ancient samurai principle of honor:

  You attach too much importance to life.… If a human life has any important meaning, it is because of some relationship with other human beings. From this springs the principle of honor. Life rests on this idea, as exemplified by the conduct of our ancient samurai. That is the essence of Bushido.… If we cling to our own lives, we actually lose self-esteem. There are two types of existence in this world: that of animals, who simply obey their instincts, and that of men, who consciously devote their lives to serving something outside themselves.… If man merely existed, what a burden it would be!25

  ONE STORY FROM THE EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SURPASSES ALL OTHERS IN exemplifying the samurai honor system. It tells of the forty-seven ronin who were the retainers of Asano Nagonari, lord of Ako. In April 1701 imperial envoys from Kyoto arrived in Edo. Asano, along with two other local grandees, was appointed to receive them. One of the tactics of the imperial government was so to preoccupy the nobility with matters of court etiquette that they had little time for plotting. Unfamiliar with the proper procedure, the three nobles consulted Kira Yoshinaka, a court expert with a reputation for extorting huge sums of money from those who asked his guidance, and gave him lavish presents to ensure his cooperation. Kira judged Asano’s donation insufficient and expressed his displeasure by constantly mocking his behavior. Asano eventually could contain himself no longer and in the very hall of the shogun’s palace flew at his tormentor, dagger in hand. Kira escaped with minor wounds to his shoulder, but Asano’s behavior so offended the shogun that he ordered the peace-breaker to disembowel himself, which Asano did that same day.

  His death left his forty-seven fighting men suddenly without home or master, and they met to determine their response. Some advocated armed resistance, others swore to disembowel themselves at the castle gate; but one, Oishi Yoshio, counseled that they stay their hand, and his view prevailed. Everyone knew that the ronin were obliged to avenge the death of their master, and this meant that a careful watch was kept on each of them. For more than a year the forty-seven lived in seeming demoralized retreat, Oishi in the gay quarters of Kyoto, leading such a dissolute life that Kira’s spies were convinced he posed no danger. But Oishi was biding his time. On January 30, 1703, flanked by his own son, Oishi and his fellow ronin stormed Kira Yoshinaka’s mansion, seeking out Kira, whom they identified by the scar on his shoulder, and beheading him. That night they offered up his head at their master’s grave, after which they went together to the authorities and confessed what they had done.

  When the shogun heard of the ronin’s revenge he was extremely moved, inspired by this reawakening of ancient virtue; but to sanction a revival of feudal vendettas was dangerous: the ronin could not be allowed to take the law into their own hands. They were ordered to disembowel themselves, and on March 20, 1703, all did so bar the youngest, Oishi’s son, who was pardoned at the last moment. The event created a great stir not only among the entire higher aristocracy but throughout the country, and samurai virtues enjoyed new respect. Innumerable works of literature described the vendetta; by 1844 no fewer than forty-seven plays had commemorated it, and the story became a great No play, an exemplar of righteousness and loyalty comparable to the Arthurian legend. In Japan, snow is symbolically associated with pure, heroic enterprises: it did not pass without notice that the forty-seven ronin had carried out their climactic attack in a snowstorm.

  THE JAPANESE PREFER THE CLOSE-QUARTER BLOW TO THE BULLET; the cult of the sword and the more general cult of archaic armaments point to this. Hand-to-hand fighting has generally been more esteemed than the art of hitting from afar. Even in the twentieth century the Japanese have shown a reluctance to employ modern techniques of destruction: after demonstrating the primacy of the aircraft carrier, they still tied up untold resources building the biggest battleships in history. The Japanese tactic of ramming other planes and crashing into ships not only relates to the mystique of self-sacrifice: it also gave obvious satisfaction, as if they enjoyed the bodily contact, even at the expense of their own lives.26

  Nevertheless, when in 1543 a Chinese cargo vessel landed at the southern island of Kyushu, and the feudal master of the island saw a Portuguese crewman shoot a duck, he immediately bought the ship’s two harquebuses, primitive handguns. Within ten years, the country was manufacturing guns in quantity; by 1560, firearms were being used in battle, and by century’s close guns were proportionately more common (and better constructed) in Japan than anywhere else in the world. Yet no true member of the bushi order wanted to use them; guns could be left to the lower classes.

  Not long before, in Europe, there had been a backlash against guns, as soldiers and civilians alike realized that progress in weaponry would mean faster killing, more killing, and the diminution of human stature. One sixteenth-century Italian general was so appalled by the disgrace of having skilled swordsmen under him shot from afar by men with guns that after one successful siege he cut off the hands of every musketeer he could find. There seemed no immediate reason for the Japanese not to take to the new weapon; and yet, according to a classic book published in 1979, Noel Perrin’s Giving Up the Gun, that is what they did for close to two hundred years.27

  Perrin had an agenda of his own, using his book to argue that if Ja
pan could give up advanced weaponry without ill effect, so might the Western world renounce nuclear armaments. Tokugawa Japan never in fact gave up the gun, keeping it as a “vital part” of its arsenal, and by 1876 Japan—suddenly embracing the modern world—had almost two hundred schools of firearms. In any event, ordinary Japanese had little access to weapons of any sort, including swords. However, Perrin’s main case is valid: Japan largely turned its back on the “black art” and concentrated on the sword.28

  He gives several reasons for this. For one thing, most samurai scorned guns and had no wish to be shot by a common peasant. (Don Quixote could have been speaking for any samurai when he condemned “an invention which allows a base and cowardly hand to take the life of a brave knight.”) Second, the Japanese were such formidable fighters, their archepelago so hard to invade, that territorial integrity could be maintained with conventional weapons: guns were unnecessary. (This is questionable: the Mongols had twice sent great fleets. It is true, however, that Korea and China, the nearest potential aggressors, were preoccupied with their own problems, so for many years invasion was not likely from any source.)

  Third, the sword had greater symbolic value than in Europe. The sword was a class symbol, a work of art, and a means of subjugating the lower classes. (In the early 1600s the Japanese government wanted to honor its four leading gunsmiths; it gave each of them … a sword.) Beyond that, the Japanese enjoyed an antipathy to foreign ideas, and the gun was an import, associated with the spread of Christianity by Spanish and Portuguese missionaries. The 1637 rebellion was raised by native Christians and fought with gunpowder. After its suppression, the country was effectively sealed off: the exclusion of authorized foreign influences became almost complete.

  Perrin’s final reason for Japanese resistance is perhaps most intriguing. It is purely aesthetic. This went beyond what Richard Burton called “an ugly change of dull lead for polished steel.” Swords were not only beautiful; they were associated with graceful movement. “This is why,” says Perrin, “an extended scene of swordplay can appear in a contemporary movie, and be a kind of danger-laden ballet, while a scene of extended gunplay comes out as raw violence.”29 A man using his sword properly is moving with beauty. A man firing an arquebus (or harquebus—lumpish and immobile) is not. Perrin quotes from a Japanese manual of 1595, whose writer apologizes for advising his students to get into positions that are distinctly ungainly: “Soldiers used to have strong wrists and arms from swordplay. Now they must get in such awkward kneeling positions to shoot guns; their elbows hurt. Hips get a strange muscle pain.” Not only that, they have to contort their bodies in defiance of aesthetic principles: “Must separate knees to kneel and fire.”

  John Keegan endorses Perrin’s view: “ ‘Style’ was central to the samurai way of life, style in clothes, armor, weapons, skill-at-arms and behavior on the battlefield.… It seems to have partaken of the Japanese belief in the importance of unity with nature and natural forces, since muscular effort is ‘natural’ while the chemical energy of gunpowder is not.”30 (There are, besides, other examples of technological reversals in isolated or semi-isolated societies: the Chinese abandoned oceangoing ships after 1433, as well as mechanical clocks and water-driven spinning machines.)31

  Firearms were never formally embargoed; rather, there was a steady series of cutbacks. The samurai-controlled government began by restricting gun production to a few cities, then introduced a requirement of a government license for producing a gun, and finally so cut down its needs that by 1610 fewer than three hundred guns a year were being ordered, and those mostly for ceremonial processions. Provincial gunsmiths were starving; several even took up swordmaking. By the end of the eighteenth century the fifteen remaining gunsmiths supported themselves with repair work and by making farm tools.

  It was the arrival in Tokyo Bay of Commodore Matthew Perry and his “black ships” in 1853 that finally brought about the general reintroduction of firearms. Perry convinced his hosts that the only way to repel uninvited visitors was to deploy a moderate coastal artillery of their own. However, in 1872 a conscription law deprived the samurai of their control of the military, and four years later the new Meiji authority, finally determined to employ modern military methods and build a national army, abolished the samurai’s right to bear swords. By then the last Tokugawa shogun had abdicated (in 1867), the shogunate itself had been abolished, and the three hundred feudal jurisdictions had been replaced by a central civil service.

  For many of the warrior order, being stripped of their weapons was the last straw. “The sword,” expostulated one grandee in a formal note of protest, “not only maintains the tranquility of the nation but also guards the safety of the individual citizen. Indeed, the one thing essential to this martial nation that reveres the gods, the one thing never to be put aside even for an instant, is the sword. How, then, could those upon whom is laid the burden of fashioning and promulgating a national policy that honors the gods and strengthens our land be so forgetful of the sword?”32 His plea fell on deaf ears, but his people were not beaten yet.

  On the night of October 24, 1876, 170 samurai, armored and swords in hand, attacked the imperial garrison stationed at Kumamoto, killing about 300 men, including the commanding general. The assault achieved little but precipitated a full-scale revolt the following year—the “Satsuma Rebellion”—in which some 25,000 samurai took up arms. The government, prepared for such a crisis, mobilized an army of 60,000 and in a climactic engagement laid siege to Kumamoto Castle, one of the three mightiest in Japan, the stronghold of 4,000 rebel troops and their leader, General Saigo. After twenty days of bitter fighting the Satsuma army was forced to withdraw, and Saigo killed himself. Thereafter the rebellion was doomed.33 With its collapse, the history of Japanese swordplay came, in one sense, to an end. That same year the last remnants of Japan’s feudal structure were abolished, and the country opened to commerce with the West.

  YET LONG BEFORE THIS DESPERATE LAST STAND, THE COUNTRY’S attitude toward swordsmanship had undergone a transformation. Conservatives lamented this as a decline, but the samurai spirit had not disappeared. It reemerged in the determination to excel, but in a sporting form. This ultimately led to modern kendo, and to judo, karate, and the other martial arts. What remade Japanese swordsmanship into the competitive sport of fencing had been the widespread adoption of protective equipment during the seventeenth century. Kendo enthusiasts took to wearing the men, a head guard of heavy cotton with a metal face protector, much like a catcher’s mask. They wore padded leather gloves, or kote, and a chest protector or cuirass made of bamboo strips covered with heavily lacquered hide, the do. Waist armor (tare), a form of apron held in place with two bands, protected the groin. Beneath all this the kendoist wore a padded blue jacket (keiko-gi) and a culotte or split skirt (hakama) that recalled the gentleman’s costume of the high Tokugawa era. His two-handed sword (shinai) was made of four equal-sized pieces of well-seasoned, and highly polished bamboo. Bouts were for one or two hits, fenced on a “field” rather than a piste (offering considerably more space for maneuver), and specific places on the body had to be struck to score a touch: only cuts to the head, temples, wrists, and upper body and thrusts to the throat were rewarded. Fencing with these powerful swords—hitting rather than cutting—did not mean the end of purely wooden weapons, but by the end of the Tokugawa period kendo had become the dominant form of swordsmanship.

  Even before the 1876 rebellion, the government of the Meiji epoch (1868–1912) had adopted a hostile attitude toward fencing schools, and three years after its prohibition of sword-carrying it banned dueling as well. Still, fencing did not fade away completely, due largely to the devotion of an enthusiast by the name of Sakakibara Kenkichi. Born into a poor family in a suburb of Edo in 1830, Sakakibara was a fully qualified instructor by the time he reached twenty-six. In 1872 he held a public demonstration of martial arts in a disused mansion in the suburb of Asakusa, promoting the event as if it were a sumo contest, with oppo
sing teams, an official announcer, and much fanfare. Several leading fencers were invited to take part, including women contestants and two Englishmen, included to attract the curious. The event was a sellout, and soon other impresarios followed Sakakibara’s lead. By September that year there were more than twenty martial arts companies in Edo; demonstrations of jujitsu, horsemanship, and other activities were added to their program. Eventually the craze wore thin, and many martial arts practitioners condemned it as degrading. However, these shows, like James Figg’s sword circuses in Georgian London, greatly boosted fencing and the other martial arts just as it seemed that government displeasure might make them disappear.