"Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai" a translation of Hagakure, a set of orations by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. (©Imperium Press)
Imperium Press, a publisher renowned for its commitment to classical texts, ventures into new territory with a fresh translation of Hagakure. Editor-in-chief Michael Maxwell recently spoke to JAPAN Forward about the company's latest project.
Hagakure, originating in 17th-century Japan, offers insights into the samurai way of life and the Bushido code of honor. Compiled by Tashiro Tsuramoto, a samurai retainer, Hagakure chronicles the thoughts and experiences the samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo imparted to him. It emphasizes loyalty, self-discipline, and the acceptance of death as integral parts of the samurai ethos.
Providing guidance on etiquette, behavior, and excellence in martial and spiritual pursuits, Hagakure encourages adherence to traditional values and a stoic approach to challenges. It serves as a key resource for understanding the mindset and values of the feudal Japanese samurai class.
In part one of this exclusive interview, Maxwell deftly elucidates the parallels between Hagakure's ethos of Bushido and classical Western literature. He hopes it will resonate with readers sympathetic to the profound values of honor, duty, and martial tradition.
Excerpts Follow.
Bushido in 'Hagakure'
Could you discuss the significance of Hagakure as a cornerstone of Bushido?
Hagakure is something of an outlier in Bushido. Even within the samurai worldview, it stands out for making rather extreme demands. Yamamoto speaks as an old samurai who has lived through a time of peace. He laments that there is no more war and no more of war's edifying influence on men. In this way, it is not unlike Ernst Jünger's Storm of Steel. Hagakure is a deeply reactionary work, even for its time.
Saying "you're weaker than your fathers," whether true or not, rarely finds a warm reception among a contemporary audience. Perhaps because of this, Hagakure was not as influential as other Bushido texts outside a fairly local area. But its insight and pure distillation of the samurai ethos ensured a devoted audience, who passed it down by word of mouth and conducted readings and performances of it long after Yamamoto's time.
Hagakure's influence began to grow in the early 20th century after the Russo-Japanese War. At this time it was rediscovered and "translated" into modern Japanese, gaining wide popularity. Its popularity only grew when war broke out again in the 1930s and 40s, and Bushido itself gained a wide vogue.
It would seem that Hagakure's influence waxes when the text is needed, to remind us of things we've forgotten. Perhaps in an age of peace, such as the Edo period, men felt they didn't need Yamamoto's austere worldview.
Modern Relevance
Some consider Hagakure a reflection of a bygone era. Where do you see its relevance to contemporary readers, particularly in the West?
The West has been struggling with a spiritual crisis for centuries. The so-called "Enlightenment" of the 18th century placed the abstract individual, shorn of his context, at the center of the world.
In all that time there has been a "Counter-Enlightenment" pushing back against this idea of man as his own king. Today, we see the Counter-Enlightenment rising in the form of the illiberal right wing. It says no to man as free to decide his own gender, status, nationality, and worth, no to man as his own lawgiver. It says yes to authority, obedience, discipline, and what Heidegger called "thrownness" — it says yes to man as born into a time, place, lineage, and a set of duties.
Hagakure says yes to all this, too, and it says it in ways that are eerily familiar to our readership but with something new that it can teach us as well. It tells us that not only is obedience to authority one moral virtue among many, it is the cardinal virtue [1.10, 2.264]. Hagakure tells us that the warrior is above the priest [1.112], or perhaps we could say that the man of action is above the man of contemplation. It tells us that if two or three rigorously obedient men make themselves into a great man's sword and instrument, they will conquer the world [1.10]. What could be more relevant in an age of weak men and elite corruption?
Now More Than Ever
What challenges do Hagakure's emphasis on extreme self-discipline and loyalty to authority pose to modern values of individualism and autonomy?
They are just what the doctor ordered — Hagakure's commitment to authority poses the core challenge that the modern world needs.
The word "autonomy" is revealing — parsed out into its Greek roots, it means "self-law." No morality is possible when man gives himself law because he can always overrule himself and never be wrong. Under an ideology of freedom, morality devolves into mere appetite and whim, and poor behavior follows. Everything that is wrong in this world is the result of good men tolerating poor behavior.
Hagakure gives us the strongest imaginable inoculation against all that. Far from morality being a matter of individual conscience, we find that for the devoted retainer, "what his lord says is 'good,' is, and what his lord decrees is 'evil,' is." (1.10) We find that the meaning of service is "in this simple ethic of fealty which is beyond all morality, beyond notions of 'right' and 'wrong.'" (2.264) Fealty itself cannot be judged as right or wrong. It is beyond right and wrong because right and wrong depend upon it.
This grates against our inherited ideas of sapere aude, that one must think for oneself. But if we accept that, we go back to "every man his own king," and this is the thinking that has turned the West from a great power into a feeble old man. It is now unable to push back against Russia and China, unable even to push back against the degenerated elements within its own power structure.
Challenging Liberal Ideologies
How does this translation engage with modern liberal ideologies?
Our edition of Hagakure doesn't directly engage with liberalism in that no mention of it is made in the introduction. We have purposefully avoided footnotes, instead letting the text speak for itself, so there is no real commentary linking the book to modern ideologies of any kind.
However, the warrior ethos found in the book could not be any less compatible with modern ideologies of freedom and equality. Every word drips with authority, instills obedience, eschews individuality, and demands subordination to the lord and master. When Hagakure is left to speak for itself, it provides an antipode to liberalism.
Modern scholarship is deathly afraid of primary sources and letting them speak for themselves. Wikipedia will delete an article that depends too heavily on primary sources. This is because the direct words of ancient peoples pose a challenge to modern sensibilities. The sorts of people who curate Wikipedia have a certain worldview that would fall apart if they did not also curate the past, sanitize it, and sand off its rough edges. They want to make sure you don't get any ideas about thinking like a Caesar, a Homer, or a Yamamoto.
The best commentary and interpretation of Hagakure is to be found in the later books from which we have included extensive selections. As a work of moral philosophy, it really is a self-contained unit that speaks for itself and does not need much, if any, secondary literature to understand the core themes.
A Legacy Renewed
Finally, what impact do you hope this new translation will have on readers outside of Japan?
For people in the West, Bushido is an exotic delicacy. It's something we are supposed to sample only occasionally and never overindulge in. It's a product of its time and place, both of which are alien to us. The worldview is simply too austere and uncompromising for us to truly inhabit. This is something like the general view.
This needs to change. Men of conservative sentiments will find in Hagakure something austere and uncompromising, yes. But they will find in it a kindred spirit, something in their very bones. It's a worldview kindred to a Germanic earl, and that root, ancestral worldview, is the very bottom layer of everything that answers to the word "conservatism." It's a worldview that prizes everything unchosen as what truly matters in life — lineage, duty, nation. The old samurai of Saga speaks to that part of us.
Imperium Press' mission is nothing less than to revive and cultivate this ancestral worldview in our folk. Each of our books is a piece of that puzzle, and Hagakure is one such piece. The book comes from very far afield, but for that reason, it has things to teach that we need very much. Our fathers have created the world around us, and that world is crumbling, but it has been said that every generation rebels against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers. Let us make friends with the old reactionary Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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Author: Daniel Manning
