Hagakure

Nabeshima's forbidden book, Hagakure (abbreviated). 1939 edition.

Hagakure (Kyūjitai: 葉隱; Shinjitai: 葉隠; meaning Hidden by the Blades or Hidden Blades) or Hagakure Kikigaki (葉隠聞書), is a practical and spiritual guide for the warrior, drawn from a collection of comments by the official Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a former retainer of Nabeshima Mitsushige (1632-1700), the third ruler of what is now Saga Prefecture in Japan. Tashiro Tsuramoto compiled these comments from his conversations with Tsunetomo from 1709 to 1716; however, it was not published until many years later. Written during a time when there was no officially sanctioned samurai combat, the book addresses the dilemma of maintaining a warrior class in the absence of war and reflects the author's nostalgia for a world that had disappeared before he was born. Hagakure was largely forgotten for two centuries after its composition, but it came to be seen as the ultimate guide for samurai during the Pacific war. Hagakure is also known as The Book of the Samurai, Analects of Nabeshima, or Hagakure Analects.

Content

The book records Yamamoto's views on bushidō, the warrior code of the samurai. Hagakure is sometimes said to state that bushidō is really the "way of dying" or living as if one were already dead, and that a samurai must be willing to die at any time to be faithful to the lord of him His saying "the way of the warrior is death" was a summary of the willingness to sacrifice that the bushidō encodes.The Hagakure text is occasionally misinterpreted to mean that the bushidō is a death code. However, the true meaning is that by having a constant awareness of death, people can reach a transcendent state of freedom, whereby "it is possible to perfectly fulfill the vocation of a warrior".

Historical context

After the Tokugawa shogunate suppressed the Shimabara rebellion in 1638, Japan experienced no war for about two centuries. Private fights and duels between samurai were also suppressed. Yamamoto Tsunetomo was born in 1659, after the end of officially sanctioned samurai fighting. He had no personal combat experience and when he was employed, he worked as a scribe. Late 17th century and early XVIII, the samurai were faced with the dilemma of maintaining a warrior class in the absence of war, and Hagakure reflects this uncertainty. Written at the end of the author's life, the book also reflects his nostalgia for a world that had disappeared before his birth.

Hagakure was largely forgotten for two centuries. The first modern edition appeared in 1900 and did not receive much attention during the first decades of the century. Hagakure came to be seen as a definitive samurai book only during the Pacific War. According to Mark Ravina, "rather than an account of samurai lore, this work serves as an example of what the Japanese military thought Japanese soldiers should believe about samurai practice." In the postwar era, the author and Nationalist poet, Yukio Mishima, used Hagakure to define his guiding principles and published his own commentary on the work in 1967.

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai features a series of intertitles that quote Hagakure.