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Thread: 16th cent. Samurai: honour and code of conduct

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    Default 16th cent. Samurai: honour and code of conduct

    Hi!

    I'm writing a short paper for a history class about Miyamoto Musashi as an example/contrast of/to the code of conduct and prinicple of honour among sixteenth century Samurai.

    Right now, I'm looking for texts, which were known at the time and do give guidelines for proper conduct. Unfortunately, I'm not reading Japanese well enough to research texts and so the only relevant text I have right now (since "Hagakure" and "Bushido" came much later) is Takeda Nobushige's "Kyujukyu Kakun" ("Ninety-Nine Precepts").

    Any thoughts?

    Thanks in advance.

    Joachim.
    Joachim Hoss
    Cologne, Germany

    Occam's Razor - A weapon for true martial artists.

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    Default Shido and others..

    Hi Joachim,
    In English I would suggest two for a good start. The first is 'Ideals of the Samurai' translated by William Scott Wilson...Basically an english version of several of the laws and house codes of the early Samurai (Up until the Tokugawa era anyway..Perfect for you). The Amazon.co.uk site is here:

    Amazon site
    And also by him you may like the ideas in 'The Unfettered Mind' by Takuan Soho...Not laws but writings on the theme by a zen monk who lived though Musashi's era...
    The second book would be the 'Budo Shoshinshu' by Taira Shigesuke and translated by Thomas Cleary...A later book by a Tokugawa Samurai and again, like the Hagakure an idealised 'This is how you should be' type of list book for retainers...
    Amazon site is here:

    Amazon site (Budo Shoshinshu)

    Those two may be a good start in English for you...They are all good books anyway and worth a look..
    Regards.
    Ben Sharples.
    智は知恵、仁は思いやり、勇は勇気と説いています。

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    Default Re: 16th cent. Samurai: honour and code of conduct

    Originally posted by Joachim
    Hi!

    I'm writing a short paper for a history class about Miyamoto Musashi as an example/contrast of/to the code of conduct and prinicple of honour among sixteenth century Samurai.

    Right now, I'm looking for texts, which were known at the time and do give guidelines for proper conduct.
    A couple of thoughts and suggestions:

    First, you really ought to consider recasting the paper a bit. Musashi isn't a useful subject for the focus of a study of 16th century bushi. He was barely 16 years old when that century ended and, as far as we know, participated in only one or two actual battles (the Osaka castle campaign and--possibly--Sekigahara). He also had a very unusual upbringing, having been raised in an obscure village while his father was essentially laying low after having gotten involved in some messy political trouble. Musashi himself never did service for any daimyo (other than as a temporary recruit, during the aforementioned battles), and was clearly a maverick in most other aspects of his personality, lifestyle, and thinking, as well. Given all that, then, putting him at the center of a paper on 16th century warrior values and conduct is essentially like using Michael Jackson as the focus of a paper on African-Americans in the early 21st century: both are too far removed from "typical" to tell you anything about the group you?re claiming they represent.

    If you want to write a paper on Musashi, you'd be on firmer ground focusing on him as an interesting early exponent of a trend of thought (martial art as a quest for perfection) that became widespread (mainstream) later in the Tokugawa period. If your real interest is late medieval warrior mores, you're better off leaving Musashi out of it, and finding a different handle for the paper.

    Second, as to sources on the latter: Ben has already mentioned Wilson's Ideals of the Samurai; a few other things you'd probably want to look at include:

    Carl Steenstrup's "Sata Mirensho: A Fourteenth-Century Law Primer," Monumenta Nipponica 35.4 (1980), 337-346; "The Imagawa Letter: A Muromachi Warrior's Code of Conduct Which Became a Tokugawa Schoolbook," Monumenta Nipponica 28.3 (1973), 295-316; and "Hojo Soun's Twenty-One Articles: The Code of Conduct of he Odawara Hojo," Monumenta Nipponica 29.3 (1974), 283-303

    David John Lu's "Seventeen-Article Injunction of Asakura Toshikage, c. 1480," in his Sources of Japanese History (1974: McGraw-Hill), volume 1, 171-174; "Hojo Soun's Twenty-One Article Injunction for His Vassals, c. 1495," in the same volume, pp. 174-175; "Takeda Shingen's House Law," in the same book, pp. 175-176; and "The Hundred Article Code of Chosokabe, 1597," in the same book, pp. 177-181

    W. Rohl's translation of Takeda Shingen's 99 article house codes (I can't remember the title of the article) in Oriens Extremus 6 (1959)

    Tom Conlan's "Largess & the Limits of Loyalty in the 14th Century," in Jeffrey Mass, ed., The Origins of Japan's Medieval World (Stanford, 1997), 39-64

    G. Cameron Hurst's "The Warrior as Ideal for a new Age," in the same volume, pp. 209-36

    The last two articles deal with 14th century warriors, but the have a lot to say about the direction things were going by then. There's a lot more available in English on 13th and 14th century shogunal laws and such, but that's a bit early for your topic.

    Happy hunting!
    Karl Friday
    Dept. of History
    University of Georgia
    Athens, GA 30602

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    Hi,

    Thank you all very much for the information.

    Dr. Friday's post made me think that maybe my lack of proficiency with the English language has led to a misunderstanding.

    I was looking for information for a "term paper" (I hope this is the correct expression), not a full-blown research paper.

    It's just about a 15 page thing, my Professor wants, specifically about Musashi and his view (or lack of adherance to) the code of conduct, before he (hopefully) gives me the credit for the course.


    Again, thank you both very much for the information. I stumbled over the Budo Shoshinshu recently and just ordered it from amazon yesterday. :-)
    I will try and find copies of the other books and articles you mentioned. Our department's library unfortunately (for me) focuses more on Japanese economy and politics than on the history of the samurai. We do have the Monumenta though.
    Joachim Hoss
    Cologne, Germany

    Occam's Razor - A weapon for true martial artists.

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    Originally posted by Joachim

    I was looking for information for a "term paper" (I hope this is the correct expression), not a full-blown research paper.
    That's what I assumed in the first place. My earlier post was the advice I'd give one of my students who proposed the sort of project you suggested as a term paper.

    Simply put, I'd steer him or her away from the project. Musashi was, at best, a very unusual man for his time. And he was neither famous nor influential until modern times. All of which means that studying him won't tell you much about warriors of his time. It's possible, of course, to compare anything to anything; but how enlightening would a compare and contrast essay about Ozzy Osbourne and British blue collar workers really be?

    The other methodological problem you're grappling with here is the lack of sources (other than in Japanese) for either side of the comparison. There isn't a lot available on Musashi's thoughts, other than Gorin no sho, and, on the other side, you'd have only the two or three daimyo house codes to work from. You'd be comparing the thoughts of a very unusual lower-ranked samurai on martial art, with the rules two or three famous daimyo established for running their "countries." Again, it's an apples and oranges sort of thing.

    So my recommendation is still the same (as it would be if you were doing this for one of my classes): either write a paper about Musashi, and forget the sengoku stuff, or write about bushi codes of conduct and house laws during the 15th and 16th centuries (wherein you have quite a few readily comparable examples).

    Anyway, have fun with the project!
    Karl Friday
    Dept. of History
    University of Georgia
    Athens, GA 30602

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