In Our Time - The Samurai

Episode Date: December 24, 2009

Melvyn Bragg and guests Gregory Irvine, Nicola Liscutin and Angus Lockyer discuss the history of the Samurai and the role of their myth in Japanese national identity.The Samurai have a fearsome historical reputation as a suicidally brave caste of Japanese warriors. During World War Two, kamikaze pilots were photographed climbing into their cockpits with Samurai swords, encapsulating the way the myth of the Samurai's martial ethos kept its power long after their heyday. But the Samurai's role in Japanese culture is much more complex than that. They were deeply engaged with Zen Buddhism and Noh Theatre, and sponsored haiku poetry. After their role in Japan's century of civil war, ending in the early 1600s, they became part of the country's civil service. A 250-year peace toppled them into identity crisis.In the 19th century, with the arrival of the West, they played an important role in the establishment of a Japanese nation-state, not least by restoring the Emperor to power. And in the 20th century the mythological version of the Samurai, designed in part for Western consumption, became integral to a newly forged national identity.Nicola Liscutin is Programme Director of Japanese Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London; Gregory Irvine is Senior Curator Japan at the Victoria and Albert Museum; Angus Lockyer is Lecturer in Japanese History and Chair of the Japan Research Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk, forward slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, during the Second World War, Japanese kamikaze pilots were photographed climbing into their cockpicks armed with samurai swords. In the decades since, the myth of the samurai is a fanatical, self-sacrificing warrior cast has been sustained in a host of films. The samurai played a crucial part in Japanese culture since at least the 12th. century, and their identity is more complex and nuanced than the bloodthirsty stereotype suggests. There were professional warriors, suicide licorages, they're also steeped in Zen Buddhism at certain points in their history, and sponsored haiku poetry. They contributed to calligraphy, flower-ranging,

and the art of the tea ceremony, and for many years their main role was the civil servants. In the 20th century, the myth of the samurai played a part in the re-emergence of a unified Japanese nation, from restoring the emperor to restarting the post-war economy. With me to discuss the myth and history of the samurai are Nick Lelyis Kooten, Program Director of Japanese Studies, Birkbeck College University of London, Gregory Irvin, senior curator Japan at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Angus Lockyer, lecturer in Japanese history and chair of the Japan Research Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London.

Angus Lockyer, before we come on to the samurai themselves, can you tell us something about the society from which they emerged? Perhaps the place to start is to remember that, like many of us, compared to their continental neighbour, China, Japan was very backward for most of its history. In other words, it came on later. So in the middle of the first millennium of the common era, you begin to see the emergence of a series of warrior clans. These aren't yet the samurai, contending for power.

One of these emerges as preeminent in maybe the fifth century and begins in order to consolidate itself to borrow series of institutions from China, administrative codes, Buddhism, how to plan a city, how to write histories. And this clan is the origin, so it is said, of today's imperial family. So they try to centralize the state. The problem is that it doesn't work very well. And so very quickly, after the 7th and 8th centuries, what you begin to see is power flowing away from the center.

The center kind of turns inward on itself. It becomes very aristocratic. some would say effete culture. And so authority gets privatised. It flows out into the countryside. It flows into kind of private family disputes and things like this. And this is the environment of a somewhat decentralized, fragmentary archipelago, if you like, that the samurai come to prominence.

So they're the struggling little island offshore, really. Yes, there are comparisons one can draw. So we have this warrior, these warriors emerging as the centre can't hold. and the young Irish circuits go to the country establish their own little mini city states or whatever we want to call them. How did the samurai come out of this cluster of rural warriors? The sources we have are sources about property disputes

and things like this. And what seems to have happened is that the samurai emerged through a kind of confluence of three different streams, if you like. One is the people who were always there in the countryside. There were always warriors in the countryside enforcing their authority over their own little patch. And one of the things that happens in this privatization of authority

is that you get very complicated kind of property chains developing. So a cultivator needing a little bit of protection, turning to a local warrior for that protection. And the local warrior then kind of attaching himself to a kind of chain of authority that leads all the way to the capital, maybe through a Buddhist temple or maybe to an aristocrat eventually. So that's one thing, these kind of property managers, if you like,

who know how to wield a sword. It's a kind of protection racket, if you like. That's one strain. The other is people who are sent out from the centre to kind of try and keep some kind of control in the countryside. So somebody who might be appointed a governor or some kind of official, who again begins to aggregate authority in as much as the centre isn't really exercising oversight.

That's the second. The third is interesting. The third is kind of the endless problem in aristocratic societies of people breeding too much. And so an elite spawning too many people and not having jobs for them. And so you get the emergence of two big clans. The names of these are very famous,

the Tyra and the Minamoto. And these names are kind of depositories for superfluous elite, suns, really. And again, they go out to the countryside. And beginning very early, actually, in the 9th century, we begin to hear stories about these people kind of causing problems.

Usually in the east or up north, which is where Tokyo, here is now, but at that point was pretty much beyond the pale. Nicola Heskuddin, can I come to you then? She'll fast forward to the 12th century. There was a decisive but, turn out to be, as I understand, a decisive battle between these two clans and the Minamoto won. How did that affect the role of the samurai?

The Minamoto being victorious at the Battle of Dan Noura, finally over the Taira and drowning the... crown prince together with his Tayada protectors, then moved the military headquarters to Kamakura, close to what is today, Tokyo. And by shifting the military headquarter and with it, really, the political power center as well as the power over taxation, incomes, and so on, it further preempted the central authority of the imperial household and the emperor. And at that time, what was really tremendously important because there were so many, as Angus said before,

so many different military clans was to form alliances that would allow strength and concentration of power in the hands of the Minamoto and it's only then that Samurai almost as a profession, namely as those who serve these military leaders.

We use that phrase because the word means to serve the samurai and they start to come forward. How did the establishment of a show Shogun affect their status. Can you tell listeners what a shogun is? The Shogun is basically the general, the main general of the military system. And Minamoto Yoritomo declared himself to be then the Shogun, not least because also in his hands then eventually rested the diverse alliances between groups. But it was to shift very quickly from the 13th century onwards going to other military clans.

Where are the samurai now under the minimum? Do people say, are this is a caste? Are they established in a much more cohesive way than before? Yes, because they were accepted then, as it were, as a professional group and also in terms of a social hierarchy. They were climbing up very quickly the social hierarchy. So it became a clearly determined hierarchical group that was above peasants, artisans, and so on.

Greg Rehvin, can you give us a sense of the, How the samurai is developing characteristics of a samurai So we can talk to them as talk about them, not just as people with horses and swords, but a cast, a group, of force. They are very much still the warrior class. They are enforcing the rule of the country under the sword. The sword is an extremely important symbol and weapon.

The sword also being one of the three imperial treasures. So there's an iconography that goes through that as well. But they're also developing a culture. They are the military, but they form, if you like, their own military aristocracy. They're far removed from the imperial court in Kyoto, but they're starting to adopt their own rights as well. They're also becoming patrons of the arts and patrons of artists. There's a great demand.

I think when we think about... We're still talking to 12th century. Yeah, absolutely. Certainly from the 12th century. Yorotomo in particular, there's a wonderful painting of Yorotomo in court-style robes. whereas 10 years before this painting, he would have been in full armour. So they were aristocrats, they were military aristocrats. Were they a cast? Could you just say, I've got enough money, I'm going to become a samurai,

or did you have to be born into it? You really had to be born into it. In later centuries, yes, you can buy yourself into it, but at the period that we're talking about, no, you're a part of that class. And expanding what Angus said earlier on, these families that grew up in the provinces, You get this Lord Vassal relationship developing Allegiances based on loyalty, based on kinship and blood. But it moves on beyond that.

So I don't really know how a caste develops, how a clan develops. But you're getting these family groupings with loyalty. Loyalty is terribly important to the samurai at this point, although some question the actual status of that loyalty, whether it was true loyalty or whether it was loyalty as long as your lord can actually afford to protect you and actually give you the benefits. But arms and armour.

still very, very important, and it's a samurai who have this. They decide what they need in the way of armour, and we always think of the samurai as depicted as the higher echelons. Can you, let's get to their sort of core purpose, the warriors. What were their customs on the battlefield? Were they distinct, and first of all, secondly, how effective were they? I think they probably were fairly distinct. I mean, we don't have very many.

records of warfare. What we have are what are called the Gunghi Monagotari, the war tales. And these are of course are always written after the event, and they can be rather romanticised. Evidence tells us that there weren't necessarily pitched battles, but individual skirmishes, often

prefaced by a declaration of lineage, Ujibumi or Yomu. So when you go out onto the battlefield, you don't want to be defeated by somebody of lower rank than yourself. So you'll say who you are, what your status is, what your family history is, and then challenge someone of equal rank to come forward and fight you.

And I've read in notes that you were provided and around the subject that they would paint their horses in bright colours. They themselves would wear makeup, cosmetics or use. What was that all about? Prior to battle, you would perfume your helmet because on the top of the helmet there's a hole through which your soul is believed to escape if you're killed in battle. So you don't actually want your soul to be polluted, if you like. But also the head would be taken after a battle and the perfume... You mean the severed

head? A severed head, yes. I mean heads were taken and examined after battle because... Examined for what? For status. How could they tell by looking at a dead head? By looking at the helmet that was attached to it and also by... And this of course led to all sorts of

corruption by the fact that they would have black painted teeth which would illustrate high status. In the 12th century when the Mongols invaded twice and were defeated by what is known as a kamikaze, the divine wind. The Japanese were absolutely shocked at their battle techniques. The Mongols never heard of declaration of lineage.

The Mongols came in with massed ranks of foot soldiers armed with spears and didn't follow the Japanese protocols for battle. They came in with exploding hand grenades, which terrorised the Japanese cavalry, because at that point, most of the fighting was carried out by cavalry. There were foot soldiers as well. But, yeah, the etiquette of battle, in the 12th century was completely shattered.

In 1466, the second shogun, it loses control of Japan, and we have more or less a century of civil war. Can I turn to you, Nicola, how did that affect the samurai in that period? Did they grow? Was it great for them? Yes, they had certainly lots to do at that time. They certainly did grow. I think the decisive shift at that time is that Certain regional, very strong military thieves develop.

So it was really several military clans fighting against each other over dominance of Japan with the aim partly to sort of unify Japan and get more control. It was really property and economic control. But Angus, the samurai went into that 100 years, X and they came out, Z. Can you tell us what X and Z were? I think they go in as property administrators with a nice little sideline

in demonstrating their military prowess on the battlefield. In 1467, the centre really no longer holds and you have disputes all the way up and down the chain. There are competing imperial factions, shogunal factions, the countryside devolves into chaos. Kyoto burns. And so what happens then is it's really every man for himself. Now, you can't make your own way in the world,

but what you can do is you can pledge your very contingent loyalty to a more effective lord. So the term for this period actually in Japanese is often Gekokujo, when the lower overcome the higher, you will sell your master for a chance to progress. And so it's at this point that you get a shift from property administrators to really violent opportunists who become very good at killing each other. And over time, as Nicola just pointed out, the units in which they're fighting get larger. They become highly bureaucratized.

So what you see, what some historians would claim is that, you know, Japan was not feudal before this. And then in the space of a hundred years, you get a very rapid progression through what we would call feudalism to a kind of centrally organized bureaucratic state. Over that hundred years, Greg, did the way they fought change? Yes, I mean, they moved from minor skirmishes with cavalry, with high-ranking samurai on horseback, to following the Mongol example. of massed ranks of foot soldiers armed with spears, swords,

bows and arrows. They still had the horsemen, though. They said had the horsemen, yeah. I mean, the horsemen were the elite, and they would, again, the jury's slightly out on this, I mean, battles would be prefaced by a charge by the cavalry.

But with the increasing mass ranks of foot soldiers with pole arms, they were terribly effective against the cavalry. You also get a change in styles of swords from the slung sword worn with armour to the Daisho, the pair of swords which becomes very symbolic for the samurai, the long sword and the short sword,

long sword being good on the battlefield and the short sword being better for urban fighting. You also get the introduction of the gun because the West arrive in the 1540s. That had a radical change on warfare at that time. The Civil War ended. Tukagawa established a new shokonate. So what happens then?

After 100 years of war in the 1560s thereabouts, the armies are getting very big. The costs of going into battle are beginning to outweigh the benefits. And you also get the emergence of three individuals successively, who we now call unifiers. It's not a great term. They don't quite unify the country. But what they do is they prove very efficient

at suppressing the opposition, which isn't only other samurai as well, it's also Buddhist institutions, it's unpopular movements, it's things like this. And so over time they impose a certain kind of peace on the countryside. There's a huge battle in 1600, Sekegohara, which is the moment at which the last of these figures, Tokugawa Iyasu, the founder of the last of the shogunates,

triumphs over his rivals. And at that point, really peace breaks out. The consequences of that are up for, perhaps, of course. Nicola, can you, when peace broke out, and it broke up for a long time, the samurai were forced to change their role, which they did. Can you explain how they did? Well, they became bureaucrats, secretaries, administrators in all the offices of the shogunate and basically had to set their swords aside. They were still allowed for a short time to wear them in public and otherwise only at official occasions. But they were basically becoming

administrators and increasingly frustrated. One advantage in a way was after really 150 years of warfare in Japan that many of this samurai had suddenly time to get an education and that men is studying the Chinese classics, also for families who would not have had access that much to education on that scale before. They are drawing very heavily on Chinese models, as Nicola has said, but one thing to remember here is that the Tokugawa are not a central authority. The negotiated nature of the piece is that there's a shogunate,

but the shogunate actually allows the other powerful lords to keep their domains. It retains the right to move them around or to take hostages and these things. But so what you have is you have what some people have called a compound system. You have a central authority, the Tokugawa, who retain authority over foreign relations, for example, over relationships with the court. But you also have these mini-states which run their own business and into which the Tokugawa don't necessarily intrude.

So there's this kind of competitive state system almost in which people are at liberty to experiment, drawing on Chinese models, maybe also drawing on other older texts and so on. You actually end up with an awful lot of dispossessed samurai. Those have backed the wrong side, for example, or those who've been defeated in battle. Where do those samurai go? They are masterless samurai. And you have this group called the Ronin, literally a wave man,

who are wandering the country, causing problems, shifting elitances all over the place, and causing an awful lot of concerns in the control of the country at that time. I mean, some of them form brigand bands that need to be suppressed. Others actually move into academic fields and become trainers of sword fencing because the Tokugawa's insist that the sword and the brush must be studied side by side during this period and that's another very crucial point at this time. And there's a sense in which they were trying to justify their new position, wouldn't they?

Could you... Would you like to come on in this, Nicola? How are they doing that? There is a set of behavioural rules that were set for the samurai during the Tokugawa period, which they were supposed to follow. But it set out, As Gregory already mentioned, that a samurai had both to train himself in the sword

and the brush, that is to say, writing and fighting. What aesthetic contribution are they making now? For the aesthetic and cultural contributions, the centuries before 13th, 14s, in particular the 14th century and 15th century, are much, much more important, I would say. very, very important in terms of the overall contribution, for example, to Japanese performing arts. The samurai were, or rather the shogun, were the main patrons of no drama, which is really quite essential. They influenced or inspired all forms of oral storytelling, theater forms like Kabuki and Bunuraku Puppet Theater that developed then in the 17th and 18th century

take their stories and their drama precisely from the big war tales, the tales of Heke. At the same time, the Shogun and some of the Samurai clan groups, families, were sponsoring in the 14th and 15th and 16th century tea ceremony. and that had a major input on architecture, ceramics, and other art forms that we still know today or we believe today as being quintessentially Japanese. What happens, of course, as you move into this period when many samurai have no purpose in life. In fact, the whole class has no real purpose in life. They've made their living by fighting and now peace has broken out. The first hundred years of this is a slightly disturbed time,

you do see emerging, in addition to some of the things that Nicholas mentioned, around 1,700 or so, is what you can really call an identity crisis. And it's on the basis of this identity crisis that you get the later mythologization, if you like. What you have is a bunch of intellectuals, samurai intellectuals. Some of them make their living, teaching sword fighting, some of them start writing and pondering their existence. So it's kind of cameo in the 1700s. And they start talking about, well, what is it to be a samurai when we are no longer the people we thought we were, and you begin to see the texts emerging which define

the notion of service. Greg? Yeah, two points, though. I mean, I agree totally with Nicola that the early periods of the tea ceremony and the no theatre are there within the hierarchical canon of Japanese art, but certainly during the Tokugawa period,

the patronage of the arts is absolutely immense. You see massive production of lacquer wares, for example, and metalware. You're still producing fine decorative of peace is all round. But then to go to what Angus has just been saying about the samurai trying to define themselves, that is absolutely crucial during that early period. And if I could actually read out a quote from a philosopher Hayashi Razan, he says, to have the arts of peace, but not

the arts of war is to lack courage. To have the arts of war, but not the art of peace, is to lack wisdom. A man who is dedicated and has a mission is called a samurai. A man who is of inner worth and upright contact, who has moral principles and a master of the arts. he is also called a samurai. So you're having this redefining of what you are during the 17th century. And then by the, certainly by the 18th century, yeah, they're administrators. They're doing other stuff. But in the 70s, you've touched on the frustration.

One imagines that a lot of them just wanted to go on fighting, and that's what they knew, that's what they wanted to do. And were they causing trouble? Were they a problem? Did they continue to be a problem for 100 years? or did they all sort of, in one sense, give up their arms and go into the civil service? The various kinds of bureaucracy

can only ever really employ 25% of this class, which is now very well defined as a class. It's laid down in law that a samurai is going to be a samurai, is going to be a samurai. They're removed from the land, they're being given stipends. The stipends are being paid in rice. The price of rice goes down over time.

And so as the economy takes off, the population doubles over the course of the 17th century, what we now call Tokyo is the biggest city in the world from 1700 until 1825. What you get is the elite is increasingly emiserated, and only 25% of them are employed. So they have a, as Greg just read out this wonderful quote saying that, you know, your duty is to serve.

They're waiting to serve for 250 years. And over 250 years of basic poverty, quite a bit of frustration does indeed build up. So what do you see happening to the samurai? Can the samurai be called a force at that time? sense of a cohesive force. Are they waiting to be called on? Should a war or a battle break out?

Do they feel their change in their character? I mean, what Greg Redoubt shows that it's an excellent example of the best of both worlds, isn't it? Yes. Is there something else running on underneath? Yes, well, it's nostalgia for

to a certain extent, also for the good old times when there were still wars to be fought and how they had to sort of to hang up the very elaborate armor and put their swords away. They could still train, but it was not worthwhile thinking about it anymore.

So yes, there is a certain sense of frustration and it's a feudal system. So what happens in some of the outer fiefdoms is not under immediate control of the shogunate in Edo or in Tokyo. And so they have a certain

autonomy even when they have to send their retainers or their lords on a regular basis to Edo, which then gives way to this wonderful processions. This were huge travels that traveled across Japan with lots of retainers and all their wonderful armours and swords. So what it becomes, it becomes a kind of show.

It's a constant performance that takes place somewhere in Japan when a lord and his retainers are called upon to appear. in Edo. So this is beginning the myth of the samurai or enforcing it? Because is this important for the next couple of centuries? Certainly, I mean, if you spend quite a bit of your time dressing up and playing a role, then you begin to believe in the role you're playing in.

So there is a certain sense in which this tells the truth of the samurai. But underneath it, you mentioned an undercurrent. Underneath it, there is, again, this statistical fact that you have an under-employed caste, which is meant to be an elite. And so you get this kind of divergence between the performance and the basic economic reality. What does this under-employed cast do? Do they just get drunk and do they go out and cultivate their land

or they sit waiting for the rice? A lot of them. Well, no, they can't go and cultivate their land because they have to live in towns. So they're living in towns waiting for their tiny little stipend to come in from the countryside, which they're not at liberty to go out and get anymore. They can't play the protection racket game.

So what are they locked up? Yeah, yes, fatten ducks waiting for something to happen. Yeah, and this system of parades that Nicola mentioned, Sanking Koti, was actually introduced by the Tokugawa Shogun for control. But it was this, it was the opportunity. How was it going to control anything? Okay, the Daimyo, the regional warlords who've been appointed by the Tokugawa Shogans, were obliged to keep a residence in Edo, Tokyo, where their families were held as hostages

and maintain their domains out in the problem. That family were held as hostages? Effectively, yeah. It was a long tradition in Japan that families were held nominally as hostages. Well, that's a face, sir. Tohagawa Yehasa, for example, was held hostage in his early days. So, yeah, it was tradition.

They're polite hostages. Except you got killed, I presumably, if they're misbehavior on the outer reasons. It could happen. It could happen. But these occasions, when you had to process between Edo and your regional domain, and Nicholas said, you would wear fantastic armour. You were then showing, here we are, we are the samurai, we are your lords, we are your overlords,

but it's also, in a way, it's a self-justification. Yeah, there's nothing much else to do. And if you think that everything's by foot at that time, it takes a long time. So, yes, they're not just sitting around the whole time. They're actually moving a lot, which actually also bolsters the economy along these routes that they have to take. And they're also spending an awful lot of money. I mean, the irony here, of course, is that in order to sustain, this kind of display.

It's at this point that they start building the castles, which we now think of as samurai castles, built during peacetime to display their authority. It's at this time that they're crafting the extraordinary helmets that we see, which were never taken into battle. They were again to perform the role.

Sorry, we're rushing on. In the 19th century, the West came in and they wanted an increasing presence in Japan. So what were the West there for Angus and how did the samurai react? By the early 19th century things are going quite badly wrong inside Japan, even before the West arrives. There's an ecological problem. They've run out of land. There is economic stress,

social tension, and so on. And then, of course, from the beginning of the 19th century, the West begins to change. It acquires gunships. It acquires new kinds of technology, which means that it can impose force at a distance, if you like. The goal here, of course, is China, and the protagonists are the British, and the result is the Opium Wars. So in the 1840s, the situation, the world map in East Asia changes, and you suddenly have what are clearly very threatening Western white opponents who are about to make you submit to something awful. And indeed, in 1853, the Americans, given the geography,

this is the people who come to Japan first, turn up and demand that Japan open itself to trade. Of course, Japan wasn't closed until that point. There was lots of trade going backwards and forwards. That's why we have decent ceramics in England, for example. But at this point, the Americans insist that Japan changes. The problem is that... Changes into what?

Changes into something that's going to operate on the West's terms, which is free trade, which is accepting Western imposition of certain kind of tariff regimes and so on, becomes a member of what is charmingly called the community of nations. But the problem for Japan, of course, is that by this point the Shogun, the nominal national authority is in no position to meet this threat because Japan has evolved in its own way but not along Western lines

and so the inability of the Shogun who as Nicholas said is the title means general generalissimo. The inability of the Shogun to respond to the West effectively means that very quickly you get an internal opposition emerging from the samurai themselves. Can you address this please Nicholas? What is the impact?

The Americans come on. along the West comes along, gunships, war at a distance, that sort of thing. What evidence do we have of the waves this sense of their society? The habits and the manners of the Westerners were considered to be pretty bad. So they were largely known as barbarians, and there was certainly not much willingness on the Japanese side to concede to the barbarians. There are samurai groups who still are loyal to the Shogun and the Togogab. and try to rally around and sort of oppose also the influx of Westerners,

try to support the misguided foreign policy of the shogunate on one side. And on the other side, samurai groups were just keen on getting the foreigners out and having Japan strengthened and who will eventually also form in various groups to support, to bring the emperor back a central figure of a... of a strengthening Japan. Greg, just to put it bluntly, did anyone sort of get hold of the samurai together and say, can we get ourselves back in the saddle, as it were,

and take on these people? Well, yes, I mean, this is an extraordinary paradoxical time because finally the samurai have a purpose. And yet the shogunate, who are governing nominally in the name of the emperor, prevaricate, they don't know what to do. Where has this great samurai spirit gone? We're 50 years after this resurgence of,

what's called national learning Kokukaku where there's a harking back to the past. So yes, you have the samurai who are loyal to the shoguner, to the military, who want to kick the foreigners out and there are lots of attacks on foreigners at this time.

But equally, you have a whole lot who are loyal to the emperor, who had always been closeted away, had never taken part in decisions. And it's an extraordinarily disturbed time. The Japanese were really... An emperor wasn't making much of a show of facing up to the foreigners.

The emperor, as I say, was clotted away. He wouldn't be allowed to see the emperor. I mean, part of the governance during the Tokugawa period was that actually who protected the emperor. There was a lot of fighting to see who would guard the emperor in Kyoto. So, yeah, I mean, an extremely disturbed time. But the samurai were not living up to their ideals, which actually contributed towards their downfall effectively.

Can I just go back to something you said because it's fascinating. they thought the Westers, barbarians, they didn't like their manners. Can you give us a few examples of what they didn't like? Well, for the start, they thought they were smelly. But touch grabbing a hand, saying hello, that was totally uncommon in Japan at that time. So everything that included body contact

or keeping one's shoes on, smoking, while that was a very old tradition in Japan as well apparently the tobaccos the Westerners used at that time were not very much liked by the Japanese so the most interesting or stereotypical image that emerged is that of smelliness of the Westerners

what part are the samurai playing in try to there's obviously some resistance and some reaction the Americans come in 1853 the ports were opened in 1858 and you have 1858, 1859, and then you have these butter-smelling barbarians. Dairy does nothing for personal hygiene at this point. And it takes 10 years for the whole thing to collapse.

Basically, you have a samurai group against a samurai group, and eventually the Shogunate falls. In 1868, Japan has its coup d'etau, which in retrospect is actually a revolution. The irony here, of course, is that the elite is revolutionary, which means that it's not like the French, so we don't call it a revolutionary. But when that resolution comes about, then very quickly the samurai who had been frustrated,

as Greg said, they have a purpose. And their purpose is to build a modern state, a modern state along Western lines, not an indiscriminate copying of the West, but something which borrows and adapts and adopts. And they succeed. This, of course, just to push it forward a little bit, doesn't happen without reactions. There's a samurai, there's a very famous hero, one of the fated heroes. in Japanese history who resists, there are samurai battles

against the erosion of their privileges for the first 10 years. So there's a military resistance from the samurai, from some of the samurai, against the other samurai who are now running the modernising state. And then there's a cultural resistance,

a cultural reaction, if you like, which emerges in the 1880s against too much westernization and then a search for something that might be authentically Japanese. The 1876, the samurai as a class, are officially abolished. They're not allowed to carry

their swords, they're no longer a recognized caste, and you then get huge economic problems because they no longer what are they going to live on? Their stipends have gone. A lot of them are paid off in lump sums, but they all have to find new employment of some sort of another. There was a book, Bushido,

The Soul of Japan, that massively influenced the Western imagination of the samurai. This was written by a man called Nitobe Inazo, who was one of the first Japanese to be completely fluent in English. lived for a long time in the States,

more to the point became under Secretary General of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1926. And one of his, he considered it to be one of his missions, to be an educator and to educate the West about Japanese culture and what he considered to be authentically Japanese. He was also a Christian and a firm Christian believer. And so he sets about writing this little book about the soul of the Japanese,

so the soul of the samurai Bushido, the way of the warrior. And it was written in English. It went through, I don't know, 27 reprints already in the early 20th century. It is probably really in the early 20th century, one of the best known books about Japan together with Okakura's book tea.

And it was still, quite often used in the West, especially also after the Second World War, is where to make sense of the Japanese, both as enemies but also as a culture. Angas not yet. The, as I understand it, after all this, from the 12th century, when Japan's looking for a national identity, they've come out and absorbed with the West to quite an, we've skipped him by, to quite an extraordinary degree, and then they compete Russia, and that shakes the West of its roots. It's suddenly this,

place has woven up, and it's taking on these great country of Russia. They're still, it seems to me, from what I've read, they're trying to form their identity still a lot around the samurai. It's only really later, a little bit in the 20s, but then in the 30s, that you begin to get a very defensive nationalism, which looks for the exceptional things in Japan's past. And, of course, at that point, in as much as you're fighting already in China and you're going to fight America, it's pretty clear to every,

everybody, that the samurai become the thing to which one attaches the military tradition, to animate a present where Japan is seen to be under threat. So I think one has to be a little careful about saying there's a continuous evolution. It's those moments when Japan has to recreat into itself that the samurai become a motivating cultural man. Can we use the sword as a way through this last period? The samurai sword, well, you say a few words about it because it was an extraordinary instrument. Yes, I mean, it's a fabulous weapon. And as I said earlier on, it's both a symbol and an actual weapon.

And during Japan's imperialist expansion period, all officers, all NCOs would carry swords. The officers would probably have well-made swords. The myth of carrying a family heirloom into battle, I think, should be shattered. You wouldn't want to take a family heirloom into battle. You might wear it at command headquarters and so on. But, yeah, the sword was made for all NCOs. And you get a sort of corruption of Bushido at this time. You get this harking back to the 17th century, the romantic view,

where Miyamoto Masashi said the way the warrior lies in the resolute acceptance of death. And this is instilled into the conscript army in the imperialist period. You will die for your emperor because it's a great and glorious thing, carrying the sword. Nitobe's book on Bushido became then part of Compiates Re-education in the 1930s in Japan. So by that time it had been translated into Japanese. So first a book that is sent out to effect cross-cultural understanding then becomes a text that will be used for propaganda in Japan. Can I just before you come in, Anguson, we're coming towards the end of the program.

It is curious, isn't it, they're stripped of their swords in the last quarter of the 19th century. And then the swords abroad. They wear them as they climb into these airplanes, kamikaze. They wear them for the Photoshop. shot. One should be very clear here. There's a very media savvy propaganda around with the Japanese army. Indeed, the cockpit of the fighters that they're flying won't allow them to wear swords inside. But for the propaganda at the time, there's one famous magazine called Front, issued in multiple European languages, where this becomes the defining image. But the officers like to wear them on parades, and they're allowed to wear them again, aren't they?

Yes, to a certain extent. And even in... infantry battles. I mean, you can't get them into a cockpit, but you can certainly take them into, not to put too fine a point in China. So overall, despite the photo opportunity, when they get a chance to wear the swords, even going into battle, let alone ceremony, they will go back to the sword again. Yes, because by this point, this myth,

the translation of Nitobe, the kind of search for some desperate kind of authenticity in the past has reached its height. Japan is at that point isolated and needs to assert a unique identity in the world. What intrigued me was after the war, just after the war, in 47, 48, the first big exhibition put on by the museum in, was it in Tokyo. The Tokyo National War was devoted to the sword.

Well, there's a, there's an, this is an interesting deflating, perhaps, and somewhat rude epilogue, but the Americans come into Japan in 1945, and the thing they're trying to do at least initially, before they make them a Cold War partner, is to demilitarize. And so one of the first things they want to do is make sure there's no resistance and people don't have access to military material. And so they have a sword hunt. It's the second or third sword hunt in Japanese history.

And of course, this causes consternation because there are family heirlooms that are now threatened. And so very quickly you get an association forming which remakes the sword into an aesthetic object. And so when the national... It always was, but there's a conscious demilitarization and aestheticization at this time. And so this association forms. There's a debate with the occupation authorities. When the Tokyo National Museum reopens, the first spokesperson. exhibition is called the art of the Japanese sword. And at that point, you no longer have an

army, but you have an icon instead. Thank you very much. Thank you, Nicola Skirton. Thank you, Angus Locker, and Gregory Irvin. Next week, we'll be talking about Mary Wilsoncraft, a great original finger of the British Enlightenment. And thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this BBC podcast, why not try others such as Start the Week, the Radio 4 discussion program where Andrew Maher sets the cultural agenda for the next seven days. To find out more, visit BBC.com.ukuk forward slash podcasts.