Brave knights, outstanding scholars or lawless soldiers? The samurai were all of these at the same time, but not necessarily at the same time… One of the most famous of them, Kusunoki Masashige (1294-1336), whose statue now adorns the promenade of Tokyo’s Imperial Palace, was a warrior of humble birth in Japan of fire and blood this time. He perfectly embodies the cardinal virtue associated with these ancient warriors: loyalty. Kusunoki, liege lord of Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339), performs feat after feat to place effective power in the hands of his supreme commander… Up to the point of sacrificing his life when the Mikado, the imperial palace, was sent to fight losing battle on the banks of the Minato River.
But if this warrior has gone down in history, it’s also because of a much less chivalrous skill: cunning. In the spring of 1333, the restless Go-Daigo in exile on the Oki Islands, a small archipelago in the Sea of Japan, appealed to him. The emperor’s attempts to wrest power from the decadent Kamakura shogunate had indeed failed. Kusunoki was his last chance. The samurai was surrounded by a thousand brave men. Opposite him were the troops of the shogun Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358) 100 times more numerous. But Kusunoki was a brilliant strategist. He lured his opponents onto collapsed bridges, buried them under falling rocks, and feigned surrender to deceive his opponents… The snares concocted by this devil of a man ensnared the enemy for months, giving him much time with the Kaiser returned to seize power.
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Bushido valued the practice of martial arts and the arts in general
Betrayals, murders… Is the soul size of the Japanese equivalent of our knights in armor just a myth? Partly because the image of the samurai has been frozen in our latitudes, thanks to a treaty made when they stopped fighting, or almost: the hagakure (literally “hidden in the foliage”). Japan was at peace for a century when Yamamoto Tsunemoto (1659-1719) dictated to a young scholar the maxims and ideas that make up the eleven chapters of this treatise. From 1603 to 1868, during the Edo period, the Tokugawa clan ruled the country with an iron fist, and although samurai were still allowed to wield long swords (katana) and short swords (wakizashi), a duel was threatened with the death penalty.
The Hagakure was therefore less a treatise on war and more a handbook of ethics (one must prioritize loyalty to one’s supreme commander, maintain control of one’s emotions, and present impeccable dress) and philosophy nourished by Zen (the way of the samurai, the End). resulting in death). This text is considered the basis of Bushido (the way of the warrior), which valued the practice of martial arts as highly as that of the arts in general. From the age of 13 and the genpuku ceremony where the young samurai was shaved and given his adult name and swords, his entire training has been designed to respect this balance. The good samurai had to be able to read and calligraph perfectly, have the basics of mathematics, compose poetry and master the tea ceremony like dancing …
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The samurai, a very hierarchical social class
Representing 2 million people during the Edo period, the samurai social class was extremely hierarchical. The hatamoto (standard bearers), direct vassals of the Tokugawa shogun, were the ruling officers of the regime. They administered the great cities, were general inspectors and in charge of finances… Then came the Kotaiyoriai, Hatamoto without official functions but enriched by owning the best lands. The Gokenin (Liemen) were officers who led groups of samurai. When the Tokugawa took power, the ji-samurai, landowners, at the bottom of the ladder had to choose between the prestigious but poorly paid status of samurai and that of peasant. Eventually, the ronin who did not own land or were attached to a lord were banished from this caste.
Thanks to their remarkable adaptability, which evolved from warrior to administrator, the samurai were able to rule Japan for seven centuries until the restoration of imperial power in the Meiji era in 1868. Led by the samurai Saigo Takamori, who is originally from the island Kyushu, young warriors were at the forefront of the battles that brought about the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the rise of Emperor Mutsuhito (Meiji).
But once victorious, these noble fighters had no place in Meiji-era Japan, which was modernizing, industrializing, and trying to catch up with Western nations. In 1876, eight years after the Imperial Restoration, an edict banned the carrying of sabers, which were henceforth reserved only for officers of the regular army. Saigo Takamori and the warriors loyal to him, holed up in their fortress of Satsuma, then rose up against the new regime they helped establish. They were massacred there by Imperial troops and the last samurai committed seppuku, a ritual suicide, on September 24, 1877.
Curiously, Saigo Taka mori was not forgotten after his death: he too has his statue in Tokyo’s Ueno Park, three kilometers from Kusunoki Masashige’s. The idealist and the cunning, the believer and the rebel: two samurai models, each as legitimate as the other.
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➤ Interview published in GEO Hors-Série Histoire magazine from December 2022 to January 2023 (No. 16, Samouraï).
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