A Japanese Mirror

by Ian Buruma

  Why did Asano, or Hangan as he shall henceforth be called, try to kill Moronao? For him to have even contemplated such a thing in the strict society of eighteenth-century samurai, one can only assume that the provocation was unbearable. It was, after all, as if a fairly minor Nazi dignitary, a Gauleiter, say, had tried to kill Himmler. Moronao must have been a very nasty man indeed. This is certainly the view of the many playwrights who all depict him as an arch-villain, with the face of a lecherous sadist and the gravelly voice of the devil incarnate.

  But why did Hangan do it? Nobody knows. There is no reason on record anywhere.5 As to Moronao (Kira), there is some historical evidence that he was a most benevolent gentleman, greatly loved by the people he ruled. This much is actually known about the incident: Hangan was in charge of receiving an imperial envoy. This kind of ceremonial occasion was of great importance to warriors who probably had little else but protocol to occupy their time. Moronao was to be Hangan’s mentor, being an experienced man in this type of procedure. In return, to pay off his debt, Hangan was obliged to give him a present of some kind and the common assumption – it is only an assumption – is that he did not give enough. Consequently Moronao treated him with disrespect, which then provoked Hangan, out of giri to himself, to retaliate violently.

  There are many other versions of the story, however, all of which reflect the attitudes of the audiences at which they were aimed. This offers a unique insight into the way of thinking of various sections of Japanese society. For example, the eighteenth-century audience of the Osaka puppet theatre, for whom Takeda Izumo wrote ‘Chushingura’, consisted mostly of merchants with a taste for erotic intrigues. Thus in the theatre version the repulsive Moronao smacks his lecherous lips every time Hangan’s young wife is around and makes several attempts to seduce her. She rejects him politely but resolutely. And out of sheer spite Moronao then taunts and bullies Hangan beyond the point of endurance, comparing him to a carp stuck in a well, ignorant of the world outside.

  This is of course a classic giri conflict. What can Hangan do? Giri to his own honour and his personal inclinations tell him to defend the honour of his wife, but giri to his seniors in rank and ultimately the shogun himself, dictates the utmost restraint. It is one of those ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situations that make stage-samurai squirm to the delight of plebeian theatre audiences.

  In another version, often used by story-tellers who were especially popular with carpenters, roof-builders, mat-makers and other urban craftsmen, Moronao deliberately humiliates Hangan by teaching him the wrong protocol, causing him to lose face in front of the imperial mission. By appearing in the wrong clothes and preparing the wrong food, he is like a courtier arriving in fancy dress at a formal palace reception. Story-tellers have a field-day describing his blushes, his embarrassed stammering and his effusive apologies to the offended envoy.

  In reality, this is highly unlikely to have happened, for in such a breach of etiquette Moronao would have seemed as culpable as Hangan. He was supposed to be the teacher, after all. But never mind that. It is typical of the gamesmanship that goes on in any organization, especially one that is based on a strong sense of hierarchy and a long apprenticeship, such as, for instance, any Japanese artisan trade.

  As in old-fashioned English public schools, losing face this way is a part of the initiation. The seniors establish their authority by exposing the ignorance of the newcomer. In Japan where the relationships between seniors and juniors or masters and apprentices are especially severe, this type of situation would strike a very responsive chord.

  I myself have worked as a lowly assistant to a photographer in Tokyo, whom, in the traditional artisan style, we had to call Master. Neither the Master, nor his other assistants would tell me what to do, let alone how to do it. One had to ‘learn with the body’, as they called it. One acquires the kata (the proper form) by sharpening one’s ‘instinct’, by making mistakes and being humiliated. ‘But you never told me …’ is never an excuse in Japan.

  This is sometimes hailed by Japanese and foreigners alike as a wonderfully spiritual way of doing things: like Zen training – do not think, but learn to act ‘instinctively’; hit the target with your eyes closed. This is all very well in its way, but it is also open to the kind of abuses Hangan had to suffer in the story-teller’s version. Many Japanese, especially those at the bottom of the ladder, or those who have not forgotten the experience, know this. That alone would make Hangan a popular hero.

  The ensuing revenge by the loyal retainers, led by Oboshi Yuranosuke (Kuranosuke in real life) has been interpreted in as many different ways. The wartime version stresses blind loyalty to the leader. The forty-seven braves are like soldiers of the Imperial Army valiantly offering their lives for the greater glory of emperor and motherland.

  Later dramatizations project a completely different picture. The national broadcasting company, NHK, did two different adaptations for television, in 1964 and again in 1975. Here we see the loyal retainers putting up a heroic last stand against the oppressive Tokugawa government. They are fighters for ‘demokurashi’ avant la lettre, resisting the feudal system.

  In another modern version, a film entitled ‘Salaryman Chushingura’, the action is transplanted to a modern trading company full of agitated salarymen sweating in their suits. Here, naturally, the emphasis is on corruption and office politics, showing the evil Moronao as a fat-cat on the take. Lastly, but not to be despised, is an animated version featuring dogs. It is called ‘Wan Wan Chushingura’ or ‘Woof Woof Chushingura’ in English.

  The one common factor in all versions is giri: everybody acts out of duty, paying off his or her debts. The retainers are obliged to kill Moronao out of giri to their leader. They have to finish what he left undone, for otherwise his spirit could never rest in peace. We have already noted how dangerous Japanese spirits can be when they have an axe to grind.

  But Moronao would have been their enemy even if Hangan had not died; an insult to the leader is an insult to them all. I remember being present at a party of a well-known avant-garde theatre group in Tokyo. All went well until a drunken actor – not a member of the group – said something mildly disparaging to the director. Without a moment’s hesitation all the male actors of the group pounced on him. He had to be carried out on a stretcher.

  The point is that the leader need not necessarily be right; it is the ikon on the wall, the regimental flag that is attacked, not a mere mortal. Just as Moronao may well have been a kindly man, there is evidence that the real Hangan was a dangerous hot-head. One of his most popular retainers Horibe Yasubei, admitted as much, stating in a letter that his lord had acted rashly and was clearly at fault.6 But, he said, once a samurai starts a quarrel it must be fought to the bitter end.

  The giri of the loyal retainers is not based on logic, or reason, or on who is right or wrong, but on something quite different, called iji o haru, which could be translated as ‘persisting in one’s position’ or ‘showing the strength of one’s sincerity’. This is why it does not matter one iota what the real reason was for Hangan’s attack on Moronao: as long as the retainers remain faithful to their lord’s cause. Everyone can read into the story what he wants to, even the retainers themselves. This is the principle of Japanese leadership: keep the goal as vague as possible, so that it can suit all purposes. Ideology can be changed from one day to another – as it was in Japan when the war was lost – and the leaders can still claim giri from people of the most diverse private persuasions.

  Hangan and his faithful retainers were makoto. The usual translation of this is ‘sincere’, but that is not exactly what it means. Sincerity in English means being honest, frank, open, meaning what one says. Makoto is more like ‘purity of heart’, believing in the rightness of one’s cause, irrespective of logic and reason. No matter if the position one has adopted is wrong or untenable: it is the purity of motive that counts.

  The critic Sato Tadao has explained this in terms of early childhood
experience: ‘When a child does something it thinks is good, it becomes deeply disturbed if an adult, for whatever reason, considers it to be bad. The child then learns how to assert its emotional position by misbehaving. It can’t explain this rationally. All it knows is that if it does not assert itself in this way, it ceases to exist as a human being true to its own heart.’7 The effectiveness of this kind of behaviour can be considerable among a people not used to explaining themselves rationally.

  Ivan Morris has pointed out that Japanese heroes are almost always fighters for a lost cause.8 The more untenable the cause, the purer the motives are seen to be. With nothing to gain and everything to lose, sincerity can be the only possible motive. To a large extent the actions of the forty-seven loyal ‘wave men’ were dictated by circumstances. They were educated, but unemployed and cut off from society. They felt powerless and superfluous. Perhaps because of this, they felt ready to die. Nevertheless their cause was – is – seen to be noble. The same thing could be said about such modern ‘wave men’ (or women) as the ‘Red Army’ terrorists in Japan. They too have been admired in certain fashionable quarters, not so much for their ideology as for their moral fortitude in a corrupt society.

  In fact they have lost most of their support by now and most Japanese would profess to despise them. Why should this be? After all, do they not fit quite neatly into Ivan Morris’s definition of the failed Japanese hero? Perhaps the following incident, or rather the reaction to it, will explain.

  In 1972 five members of the ‘Red Army’ tortured to death eleven comrades, including the husband of one of the leaders, for their alleged lack of loyalty to the group. They then seized a mountain lodge, taking the proprietress hostage. This was followed by a siege involving 1,500 policemen and lasting ten days of televised national hysteria, during which one of the police officers was shot dead. Finally after a long build-up the police moved in using helicopters and out came the terrorists, unkempt, unshaven and exhausted.

  The following week the Mainichi Shimbun, one of the three largest and most prestigious Japanese daily newspapers, always careful to follow majority opinions, came out with the following editorial entitled ‘Thoughts on Revolutionists’.9 It is worth quoting exactly as it appeared in the English language edition:

  Differing from other extremist groups, their creed is ‘direct resort to arms’. It was believed that after exhausting their ammunition, they would either take their own lives or die fighting hand-to-hand with the riot police.

  But this belief was utterly betrayed [the italics are mine]. When the police rushed in, the five youths … offered almost no resistance. At the last moment they had lost all will to fight and meekly submitted to arrest. Such an attitude brings out their ‘pampered spirit!’ …

  The student radicals boasted of fighting to the finish. But no, they were not that high-spirited when the end came. Why? It all boils down to their pampered way of thinking … I recall a friend in my high-school days who staked his life for the cause he believed in … he was finally caught by the Special Thought Police in 1941. As was usually the case in those days, the result was the loss of his life …

  The radical fanatics have no fear of being killed; they are carrying out their anti-social activities on a surety of life … The second point which comes to my mind is the extreme gap existing between the parents and their sons and daughters. The father of one of the extremists hanged himself to death the same day his son was arrested. He took his life in a tragic gesture of apology for his son’s actions.

  The feelings of the other parents, no doubt, are in common with that of his father. But the sad part of it is that the father’s death cannot fill the spiritual gap existing between father and son …9

  This was not written in 1703, or 1944, but in 1972. The most serious charge against the students was not that they brutally murdered eleven of their friends and a policeman or that their cause was, at best, absurd, but that they failed to die for it. They lacked sincerity, their hearts were not pure. The editor who wrote this piece could hardly be called a sympathizer with the ‘Red Army’s’ goals. But whether he was or was not was beside the point. It was the purity of motive that counted. If only their attitude had been right, they could have been heroes.

  For the same reason, people who are by no means militarists can still be sentimental about the brave suicide pilots in the Second World War: they were makoto and their deaths were rippa, splendid. And following the same reasoning, admirers of the forty-seven ronin, then as now, certainly need not subscribe to the samurai ethic. But they died for their cause. (Significantly the estate of Moronao’s unfortunate grandson was confiscated, as he had failed to fight to his death in defence of his grandfather.)

  In the Edo period there used to be a very useful custom – for the authorities, that is – whereby one could petition the government to look into an alleged injustice: crippling taxes resulting in widespread famine in the countryside, for instance. The snag was that the case would only be investigated if the petitioner was ready to die. Thus the government killed two difficult birds with one stone: the sincerity of the request was proved beyond doubt and the authorities were rid of a potential troublemaker.

  Modern Japanese hero-worship still bears the traces of this. People admire rebels and fanatical non-conformists (the more fanatical the better). But in the end, these heroes must destroy themselves, like the incompatible lovers of Chikamatsu. Rebels may make waves when jumping headlong into the water, but by drowning they have to make sure that the surface returns to its unrippled self again. Japanese audiences, in short, love to see their heroes die. The certainty that non-conformity will ultimately be punished, that the stubborn nail will be knocked back in, is in a way reassuring. It lends a fixed contour to the lives of people who are terrified of the amorphous. It enables them to see the precise limits of their existence.

  To illustrate this further, let us turn to a film based on another historical incident, somewhat similar to the tale of the forty-seven ronin. It is called ‘Disturbance’ (‘Doran’), made in 1979 and based on the ‘26 February Incident’ (ni-ni-rokku jikken), already mentioned.

  Briefly told, the real incident went like this. Japan was slowly recovering from a severe economic depression in the 1930s which had been especially hard on the rural population.10 Much of the popular blame fell on ‘greedy industrialists’ and ‘effete, corrupt politicians’. Anti-government feelings ran especially high among young, often frustrated army officers, many of whom were recruited from the depressed rural areas. A number of them were in favour of ridding the country once and for all of parliamentary democracy, such as it was, and establishing military rule, basking in the glorious light of the infinitely benevolent emperor.

  On the night of 26 February 1936, a thick blanket of snow covered Tokyo, just as on that fateful night when the forty-seven braves assassinated Moronao. More than 1,400 men from the Army’s First Division moved stealthily out of their barracks and in the following few hours a former Prime Minister, a General, a Minister of Finance and several other dignitaries were stabbed or shot to death in their beds. It was a brutal act of terrorism. And the army authorities, realizing that things had gone too far, for the time being anyway, squashed the rebellion. The leaders were duly executed. But the parliamentary system did not recover from the shock until General MacArthur put it back on its shaky feet again nine years later.

  One leader of these right-wing fanatics in the film is played by the most popular hero of the 1960s, the pure, righteous, stoic, handsome Takakura Ken himself. Had this Japanese Robert Redford made a volte-face and turned into a cinematic baddy all of a sudden? Not a bit of it. The publicity slogan of the film was: ‘When men were still men and women still women.’ And the programme notes informed us that ‘although times change, one thing never will: the Japanese spirit (Nihonjin no kokoro)’.

  Like the loyal retainers, the militarists are heroes. The assassinations are shown as heroic and romantic deeds of young idealists – honourable ex
amples of purity and giri. Though the film suggests that they were primarily motivated by the sorry plight of the rural population, in fact their professed ideology was far more abstract, echoing the nationalist propaganda of pre-war education.

  At the trial they were mostly concerned with the purity of their motives.11 They repeated vague slogans about their adoration of the emperor and their burning patriotism. And how the access to the throne was monopolized by evil men who had to be destroyed so that the emperor in his eternal wisdom could see the truth of their ways. They were particularly anxious that he would ‘understand their feelings’. In short, the whole exercise was a typical example of iji o haru, a violent demonstration of sincerity. And in so far as people in 1979 were still prepared to admire them for it, they were remarkably successful.

  An important element in their heroism (the same is true of the forty-seven braves) is the directness, the unthinkingness of their actions. There is a certain type of hero who appeals greatly to the popular imagination. He is the opposite of the stereotyped image people generally have of the average Japanese – which is perhaps partly why he is a hero. One is often told, usually by Japanese themselves, that losing one’s temper is tantamount to losing face. This may be so, but this type of hero is nothing if not quick-tempered. Hangan is of course the prime example: his first reaction is to use his sword.

  There is another character in ‘Chushingura’ called Honzo, the retainer of a samurai, Wakanosuke. His behaviour is in direct contrast to that of Hangan’s loyalists. His lord is the first to be insulted by the evil Moronao. And Wakanosuke, like Hangan, immediately wants to retaliate. Honzo calms him down and without telling him, bribes Moronao to stop bullying his master. In other words, he is a prudent politician, a diplomat keeping his lord out of trouble. This same Honzo further distinguishes himself by pulling Hangan back when he tries to kill Moronao, thereby preventing the murder in the hope that Hangan will thus be spared the ultimate punishment. All this may seem entirely honourable to us, but it had the effect of making him the forty-seven ronins’ most hated man, besides Moronao himself.