The "Bastardized" Code of Bushido

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#1

In his book “Flyboys,” James Bradly writes:

“Samurai were shrewd strategists and tacticians. Samurai fought to win, to protect their lives and the lives of their compatriots. There was no concept that death in battle was a sound strategy. Mass suicide was never part of Bushido. A true Samurai would agree with the U.S. Army General George Patton that ‘no one ever won a war by dying for their country. They won by making the other son-of-a-bitch die for his!’
In an effort to make warriors out of the entire male populace, the Spirit Warriors (the modern Japanese Imperial Army officer corp, referred to as “Yamato damashi” or “Attack Spirit” for their rigid, suicidal emphasis in warfare, trying to instill the “Third-Force” concept of men and weapons combined with the “spirit,” that western armies presumably lacked, could overcome superior technology and fire power…) distorted the essence of Bushido and began to peddle a bastardized version that taught a cult of death. This twisted version focused not on the sublime personal standards of honor among samurai, but one based on blood and guts of death.
The Japanese Army field regulations of 1912 systematically stated the Spirit Warriors’ strategic doctrine for the first time…In the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, many Japanese troops had surrendered , served as POWs, and later been welcomed back to Japan with open arms. But as the Meiji leaders passed, the new crop of Yamato damashi boys (JIA officers) decreed that it was absolutely forbidden to withdraw, surrender, or become prisoner of war…” Flyboys p. 37-38.

I’ve always thought this as interesting, the equation of suicide with macho bravado and toughness. In fact, many regarded Japanese IA tactics as suicidal amateurishness.

Note: I apologise for any errors I may have made in type copying Bradley’s work…

#2

In the western world, the kamikaze and the banzai charges are always associated with words such as “suicidal” or “fanaticism”. Meanwhile, Captain Jim Crowe’s now famous quote “[y]ou’ll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me!” as a token of Marine heroism on the island of Guadalcanal. Why is that? Why is it that we as westerners call young pilots who fly their bomb-laden aircraft into American warships “crazy fanatics”, but yet in the Hollywood film Indenpendence Day the writer included a scene where a “brave man” sacrifice himself the save others by flying his jet fighter into the alien craft? What is the difference between Takajiro Onishi (who authorized the kamikaze attack at the Philippines) and the Allied leaders who sent bombers to attack the oil fields of Ploieşti? Is there really a difference between the banzai charges and how Bernard Montgomery pushed his troops into Caen at a casual rate of over 25%? Men who fought for the winning sides of war who lost their lives are martyrs. Those who fell for the other side are sometimes considered less so, because winners of wars write the history.

These are not questions to be answered, but should provide some good food for thought.

#3

Greetings temujin77,

I know this is an older post, but I’ll respond. What I was trying to say is that there was a radical change in Japanese Imperial Army doctrine, and her expectation of the average soldiers concept of honor, between the early part of the 20th century to around about WWI. The Japanese adopted a pseudo “Code of Bushido” that was a misrepresentation of the attitudes and the actual codes of the Samurai in order to inspire a suicidal fanaticism in her soldiers, which was not the code of Bushido, and in fact completely contradicted it in part. Often referred to as the “Third Force,” this warrior spirit, or death cult actually, was conceptualized as a means to overcome the technological superiority of any probable Western foe by incorporating a spiritual aspect to the man (1st force) and his weapons (2nd force), to compensate for the inferior firepower the Japanese could field with an extreme ‘esprit de corp.’ The doctrine was in fact more along the lines of a “cult of death,” and fostered a brutality that was endemic of the WWII Japanese record. There was a very different attitude between surrender when the means of resistance was depleted in the Russo-Japanese War (when expectations of an IA soldier was along the lines of any soldier in a Western army) and in WWII. This fact is borne out in the comparative statistics of , and attitudes towards, the POWs returned to Japan after each war.

#4

I’ll have a go at answering these questions anyway.

There is a difference between individual acts of self-sacrifice which are not part of a cult of death and an institutionalised programme of expected conduct which are part of such a cult.

American pilots were probably the first to engage in ‘kamikaze’ attacks early in the Pacific war. These were desperate individual acts in desperate days. They were not actions expected of them nor ordered of them. They happened in all armies in all modern, and probably all, wars.

Japanese kamikaze pilots only came into being when Japan was losing the war. They existed solely to die. It was expected of them and ordered of them.

The most important point about kamikaze pilots is that they did not represent a long, noble and unbroken line of Japanese military tradition. Otherwise they would have been there from the start, in which case the naval battles of Coral Sea, Midway and Guadalcanal would have turned out differently for the loss of relatively few Japanese planes. If it was really such a pure Japanese tradition as kept alive by Tojo and company as keepers of the Bushido flame, kamikazes would have been in China years before Pearl Harbor. And at Pearl Harbor, for that matter where instead the Japanese contented themselves with torpedoes and bombs after carefully practising the attacks months earlier.

The term ‘kamikaze’ refers to a so-called ‘divine wind’ which saved Japan from Mongol invasion fleets in the 13th century. These events did not inspire the creation of suicidal defence forces, or even just lots of soldiers operating very large fans to keep invasion fleets away :slight_smile: .

The militarist leaders in Japan preceding and during WWII, like Islamic extremists today, seized upon and distorted elements of an ancient and great culture to cherry-pick bits and pieces to suit their purposes of defending Japan against the onslaught which they had inevitably brought upon it by their original arrogance and military stupidity in attacking America and its allies. The militarist appeals attracted patriotic and brave young men to engage in suicidal acts to try to achieve the impossibly deluded aims of an arrogant elite fighting for its survival and for the survival of the land they had imperilled by their military aggression.

I doubt there could be a clearer and more concise statement of the corruption of Bushido by these militarists than Nickdfresh’s

… there was a radical change in Japanese Imperial Army doctrine, and her expectation of the average soldiers concept of honor, between the early part of the 20th century to around about WWI. The Japanese adopted a pseudo “Code of Bushido” that was a misrepresentation of the attitudes and the actual codes of the Samurai in order to inspire a suicidal fanaticism in her soldiers, which was not the code of Bushido, and in fact completely contradicted it in part. Often referred to as the “Third Force,” this warrior spirit, or death cult actually, was conceptualized as a means to overcome the technological superiority of any probable Western foe by incorporating a spiritual aspect to the man (1st force) and his weapons (2nd force), to compensate for the inferior firepower the Japanese could field with an extreme ‘esprit de corp.’ The doctrine was in fact more along the lines of a “cult of death,” and fostered a brutality that was endemic of the WWII Japanese record. There was a very different attitude between surrender when the means of resistance was depleted in the Russo-Japanese War (when expectations of an IA soldier was along the lines of any soldier in a Western army) and in WWII. This fact is borne out in the comparative statistics of , and attitudes towards, the POWs returned to Japan after each war.

#5

A very good web-accessible examination of bushido is at http://ejmas.com/jalt/jaltart_friday_0301.htm , some pertinent parts of which are quoted below.

Much of the code of conduct for samurai prescribed by early modern and modern writers, then, was at odds with the apparent behavioral norms of the actual warrior tradition. Beyond that, much of the “bushidó” preached by the government and the militarists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was at best only superficially derived from the “Way of the Warrior” espoused in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Modern bushidó is closely bound up with the notion of a Japanese “national essence,” and with those of the kokutai, or Japanese national structure, and the cult of the emperor. It was a propaganda tool, consciously shaped and manipulated as part of the effort to forge a unified, modern nation out of a fundamentally feudal society, and to build a modern national military made up of conscripts from all tiers of society. Bushidó was believed to represent much more than just the ethic of the feudal warrior class. The Imperial Rescript to the Military of 1882 proclaimed that it “should be viewed as the reflection of the whole of the subjects of Japan.” [EN8] That is to say, warrior values were held to be the essence of Japanese-ness itself, unifying traits of character common to all classes. The abolition of the samurai class thus marked not the end of bushidó, but the point of its spread to the whole of the Japanese population. [EN9]

But, had they not been cremated, Yamamoto Tsunemoto, Daidóji Yúzan, Yamaga Sokó, and other early modern figures who wrote about the idea of a code of conduct for samurai would probably have rolled over in their graves when they heard this. One of the few things that all of these men had in common was their interest in defining – and defending – the essence of what set the samurai apart from all other classes. They were describing – or prescribing – a code of conduct for an elite; and they were arguing that it was adherence to this code of conduct and the values on which it was based that separated this elite class of warriors from the rabble of townsmen and peasants behind them. The idea that bushidó values were simply Japanese values would have appalled them.

Furthermore, the abstract, transcendent loyalty to the emperor and the kokutai demanded of Japanese subjects by modern bushidó was a far cry from the particularized, feudal loyalty valued by Tsunemoto and his contemporaries. The former was intangible, institutional, and more akin to nineteenth century German patriotism than to the lord/vassal bond of pre-modern Japan. The latter was direct and personal: for Tsunemoto the relationship between a samurai and his lord was grounded in a kind of platonic homosexual love; for Yúzan, it derived from an extension of filial piety. In short, twentieth century and early modern commentators on bushidó may have been using many of the same words, but they were not speaking the same language.

Another problem involved in attempting to find the source of Imperial Army behavior during the Pacific War in samurai codes of conduct is that modern “bushidó” is not much of a guideline to behavior at all. Which is to say that the ideals for modern soldiers specifically identified as deriving from the samurai tradition are vague and innocuous. The Ministry of War’s 1871 instructions to the troops listed seven character traits that soldiers should strive for: loyalty, decorum, faith, obedience, courage, frugality, and honor. [EN10] Similarly, the Imperial Rescript to the Military, promulgated on Jan. 4, 1882 listed five such traits: loyalty, decorum, courage, faith, and frugality. [EN11] (Apparently the government had lost interest in keeping its troops obedient and honorable during the intervening eleven years.) At any rate these are all very general concepts – and very nebulous ones. There is nothing especially samurai-esque about them; they could apply to almost any military anywhere at any time.

…

Nanking-type incidents ran counter to the formal tenets of the modern version of bushidó as well. The Senjin kun, or Code of Battlefield Conduct, issued in January of 1941 repeatedly forbids this sort of behavior: Section 3, Part 1 states, “Do not despise your enemy or the inhabitants,” while Part 6 directs troops to, “Take care to protect the property of the enemy. Requisition, confiscation, destruction of enemy resources, etc. are all governed by regulations. Always follow the orders of your commanding officers.” [EN16] Section I, Part 2 reads:

"The army, under the leadership of the Emperor, bodily manifests the true military spirit (shinbu), and through this reveals the august virtue of the empire. It is charged with aiding Imperial destiny. The true military spirit is to receive the noble will of the Emperor, to be strong in righteousness and benevolent in strength, and thereby establish world peace. Strength must be austere; benevolence requires breadth. If there be enemies that resist the imperial army, resolutely brandish martial dignity and vanquish them. But even if one’s power forces the enemy to submit, the true martial spirit is incomplete if one is lacking in the virtue that causes one not to strike down those who submit and to treat tenderly those who obey. Strength is not haughty; benevolence is not an ornament; they are ennobled by spontaneously erupting. It is the providence of the imperial army to temper justice with mercy, to revere the broad majesty of the Emperor. "[EN17]

The Rape of Nanking and similar incidents, then, were clearly not condoned by either pre-modern or modern Japanese warrior philosophy. To explain why such things happened, one must look outside the samurai legacy.

A similar conclusion can be reached with regard to Japanese maltreatment of prisoners of war. These abuses are well-documented – Russell devoted more than four chapters of The Knights of Bushidó to them. But while the samurai tradition did not actually forbid this sort of treatment of prisoners, it does not explain it, either.

…

To sum up then, the military tradition of the medieval samurai has very little in common with the “bushidó” that was current in the early twentieth century, and does very little to explain the behavior of the Japanese Imperial Army. Far better clues to the attitudes of the Japanese high command, the officer corps, and the ordinary troops can be found in the specific circumstances of the war, the political atmosphere – both domestic and international – of the 1930s, and the process through which Japan emerged as a modern nation.

#6

The Bushido was twisted in WW" yes, but I think that never was a very “gentleman code”.

The extreme violence and “take no prisoners” was always part of that.

For example when the japaneses entered in Port arthur in the Russian-japabnese war in 1905 , they beheaded every single corean and chinese guy that they think were a “collaborator”…that could include women and children alike.

Discusting.

#7

I have posted the following article in another forum:

One thing I’ve wondered concerning the role of Tenno showa (Hirohito) during the 30s and 40s. How much power did he really have (and I’m not talking about the days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when everything was falling down and he made his famous surrender speech, much against the concrete heads in his general staff, who wanted to fight until the end).

From the middle ages until the arrival of the American admiral Perry the emperor was virtually powerless. He was a figurehead virtually imprisoned in his castle in Kyoto, while the country was ruled at first by a succession of feudal lords with private armies, who fought between themselves for the position of the Shogun, the military dictator, who ruled in the name of the emperor. In 1615 however the Daimyo (Lord) of the Edo district (today Tokyo), Tokugawa Iyasu, managed to defeat his rivals and his dynasty ruled the country in an absolutist manner until Perry’s arrival in 1858. Now this brought the shogunate to a crisis, the Japanese discovered how stagnant and backward the country has become since Tokugawa Iyasu’s son isolated it from the outside (to prevent Spanish and portugese meddling in internal affairs). The emperor Meiji seized the opportunity and took power, abolishing the century old privileges of the samurai class. At the same time he started with a radical modernisation programme, young Japanese were sent abroad to study and gather knowledge (now of 19th century sciences etc.) because he realised that else his country might be colonialised. A constitution was also written, creating a parliament. At the same time he recruited advisers, in technology as well as in military matters. Emperor Meiji got himself foreign experts from whichever place was considered best, e.g. in naval matters from britain and for the army from Germany and France (which at this time had the most advanced land forces).
Obviously Meiji also created himself enemies, mainly among the formerly powerfull samurai clans. Some, especially in the south, on the island Kyushu, rebelled openly in what became known as the Satsuma rebellion. It was eventually crushed by the emperor’s modern westernised army.
Several samurai families went into business and founded companies, which later would become huge industrial complexes and some still exist today (though with different ownership), like Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo.
Others decided to join the military as officers.
The first war Japan fought was the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895). There are different interpretations about it. Some say that in Korea, which at this time was a vasal state of the Chinese empire and who’s emperor had to swear fealty to the Chinese one, there existed a movement of young people, who looked at Japan’s sudden advance and who wanted to become independent of China to copy Japan’s development and so asked the Japanese for assistance, while others say that Japan just invaded Korea, based on expansionist idea from the late middle ages, when shogun Hideyoshi tried to attack Korea, but was repelled by the more advanced Korea navy.
Anyway, Japan’s modern army easily defeated the medieval Chinese one.
If the Japanese would have left it at it, everything would have turned out fine, but actually they defacto annexed Korea.
This lead to a conflict with Russia, which had similar intentions about Korea. The Russians totally underestimated the Japanese and got thouroughly defeated in 1905 in a war, which already gave ideas about WW1.
Now during WW1 Japan was a member of the Allies and was a model state, strictly sticking to the rules of war.
Also up to the 1920s, Japan was a model contitutional monarchy.
But after WW1 many Japanese felt cheated by the Western powers, when they got denied what they considered fair spoils of victory, like colonies in China. At the same time the economic crisises of the 1920s hit Japan very hard, also the US reduced the quota of Japanese immigrants, thus removing an important demoscopic safety valve from the overpopulated islands.
The reactionaries, which consisted of the old nobility, the comercial and business elite (Zaibatsu), the military officer’s corops and landowners (Gumbatsu) used this opportunity to spread unrest. Political assassinations became standard and more and more military officers became members of the parliament and government. An internal sevret police was introduced, the infamous Peace preservation Department aka “Though police” and the military Kempetai, which arrested dissenters. In the early 1930s Japan had defacto returned to a Shogunate under a military junta. Hirohito at this time was still a young man, more interested in maritime biology (where he actually wrote several treatises under a pseudonym and made his name as a scientist) than in politics.
The junta under the leadership of General Tojo, who was tat the same time the head of the Kempetai, had the final say, though it publically ruled in the name of the emperor. It is unclear how much power Hirohito really had, if he could have stopped Tojo and his gang if he really wanted, or if he just had to rubberstamp the decisions made by the junta.
In any case, Tojo started the second Sino-Japanese war in full cooperation with the other conservative groups. especially the industrialists were very much interested in getting their hands on Chinese coal, iron and other raw materials, not to speak of slave labour.
But the Japanese Army had underestimated the Chinese. They soon found themselves in a protracted guerilla war in a huge country. The Japanese reacted with brute force, e.g. by using chemical and biological weapons.
In any case, the Japanese army became soon overstretched. If you lok at a map of the Japanese occupation of China you can see that they only held the north and a strip along the coast. Japanese brutality, also caused by a systematic brainwashing of the Japanese population starting in the 1920s, led to an embargo of American oil and steel. The Japanese navy realised that latest by the end of 1941 they would have to strike for the oil fields in Indonesia (back the Dutch East Indies) or else they would run out of fuel. Since both British Malaya and the Philippines, at this time an American colony, but since Roosevelt’s presidency gradualy being handed back to the Filipinos, were inbetween, both with strong garrisons of British and American troops, Army as well as Navy, they had to attack them as well to prevent the Americans and British from cutting their supply lines. Also, the American Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbour had to be destroyed. The rest is history.

Jan

IMO, the change in Japan during the 1920s and the introduction of the perverted Bushido were nothing more than the return to power of the elites which ran Japan until the end of the Tokugawa dynasty and the Meiji reforms. IMO it was the reintroduction of the Shogunate under a different name.

Jan

#8

Be what it may the Bushido Code of ancient samarai was not so demonstrabally applicable to modern warfare. Beginning on Guadalcanal “bayonet charges” were performed. These banzai attacks from a tatical standpoint had little or no probability of success from their conception but they doggedly continued.

Bringing a bayonet to a gunfight just doesn’t work.

#9

Hi guys, I am alfiechan, I live in Japan and I have a sword. I have been practising Aikido and Kendo for the last 25 years and I guess I know a little bit about Bushido. What Japanese soldiers did in WW2 was certainly NOT Bushido, because you do not attack and kill the weak!