What’s Wrong With Ritual?

In doing a little research on the history of the yari, the Japanese word for “spear,” I came across a mention that battles in early Japan, circa 700 A.D., were highly ritualized affairs with lone warriors dueling on horseback with bow and sword. So… what’s wrong with this, exactly?

I mean, we might casually write about it all these centuries later, but combat with a yuri (bow) and a tsurugi (pre-katana sword) were two very specialized areas. Combine that with doing it on horseback, and you have three skills that could take all of a young man’s life to master. Certainly they are not skills that can be mastered by non-professionals. Achieving and maintaining the physical and mental edge required was literally a full-time job.

Now, the real question that bears asking – and which is a rather obvious one to those who would demean cavalry, and the professional soldiery it demands, in any age and any context – is, were these just poseurs reducing battle to their own self-gratification, or did they actually fulfill some kind of useful military role?

This can only be answered by looking at how early Japanese cavalry fared when pitted, not against each other, but against everyone else.

The Yamato dynasty, from which Emperors throughout Japanese history are direct descendants of, began with the domination of the south of Japan’s main island (from which comes the very literal name of Honshu). Further expansion, especially eastward, was the result of violent confrontations with peoples who were not yet considered “Japanese.” Indeed, the first Shogun was the “General who Conquers the Eastern Barbarians,” thus directly expanding the nascent Japanese Empire.

Cavalry themselves, and the warhorses required for them, were introduced from Korea, but that was simply because Korea was closest; warhorses had been in general use in Eastern Asia since the days of the chariot (in Sun Tzu’s time) ended circa 500 B.C. Upon the adoption of war cavalry in Japan, aggressive Yamato expansion became feasible. While early cavalry were often refugees from Korea, i.e. losers in factional rivalries, it didn’t take long for Japanese clans to notice that they had a good thing going.

Thus did the idea of not just cavalry, but cavalry archers, spread to Japan; such ideas had been around since at least the era of the Three Kingdoms in China, circa 200 A.D.

While Japanese national mythology cites the exploits of particular members of the Imperial family as the driving force behind expansion, we should not feel any hesitation to view this as a broad-brush retelling of the story. In military history, it’s usually a dominant technology that leads to spectacular change.

So, judging purely by results, early Japanese cavalry did quite well against non-cavalry in a broad, big picture sense.

Easier Said Than Done

Now, this is not to say that the typical tactic of a mounted archer is to fire on the move. Granted, Mongols did this, but Mongols had the advantage of a nifty and very conveniently sized compound bow. The Japanese had long bows which weren’t trusted against samurai armor until their stated optimal range of 30 feet. (10 meters)

So, the simplest tactic would be to use cavalry as mobile artillery.

In other words, use a horse to get to a specific location; stop; fire to your heart’s content; move to a new location; fire; repeat.

If not countered, you can do this until you run out of ammo… or targets. One of the two.

Obviously, the other side having bows would mean they can return fire. However, infantry are in a pretty hard spot.

If infantry charge you in mass, you can simply retreat with ease and fire more arrows. If infantry charge you individually, you can – provided the training and cohesion is there – break your own unit apart, run around, make the infantry chase you, double back, and then trample/ skewer/ sword slice at will. Infantry faced with this will tend to rout; as in, turn their backs to you to become particularly easy prey.

Archers are more of a problem, obviously, but having swords as back-up weapons means that, given an opening, a group of mounted archers can do a group sword charge against foot archers, leading to spectacular result.

(Image from http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=201846 )

So, while a very specialized skill set and requiring the proper equipment (including the horse!), a mounted archer had a tactic for every typical situation. What he really had to worry about, if the situation arose, was fighting others like himself.

This is why, when Japanese forces fought each other, combat was highly ritualized. After all, they didn’t want everything to become a mixed infantry/ cavalry mess; they wanted everyone to see their displays of chivalric skills and duels for fame and fortune. If it was done any other way, it’d just become an issue of brute killing.

Not that they couldn’t resort to brute killing! But they preferred to save that for the “barbarians.”

A More Civilized Age?

It’s pretty hard for most relatively young people to forget their first experience with a movie light saber: “A weapon from a more civilized age.”

A lot of people really frown on ritualized combat because they consider it heresy against the serious business of bloody slaughter by citizen armies, where everyone has the right to vote so everyone’s obligated to kill the other army’s citizens. But how is that better?

Ritualized duels, between sides that have the minimum amount of cultural respect for each other required to support them, aren’t about sport per se, but rather, about the more fundamental word of competition.

As far as personal worth goes, there’s a big and fundamental difference between strength and power. As a practical matter, we see this mostly in something like anime, but having power doesn’t mean you’re stronger. Just because you have the magic sword doesn’t mean you’re the better swordsman, though it may mean the difference between winning and living, or losing and dying (or seeing your friends and loved ones die). So, power is important, but it won’t resolve the issue of who’s stronger or, in a competition sense, who is better.

For that, we need to have some kind of minimally fair setting for a duel.

Riding out to duel one’s opponent in front of massed mounted cavalry means:

a) The audience is composed of the people whose opinions matter to you.

b) Both combatants have powerful incentives to not turn chicken and run.

c) No one needs a TV if you’re all there in person.

If what you’re deciding isn’t the fate of the empire, but who has the territorial and otherwise bragging rights in a clan-based feud, why not settle your fights this way?

I know people cling to a fantasy of having the old men that start wars duke it out with pistols in a locked room, but old men really aren’t the ones to be doing that. History provides a long precedent for the use of champions to represent one’s cause. Think of these as the Jedi of ancient Japan. Why not get these people to settle the issue? How much pure death and destruction is saved by doing this rather than have the matter be decided by Stormtroopers or Clonetroopers or Droid armies or their equivalents of the day?

But no, a lot of people wouldn’t be happy if there wasn’t grand slaughter to ennoble warfare. Because that proves how civilized we are.

Send in the droids, I guess! Er, I mean infantry…

A Rose By Any Other Name

What’s in a name? Today’s subject isn’t any particular place name; it is a term used for famous places as described in an essay on viewing Japanese prints, like ukiyo-e. There is, after all, a long and rich tradition of Japanese wood block printed graphic art of interesting place, such as in the Edo (modern Tokyo) area.

So, here’s part of the paragraph that really got my attention at this site:

The context of meisho-e should be explained further. Meisho, literally “place with a name,” is a term often translated as “famous places” or “celebrated locations.” The earliest known meisho-e were probably painted as a sub-genre of early yamato-e (“Japanese painting”) and were first linked as well toshiki-e (“pictures of the four seasons”) and tsukinami-e (“pictures of the twelve months”).

…This furthers what I call the “Japanese as a language spoken by space aliens” meme. In other words, Japanese is a language with literal meanings absolutely incomprehensible to the Western mind that only Martians could comprehend.

This is laughably false, because the premise above simply isn’t correct.

Your Name Is Your Reputation

In Japanese language, 名 (mei) is indeed used for what we would call name, but it means more than that. It means your reputation, renown, and fame; in other words, not just the name, but what is associated with that name.

So, 名前 (namae; reputation + front) is your name, but it also means the reputation that precedes you. Something that is 有名 (yuumei; have + reputation) is famous because it has a reputation attached. A 有名人 (yuumeijin; have + reputation + person) is a famous person, like Elvis.

For these reasons, a 名所 (meisho; reputation + general place) is a place of renown, a well-known place, a famous place.

Incidentally, the kanji 場 (ba) tends to indicate a specific place rather than a broad one. This is a nuance that is easily missed.

For instance, a 急所 (kyuusho; critical place) uses a kanji usually used for “urgent/ emergency” plus “general place.” This describes, in abstract, the vitals, or vital spots that can be struck for grievous damage. This applies to martial arts, as well as to Monster Hunter video games. While not the same language as 弱点 (jakuten; lit. “weak point”), it fulfills much the same linguistic function.

On the other foot, 足場 (ashiba; foot + specific place) is used for foothold, often in the specific sense of scaffolding (i.e. something you place your feet on to reach high places without falling). It could also be used in a slightly more abstract way, such as a beachhead gained by landing forces during the invasion of Normandy in WWII.

Similarly, an 売り場 (uriba; sell + specific place) is the specific place where you sell something, like a store counter.

場所 (basho; specific place + general place) describes a location.

So, let us not consider famous places to be a matter of standing on top of a particular stone; they are areas, and famous, well known areas at that; places of wide renown.

It’s not about having a name. It’s about why a place has a name to begin with.

Losing The Plot

So, I was reading another article in the Japan Times, this time on a playwright who is doing a play that examines the origin myth of the Japanese imperial line (which would be the Yamato line, for those keeping track). The article is titled, Playwright Noda asks, “What is a Japanese?” We should read this as in 日本人 (nihonjin, a Japanese person).

So, let’s cut to the chase:

After Aum Shinrikyo’s gas attacks, Noda points out, most Japanese lost interest in such cults gradually and just drifted away from them. However, some remained fervent believers and some turned strongly against their very notion.

“This response fits exactly with Japanese people’s reactions after their defeat in World War II,” he says. “And when I see this phenomenon repeated, I realize how Japanese still don’t bother to question the object of their absolute beliefs — for example, we as a society have never discussed openly why we called the emperor a ‘living god.’ In Germany, the society has thoroughly confronted its Nazi past.”

So, all he’s trying to do is undermine and negate the mythological underpinning of the Japanese imperial line in the hope of confronting the existence of Emperors, the central pillar of Japan’s view of itself and of what it is to be Japanese. This is in the hopes of negating and demolishing the rallying point that was used by the WWII Japanese government to carry the nation into war, thus leading Japan to radical change in its social and governmental structure.

Hey, no big deal, right?

And no one could possibly take this the wrong way, right?

About That “Absolute Belief”

This is an excellent opportunity for me to write about one of my conclusions from much study of history. I admit, I am hardly an expert on all of Japanese history; don’t ask me about the Jomon Jidai, I will not have a clue. I am, however, decently well read on the histories of the Japanese warlords who dominated the Sengoku Jidai, with the Onin War that opened the Sengoku Jidai, and with the earlier loss of imperial authority as the samurai and the Shoguns rose to prominence.

In other words, there was once a time in Japan when Emperors led Japanese people into war, squished their enemies, had chronicles written about it, and lived good lives in more or less unified countries. That stopped in Japan a very long time ago.

Do we really think the likes of Tokugawa Ieyasu were quaking in fear of an edict by the Emperor? No, that’s not how it worked. A distinct reapolitik had taken over where the Emperors did not ask the people with real power, that is, Shoguns or dominant warlords of the day that did not technically hold that rank (say, Hideyoshi), anything that these men were not inclined to provide. Nothing was left to chance; no edict came forth unless enough ground work to sign a START treaty had already been completed.

However, due to a natural desire for prestige and legitimacy, Shoguns maintained the position that the Emperor was a living god, and that Shoguns themselves were implementing His will. Now, the Emperor can’t have been so divine he could just well, come out of his palace and whip the country into shape and rule in his own name like the old days, but this was a convenient position.

Now, obviously, the people who conducted the Meiji Restoration didn’t think that the rule of the Shoguns was serving the Emperor quite enough. Or rather, well, let’s recall the rallying cry: 尊皇攘夷 (sonnou joui), which reads like “Revere the Emperor, Cast Out the Savages.”

Incidentally, we Westerners are the savages being referred to.

So, it wasn’t just an issue of revering the Emperor. It was rallying around a specific political policy to be done in the Emperor’s name, but for the country’s benefit.

Having said this, after the Restoration, Japan went on a huge Westernization spree in terms of industrial policy, military technology, military reorganization, and all sorts of cultural areas. Let’s say the Emperor turned around and said, “You know, I really don’t like how this is going. Let’s change back to how it was under the Shogun.” How long do you think his revered position would have lasted?

Keep this in mind next time you watch The Last Samurai.

So, fast forwarding, it was the position of the ruling government in WWII that the Emperor was a living god and infallible. (It is only the “living god” technicality which makes this any different from the description of the Pope, incidentally.) This position was maintained after WWII, for very simple reasons.

This position kept ultimate symbolic power out of reach, giving the old Army and Navy one less thing to potentially fight over. After the Japanese surrender, the Americans could have undermined the Emperor and encouraged a political revolution against him (regardless of what they put on that piece of paper) by the simple virtue of having the power to do so, but they did not, because the Emperor was a check on the establishment of communism.

Now, let’s not mince words here: a lot of people think that Japan’s lack of communism represents the single overarching, overwhelming problem that Japan has, and that if Japan would ever solve this issue, it would be a much more egalitarian place. Women would be fully liberated, there would be no more rallying of militarists around the Emperor, the wealthy would be cast down and the proletariat would rise up.

The precondition of all this is getting rid of that pesky imperial tradition.

Hmm, sounds to me like what a crafty person might do is write a play that calls into question the mythological and historical underpinnings of the entire Imperial line, to breed contempt by familiarity and show that they’re really nothing but a bunch of lucky and very ordinary humans who don’t deserve any reverence, or even respect.

Hmm.

Misplaced Aggression

Today, the Emperor has extremely little influence on public life, and extremely little influence on private life, too.

Frankly, the Emperor of the day had very little influence on WWII. He was tremendously symbolic, yes, but that’s um, all.

Take Britain. Have you heard about The King’s Speech? It references the abdication of the King prior to the one in the movie. The United Kingdom didn’t like that King’s attitude towards the Germans and tossed him out, just like that country has, in the past, slain monarchs or would-be monarchs who tried to force Catholicism back down the throat of a now Protestant nation; it intimidated the German rooted ruling family that came in after the Stuarts into surrendering all German possessions and heretofore being a “British” monarchy only when the UK and Germany were rumbling against each other around WWI.

The only reason that sort of thing never happened to the late Japanese Emperors is that they had no un-Japanese commitments, and they didn’t try to buck the system too far.

So, again, the only real reason to kick the Emperor around when he is a powerless figurehead is precisely to destroy his symbolic role as the lynch pin of society. This done, society can be subjected to truly radical change.

Problem: What if people don’t want the radical change you’re peddling? Articles like this make dropping out of an elite school and going into theater sound like an act of heroism because it’s working to “change the country.” What if it doesn’t want to be changed how you want it to be?

Oh, let’s not kid ourselves. You’re going to push it anyway and stuff it down people’s throats, and act really shocked if anyone shows any resistance, because you think you’re peddling utopia.

I think we should give the guy a break. He hasn’t done anything to any of us personally. Revolutions without justice don’t fly with me, really.

Although the word sohei is usually translated as warrior monks, the hei part fits “soldier” much better. These are monk-soldiers, but as English has no such term, warrior monks will generally do. The image above is a procession in sohei costume; as a serious armed group, the sohei met their end long before the samurai did.

The sohei existed because of an astonishingly simple question. What force on Earth had the authority to tell Buddhist monks what to do? To Japan, Buddhism was an imported religion. It existed in multiple sects. No one had ever established that they answered to the Japanese Emperor; at any rate, the rise of the samurai had eroded the Emperor’s secular authority centuries before the sohei stormed onto the scene.

If two Buddhist sects had a dispute, who would settle it for them? No one.

If two Buddhist sects had a dispute that became an armed confrontation, who would fight for them? No one.

If two Buddhist sects fought in the open, who would interfere to prevent the stronger side from winning? No one.

This situation, a product of the same social and political upheavals that produced the rule of the Shogun and a hardening of the role of the samurai, produced the sohei.

A Force Unto Themselves

There are three things beyond my control: the rapids on the Kamo river, the dice at gambling, and the monks of the mountain. – Emperor Go Shirakawa-in, 12th century

Sohei were instantly recognizable because of the white cowls they wore over their heads (which were shaved, like all monks). Otherwise, they were armed much like samurai, right down to steel helmets under the cowls. In other words, they were armed according to the prevailing conditions of their day. Thinking of them as temple samurai would not be an exaggeration.

Some might recoil at the whole idea, but Buddhism would never have thrived in Japan if people had interpreted it as a religion of pure pacifism. Besides, if you’re on a holy crusade, a lot of what might otherwise be condemned as unnecessary violence suddenly becomes necessary violence.

The point being, sohei co-existed with samurai during the same period. It isn’t much of a stretch to say that they recruited from a lot of the same talent pools.

Thanks to their holy status, and their all too temporal might, the temples became forces unto themselves.

If they had not, these temples, often centers of local or even regional commerce and, even if this was disregarded, sources of money due to visits by pious pilgrims, would find themselves at the mercy of others, to be exploited or simply plundered at will. Thanks to the sohei, this was not the case – to the point that these groups came to be considered a threat to the warlords of Japan.

Weapons and Armor

Like samurai, sohei used katana and tanto (the latter being reinforced daggers capable of penetrating armor, a standard samurai back-up weapon throughout their history). Also like samurai, they included a considerable number of skilled archers, for otherwise they would have difficulty defending high places. In addition, they wore armor that was virtually indistinguishable from the samurai yoroi (armor) of the day, except for the white cowls.

Unlike the samurai, sohei became known as particularly heavy users of the naginata, a polearm with a wooden shaft and a slightly curved blade. This made the weapon useful both as a swinging weapon, with greater reach than than the katana, and as a thrusting weapon, used in packed formations. Thus, it was ideal as a weapon for defense and counter-attack on temple grounds, allowing a single man to attempt to hold a doorway, but also allowing a packed formation to swiftly go on the assault.

Sohei often carried a portable shrine, or mikoshi, with them on campaigns. Committing violence in the presence of such a holy object was considered blasphemous… though certain warlords could have cared less, seeing armed monks as blasphemy in and of itself. At any rate, this served as protection from ordinary soldiers, not rival sohei with their own rival divine beliefs (and carrying their own mikoshi).

History of the Sohei

Origins

In the 10th century, the Emperor and his government still retained a great deal of power. This power included the authority to appoint which monk would run a particular temple. However, the factional divisions within Buddhist monks and the simple realities of palace politics meant that a member of one faction could be appointed as the head of a temple controlled by a rival faction.

This, of course, did not go down very well.

Protests began. Eventually, there were protests of this nature which ended in brawls in the streets, accompanied by fatalities. A dispute between two shrines led to the establishment of a standing army of monks at the Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto. This led to a warrior monk arms race, if you will, as disputes over appointments, and the personal honor of the leaders of various religious complexes, broke out into limited armed conflict.

These disputes expanded at times, but at others, were prone to long periods of complete peace. Nonetheless, new grievances arose and once again, even larger armies of sohei dueled with each other. Finally, in 1121, the Mii-dera complex was burned to the ground by monks from Enryaku-ji. (And in 1141, they came back and did it again!) Other temples became embroiled into conflicts, and the Mii-dera and Enryaku-ji rivals joined forces against other powerful temples.

The Genpei War

Sohei were combatants on both sides of the “Genpei” civil conflict. Thus, monks who would have gladly fought for themselves were fighting rivals working for the other side. The temples of losing factions were burned to the ground in retaliation for defiance. Overall, these stories were footnotes as part of the grander conflict that produced the shogunate.

The Peak of Sohei Influence

The 13th and 14th centuries were as good as it got for sohei. Though they first had to rebuild, physically as well as politically, the mere existence of the sohei helped the temples get what they wanted from the shogunate without violence. Furthermore, they were able to stay largely aloof during other civil disputes of the time. This meant they could husband their economic and military resources and remain bastions of power, untamed by secular forces, and simply not worth the trouble to humble.

Put another way, deliberate attempts to use appointments to debilitate strongly established factions tapered off. There was less need to protest, and less reason to fight each other.

Notwithstanding this, the rise of Zen, and the support given to Zen by the Ashikaga shogunate, gave rise to new conflicts, with the established temples seeking to defend their power and influence from the upstarts.

The Onin War

In the mid-15th century, a weak Shogun without a son, and with one eye on retirement, dragged his younger brother out of monastic life and declared him heir. A year later, his wife gave birth to a son. Surprise!

Well, it wasn’t very funny. Declaring his son to be the heir, the Shogun might as well have made a written invitation to every power base in Japan to line up and pick sides and fight it out.

And they did. In the middle of temple-filled Kyoto. And the Shogun did about as much to stop it as Nero did to stop Rome from burning. (Well, what Nero did is under some dispute, but at any rate, he didn’t stop Rome from burning, and the Shogun didn’t stop Kyoto from becoming the Stalingrad of the medieval era!)

With this, the long period of relative peace and neutrality came to an end.

The Sengoku Jidai

Within thirty years, the Ikko-Ikki movement arose in the countryside. The name itself broadcasts that these are coalitions of like-minded people, and they didn’t like what was going on. Daimyo? Shoguns? Samurai? To hell with all of them. These people were sick and tired of being piñatas in an increasingly lawless era, so they armed themselves with weapons, both physical and spiritual. Spiritually, they were armed with Pure Land Buddhism, which is the dominant form today.

In essence, Pure Land Buddhism was the Reformation movement of its day. According to this sect, humans had degenerated into a corrupted state and could never find their path to Nirvana alone, but only through the power of their personal savior… Buddha!! (If you expected another word here, you’re getting the point.)

So, essentially, just pray to Buddha – a lot – and he’ll come save you. That’s it. No wonder it got popular.

From this point on, these new sohei fought in the Ikko-Ikki extensively against every other faction trying to make headway towards a united Japan under their rule (as opposed to someone else’s). Thus, the Ikko-Ikki were essentially radical people’s movements that believed in equality. In other words, they fought everyone else equally, showing no favor to any of them.

As Oda Nobunaga (family name first – J) rose to power, he not only spent a very considerable amount of trouble to wipe out the Ikko-Ikki as a threat to his rule; he also found sohei from good ol’ Enryaku-ji fighting in the streets of Kyoto with a rival Buddhist sect. Then, the Enryaku-ji monks decided to ally with the Asai and Asakura families (Asakura, as in the Asakura shogunate).

They picked a really bad time to ally against Nobunaga, who was reaching the height of his power and who has been considered one of Japan’s cruelest warlords, perhaps for what he did next: he took an army of 30,000, surrounded Mt. Hiei, and destroyed Enryaku-ji, putting every man, woman, and child to the sword.

The temple was rebuilt, but the sohei were not.

Nobunaga spent years exterminating the Ikko-Ikki and their component sohei before his own fiery death. In the decades to come, they would pick rival sides in the battles to unify Japan. Finally, the victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu – who knew all too well how the sohei were a threat to his ideal of a united, peaceful Japan – made clear that they would no longer be tolerated, and there was no longer any prospect of picking another side.

Thus, the sohei were re-absorbed into the fabric of history, and became a memory.

Closing Thoughts

The sohei were, in some sense, an accident of history: a samurai-ization of monks that occurred because of the conditions in Japan at the time, the enduring idea that justified violence was not unholy, and the simple belief that they were necessary. Given the level of armaments in Japanese society in general, the temples relied on their own might to defend their property, lives, and beliefs.

I find this self-reliance to be admirable. It shows a lack of denial about their human natures. They did what they felt had to be done, and that was all. I cannot and will not condemn that just because it does not fit into a perfectionist view of Buddhism. We’re not perfect, and it’s fine to accept that and live with it.

Having said this, they had no special claim on violence. Going toe to toe with the likes of Nobunaga meant risking getting burned… and burned, they were. They knew what they were doing and thought the Asakura would regain their former glory or, at any rate, would be able to keep Nobunaga out of Kyoto. They simply lost that bet, and paid for it.

Since even this did not end the sohei, their being brought to an end, like the Ikko-Ikki and, centuries later, the samurai themselves, was a stepping stone to a unified Japan. That’s not, actually, to say it is a good thing or a bad thing. It just is. They played a role; that role became obsolete; now they exist only as part of ceremony.

Actually, the most we see of sohei these days is in role-playing games. In my case, it was a video game, but there is a sohei class in Dungeons & Dragons books of old.

So the idea lives on.

History stops for no one, but there’s no need to scorn the old idea of fighting for what you believe in. I’ll take that over fighting for a dollar bill any day of the week. – J

Following the Genpei War (the subject of The Tale of Genji), which gave rise to the Bafuku (government said to be run out of a general’s tent rather than a palace), the Imperial line was subject to intense internal squabbles.

I’m sure these links will provide great reading to those interested, so please, give the writer some love.

My point in bringing attention to these events is to make plain that the decline of the Emperors’ grip on direct power did not continue by some kind of accident. As summarized in my Concise History of the Samurai, the samurai became influential as central power decayed. Power struggles within the Imperial family did nothing to discourage the notion that the writ of the sword and bow meant a lot more in the here and now, regardless of history or lip service.

After all, when you try to get the attention of “the Emperor,” who are you getting? The actual Emperor? The regent? Is there only one regent? The Emperor’s mother, who is the real power behind the throne (or thinks she is)? Who constitutes “the Emperor” for the purposes of real power?

When it’s like that, with competing factions having allies and enemies strewn across the entire country, it’s easier to understand why loyalty to one’s lord and constant readiness to engage in armed conflict were highly prized features among samurai retainers.

Used for educational purposes.

芸者　(げいしゃ、geisha)

Let’s start with a bang: Geisha is a gender-neutral term in the original Japanese.

This word is actually quite simple, combining 芸 (“gei,” lit. performance) with 者 (“sha,” lit. “person who does ___”). Thus, the word itself suggests a performer, in the same sense that Prince and Madonna are performers today.

This is why the term “geisha” originally applied to men when women in the mid 18th century (the 1700’s) began to adopt the term for themselves. There are male “geisha” to this day, though even rarer than female geisha; they correctly view themselves as simply following an ancient tradition that has nothing to do with “those” geisha.

But enough about them. We want to talk about the girls here, don’t we?

Kikuya, The First Geisha (In The Normal Sense)

The first woman to call herself a geisha was called (i.e. using a stage name) Kikuya, and was a smash hit around 1750. Others soon rose to fill a need for female entertainment that wasn’t part of the heavily regulated sex industry. In light of the fact that the courtesans, the Oiran, did not want any competition, the female geishas became firmly entrenched in – or one might say, trapped in – their non-sexual entertainment niche.

That is, they were performers, singing and playing the shamisen (a stringed instrument) and, well, being better eye candy than your male geisha. Thus, the idea caught on. Indeed, within fifty years, geisha became more popular than those who sold sex. (Of course, strict regulation, limited licenses, and therefore, high prices, might have had something to do with it, too.)

At any rate, geisha gradually became icons of popular culture, with the geisha look and feel transmitting throughout woman’s society in Japan. “Geisha” was a respectable occupation for women, even as Confucian ideas force-fed to Japanese society by the Tokugawa government discouraged women rising out of their designated place as commander-in-chief of the home and hearth.

Shortly after the Meiji Restoration, geisha were liberated from the Tokugawa shogunate’s laws and were permitted to engage in full prostitution at their own personal discretion. Equally, they could refrain at will.

Anyway, when the 1900’s rolled around, the government cracked down on this, probably because it was yet another “backward” Asian idea that needed to take a backseat to modernity.

Even Geishas Had To Work In Factories

For the WWII war effort, the government made no distinction between geisha and other women: if you were able, you had to work for the war effort, and that meant working in a factory. It’s hard to keep up the arts like that.

Postwar Decline

When you had every prostitute calling herself a Geisha girl to American servicemen looking to be serviced, it’s hard to maintain the dignity of an old profession. Obviously, the oldest profession had seniority here.

I mean, before the war even ended, things like bars, teahouses, and so forth, were shut down and their employees pressed into factory service. Obviously, any in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who survived had seen their world obliterated; also, the Tokyo firebombing and other nightmares made people think of things other than entertainment.

When these establishments were allowed to reopen, few women returned to the old ways, and those who did decided to completely reject Western influence and make themselves special by engaging in the really old ways.

It is from these people that the few remaining geisha of today are spiritually descended.

Along with bringing back traditional arts, these modern geisha wanted more rights for their own kind. Working in factories tends to get women demanding rights, after all.

Chiefly, this means that a geisha sleeps with whomever she damn well pleases. Hey, fine with me…

Modern Geisha: Strictly Tease

This is some commentary that doesn’t apply to geisha alone, but…

In modern Japanese society, men in the business world tend to be in a lot of high pressure situations. A quite considerable number of these men are wealthy, but are not especially good looking, are getting on in years, and are considered boring by their wives.

For these men to have a beautiful, ornately groomed woman to simply spend time with him, to listen to him, to laugh, to drink, to play the game without complaint, to simply give him the time of day and provide him with an experience from another century, is well worth the stiff price they pay for the service.

Of course, the younger the men get, the less likely they are to want to find this from a geisha per se, but this is the general gist of it. Sex isn’t the point: it’s the attention.

Put another way, yes, they’re desperate enough that feigned affection – that they know is feigned going in – is still a breath of fresh air.

So in this light, no, modern geisha are not prostitutes, and well, you can see why geisha are very eager to set the record straight about their not being prostitutes. Not in this day and age, at least.

And There, We Shall Conclude

It wasn’t my intention to leap out of the frying pan and into the fire by getting into, well, you know, Memoirs of a Geisha. I kind of want to read the other side of the story, that is, the memoir of the geisha the author of Memoirs of a Geisha interviewed, and then listed as a source, causing her a great deal of stress, leading to lawsuits, a legal settlement, and her own autobiography. Until I read both books side by side, I don’t want to say anything authoritative.

That said, it’s safe to say that performing is, literally, and linguistically, the heart and soul of the geisha.

Let us appreciate this institution for what it is: living art.

One rather interesting footnote of Chinese history is that the land where Sun Tzu is said to have hailed, the state of Wu, was more or less the eastern tip of China, the closest geographical point to the Japanese islands. Indeed, Chinese records state that ambassadors from Japan stated (in China) that they were descended from the “Wo” people of the state of Wu.

Certainly, there is much in common in the traditions of the people that resided in the state once known as Qi and the people of Japan. The “Wo” people were considered barbarians who had been Sinicized (made Chinese, i.e. civilized) during the wars that defined Sun Tzu’s time and were the inspiration for his writings about less devastating, more victorious warfighting.

Furthermore, like the people of Japan, the Wo people carried babies on their back, had face tattoos (Chinese influence drove that out of Japan too), ate raw fish, and were known for their superior ability to forge swords (in the style of the day, at least).

Finally, there are substantial linguistic links between Japan and Wu Chinese. One type of “native Japanese” kanji pronunciation, “go-on” (“on” for sound), is viewed as explicitly drawn from Wu Chinese.

Thus, it is little surprise that Japan has treated Sun Tzu as an adopted son… or an adopted military guru, if you will.

A Lengthy Legacy

Although overshadowed by what would be considered stereotypical Japanese courage and viciousness in battle, serious, educated Japanese warlords such as Takeda Shingen religiously studied the writings of Sun Tzu, deriving innumerable lessons about how to approach battle. Chiefly, these regarded when to fight and when not to fight.

In his long war with Uesugi Kenshin, Shingen’s fiercest battle with his longtime rival was essentially created by an error in maneuvering and communication which gave Shingen an opportunity to fight with equal chances of success or failure, with even numbers, in a particular place and at a particular time. The casualty count was easily the highest of all of their battles. Typically, both strategic masters passed on direct combat because they perceived no advantage in the circumstances, preserving their forces and their power against each other and numerous other foes for a considerable number of years.

Sun Tzu’s strategies are not really compatible with kamikazes, suicide charges, and so forth. These were desperation tactics to reverse battles that had already been largely lost, particularly on the strategic level. The consequent defeat of Japan in WWII did not diminish interest in strategy; rather, it brought about an eventual revival in interest in what we might call real strategy, the sort that prepares the ground for victory well before the first shot is fired, either literally or proverbially.

Thus:

• Minimize Risk
• Maximize Chances of Victory
• Account for the Unknown
• Seize Genuine Opportunities
• Avoid Traps
• Create Traps for the Opponent
• Win.

These are the principles treasured and passed down century after century. They have become deeply entrenched in Japanese culture, even though Sun Tzu is, as people may be quick to tell you, Chinese.

His legacy, however, is much broader than the borders of China. In Japan, his legacy firmly lives on: in business, government, and military circles, and with armchair generals (players of strategic video games) everywhere.

Origin

In Japanese, 服 (fuku) simply means clothing. In the case of an individual set of clothes, we may safely read this as outfit.

Sailor Fuku = sailor outfit.

The “sailor outfit” came to Japan in the early 1920’s. Although a different school claims to have invented the sailor fuku first, the sounder claim rests with Fukuoka Jo Gakuin (a university for women, hence the “jo” part, 女 (woman)), where the principal, Elisabeth Lee, modeled the uniform after the sailor uniforms of the Royal Navy (the name of the navy of the United Kingdom).

In light of the fact that the gakuran, the stereotypical “male Japanese student uniform” used in Japan, is actually based on Prussian military uniforms of the time, uniforms reflecting a) the concept of military uniformity, b) the fact of being Western clothing, makes clear the cultural context.

A gakuran.

In fact, the Japanese for gakuran, 学ラン, is “gaku” for “study” plus “ran,” representing a pre-modern Japanese term for “the West.”

So, both the gakuran and the sailor fuku are intended to evoke Western modernity mixed with military uniformity.

Things have come a long way since then.

Wide Variations

Schools widely vary in their official uniforms, and not only do these uniforms have official seasonal variations for summer and winter conditions. In addition to this, schools without iron fisted discipline levels see schoolgirls modify their outfits by shortening the skirt (temporarily or permanently), wearing loose socks, wearing knee-length socks, and so forth. Boys may go as casual as they can in uniforms and not have everything fully buttoned and so forth.

Summer variation for sailor fuku.

School-assigned footwear is usually in the penny loafer style; that is, slip-on shoes. This is convenient in Japan where you would be taking your shoes off every time you enter a home.

In addition, and I realize this is stating the obvious, skirts are a lot shorter today compared to the 1920’s. WWII has come and gone and people want to enjoy their youth rather than feel like they’re serving in the military.

Cultural Power And Legacy

Sailor outfits are symbols of what was, to most adult Japanese people, a more innocent time, a time when the pressures of the modern world were confined to studying and when the rest wasn’t so bad.

Of course, the shorter the skirts get, the more this impression of innocence becomes associated with naughtiness and sexuality. This spin on things may be punted into the stratosphere by anime and visual novel games, but it is hardly an invention of fiction; it reflects a part of contemporary society.

Also, in modern times, 99%+ of Japanese public schools are co-ed. Therefore, boys are constantly seeing girls in sailor fuku, not only at a young age, but when there is, ah, shall we say, more to stare at.

Co-ed as the schools may be, groups teens of different genders rarely mix much (i.e. they aren’t seen going around town like that very often). There are various reasons for this, but keep in mind that public displays of affection are a much bigger no-no in Japanese society than in America. Such things are funneled into dating; this makes dating more intimate, but also keeps such intimacy from butting into the “buddy” system around which cliques form.

Thus, many boys have long memories of seeing girls in “innocent,” teasing sailor fuku but being only able to look, not to touch.

I think that this explains much about how adults look back at their school lives, about “what could have been,” and how these thoughts influence fiction in novels, anime, manga, games, and broader culture.

Setting The Record Straight

I don’t want to link to this because it’ll only draw attention to leaky history but, in my efforts to find sites worth linking this blog to, I began reading a ‘history of Japan’ that floated the idea that Bushido was a key cultural factor driving Japan into WWII.

This is a bit much.

Bushido: Raised From The Dead

By the time the Meiji Restoration regime started citing Bushido as an inspiration for its uniformed soldiers, the samurai, as a class, had been safely extinguished. No one went around Japan wearing two swords; it was one, military sword, and then only for commissioned and non-commissioned officers in the modern, West-inspired military. In other words, Bushido had been raised from the dead in defense of nationalism by the very people who had slain it.

If you’ve read my Concise Samurai History eBook posted below, you are already aware that samurai had not directly served emperors in force for about one thousand years prior to the Meiji Restoration. Bushido was, at its core, a feudal principle: loyalty and fidelity to one’s immediate lord. Every samurai paid lip service to the emperors said to be directly descended from the gods, but samurai only followed the commands of their leaders: shoguns, daimyo, clan leaders, and immediate commanding officers. In other words, they obeyed those who paid them (in rice, so this is really to say, those who fed them). Emperors had lost the clout to pay/ feed samurai long before, so this lip service was as good as it was going to get.

It is not this Bushido that Japan revived in the lead-up to the Russo-Japanese war, and later, in the lead-up to WWII. It is another, citing the name of Bushido, and invoking its spirit, because that spirit retained power in the popular mind. Once it was safely dead, a seance was held to call the spirit back and apply it to traditional Western propaganda, just with a native Japanese twist.

I mean, really, where do you think Japan learned about nationalism, patriotism, mass media propaganda, and so forth? Why, from us in the West, of course! Don’t think that the young officers Japan sent to Western nations were just taking note of technology. They were also analyzing what fed into the morale of the foot soldier: national esprit, talk of the blood of martyrs (example: Remember The Alamo!!), rigorous organization, conscription, codes of military law enforced to create and maintain discipline, and so forth.

Bushido: Convenient Tool of a Modern Army

So, it is the idea of Bushido that was being invoked, not Bushido itself. Fighting for the Emperor hadn’t been in style for a thousand years, after all; they wanted to make it cool again, if you will.

Ultimately, if Bushido had not existed, the Meiji government would have invented it, just like it invented many other things. Bushido was used – once it had been rendered harmless to Japan’s new regime, anyway – because it was there.

That is all.