--- kakiser <
kakiser@...> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I am working on a thesis regarding bushido as a site
> of ideological
> contest between Japan and the West; I am especially
> interested in
> the way notions of bushido have been disseminated
> through film.
> Currently I am in need of an authority on the
> subject to interview,
> with questions to include:
What do you mean by "authority"? We've got one
published author that I know of, and a few others who
have academic credentials that can weigh in--is that
what you're looking for? If you plan on using them for
a source, make sure whomever you use can establish
their expertise--otherwise, you get a bunch of wannabe
hacks (like me, I'll admit) answering your question,
and you quoting them without knowing they aren't
formally educated in the matter. Just want to make
sure you're careful :)
> 1) how do accounts of bushido/samurai differ inside
> and outside
> Japan?
Outside Japan, too many people only understand it from
either movies and television, or from Hagakure, or
from study of pre-WWII Japan, and think it's an
all-encompassing lifestyle still followed today, or
they think it's a religion, or that all samurai were
paragons of bushido.
Japanese have a much better grasp of the reality, I
think--that it is a vague set of warrior ideals
created throughout samurai history, codified in the
Edo period by those who felt a need to explain the
existence of a warrior class with no wars to fight,
then coopted by the political elite to speed the
buildup of military and industry to catch up and
surpass the West. While it's by no means completely
irrelevant to modern Japan, it's not any more invoked
by Japanese than any Western virtues are invoked by
Europeans or Americans.
> 2) Where do public conceptions of bushido originate
> (i.e., How do
> most people learn about bushido?), and is this
> different for Japan
> and the West?
The West: Movies, anime, and reading bad Cleary
translations. Seriously, part of it is because the
image is more interesting than the reality--so the
image gets perpetuated, and the reality gets
forgotten.
Japan: History class? Of course it's much more
prevalent in their pop culture, but there's a
historical understanding of it that tempers it a bit.
> 3) How has the useage/meaning of the terms bushido
> and samurai
> changed over the years since Nitobe Inazo
> popularized them in 1900?
Um, well, both words existed before 1900. Samurai
ceased to exist about 25 years before 1900, so I'd
hardly say the word was popularized then. In the West,
I'd say, Bushido is either mentioned in the context of
the "wonderful" martial virtues of the Samurai, or the
same "horrific" values of the WWII era Japanese
military.
> 4) Why do samurai retain such a hold on the popular
> imagination?
Because they're freaking cool! As we've discussed on
the Archives board before, just about everyone has a
different reason they are interested in the
subject...some because they collect swords, others
because they are history buffs, some because they read
a certain book or movie (if you took a poll, about 40%
would say "Shogun", in book or movie format, was the
key for them), etc.
But to attempt to really answer the question, for much
the same reason that gunfighters of the Old West or
knights in shining armor do--because the ideal image
of a brave warrior fighting for "right" against the
odds is a common human ideal archetype.
Interesting questions!
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