Oxford University Press has recently published Inventing the Way of The Samurai, by
Oleg Benesch. The book offers a re-evaluation of some of the
longest-standing myths about Japanese thought and culture. Oleg Benesch here
further explains…
One
hundred years ago today, far from the erupting battlefields of Europe, a small
German force in the city of Tsingtau (Qingdao), Germany’s most important
possession in China, was preparing for an impending siege. The small fishing
village of Qingdao and the surrounding area had been reluctantly leased to the
German Empire by the Chinese government for 99 years in 1898, and German colonists
soon set about transforming this minor outpost into a vibrant city boasting
many of the comforts of home, including the forerunner of the now-famous
Tsingtao Brewery. By 1914, Qingdao had over 50,000 residents and was the
primary trading port in the region. Given its further role as the base for the
Far East Fleet of the Imperial German Navy, however, Qingdao was unable to
avoid becoming caught up in the faraway European war.
The forces
that besieged Qingdao in the autumn of 1914 were composed of troops from
Britain and Japan, the latter entering the war against Germany in accord with
the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The Alliance had been agreed in 1902 amid growing
anxiety in Britain regarding its interests in East Asia, and rapidly
modernizing Japan was seen as a useful ally in the region. For Japanese
leaders, the signing of such an agreement with the most powerful empire of the
day was seen as a major diplomatic accomplishment and an acknowledgement of
Japan’s arrival as one of the world’s great powers. More immediately, the
Alliance effectively guaranteed the neutrality of third parties in Japan’s
looming war with Russia, and Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War of
1904-05 sent shockwaves across the globe as the first defeat of a great European
empire by a non-Western country in a conventional modern war.
In
Britain, Japan’s victory was celebrated as a confirmation of the strength of
its Asian ally, and represented the peak of a fascination with Japan in Britain
that marked the first decade of the twentieth century. This culminated in the
1910 Japan-British Exhibition in London, which saw over eight million visitors
pass through during its six-month tenure. In contrast, before the 1890s, Japan
had been portrayed in Britain primarily as a relatively backward yet culturally
interesting nation, with artists and intellectuals displaying considerable
interest in Japanese art and literature. Japan’s importance as a military force
was first recognized during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, and especially
from the time of the Russo-Japanese War, Japan’s military prowess was popularly
attributed to a supposedly ancient warrior spirit that was embodied in
‘bushido’, or the ‘way of the samurai’.
The
‘bushido’ ideal was popularized around the world especially through the
prominent Japanese educator Nitobe Inazo’s (1862-1933) book Bushido:
The Soul of Japan, which was originally published in English in 1900 and
achieved global bestseller status around the time of the Russo-Japanese War (a
Japanese translation first appeared in 1908). The British public took a
positive view towards the ‘national spirit’ of its ally, and many saw Japan as
a model for curing perceived social ills. Fabian Socialists such as Beatrice
Webb (1858-1943) and Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) lauded the supposed collectivism
of ‘bushido’, while Alfred Stead (1877-1933) and other promoters of the
Efficiency Movement celebrated Japan’s rapid modernization. For his part, H.G.
Wells 1905 novel A Modern Utopia included a ‘voluntary
nobility’ called ‘samurai,’ who guided society from atop a governing structure
that he compared to Plato’s ideal republic. At the same time, British writers
lamented the supposed decline of European chivalry from an earlier ideal,
contrasting it with the Japanese who had seemingly managed to turn their
‘knightly code’ into a national ethic followed by citizens of all social
classes.
The
‘bushido boom’ in Britain was not mere Orientalization of a distant society,
however, but was strongly influenced by contemporary Japanese discourse on the
subject. The term ‘bushido’ only came into widespread use around 1900, and even
a decade earlier most Japanese would have been bemused by the notion of a
national ethic based on the former samurai class. Rather than being an ancient
tradition, the modern ‘way of the samurai’ developed from a search for identity
among Japanese intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century. This process
saw an increasing shift away from both Chinese and European thought towards
supposedly native ideals, and the former samurai class provided a useful
foundation. The construction of an ethic based on the ‘feudal’ samurai was
given apparent legitimacy by the popularity of idealized chivalry and
knighthood in nineteenth-century Europe, with the notion that English
‘gentlemanship’ was rooted in that nation’s ‘feudal knighthood’ proving
especially influential. This early ‘bushido’ discourse profited from the
nationalistic fervor following Japan’s victory over China in 1895, and the
concept increasingly came to be portrayed as a unique and ancient martial
ethic. At the same time, those theories that had drawn inspiration from
European models came to be ignored, with one prominent Japanese promoter of
‘bushido’ deriding European chivalry as ‘mere woman-worship’.
In the first years of the twentieth
century, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance contributed greatly to the positive
reception in Britain of theories positing a Japanese ‘martial race’, and the
fate of ‘bushido’ in the UK demonstrated the effect of geopolitics on theories
of ‘national characteristics’. By 1914, British attitudes had begun to change
amid increasing concern regarding Japan’s growing assertiveness. Even the
Anglo-Japanese operation that finally captured Qingdao in November was marked
by British distrust of Japanese aims in China, a sentiment that was
strengthened by Japan’s excessive demands on China the following year.
Following the war, Japan’s reluctance to return the captured territory to China
caused British opposition to Japan’s China policy to increase, leading to the
end of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1923. The two countries subsequently drifted
even further apart, and by the 1930s, ‘bushido’ was popularly described in
Britain as an ethic of treachery and cruelty, only regaining its positive
status after 1945 through samurai films and other popular culture as Japan and
Britain again became firm allies in the Cold War.
This post originally appeared on the Oxford
University Press Blog, and is re-posted by kind permission of OUP and Oleg
Benesch.