Tuttle Publishing Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan: With an Extensive Introduction and Notes by Alexander Bennett

Book is new and we’ll pack, well done

Great!

What made me laugh out loud (perhaps I may seem strange to some) is how different this book is from what I and presumably many today expect from a book on Bushido written by a samurai! Hagakure (the famous iconic book of Bushido) certainly fits the expectation perfectly - do your duty until death and be happy to die at any moment etc... This book however, while certainly encompassing these aspects of Bushido, does not stop at them but instead goes far beyond to encompass all of life and even the whole world as the book seeks to place Bushido within the scope of international mores and moral codes!The most important quotation from the book to understand its message is this one from page 170, "Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor force of our country." This quotation is the golden bough or key to understanding what this book is trying to tell you! First of all, in spite of what we might expect or want to find and in spite of what some samurai may have wanted to promote, Bushido was never formulated in a precise way. There was no reliable written code. This book tries to fill this void, and of course can only go so far in laying down as precepts what were in fact nebulous notions of general attitudes towards righteous conduct, manners and etiquette. But the second and more important point in this quotation is that Bushido is the spirit or guiding force of Japan, nearly a religion, and as such it is critical to understand it in order to understand Japan.One other way I was gleefully surprised by the book was that the author, a samurai by birth and lineage and one of the great men of his day both nationally and internationally, sees faults in Bushido particularly regarding its inclination to pride, violence and over-sensitivity to perceived insult. He also can foresee a day when Bushido finally dies (and commits its own seppuku! Ironic!), its code of honour and bravery replaced with one of love for all mankind. He puts forth what appear to me very logical and sensible reasons for this such as the modern State's justice system taking away the need for revenge killing, and the abolition of class distinctions at once ennobling the commoners and reducing the noble classes down to a kind of level where Chivalry or Bushido does not play a role. However, he rightfully points out that in his day Bushido was still strong and was likely to remain so for a long time yet. At the same time, he wishes for modern peoples to see what is noble and valuable in Bushido, or at least what is passably respectable or tolerable. A rare Christian (and Quaker at that!) samurai, he does not think Christianity can make any real headway in Japan without building upon its native and ingrained Bushido rather than trying to supplant it. Interesting! It has been remarked that Christianity attained the status in Korea it has today in part due to its use of Buddhist, Confucian and native Shamanistic language and aspects.This is a deep work of literature deeply felt by this samurai author, and is the product of a brilliant and eminently international diplomat and government official. Even if the exact topic of Bushido does not attract us, the workings of this brilliant man's mind have a lot of wisdom to offer us! This is the most accepted work on Bushido in modern Japan, and the author's image was on Japanese paper money from the 80s until the 2000s! His English style and erudition are wonderful and it is a worthy education in literary expression to read and reread this excellent literary work of his!Along with martial arts like Kendo and Judo, this book Bushido (also a "do" form take note please!) was part of the Wako no Sai movement which tried to preserve Japanese spirit into the modern world dominated by the West by nationalizing and streamlining traditional Japanese practices to enable them to be preserved and more readily learnt by the new generations of Japanese, this time by all Japanese and not just the small class of nobles. Thus from myriad Jiu-jitsu schools came the nationalized Judo curriculum, and from a myriad of Kenjutsu schools came the nationalized and streamlined Kendo. This book Bushido comes across to me as being precisely in line with this national effort to preserve the past into the future.Why did I read the book? I read it in order to better understand my relationship with Japanese martial arts, myself being a Westerner. While this book does not exactly answer this question for me as it was not written to do this, it has provided me with some ways to answer the question for myself in an informed way. For instance, some aspects of judo and kendo just do not seem to make sense to a Western mind. There are too many of these to write down here for you to read, but suffice it to say that this book has indeed solved many of them for me!I highly recommend this particular edition of the book with the footnotes and preface by the renowned scholar of Japanese martial arts Dr. Alexander Bennett. Without his notes and introduction this work would not have made full sense. With his excellent additions this book makes perfect sense. Thank you Dr. Bennett!What is something I can say I learned from this book? As a Western student of Japanese martial arts, I can say I learned that there are aspects of Bushido I can acquire from my training with a right mind that are beneficial to me and to others without there being any expectation placed on me to pretend to actually being a samurai not to becoming Japanese, as if this were possible or necessarily desirable in any case! Just as in the book it is described how Japan of her own accord looked outward and learned from the West, so I (and many others too!) as a Westerner have looked across the ocean to Japan and chose to learn from that fabled land. Through these kind of exchanges we promote international peace and love, which to Inazo Nitobe the author married to an American woman, as well as to me, are the most important values.

El libro se ve precioso, además de que es pasta dura y con sobrecubierta. Muy bueno

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