Category: samurai

From the classical era to the modern age, against foes foreign and domestic, in rebellion and as government functionaries, the class of men known as samurai and their families have been at (or near) the center of Japan’s politics, government and culture. Even after their elimination – one of the only times in world history that an aristocracy eliminated itself – the samurai lives on in the memory and imagination, drawing on centuries of accumulated mythology and literature.

There are few books that do a good job, from an historian’s perspective, of giving a strong, focused overview of the samurai throughout their history. The one we’ll be using as the overarching narrative of the course is:

• Ikegami, Eiko, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Harvard University Press, 1995). ISBN-13: 978-0674868090

Ikegami’s book isn’t just a survey of the history: it’s an attempt to understand the social and political process by which the samurai transform over time. We’ll discuss her argument as we go along. The rest of the books we’ll read more or less chronologically, starting with the Heike Monogatari, one of the greatest works of samurai literature and a chronicle (more or less) of the Gempei war.

• Sadler, A L, Ten Foot Square Hut and Tales of the Heike, Tuttle, 1972. ISBN 978-0804808798

We’ll move on to the increasingly chaotic middle period, with a work that takes the literature and documentation of the samurai in their heyday to reconstruct the realities of the time:

• Thomas Conlan, State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth-Century Japan, Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. (July 2003), ISBN 1-929280-23-8

Moving on to the Tokugawa period (we’ll read some unification period stuff, too, I promise, in documents described below. Also probably a movie or two), we’ll look at both the male and female side of the equation:

• Yamakawa Kikue, Kate Wildman Nakai (Translator), Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Family Life, 1997, Stanford UP. ISBN-13: 978-0804731492
• Mark Ravina, The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori, Wiley 2003. ISBN 9780471705376

Ravina’s book actually predates the movie of the same title (both of them took their titles from Saigo Takamori’s posthumous reputation) and is a full-bore biography rather than a…. well, we’ll talk about that, too.

In addition to the books for purchase, we’ll make liberal use of the ACLS Humanities E-Book collection, accessible through Axe Library, including:

• Keene, Donald., Tyler, Royall. Twenty plays of the Nō theatre, Columbia University Press, 1970.
• Kojima Hōshi, McCullough, Helen Craig, trans. The Taiheiki: a chronicle of medieval Japan, Columbia University Press, 1959.
• Hall, John Whitney, Government and local power in Japan, 500 to 1700: a study based on Bizen Province, Princeton UP, 1966
• Tsunoda, de Bary, Keene, Sources of the Japanese tradition, Columbia UP, 1958.

There will also be some movies: the History department recently acquired a substantial selection of Japan-related DVDs, many of which are classic samurai flicks.

Graduate Students will also read (for everyone else, these are optional, but very fun):

• Katsu, Kokichi, Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai, trans. Teruko Craig (University of Arizona Press, 1988). ISBN-13: 978-0816512560
• Shiba Goro, Remembering Aizu: The Testament of Shiba Goro, trans. Teruko Craig, University of Hawaii Press, 1999. ISBN 9780824821579

You’re welcome to purchase these books anywhere, of course, but the bookstore does have them on order. All of these readings (except the last as noted) are required.