Samurai Road Just a Minute

Just a minute. You blew by the dedications so fast you either knew who they were, or you didn’t care. You didn’t know at least one of them, so it must have been the second reason. I don’t want you going any further until you care. So just a minute.

The three men were not samurai. Indeed, they represented more of what eluded samurai than what defined them. What the three men embodied is nothing more than the three noble paths that a man can take in life. If he is lucky, he can take all three. I have been that lucky.

Bashō was the quintessential lyrical traveler, opening himself up to meet the world and all the people in it, as I was in my five years of hitchhiking around the planet in my late 20s. 

Kenji was a chain-smoking hard-drinking neurosurgeon with long black curly hair and bushy beard and eyebrows, who picked me up on my way to Kageshima on June 18, 1984. He probably told me his last name, but I lost it. He’s probably dead by now, but back then he was very much alive. Kenji was serving humanity with all the skill and knowledge he could muster. His eyebrows went up a notch when he found out I was also a physician. They went up a lot when he found out about the hitchhiking the world part. 

“I want to drink with you.” He said, like I had no choice. I didn’t need one. After his clinic in Minimata, we ate too much sashimi, drank too much sake, smoked too many cigarettes, and sang too much karaoke with his fishermen friends. He left me next morning with a new shirt, and a renewed purpose. When I got back, I would serve humanity with all the skill and knowledge I could muster.

Kamo no Chōmei was the Thoreau of Japan. He was the last prototype of the first man, a twelfth century hermetic aesthete who took his leave from humanity, to live simply in nature. He wrote down his thoughts in his Notebook of a Ten Square Rush Mat Sized World, the way I wrote down mine, in Westwood Lake Chronicles. And that’s the best way for a man’s life to go, in the world of all people, some people, and no people, in no particular order.

The male journey of a samurai was not as sanguine, although there was plenty of blood. Their lyrical verse consisted of death poems. If they wandered, it was because they had become masterless rōnin. They wore their poverty not as a badge of pride but of shame. They didn’t serve humanity with all the skill and knowledge they could muster, but one warlord. When they were in nature, in a Zen garden or in a tea ceremony, they were rarely alone and, even if they became monks, they were usually with other monks. Their moon-viewing and wind-scattered cherry blossoms were even more ephemeral than ours. They were the prototype of pathos. 

So, now that you know the difference between those who lived the perfect life and those who lived for the perfect death, you can understand why you shouldn’t have blown by the dedication. Now you can read the book.