Into the Rising Sun 3

                           ‘A whole is what has a beginning and
                           middle and end.’
                                                                          Aristotle 

                                                                                                           

The history of the Samurai is the history of Japan. The exact moment of creation is unclear, but a class of highly skilled warriors appeared after Emperor Kōtoku’s Taika Reforms in 646. A village is composed of fifty households, and over each village shall be placed a headman. The reorganization of society was designed to support an elaborate Chinese-like empire. Property redistribution and heavy new taxes forced many small farmers to sell their land, and work as tenant farmers. The few emerging dominant large landholders amassed power and wealth, and created a feudal system similar to one halfway around the world. As in medieval Europe, the new feudal lords needed warriors to defend their riches, and the samurai was born. Originally calling themselves bushi, from the Han Chinese bu-, ‘to stop,’ and -shi, ‘a spear,’ the ancient soldiers from the north of Japan were renowned for being ‘able to keep the peace, either by literary or military means, but predominantly by the latter.’ Their aristocratic clan masters began to call them saburau, ‘those who wait on and serve, in close attendance to nobility,’ and the first recorded reference to the word samurai appeared in the early tenth century, in the Kokinshū, the first imperial anthology of poetry.

                              ‘Ask for your master's umbrella
                              The dews 'neath the trees of Miyagino
                              Are thicker than rain.’

With each change of train, Robyn and I began to get a sense of the rhythms and precision of the late Kisei Rasshu homeward rush. The painted marks along the edge of the platforms specified the exact points at which the doors would open, and the optimal number of people who could expect to be successful in boarding. The motion of our car followed a repetitive pattern- a slow beginning, a gradual acceleration, and a sudden ending in the next station. It was not a metaphor, it was several. The Greek shape of Aristotle’s three-act stories, honed by a Roman refinement that would explain why decline is faster than growth. 

       ‘It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our
        selves and our works if all things should perish as
        slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases
        are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.’
                          Lucius Annæus Seneca, Letters to Lucilius

But ‘Seneca’s Cliff’ had been known in Japan for centuries before its Western recognition, as the universal modulation pattern in the movement of all things. One of the nine aesthetics, Jo-ha-kyu was the tempo of slow setup, an accelerated quest, and a swift urgent climactic termination. It was the cadence of our train, and all the classical Japanese arts- of Gagaku court music, of tea ceremony, of theatre drama (Noh and Kabuki and Jōruri), of poetry (renga and renku), of martial arts (kendō and jujitsu), and even of the surfers we would watch the next day. Most fascinating of all, it traced the curve of Samurai history.