‘Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom
nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory
or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing
this, you will awaken from your dreams.’
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure- The Book of the Samurai, 1716
Even the Quaker author of Bushidō, Soul of Japan, who so confused Giri as Bushidō, and Bushidō as the code of the Samurai, had this part right.
‘In revenge there is something that satisfies one’s sense of justice. Our
sense of revenge is as exact as our mathematical faculty and until
both Terms of the equation are satisfied we cannot get over the sense
of something left undone.’
Inazō Nitobe, 1900
In a modern era of law and order and interdependent economies, the Japanese still live in a world where repressed and sublimated emotions drift like chlorine gas. But the aggression their old heroes used to visit upon their enemies has been driven underground or inward. Boredom and depression and anger go deep into the interior of one’s own heart.
Giri obligations also extend to Japanese Yakuza gangsters operating outside the law. Doing jingi refers to this honour among thieves, and the one-sworded swashbucklers of the Tokugawa shogunate who sought shelter with strangers, as insurance against any future vengeance from them.
Repayment of the Giri favour calls forth future favours in turn. Relations of social dependence thus continue indefinitely, their very inequality binding individuals to each other. One’s behaviour is continually rebalanced within the hierarchical circular framework of on-gimu-giri centrifugal forces.
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