Tuesday, 11 August 2015
Narrow Road To The Deep North 32
The Tiger, Takeda Shingen, was born in 1521. An accomplished poet in his youth, his definition of samurai parental loyalty was equally figurative. Everyone knows that if a man doesn't hold filial piety toward his own parents he would also neglect his duties toward his lord. Such a neglect means a disloyalty toward humanity. Therefore such a man doesn't deserve to be called ‘samurai.’ At the age of 21, after his coming of age ceremony, he led a bloodless coup against his father.
His war banner read Fū-Rin-Ka-Zan, ‘Wind-Forest-Fire-Mountain,’ taken from Sun Tzu's The Art of War, and his aspiration to be as swift as the wind, as silent as a forest, as fierce as fire and as immovable as a mountain.
Due to the prowess of his army’s ‘Twenty-Four Generals,’ Shingen turned the Takeda clan in the most powerful in the country. Of these, Kōsaka Masanobu was the Tiger’s best known homosexual lover, in Japanese shudo tradition. Shingen signed a pledge that he was not involved in, nor had any intentions of entering into, a sexual relationship with a certain other retainer, and asserted that ‘since I want to be intimate with you.’ He would in no way harm the boy, calling upon the gods to be his guarantors.
Shingen revered learning and, as you may have already forgotten, was the first to introduce soy sauce as a seasoning to his army.
‘Learning is to a man as the leaves and branches are to a tree, and
it can be said that he should not be without it. Learning is not
only reading books, however, but is rather something that we
study to integrate with our own way of life. One who is born into
the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first
aquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements
in loyalty, and, in listening to just one of his dictums each day,
will in a month know 30 precepts. Needless to say, if in a year he
learns 300 precepts, at the end of that time he will be much the
better. Thus, a man can divide his mind into three parts: he
should throw out those thoughts that are evil, take up those ideas
that are good, and become intimate with his own wisdom… I
would honor and call wise the man who penetrates this principle,
though he lacks the knowledge of a single Chinese character. As
for those who are learned in other matters, I would avoid them
regardless of how deep their knowledge might be. That is how
shallow and untalented this monk is.’
But Shingen was also a strict disciplinarian, and there is an exemplary story in the Hagakure, relating his execution of two brawlers, not because they had fought, but because they had not fought to the death.
‘Once a master was on his way to a reading at the Jissoin Temple
in Kawakami. One of his pages had gotten drunk and started a
quarrel with a boatman on a ferry. Once the ferry docked the
page drew his sword, but the boatman struck him on the head
with an oar, and the other boatmen gathered around ready to
beat the page to death with their oars. The master pretended not
to notice what was happening and walked away. Another page
ran to aid his friend, apologized to the boatmen, calmed down
the injured page, and took him back to the master’s house. That
night the master took the disorderly page’s swords. The master
is first to blame for not rebuking the drunken page and taking
control of the situation before it got out of hand. After the page
had been struck down there was no reason to apologize to the
boatmen, even though the page had acted unruly. At that point,
the master should have apologized to both the page and the
boatman for what he was about to do and killed them both in
one stroke. The master had a coward’s heart.’
Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure- The Book of the Samurai, 1716
Soy sauce. No sauce.
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