Secrets of the Samurai. Oscar Ratti
would enable them to share their experiences and findings with others, thus furthering the development of a more comprehensive perspective. But a dialogue, as Socrates pointed out, can only begin to stimulate the interest by starting at a certain point and at a certain moment—which is exactly what the present study, in its own way, from its own platform of observation, and with its own method, has set out to do.
Finally, it is the authors’ fond hope that this book may prove as stimulating to the reader as its production was to them, especially when they surveyed the multiform landscape of an ancient culture and the often tragic but brave attempts of its subjects to cope, in their own way, with the demands of a harsh reality. Confronted as we are today with social and political turbulence, living under the moment-to-moment threat of nuclear catastrophe, all studies of man’s experience in the art of violent confrontation have acquired a particular relevancy. Almost everyone seems to agree that we must attempt to determine whether man will be forever trapped by his apparently constitutional inclination to employ any method, however lethal, to ensure his dominance over his fellowmen, or whether he may—in time—be capable of ritualizing and then, ultimately, transforming that pattern. In this endeavor, thoughtful studies of man’s past, with all its pitfalls and bloody errors, may prove to be a necessary and valuable factor in the final equation.
—The Authors
New York
INTRODUCTION
The Martial Ethos
Definition of Bujutsu and Its Specializations
The long history and complex tradition of the Japanese art of combat is embodied in a variety of forms, methods, and weapons, each of which constitutes a particular specialization of that art. Each specialization, in turn, is known as a jutsu, a word which may be translated as “method,” “art,” or “technique” and is indicative of the particular way or ways in which certain actions are performed. Historically, each art or method has developed certain procedures or patterns which set it apart from the procedures and patterns of other arts. In the context of the Japanese art of combat, therefore, a specialization consists of a particular, systematic method of using a specific weapon.
Very often, a specialization of combat was identified by the name of the weapon used by its practitioners. An example of this system of identification would be kenjutsu—that is, the art (jutsu) of the sword (ken). However, a combat method could also be identified by the particular, functional way of using a weapon in order to achieve an opponent’s subjugation. Among the specializations of the art of unarmed combat, for example, jujutsu identifies the art (jutsu) of suppleness (ju)—that is, the art of using suppleness in a certain technical way in order to defeat an opponent. Frequently, a main specialization of combat would produce subspecializations, many of which, through constant refinement, effectively improved upon the original method to the extent of substituting for it entirely, thus becoming independent specializations of combat in and of themselves. In such a case, the subspecialization would generally be identified by the name of its main feature. Kenjutsu, the art of the sword, for example, was further refined into a deadly specialization known as iaijutsu—the art (jutsu) of drawing (iai) and simultaneously cutting with the sword; it was also the matrix for nito-kenjutsu, the art (jutsu) of fencing with two (nito) swords (ken). Finally, a specialization could be identified by the name of the master who had devised his own particular style of fighting or by the name of the school where this particular style was taught.
The specializations of the Japanese art of combat which are of particular relevance to this study are those which were developed and brought to the highest degree of systematic perfection during the feudal period of Japanese history. This period embraces a span of approximately nine centuries, from the late ninth and early tenth centuries to the nineteenth century—more precisely to the year of the Meiji Restoration (1868), when, in a manner characteristically Japanese, the feudal era was declared formally closed. During the centuries of dominance by the Tokugawa (1600 to 1867), the specializations of the art of combat inherited from the previous ages of turmoil were thoroughly polished and perfected by a system of study surprisingly modern in its methods of experimentation and observation; at the same time, new specializations were devised and applied to help resolve the eternally precarious problems of combat. The era of comparative peace forcefully imposed by the Tokugawa, in fact, actually made it possible for many masters of the art of combat to delve quite deeply into the mysteries and techniques of violent confrontation and to test their findings within the repressed, hence extremely virulent and explosive, reality of individual combat (large-scale battles being few and far between).
In the doctrine of the Japanese martial arts we find long lists of combat specializations. They are usually divided systematically according to the particular views of the author discussing them. Certain authors, for example, make a clear distinction between those specializations formally practiced by the Japanese warrior (bushi) and those which he despised because they were practiced by the members of other, “inferior” classes within the rigidly stratified hierarchy of the Japanese nation. Other authors divide them into armed and unarmed categories according to the predominance of mechanical or anatomical weapons as the primary instruments of combat.
In order to give the reader a panoramic view of the warrior’s specializations in the art of individual combat, we have endeavored to list in chart 1 as many as possible of the various jutsu we have discovered in the doctrine. The only attempt we have made to classify them at this time is by dividing them into two major groups—armed and unarmed—subdividing the former into three categories according to the importance and prestige traditionally assigned them within the culture of feudal Japan. We have not attempted to provide a specific translation of each name used in the Japanese doctrine to identify a particular specialization of bujutsu or one of its possible subspecial izations, since many different names may be used to identify the same basic method of combat. We have therefore deemed it advisable to leave the task of proper identification to those sections in part 2 wherein they will be examined individually. It is obvious that the Japanese nomenclature presents an initial set of problems in identifying these jutsu, since so many of the names imply or refer to concepts and functions of a rather complex and esoteric nature—to the extent of defying attempts to establish a clear identification in English without preliminary examinations of these concepts and functions.
The entire body of these specializations, the generic art of combat, is most often termed bujutsu. This word is the phonetic rendering of two Chinese ideograms,
In contemporary parlance, the Tokugawa shogunate was a particular instance of buke seiji or bumon seiji, that is, “military government.” In general, that expression meant government by soldiers, or at least by officials whose titles implied military command. It suggested the philosophic sense of a government which relied for its control on force or the threat of force. (Webb, 5)
Combined with justu, which, as indicated above, may be literally translated as “technique,” “art,” or “method,” bu is used to represent the idea of military technique or techniques (the plural being implied by the context in which it is used), military arts, or military methods. Since the military aspect