Secrets of the Samurai. Oscar Ratti
figure of the Japanese feudal warrior (the prototype of the fighting man, known as a bushi or samurai), the term bujutsu was, and to a great extent still is, employed to denote the techniques, arts, and methods of combat developed and practiced primarily (if not exclusively) by the members of the military class. By semantic implication, then, the term bujutsu identifies the martial arts of Japan.
There were, of course, other terms employed by the doctrine of these arts in an attempt to express as clearly and as specifically as possible their nature and purposes. The word bugei, for example, is one of these—formed by the combination of the ideogram
The word bujutsu, then, is used in the Japanese doctrine of the art of combat to represent all those specializations of the general art of combat practiced by the Japanese fighting man, or professional warrior of Japan, as well as by various members of other social classes who practiced any of the individual combat arts. Bujutsu, we wish to emphasize, is particularly related to the practical, technical, and strategic aspects of these arts, as indicated by the use of the ideogram for technique. When these specializations are intended as disciplines with an end or purpose of a more educational or ethical nature, “technique” becomes “way” (do), meaning the “path” toward a spiritual rather than purely practical achievement.
The criteria used by the authors in deciding whether a specialization should be included in this study were as follows: it must have occupied a position of traditional importance in Japanese feudal culture; it must have been strategically relevant in and to individual combat; and, finally, it must have been widely known and practiced. The specializations fulfilling all three of these requirements are examined in part 2 after a preliminary study of the armor which influenced so many of the weapons and techniques used in the various arts. The order followed in presenting the various martial arts assigns a position of priority to archery, spearmanship, swordsmanship, horsemanship, and swimming in armor, since the main protagonist of Japanese history, the warrior or bushi, practiced these arts on a professional basis. The discussion of these specializations, which are termed “major martial arts,” will then be followed by an examination of other arts, termed “minor martial arts,” such as the art of the war fan and that of the staff, which were also considered traditional as well as strategically important and were quite popular with the members of various other classes of Japanese society. Finally, we will examine several specializations of the art of combat which do not fulfill all three of the criteria listed above and, therefore, are termed “collateral arts of combat.” The science of firearms (hojutsu), that of fortification (chikujojutsu), and that of field deployment (senjojutsu) are excluded from this study because they are related more specifically to the art of war—to the art of collective rather than individual combat.
All these major, minor, and collateral specializations of bujutsu are classified as armed because they were based predominantly upon the use of mechanical weapons or assortments of weapons, which distinguished them from those specializations of the art of combat in which the primary weapon was a part or parts of the human body. The unarmed specializations will be examined in part 2.
In addition to an analysis of the historical background, the discussion of each art includes a study of its characteristic factors, such as the weapons employed, the particular techniques or ways of employing them, the mental attitude adopted in order to face combat with confidence, and the type of power or energy needed to use those weapons properly—all the factors that blend in forming the art and guarantee its strategic efficiency in combat as well as its significance as a contribution to the theory of combat.
The authors have divided the above-mentioned factors into two categories: the first includes factors such as the weapons and the techniques of each specialization, which may be qualified as outer or external because they are easily perceivable; the second embraces factors such as mental control and power, which may not be as visually (or immediately) impressive as the factors in the first category but which determine, from within, the degree of efficiency of both the weapons and the techniques. This second category of factors, therefore, contains the inner or interior factors of bujutsu. In the study which follows, the outer factors are examined in part 2 and the inner factors in part 3. The main reason for treating these factors separately is that while the weapons and techniques of bujutsu differed to a certain extent in structure and functionality from one specialization to another, the mental attitude and the power needed to control them from within appear to have been substantially identical. Hence, it was decided to illustrate these inner factors separately and as a systematic whole, avoiding a repetition of concepts and ideas which are basically uniform throughout the various specializations. Even so, particular references are made to the ways in which these inner factors were interpreted and applied in the most important specializations.
In part 3, our aim is to present a unified and systematic view of certain theories propounded by a number of ancient masters of bujutsu—theories which, by and large, appear only in a fragmented fashion in the doctrine and are generally interpreted in an exclusivistic sense by the adepts of each specialization. The theories of the major strategies of combat and the principles of their application are also illustrated so as to unify them within a systematic whole and avoid having the particular character of one confuse or blur a panoramic view of all.
The Qualification “Martial” (Bu) and the Exponents of Bujutsu
The extensive and general use of the qualification “martial” by Western authors when discussing the art of combat (although admittedly based upon Japanese records) can be misleading. We may be easily led to falsely assume, for example, that the warrior (bushi) of feudal Japan, the prototype of the martial man, was the sole originator of these arts or that he alone practiced them. “Martial” is, of course, etymologically related to Mars, the Roman god of war, and consequently to war, warriors, military pursuits, and soldiers. By implication, this assumption could also lead us to qualify the specializations of the art of combat as arts of war, thus relating them more to the battlefield and to mass involvements of men and materiel than to individual confrontations. Neither of these assumptions, however, would be quite correct. To begin with, the Japanese warrior of the feudal era was not the sole practitioner of bujutsu, nor was he, by any means, the sole originator of its specializations. His predominant identification as the Japanese fighting man par excellence may be traced back, with a certain degree of accuracy, to 1600, when the military clan of the Tokugawa rose to power and, by forcefully organizing all the other major clans into a separate class with separate duties, rights, and privileges, extolled and elevated its members, de jure et de facto, above the members of all the other social classes. Before 1600, however, Japanese history provides abundant evidence that, during the ages of the original clans (uji) and the court nobles or aristocrats (kuge) in Nara and Kyoto, the distinction between such as the clansman-farmer, artisan, and merchant (including the clansman-priest) and the clansman-fighter was apparently not as clearly delineated as it was to become during the feudal era.
In the ages preceding the consolidation of the country into the rigidly stratified society of the Tokugawa—which made the passage from one class to another among commoners (heimin) extremely difficult and the admission of a member of another class to the military class (buke) almost impossible—the demarcation lines between classes were not strict. Until the very end of the fifteenth century, as Cole points out in his study of Kyoto during the Momoyama period, “almost any man of ability could carve a career by himself” (Cole, 58).
The decree disarming all commoners and the militant clergy, issued in the seventh month, eighth day of Tensho (1588) by Nobunaga’s successor, Hideyoshi, provides the clearest and most telling proof that many commoners had not only possessed weapons such as bows and arrow, spears and swords, but had evidently been quite well versed in their use. “The possession of...implements of war,” the decree candidly