This article explores the reception and appropriation of the Japanese samurai in Italian nationalist and Fascist discourse from the early twentieth century to the far-right movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Through a close examination of figures such as Luigi Barzini Sr., Shimoi Harukichi, Giuseppe Tucci, and Julius Evola, it analyzes how the ethical code of bushido, popularized in Europe through Inazo Nitobe's Bushido: The Soul of Japan, was interpreted by Italian writers through the lens of Classical Roman ideals of honorable death, civic duty, and heroic virtue. The article emphasizes an Italian tendency to read Japanese martial traditions not as radically other, but as culturally and ethically resonant with national ideals, and identifies two competing yet interconnected interpretations of the samurai that circulated in Italy during the Fascist era: a Shinto-inflected view aligned with sacrificial patriotism, and a Zen-oriented reading centered on spiritual detachment and aristocratic self-overcoming. The article also traces the afterlife of bushido in postwar Italy, showing how Evola's Zen-oriented version resurfaced in neofascist subcultures during the 1970s. By presenting two alternative interpretations of the samurai, Shinto and Zen, it shows that the transnational samurai became a flexible symbol in twentieth century Italy's political imagination.
During the late nineteenth century, Christian missionaries and scholars in Europe and the United States expounded upon the inferior character of Japan and other nations in part to justify the dominant position of the West in the imperialist world order. In 1895, when prominent Yale professor George Trumbull Ladd described the Japanese people as fickle and immature, philosopher & Omacr;nishi Hajime responded by holding up bushido and its practice of suicide as analogous to the Stoicism of ancient Greece. In doing so, he suggested the existence of a Japanese ethic of perseverance comparable to one of the philosophical foundations of Western civilization and established a set of talking points that would be picked up by later writers. In the early 1900s, Inoue Tetsujir & omacr; expanded upon & Omacr;nishi's argument, contrasting bushido with Stoicism to suggest the superiority of the Japanese national spirit over the West. As the comparison between bushido and Stoicism became a topic of study for aspiring teachers of the national moral (sh & umacr;shin) curriculum, members of the Teiy & umacr; Ethical Society built upon this comparison to debate the status of bushido and promote competing priorities for moral education. Through such comparisons and contrasts, qualities associated with Stoicism-including self-discipline, perseverance, and the practice of suicide-became integral to conceptions of bushido and Japanese national character in the twentieth century.
This article investigates the evolving representations of Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, figures often collectively referred to as the "Three Heroes," and their transformation from historical actors into mythologized icons within Japanese cultural memory. While these leaders played pivotal roles in the unification of Japan during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, their legacies have been continually reshaped by ideological, institutional, and commercial forces. Through an analysis of their portrayals in literature, museums, and contemporary media such as anime and video games, the article explores how these samurai have been reconstituted as symbols of national identity, soft power, and cultural branding. This process of mythologization reveals the interplay between historical narrative and collective memory, highlighting how selective remembrance and reinvention serve to negotiate power, tradition, and belonging in both domestic and global contexts.
This article examines the ways in which Indian intellectuals, reformers, and nationalists conceptualized and articulated their ideas about one key Japanese concept: the samurai. This is set within the context of India's engagement with Japan in the early decades of the twentieth century. The article begins with a brief overview of the relevant literature, after which it presents two case studies in which Indians made use of the term "samurai." The contexts under consideration are as follows: first, the issue of caste and the abolition of untouchability from the late 1900s to the early 1920s; and second, the articulation of ideas to unite and unify the Indian nation with the objective of liberating the country from colonial rule in the 1920s and early 1930s. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, Indian reformers and nationalists, I argue, repeatedly invoked the positive effects of the samurai's renunciation of privilege and status on the construction of equality in Japan. They also highlighted the samurai's willingness to sacrifice their privileges for the sake of the nation as a point of reference for ensuring national solidarity and political progress with simultaneous social reform. The conclusion of the article provides a perspective on subsequent developments in the use-or rather the non-use-of the term "samurai" in the late 1930s and 1940s.
Between 1938 and 1944 there were five adaptations of Ch & umacr;shingura staged in Nazi Germany. These adaptations may have served as convenient advertising for the German-Japanese alliance, but that was, at best, a secondary consideration for the dramatists. Rather, they reflect and capture Nazism's ongoing fascination with Japanese martial culture, and particularly with the figure of the samurai. A potent symbol of a supposedly intact national ethos, the samurai were consistently represented in Nazi Germany as an aspirational model for what a reconstructed German "national community" (Volksgemeinschaft) could be. As a historical anecdote, Ch & umacr;shingura validated this narrative; as a dramatic performance, it brought it to life. Ch & umacr;shingura's popularity in Nazi Germany may have benefited from its alignment with the regime's ideological aims and expectations, but it was not a product of state intervention; rather, it emerged out of an organic German fascination with the samurai which predated the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Moreover, the fact that it was not just transcribed or translated but performed is significant in what it reveals about the intensity of Nazism's attempted appropriation of the samurai into their own iconography of "honor and loyalty."
In the early 1600s, various commercial entrepots in maritime Southeast Asia became home to Japanese mercenaries, merchants, and exiled Christians. Their sociopolitical roles in Southeast Asia, and their subsequent exploitation by different (memory) regimes, emphasizes these Japanese as exceptional historical actors and contributes to the trope of the samurai within early modern historiography. Focusing on two icons of this early modern southward expansion-Takayama Ukon, commemorated as "Christ's samurai," and Yamada Nagamasa, labeled "the Samurai of Ayutthaya"-this article explores the dynamic trope of Japanese samurai in Southeast Asia and demonstrates how historiography and public diplomacy have created new knowledge and interpretative frames over the centuries. The article's longue-dur & eacute;e conceptual history critically examines a wide variety of sources, including seventeenth century archival accounts, Japanese imperialist propaganda historiography from the 1930s and 1940s, and more recent public diplomacy, and provides a comparative analysis of how merchant spirit and elite status were used to forge the trope of the Southeast Asian samurai.
The Restoration Edict of January 1868, which restored the political power of the emperor, was followed by a series of measures that abolished the warrior class (bushi) and established the supremacy of the imperial court in military matters. Drawing on ancient history and mythology, such as the military campaigns of Japan's first (legendary) Emperor Jinmu, imperial apologists vilified the warrior class and accused it of "usurping" imperial authority for more than five hundred years. In this article, I show that the Imperial Japanese Army took a rather condescending view of the warrior rule of previous centuries and of "the samurai" as a whole. Although it may sound counterintuitive, the vilification of "the samurai" was a necessary precondition for the remilitarization of the imperial house, which had not been directly involved in military affairs since the fourteenth century. In addition, I demonstrate that it was World War II propaganda, particularly the propaganda directed at non-Japanese audiences, that shaped the pervasive notion of a connection between the historical "samurai" and the modern Japanese military. Following the Second World War, however, the emperor was once again demilitarized. He set aside the uniform of the supreme military commander, adopting civilian attire and becoming the foremost symbol of the "peace state."
This article examines perceptions of the samurai and bushido in twentiethcentury Britain. It does so by focusing on four key moments: Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1905); the seppuku of General Nogi Maresuke (1912); Japan's escalating militarism in the 1930s and 1940s; and the seppuku of novelist Mishima Yukio (1970). I explore the discursive variations across these four moments to demonstrate that British attitudes toward the samurai cannot be understood without situating them in the shifting geopolitical and ideological context of the global twentieth century. More specifically, the article highlights the centrality of questions of temporality. I show how British politicians and intellectuals at the beginning of the century associated the samurai and bushido not with medieval Japan, but with a utopian, progressive vision of the future (that is, an "alternative modernity"). Japan's escalating militarism subsequently generated other interpretations, including the idea of bushido as a cause of Japanese atavism. But across these shifting British debates, one consistent objective in reflecting on Japanese warrior culture was to articulate explanations and predictions for the behavior of modern Japan as an international actor. Such discussions consequently also became opportunities for British elites to affirm or denounce particular visions of the sociopolitical order. Britain's preoccupation with the samurai, then, amounted to much more than a timeless exoticist fascination with an Oriental culture. To debate the figure of the samurai was to evaluate the promise and limits of alternative modernities beyond the liberal Western model represented by Britain.
This article highlights the experiences of the first Japanese students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by analyzing archival sources in the MIT Libraries Distinctive Collections that are connected to MIT's first two Japanese graduates, Honma Eiichir & omacr; and Dan Takuma. These documents not only provide firsthand accounts of Honma and Dan's studies in the United States but also offer rich details regarding the community of fellow Japanese students around them in Boston. Notably, they provide examples of both instances in which attitudes and relationships particular to these students' samurai identity continued to shape their experiences in the United States, on the one hand, as well as those in which they attempted to distance themselves from such continuities, on the other. What becomes especially clear in these documents are the ways in which Honma, Dan, and other Japanese students in Boston during the 1870s understood their experiences as steps that would lead to their future careers not only as professionals in specific fields but also as members of a newly emerging elite that would be responsible for shaping their country's modern transformation.
In 1591, as Toyotomi Hideyoshi prepared to invade Korea, he spent several weeks hunting in Mino and Owari provinces before returning to Kyoto with a spectacular parade displaying thousands of captured birds and other animals. The hunting of animals was a prominent feature of the Imjin War that followed as Hideyoshi's generals killed tigers and wildfowl on the peninsula. The links between hunting and samurai identity in Japanese history are well known and have been explored by a number of scholars in rich detail. In this article, I turn to the question of what hunting by Japanese troops may have meant in Joseon Korea during the war. I argue that bushi attempted to assert their authority over captured Korean territory in the same way that they had traditionally done in Japan, and that hunting, and in particular falconry, played a role in this process. Hunting also served to reinforce the hierarchies of the Japanese military apparatus. However, these symbolic statements of authority did not translate well into the Korean context due to differences in the semiotic vocabulary of legitimate rulership between the two states. My analysis centers on a close reading of an Imjin War diary written by a retainer from Satsuma, supplemented by the official Korean government record Joseon wangjo sillok and a digitized collection of premodern Korean diaries.
This article tells the story of Koizumi Kikue, an ordinary woman from the Tohoku region who became a leading figure in the East Asia League Movement (T & omacr;a Renmei Und & omacr;), a Pan-Asianist and Nichirenist movement in wartime Japan. Koizumi developed into an independent Nichirenist thinker, writer, and activist whose faith inspired her advocacy for women's liberation. A product of her time, she was also a radical nationalist and militarist, although these aspects were encapsulated in a larger Buddhist utopianism. The article argues that an analysis of Koizumi's life and thought demonstrates that in contrast to its image as a closed and exclusivist movement, Nichirenism also proved open to, and functioned as a catalyst for, new ideas. Koizumi's story shows the importance of carefully examining the lives and lived experience of practioners and less prominent figures in modern Buddhism.
This research note examines the complex transliteration practices used by the Jesuits in Japan during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with a particular focus on documents related to the Imjin War, the Japanese invasions of Korea which occurred over the course of 1592-1598. The linguistic diversity of Japanese dialects and the multilingual environment of the Catholic mission in the archipelago resulted in significant variability in the graphical representation of native names in European sources. By analyzing these transliterations, I explore how the Jesuits' policy of cultural accommodation, central to their evangelization efforts in Japan, influenced both their understanding of the Japanese language and shaped the way they recorded native terms. To this end, this research note includes a comprehensive list of Jesuit transliterations of Japanese proper names and toponyms, along with their corresponding original forms, aiming to facilitate the coordinated use and comparative study of both missionary and Asian sources in historical research on the Imjin War.
While the study of modern Buddhism has advanced significantly in recent decades, research on women and gender within modern Buddhism has lagged behind. This special section explores the roles of women in Nichiren Buddhism, with a particular focus on the modern period, when the position of women became a subject of explicit Buddhist discourse. Although Nichiren Buddhists have often upheld traditional gender norms, for many women, Nichiren Buddhism also became a source of personal, social, and spiritual empowerment. This section further highlights the diversity of experiences among Nichiren Buddhist women.
The 1970 Japan World Exposition in Osaka is often understood as a spectacle of Japanese ultramodernity. However, recent research suggests that the Expo instead lepresented the rise of post-modernism in Japan. Abandoning mass politics, the Expo became a space for postmodernist political irony, such as the Black Sun Face that Okamoto Taro directed at the Showa Emperor during the opening ceremony. This article argues that both creators and protesters of the Expo challenged Western-liberal industrial modernity through the politics of diversity. At the forefront of protests against the Expo were the Protestant Christian students of the United Church of Christ in Japan, who banned the participation of their congregations in the Expo. However, the Expo's actual planners also subverted the western-liberal industrial modernity at its heart. The Kangarrukai-compsising Kyoto University academics many from the Institute for Research in Humanities, and the science fiction writer Komatsu Saky & omacr;-envisioned the Expo as a festival that would focus on a "diversity" of civilizations, with the "West" at the periphery and Japan as the communicative center. By cooperating with political elites from right and left, the Kangacrukai was successful in creating a high-industrial cultural marketplace, celebrating a capitalist modernity of global diversity, and laying the groundwork for the idea of productivity through cultural self-actualization.
Until recently, the history of Nichiren Buddhism, and modern Japanese Buddhism in general, has focused chiefly on male clerics and intellectuals. This article restores to that history the neglected figure of Matsudaira Toshiko (1890-1985), a prominent female figure within the Nichiren Buddhist tradition. Although famous as a darling of the mass media in the 1920s and 1930s and respected beyond Nichirenist circles as an emerging Buddhist leader and female role model, she is little known today. Matsudaira Toshiko sought to improve the status of women in Japan through a vast array of social activities, especially after the Great Kant & omacr; Earthquake. These efforts were deeply rooted in her religious beliefs. This article analyzes Matsudaira's activism, writings, and faith to explore how women in modern Japan approached, accepted, and practiced Nichiren Buddhism. It contributes to the literature on women and Nichiren Buddhism from the Meiji period through the early Sh & omacr;wa era by shedding light on what meaning Buddhism had for female believers in modern Japan, and reinterpreting the history of Buddhism in modern Japan as the practice of faith, rather than as a story of Buddhist doctrines, institutions, and reform movements.
In this article, I examine teachings and guidance for women in modern Japan's Nichiren Buddhism. I focus on the activities of the Murakumo Women's Association, formed in 1906 by the Nichiren nun Murakumo Nichiei (1855-1920), and particularly on its journal, Murakumo Women. I consider the teachings of male Nichiren priests, the voices of female members, and the Buddhist sermons of Nichiei. My analysis reveals a pattern: male priests quoted from the same Nichiren passages and then presented their own interpretations for modern society. Through this, they attempted to solve "the women's issue" of the time using Nichiren Buddhism, drawing from Nichiren's writings to justify patriarchy and the "good wife, wise mother" ideology. Unlike Jodo Shinshu and other Buddhist schools, Nichiren Buddhism discusses women's salvation in terms of the attainment of buddhahood by the dragon king's daughter. This episode frequently appeared in the association's journal, but in the context of male priests preaching to women about their salvation. The evidence also suggests that Nichiei's ideas, although different from those of male priests, were reinterpreted by them into views of women and the household that conformed to gender-asymmetrical relationships.
The rule of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi witnessed a significant diplomatic crisis in the fifteenth century following the invasion of Tsushima by forces from Joseon Korea and the breaking-off of diplomatic relations with Ming China. The shogun renounced the title "King of Japan," bestowed upon his predecessor by the Ming emperor, and used shinkoku rhetoric in official correspondence with the continent. This article reveals the reasons for Yoshimochi's stance, concealed within the ceremonial and ritual aspects of his rule. First, it investigates diplomatic relations between the Ashikaga Shogunate and the Ming government, and shows how the domestic political agenda and ceremonial cycle of the Japanese imperial court influenced shogunal decisions regarding the reception of diplomatic envoys. Second, it argues that Yoshimochi's termination of diplomatic exchange with the Ming was a political reaction to the reports of divine intervention brought by the priests of the Hachiman bodhisattva syncretic cult, rather than a geopolitical measure responding to the Joseon invasion of Tsushima. The article refutes the notion that the shogun demonstrated hostility towards foreigners caused by emerging national awareness. Finally, examining visits of Korean envoys after the diplomatic crisis of 1419, this article outlines the transformation of diplomatic protocol from Ming-dominated tributary ceremonies to a framework of Buddhist cultural exchange.
This research note proposes an adapted version of an ethics of care that begins from the position of omoiyari, empathy based on close attention, as a means of creating an ethical framework for ethnographic study design, research practice, and writing. Applying this ethical intention to research practice can enrich engagement with the focus of research, whether that focus is a person or a group of people, or a text or archive. Drawing from a four-year ethnohistorical research project in Japan, I demonstrate how omoiyari, applied as an adapted ethics of care, can show us new aspects of a research field and the study participants we work with, and identify design errors in the research plan as well as how to amend these errors. Finally, I explore writing strategies that not only underline the ethics of care shaping the research but also attempt to engage the reader in a relationship of care with the study participant. Weaving an omoiyari-informed ethics of care through research project design, fieldwork, and writing practices in this way can address care theorist Nel Noddings' call to "build the conditions under which caring can flourish."
An oni (demon/ogre) is a fascinating supernatural creature. Depicted in Japanese literature, religion, art, and folklore, the oni's longevity can be ascribed to their symbiotic evolution alongside Japanese society. The recent Japanese societal phenomenon created by Kimetsu no yaiba, a manga which was then made into anime and a film, reveals how oni still occupy an important position in Japanese culture. Kimetsu no yaiba depicts a war between humans and evil oni. The oni characters in Kimetsu no yaiba across all its iterations possess the fundamental attributes of traditional oni such as anthropophagy, but distinct attributes are added. These draw on cultural elements from the West, including superheroes and, most notably, vampires. This research note will focus on the characteristics of oni and their portrayal in Kimetsu no yaiba to demonstrate the ongoing evolution of oni and emphasize their continued relevance today.
This article examines Kangde Academy, a private school that operated from 1935 to 1944 in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. The school was founded by the first director of Manchukuo's General Affairs Board, Komai Tokuzo. Existing studies in Japanese and English on Manchukuo have paid inadequate attention to Komai, an important contemporary Japanese bureaucrat who contributed to Manchukuo's creation in 1932, and research on Komai's interest in education as a means of fostering cooperative relations between the Japanese and Chinese is notably lacking. The article draws on the sparse and scattered sources in order to elucidate the reasons behind Kangde's foundation, accounts of school life at Kangde, and the postwar experiences of Kangde's graduates. In doing so, it argues for the importance of looking beyond the history of domination and violence when attempting to develop a more nuanced understanding of the operation of Japan's empire in China. The story of the Kangde Academy casts fresh light on fourteen years of interactions between Japan and China from 1931 to 1945 and problematizes the concept of apology for the Japanese Empire in postwar Japan.
