Bushido: Mode or Ethic?

ROGER T. AMES

Bushido, "the way of the warrior, a term known, but often misunderstood, in the West, is definedandexplained in this descriptive essay by Roger Ames, who uses the life and death (by seppuku) of YukioMishima as the contextfor his discussion of the importance of seppuku in bushido. In his desire to understandand explain Mishima's suicide, Ames provides us with insight into bushido as ‘mode”rather than ‘ethic."

On November 25, 1970, Yukio Mishima, undoubtedly the most widely read Japanese author ever, killed himself in the traditionally Japanese way, by committing harakiri. The location-the Ichigaya Headquarters of the Army National Defense Forces in Tokyo. It has been a personal exigency to understand the mentality behind Mishima’s death that has led me into the larger task of exploring the relationship between his suicide and the traditional social ethic. In so doing, Mishima‘s life and death will hc drawn on as a practical example to test certain of our conclusions. This will, I hope, serve us in putting some flesh on to our abstractions, and hopefully serve him in providing some insights into a death that I believe has been sorely misunderstood,

The sheer profusion of "explanations” that followed upon Mishima’s death show how much misunderstanding there has been. Theories have been advanced to explain it as the final, desperate act of a political extremist, the dramatic exit of an author of exhausted resources, the “Chinese revenge” of a homosexual lover embroiled in an unmanageable passion, the administration of euthanasia for an invalid suffering from a terminal illness, and quite simply, an inexplicable deed performed by a man bereft of his sanity. The only common denominator among these various explanations is that tlie suicide was an act of despctation, and this is probably wrong. In assessing his motivations and providing a starting point in analyzing the traditional social ethic, let us look into a very brief synopsis of the events on Mishima‘s last day.

At about 11:00 a.m. Mishirna presented himself along with four members of his Tatenokai (“Shield Society”) at the Ichigaya Headquarters of the National Defense Forces to keep a prearranged appointment with General Matsuda, the commanding officer. His uniformed appearance at the headquarters was not unusual-the National Defense Forces had often assisted the Tatenokai with training facilities and their off-the-record encouragement.

After the general had received his guests in his second floor office, he commented on the fact that Mishiina was carrying a long, samurai sword, and asked to examine it. This set off a pre-rehearsed series ofevents among Mishima and his four cohorts. The general was seized, bound and gagged; the doors were barricaded; a list of dernands were made known to those in command. If the demands were not met, the group threatened to execute the general.

In compliance with Mishima’s demands, the entire contingent of approximately one thousand soldiers was assembled in front ofa large balcony leading off of the general’soffice. Mishima then appeared on the balcony and, shouting over the din of circling helicopters, sirens and the persistent jeers of a less than sympathetic crowd, he mustered his best attempt to give them a moving speech. He cut his address, or perhaps more properly, his inaudible harangue, from a projected thirty minutes to barely seven, and ended with the traditional ‘‘ Tenno Heika Banzai (Long live his Imperial Majesty).”

Whereupon Mishima withdrew and coinmitted seppuku in traditional form. His kaishaku-nin (second) gave him the coup de grace, and then followed him in death. Significantly, Mishima was successful in inflicting a death wound upon himself-there is no mystery surrounding the formal satisfaction of his seppuku. His kazshaku-nin, by contrast, barely scratched himself before calling upon his second.

When Donald Keene, Mishima’s long-time friend and translator, heard of the death, he contended that “the manifest rnotive for Mishima’s death- his charging into the military headquarters-was trivial.”’ Keene rejected the thesis that Mishima had hoped to fuse some kind of right-wing coup d’etat.

In fact, few have taken Mishima’s role as the inflamed right-wing zealot seriously-his strained politics are regarded as a device rather than a sincere conviction.‘ The only people who sccni to have taken the “revival of Japanese militarism” thesis to heart were the Chinese who reported the incident as “new iron-clad evidence,” and suggested complicity on the part of the Japanese government.’ And even here, there would seem to be more polemic than insight.

If his political stance was “a device rather than conviction,” Mishima must have killed himself for a cause that he probably did not believe in, a cause he knew his death would contribute little to. In fact, he ostensibly killed himself for an emperor about whom he had his own serious misgivings, an emperor who could only have been embarrassed by the circumstances surrounding the seppuku. Where in this death then is his espoused patriotism? What was the true meaning of his suicide?

The answer to these questions lies in bushido -variously translated as “the way of the warrior,” “the way of the samurai,’’ and even as broadly as “the traditional Japanese social ethic.” In this essay, I would like to offer a basis for understanding bushido, and in the process, to hopefully dispel some less than adequate assumptions surrounding it. Second, most people who have an interest in Japan are aware of the valuable contributions to our understanding of Japanese thought made by the philosopher, Nakamura Hajime; the psychologist, Doi Takeo; and the sociologist, Nakane Chie. The works of these three scholars characterize the Japanese asreflecting an “absolute devotion to a closed social nexus,”4 a characterization which tends to minimize if not preclude the possibility of individuated human freedom and personal fulfillment. I hope to clarify, refine, and perhaps qualify this position. And third, I hope that this interpretation of bushid8 will shed some light on the motivations behind Mishima’s death, and show him to be an earnest if anachronistic proponent of a rich but fading tradition.

What is bushido! Historically, there hasbheen some debate over the meaning ing if not the very existence of this philosophy. B. Hall Chamberlain, an early cultural historian, claimed:

Bushdo, as an institution or code of rules, has never existed. The accounts given of it have been fabricated out of whole cloth, chiefly of foreign consumption. . . .The very word appears in no dictionary, native or foreign, before the year 1900. . . . Bushido was unknown until a decade or so ago.’

This position was reinforced by John Buchan in his Japan:

Bushido - "The Precepts of Knighthood ”-is a rnodern product, so very modern that the present writer cannot now recollect ever having heard the word mentioned during a residence of over thirty years in Japan, in constant association the whole time with the military and official classes. It is not mentioned in any dictionary, in any of the works of Satow, Aston, Brinkley or Chamberlain, nor in any of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, published prior to 1700. 6

Nitobe Inazo who played a pivotal role in interpreting Japan to the world in this century offered a strong, contrasting opinion in his book Bushido:

“as applied to fundamental ethical notions . . . Bushido, the maker and product of Old Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove the formative force of the new era.7

He saw bushido not only as the “commanding moral force of his country” but as the “totality of the moral instincts of the Japanese race.”

Chamberlain and Buchan claimed that bushidowas an out-and-out ruse while Nitobe sees it as the primary ethical force that has shaped japan. To clarify this dilemma, we must move from secondary materials to the bushido literature itself. Although bushido cannot bc traccd to any one souce or particular individual, it is not an exaggeration to say that Hagakure , an early eighteenth-century document which was compiled from the conversations of a Nabeshima samurai named Yamamoto Tsunetomo, articulated many of the central concepts of bushido and evaluated many of its proponents. It is an interpretation of the bushido way of life that has been taken by some, Mishima included, as a veritable bible of this philosophy.

The basic difficulty in understanding bushido may be due to a confusion between it and the prevailing moral or social ethic that it has traditionally served. If we take “social ethic” to mean a standard or set of standards whereby the social man can guide and evaluate his conduct, there is a serious question as to whether bushido can be construed as a social ethic at all, This is made clear in Hagakure I-140’ where the text insists upon a distinction between the two:

It is not good to divide your concentration. Seeking only bushido, one should not pursue anything else. Hearing Confucianism or Buddhism and taking it for bushido on the basis that the final character is the same will not lead to the realization of bushido. If one bears this in mind, then even if he studies various schools of thought, he will assuredly realize bushido.

If bushido in essence is not a social ethic, what is it and how can we define it? Returning to Hagakure 1-2 and 114, we find an explicit and unequivocal definition:

I have discovered that bushido is to die. (1-2) Bushido is a mania for death. . . . In bushido there is only this mania. (1-114)

Busbido is not a willingness to die, not a once-off decision to die, but is rather a resolution to die.”A more difficult and perhaps intellectually insoluble question is the meaning of this resolution to die. Again Hagakure 1-2 provides some explanation:

When the choice arises between life and death, one immediately settles on death. This is all it means. Once this is understood, one need only rush in. To call a death short of the objective “death in vain” is the counterfeit bushido of the Kyoto-Osaka area. When a choice arises between life and death, it is simply not possible to know that one is going to reach his objective. Now people generally like to live, and most will find some pretext for doing what they like. If then onc fails to reach his objective and yet goes on living, he is guilty of cowardice. This is the difficulty. If one dies without reaching his objective, it is death in vain, but there is no dishonor.
And this is the most important thing is bushido.

The resolution to die and the strength and intcnsity of this commitment is constantly reinforced through meditation, making it the focal point of the bushido existence. It is the center of the bushi mentality from the moment of decision until the moment of consummation. It is a resolve which must be total and immediate, and which can only be achieved through daily contemplation on and affirmation of this single principle.

In short “death” becomes the essential meaning of life. Hagakure describes the gradual process of steeling this resolution to die in the following terms:

When someone examines himself every morning and every evening and dwells constantly on death and resides permanently in a living corpse, he will find freedom in bushido, will live his life without fault, and will be able to fulfill his duties. (1-2)

Indeed, there is nothing beyond the resolve of the “very now.” Life is but the accumulation of one resolve after another. When someone grasps this, there is nothing beyond it that can cause him consternation or that he must seek. Giving pre-eminence to this resolve, he simply lives out his life. . . . Giving pre-eminence to this resolve without wavering from it is the result oflong, continuous effort, but once having achieved this level of mind, even without conscious reinforcement, there will he no departure from it. (11-17)

As I have suggested, bushido being centered in this resolution to die, is not in any strict sense an ethical system at all. In essence, it does not represent any particular code of conduct or normative standards. On the contrary, it is free of any implicit commitment to any given set of beliefs or values. Of course, historically the proponent of bushido, the samurai, did align himself with a prevailing morality, or more likely, was born into circumstances where the the decision of moral alignment was predetermined. That is to say, through the historical association of the bushido with the strict social ethical system of Tokugawa Japan, the resolution to die and the prevailing morality which this resolution supported have become mistakenly identified as one and the same.

However much the distinction between the Tokugawa social ethic and bushido has blurred, the resolution to die that lies at the heart of the bushido matrix has provided the framework for the people of other ages as well. The resolution to die of bushido can therefore be seen as a constant while the cause it serves is a historical variable. While bushido was an important support of particular daimyo during the Tokugawa period, in the post-Meiji era it has supported a variety of causes and moralities, from extreme political actions to thc militarism of iinpcrial Japan, from the kamikaze pilots to the exploits of the Red Army. The “resolution” of bushido is ultimately mobile and neutral. It can be attached to any cause or purpose, no matter how trivial or contrary that might be to prevailing morality. The morality, the cause, the purpose determines the action-bushido simply describes the manner in which that action is carried out.

Before correlating bushido and human freedom, let us first identify the avenues open to the bushido proponent in consummating his death resolve. The most obvious path is to die defending the integrity of his cause, to give his life for the protection or support of his morality, whatever that moral reference might be. In the case of the samurai, this would be “death on the battlefield.” An alternative to death on the battlefield would be seppuku or ritual suicide. Where disembowelment to an objective observer might seem an inconvenient if not blatantly untidy method ofdeparting this earth, certain cultural assumptions and predispositions in Japan support it. In the Western traditions, the brain is considered the seat of the intellect and the heart the seat of the emotions, while the Chinese combine these two functions as the heart-and-mind shin . The Japanese, on the other hand, identify the hara or “lower abdomen” as the center of a human beings essential nature- the English mind and heart rolled into one-as is revealed in the following Japanese idioms:

1. Hara o kimeru , literally “to make up one’s hara” means “to make up one’s mind.”

2. Hara o wane hanasu, 1iterally“to open the hara and talk” means “to have a heart-to-heart talk.”

3. Hito no hara oyomu , literally“to read another‘s hara ’’means “to read someone else’s mind.”

Consequently, the emotive force of cutting out one’s lower abdomen would perhaps be comparable to a Western person cutting out his heart.

In addition to the central role the hara plays in Japanese psychology and epistemology, stomach wounds are excruciating. Seppuku is, consequently, a fair test of a person’s mental fortitude. In fact, in most cases where seppuku was a mitigation of capital punishment, the kaishaku-nin or “second” would decapitate the individual even as he reached for the knife. As Jack Seward in Harakiri points out, this deviation in form eventually lead to sensu-bara and mizu-bara where the individual would be presented with a fan or cup of water rather than an actual knife.”’

Seppku, the so-called “flower of bushido,”although consistent in action, has many faces and corresponding functions. Traditionally, the most common “category” of seppuku has been chugi-bara, or suicide for the sake of loyalty to one‘s lord. This could be either junshi, self-immolation to follow one’s lord in death, or kanshi, suicide as a protest against a given measure or as a remonstration with one’s lord on his course of conduct. Beyond this there are also cases of sokotsu-shi, expiatory seppuku as a contrition or atonement for one’s imprudent or rash behavior, and munenbara or funshi which expresses indignation or resentment at the way one has been treated by one’s superiors. And in the eyes of the bushido proponent, seppuku in any of these forms as a reflection of the strength of one’s resolve was no less honorable than “death on the battlefield.”

The principle that underlies bushido is in essence the resolve to die honorably. If the aim is death, the next question that arises is how the bushii ideals with determinism-the sense that actions are beyond his own control. What is the effect of this resolve on human action and human freedom? And finally, where does life enter into a philosophy that seems on the surface at least to be totally pessimistic?

The first and perhaps most obvious function of the bushii death resolve concerns the fear of dying, a fear that seems to feed on and grow in proportion to an individual’s unwillingness to face his inevitable end. The proponent of bushido, in his initial decision and his meditative reinforcement of that decision, tempers his resolve to an unequivocal and uncontingent point. It is fair, I think, to describe this state of mind as a perfect willingness to die. Yet, death must be put into its cultural framework. Bushido arose in an environment dominated by an admixture of Confucian moral precepts and Buddhist philosophy, and owes some of its most fundamental characteristics to both traditions. Given the currency of Zen ideas and their influence on bushido, the proponent of bushido would probably not see death as self destruction, self-annihilation or self-abnegation-the Hobbesian “leap
into a black hole.” Rather, he would be inclined to view it in a way more consistent with mujo “impermanence”-expressed in the popular metaphor of the fleeting cherry blossoms with petals that fall at the height of their beauty when they are fully what they are. It is their temporality that enhances the intensity and poignancy of the experience. There is a soft determinism implicit in this attitude, but it is a determinism qualified by cultivation, refinement, and the attainment of self-fulfillment.

A Second function of the bushi death resolve is a complete and total separation of self-interest. A central issue in Confucian moral philosophy dating back to Confucius himself is the nced to disengage morality-the most appropriate thing to do yi in a particular situation-from the contamination of self-interest li. What the Confucian thinkers were seeking was a devotion to maximizing community interesrs such that personal interests would enter the picture only as one consideration among many. Confucius and his later adherents did not suggest that a tension necessarily exists between what one ought to do and one’s own interest. What they did advocate, however, was that in a situation where a conflict did arise between the two, the good man would opt for what he saw as right rather than what he saw as personally advantageous. In the words of Confucius himself:

If a man considers what is right at the sight of profit, is ready to lay down his life in the face of danger, and does not forget his ordinary commitments for the sake of an old promise, he may be said to be a complete man.”

Self-interest then is the most formidable, most persistent, and most insidious threat to any community-based morality.

The concern of the Confucian theorist is the purification of moral action. Mencius reiterates this sentiment:

I want life and I also want rightness. But if I cannot have them both, I will opt for rightness over life.’’

The function of bushi death resolve is to establish a clear distinction between morality and self-interest, and to absolve him of any concern for the latter. The resolution is a purgative, a catharsis, which purifies the decision to act by removing any tension which may exist between what one believes to be right and the decision to act on it accordingly. As observed above, the resolution to die is independent of the morality to which it offers service. In not only rejecting any attachment to the ego-self, but further in committing himself to die, the bushi becomes the uninhibited agent of his morality, whatever morality that might be. The freedom implicit in such a philosophy is the mobility to assign his “purity of action” to any cause or purpose that he might decide is worthy of his support. Such freedom has been the mark of the post-Meiji era.

A third function of the bushido death resolve is spontaneity in action and freedom from the calculation that usually attends decision. In the death resolve, the dilemma of decision has been expunged - and circumstances alone determine the time and place of death. The degree to which the bushi evidences this spontaneity, immediacy, and impulsiveness of action has long bccn taken as an indication of the strength of his resolve to die, and as such has served as a normative measure or standard of bushi conduct.’ By contrast, the calculating mind is despised because it hedges on total commitment and avoids hold action.

Hagakure 1-1 12 attacks backsliders explicitly and in no uncertain terms: A calculating person is a coward. This is because calculation is the weighing of gain and loss, and as such, the person can never extricate himself from this gain-and-loss mentality. If he takes death to be “loss”and life to be “gain,” because he dislikes death, he will end up a coward.

The rejection of rational decision-malung and careful deliberation in favor of spontaneous action, of course, is consistent with the basic Zen emphasis on action and experience.

A corollary to this “spontaneity of action” is the fact that, since the final moment is always imminent, the man of bushido is forced to live in the immediate “now.” This suatipatthana-like “mindfulness” or attention to present
action releases him from common human stress and anxiety about future developments, the bulk of which never materialize. In Hugukure 1-61, this “mindfulness” is an essential element of human cultivation:

Let’s try to answer the question: “What is the cultivation that a man must undertake to attain his highest objectives?” It is to live focusing a tranquil mind on the very now. . . . Then, in carrying out all of one’s various activities, there is this one established thing in mind. Toward the lord it becomes loyalty, toward one’s parents it becomes filial piety, toward bushido it becomes courage and toward everything else it is a foundation. This principle, however, is difficult to discover, hut even more difficult than discovering it is to maintain it consistently. There is nothing more important than living in the very now.

Afourth function of bushido is self-assertion. The proponent of bushido has been typically characterized as “blindly obedient” to his lord where such obedience would be nothing less than a total surrender of free-will. Such stereotypes must be qualified. While the bushi indubitably makes a solemn commitment to the values and order represented by his overlord, little in the popular literature about Japan is ever said about the obligations obtaining in the other direction. the bushi's dedication to the interests of the lord is balanced by a pledge on the part of the lord to guarantee the affairs of his retainers. The absolutely sincere and selfless services of the ideal bushi, therefore, canot simply be construcd as “blind obedience.” Rather, consistent with the Confucian ideal of the filial son remonstrating with an erring father and a loyal minister risking his life to expostulate with his ruler, bushi had both the right and the inescapable duty to dissuade the lord against any given course of action ill-advised or detrimental to the lord’s interests.

Nitobe describes the bushiwho neglects this obligation and who simply follows the dictates of the lord in very unflattering terms: Such a one was despised as nei-shin, a cringeling, who makes court by unscrupulous fawning, or as a cho-shin, a favourite who steals his master‘s affections by means of servile compliance. . . .

When a subject differed from his master, the loyal path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him of his error.

When all else has failed and the lord remains obdurate, the bushi can offer him a final protest to demonstrate the degree of his commitment and the extent of his sincerity. He can commit kanshi seppuku, suicide as remonstrance. While this suicide is certainly self-immolation, paradoxically, it is also self- fulfilling in that it consummates one’s resolve and it is self-assertive in that it advanccs one’s pcrsonal point of view with the optimum degree of emotive force. Consequently, suggesting that bushido simplymeans “blind obedience” is a distortion that ignores the obligation of the bushi to speak his own mind and act according to his own conscience.

By single-mindedly resolving to die, all life activities, human interests, attachments and entanglements arc placed in perspective. They must, by definition, be sccoiidary to this resolve. In this setting asi de ofhuman attachments, we can at once detect a strong sympathy with the Zen notion of repudiating attachments as a ncccssary step toward the elimination of the subject/ object dicotomy. As in Zen, the bushido meditation that seeks freedom from personal desires and attachments implies a dogged discipline, self-control, determination, and total mastery over one’s own natural inclinations. And again as in Zen practice, the absolute commitment of bushido must engender a certain tranquility and serenity of mind.

The question arises: if the proponent of bushido,relative to his resolution to die, eliminates all attachments and entanglements, what is the significance of the “loyalty” and “devotion” so often associated with this philosophy? To once again put this in Zen terms, this problem is similar to the characterization of the monk as one “attached to‘’ or “devoted to’’ his practice. ’The judgment is made from the outside by the spectator, not from the perspective of the monk himself who has no attachments. Similarly to someone outside of the world of the bushi, he seems to be “loyal” and “devoted” because he acts without hesitation in the interests of his lord. Yet the bushi himself allows no such attachments; loyalty and devotion are simply givens. This is what Hagakure 1-114 means by the following:

Great deeds cannot he effected by sober means. One must become mad and work at them with a mania for death. In bushido if one stops to ponder the situation, he has already lost. Loyalty and filial piety do not enter into it. In bushido there is only this mania for death. Within its scope, loyalty and filial piety are implied as a matter of course.

As the man bushido makes hmieclf thc selfless agent of his morality, the spontaneity and energy ofhis action are no more interrupted by attachment to his lord than the precision of an arrow is hampered by the attachment to the bow. It is at this level that we can perhaps begin to understand how a man like Mishima can offer his life for a “trivial” cause which seems entirely unworthy of his action.

In addition to the bushi death resolve forcing a person to accept the imminence of death and to live constantly in the very now, it also releases him from any blame or censure for the outcome of his action. He is totally absolved of guilt and/or responsibility for the consequences of his mission. It is the quality of his commitment that is important, not thm ultimate success or failure of his specific actions. Hagakure 1-55 clarifies this point:

Victory and defeat are determined by circumstances. Conduct that does not incur dishonor is a different matter. It needs only the determination to die. Even when one is going to be defeated, he must strike back at once. Intelligence and strategy do not enter into it. A person who can be called a “tough customer” gives no thought to victory or defeat, but, totally indifferent to all other considerations, rushes forward to his death. In doing so, he awakens himself to his true self.

The quality of bushi? action is evaluated not according to success or failure, but rather on the basis of the strength or weakness of his single resolve.

He is not judged on why he dies, but rather on how he dies. That the his resolve supersedes all considerations of ability, intelligence, and physical prowess is underscored in Hagakure 1-13’?

Even a man who has no versatility and is not particularly good at anything, if he has the determination to devote himself earnestly to his lord, is a retainer who can be depcndcd upon. Service based only upon intelligence and skills is service of a lowly calibre.

Yet it would be just as fallacious to generalize and say the proponent of bushido has no concern with the ultimate efficacy ofhis actions. Strength of determination is related to success. The bushi, who objectively speaking, is only mediocre, can amplify his ability immeasurably through the strength of his determination:

There is nothing that is impossible. Where one manifests a determination of purpose lie can penetrate the cosmos. There is nothing that cannot be accomplished. Hence, it is not that one “can’t,’’ but that he is faint-hearted and lacking in resolve. Indeed, without prowess even entering into it, one can shake the world through sheer singleness of purpose.

The difficulty inherent in stopping someone who has no qualms about exchanging his own life for the success of his action needs no elaboration.

Efficacy aside however, it is how the bushi consummates his resolve that stands as the single measure ofhis conduct. Since the performance is so crucial, consistent with Zen aesthetic sensibilities, the importance offormal refinement bccomrs a significant element in the way the man of bushido frames his life. On the battlefield as in the highly formalized seppuku, any equivocation or faint-heartedness, any reluctance or violation of form would seriously detract from the quality of one’s actions, or even more irreparably, from the quality of one’s death.

A final funcoicn of the death resolve is the freedom of total and uninhibited comradery among bushi who have committed themselves to the same cause or purpose. The strength and the intensity of this comradery can only be known by those who come together in a single and all-encompassing purpose. Since self-interest has no part in this kind of relationship, the individual is not judged on the basis of ability or intelligence, but rather, given his absolute commitment, is accepted on his own terms and on the basis of his own merits.

The dominance of the death resolve further serves to defuse conventional sources of disharmony by relegating them to the margins in interpersonal relationships. Again, these relationships must be seen in terms of the quality and sincerity of action rather than in terms of love or attachment. There is a frequent association between bushido and homosexual love shudo. While Hagakure does allow that a homosexual relationship may develop within thc parameters of bushido, this particular relationship has no special claim. Like all relationships, it is peripheral relative to the death resolve (1-182):

Ryotetsu asked, “Is your understanding of homosexual love to put yourself into it heart and soul?”

Edayoshi replied, “I see it as loving but not loving.” . . .Years later someone asked Edayoshi what he had meant by this answer. At that time, Edayoshi explained, “To give up one’s life is the essence of the lover‘s way. Where this is not the case, there is dishonor. Now, if one gives up his life for his lover’s sake, he has no life to give for his lord. Hence, I understood it to he a matter of loving but not loving.”

Returning to Mishima as our practical example, to what extent, greater or lesser, is his death congruent with this interpretation of bushido? First, the importance and persistence of the death-theme and, especially, the notion of suicide in the corpus of his work spanning almost three decades would certainly indicate at least a preoccupation with death-a constant meditation on death and suicide. In Mishima more than in most proponents of bushido, we can identify a clear line between his espoused political convictions, that is, his “cause,” and his death resolve. Me must make a strong distinction here between the revival of prewar militarism which he used as a device, and his commitment to bushido, the spirit of Japan to which he was sincerely devoted.

In his impassioned speech to the National Defense Forces and ill thc act of seppuku itself there was no equivocation. While we cannot say that he had overcome his fear of death, his self-control was such that he was at least able to contain his fear. His depth of remonstration was unquestionably self-assertive, forcing his death before the Japanese people as a protest against their spiritual degeneration and degradation. In spite of his role as a family man and a doting son, these convontional attachments collapscd in his death resolve. Although it is widely believed that Mishima and his kaishaku­ nin were homosexual lovers, this hypothesis is irrelevant to his final act. The most prominent and identifiable elements of his death are consistent with our interpretation of bushido, and there can be little douht that Mishima saw himself as a proponent of this philosophy. However, bushido seeks self- fulfillment in acting as the unselfish agent of one’s morality, and only at that point Misliima may perhaps have fallen short of the mark. He seems to have been more concerned with death as his own vehicle to self-fulfillment than as a means to furthering his stated cause.

In summary, the “resolution to die” has been a key for unlocking the bushido mentality, and on the basis of this we have been able to identify bushido as something distinct from and independent of the morality or cause with which it is aligned. Bushido describes the action rather than precipitates it, explains how the action be carried out rather than why that particular course of action has been chosen, qualifies the action rather than determines it. This is, of course, consistent with the do (“way”) of bushido: the morality of a bushi action rather than the reason for it. In exploring the application of bushido death resolve, the nature and the extent of its influence on the actions of the person of bushido can be clarified. Bushido is not the core of the samurai ethic and feudal subservience; it is the consciousness behind the post-Meiji ronin, the imperial soldier, the kamikaze, the Red Army activist and perhaps even Mishima.

To the uninitiated, bushido might appear to be negative and even nihilistic. There is support, however, to suggest that it is a discipline requiring persistent cultivation and effort, and that the dividends for this discipline do include a very real degree of personal freedom and fulfillment. Where the proponent might lack free-will in the sense of choice among alternative posibilities of action, he does have the freedom of self-determination in accordance with his own dispositions, motives and ideals. His freedom is not the freedom of choice based on a calculating and deliberating rational mind, but rather, like his Zen counterpart, freedom from the very calculating and deliberating mind that would constrain and delimit his action.

Notes
1. New York 7imes, 26 November, 1970.
2. John Nathan in his excellent biography, Mishima (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974): 163-64, suggests and illustrates this lack of conviction in right extremist politics by taking an excerpt from one of Mishima’s characters
in Kyoko House. That character, commenting on his own rightist politics, states quite baldly:
I wouldn’t say 1 believe it exactly. It’s just that phrases like that give me a fine feefing. I feel as if my body can melt into each phrase as I say it. Probably because phrases like this are closer than anything to death. . . . I see this ideology outside of myself, and I use it as a tool to obtain an indescribable rapture, to feel that my own death
and the death of others is always close to me. The feeling is my qualification as an effective member of the group, as effective as you can he.
3. See the Peking Review following Mishima’s death in November- December, 1970.J. Araki, “The Mishima Incident,” in Universityof Hartford .

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