- Dave Lowry
- Apr 23
- 4 min read
Imagine a political leader going to Duluth to tell Minnesotans this: “You are the descendants of Vikings. You have the blood of warriors in you. Your ancestors were feared over much of the known world. It’s only reasonable that you are invincible, that you control the lands your ancestors ruled, that you have the rewards they enjoyed, that no other people can match you for courage and daring.”
It’s hard to imagine any Minnesotan believing such nonsense. But suppose in addition to being political figures, the people spreading this message were powerful — very powerful — military leaders.
And suppose that people who disagreed with those leaders were made extremely uncomfortable.
And suppose this message was spread constantly in the media, in schools, in popular music and in churches in Minnesota.
Yes, it's still hard to imagine something like this. You have to remember, though, that Japan in the early 20th century was, like the rest of the world, a far different place than it is today. Japan was less than 50 years from feudalism. It was just emerging on the world scene and flexing its muscles. And it was deeply angry at what it perceived as numerous slights from the Western world.
What Japan needed was a way to stir up its people, to engage them in a dream of conquest and expansion, one fueled by the burning coals of their own righteousness and “specialness.”
The gasoline for this fire was bushido.
In the many years I spent with my Japanese sensei, I don’t think I ever heard him use this word. In the classical martial arts, it's never mentioned. Largely, it’s because bushido doesn’t really mean anything. It’s a vague term, like “patriotism,” that has emotional value but not much in the way of a rational definition.
The Japanese of the Taisho period (1912–1926) were a full generation removed from the days of the samurai. The samurai were, for them, not much different than the Vikings were for modern Minnesotans: figures from the vague past.
The Japanese government and power structure used images of samurai, romantic and carefully crafted, to convince the Japanese that their ancestors had been motivated by a near-fanatic reverence for the emperor, by utter obedience to rulers and by a willingness to sacrifice all for some cause.
The truth is that prior to the mid-19th century, the emperor was about as important in the lives of Japanese, both samurai and commoners, as Santa Claus is to us. They knew of him and believed him to be the descendant of gods, but he played no role in their lives. They prayed to their own local or family deities.
Even in ancient Japan, the emperor was primarily a figurehead, one manipulated and even chosen by powerful warlords. “Emperor worship” became such a big deal when it was useful for the military and government to have a leader around whom the country could rally.
While we think of Japan as a “country,” in fact, it was until modern times a land of considerably independent fiefs and provinces where, much like the United States until the Civil War, citizens tended to identify with their village or region rather than their country.
The idea that loyalty meant an unquestioned obedience to authority was not a historical concept in Japan. Yes, the samurai were expected to give their lives for their lords, but commoners had no such obligation. Commoners could and often did stage strikes, even rebellions, usually over taxes. And armed with rakes and hoes, they nearly always defeated the samurai if things got violent.
Further, even for the samurai, loyalty was a two-way street. Just as a samurai was expected to give himself to his lord’s needs, the lord had an obligation to take care of his people — samurai and commoners.
The imperial government overlooked this, demanding the Japanese population sacrifice all for the war effort while rarely giving their needs consideration. The construct of Confucianism, that loyalty meant interdependency, was perverted.
In a sense, the imperial powers duped the Japanese — or fed them myths and propaganda based on a fraudulent history. How does this affect you, a karateka or budoka in the 21st century?
Well, for many of you, your teachers or your teacher’s teachers were once young men growing up in prewar and then wartime Japan.
They inhaled much of this propaganda. They matured with the “truth” that Japan was unique, its society superior in every way to every other. They were imbued with the notion that authority could never be questioned. They grew up with a belief, almost religious, that the Japanese were destined to rule the world.
Bringing these beliefs and attitudes into dojo in the West clearly has had a profound effect on the development of the budo here. The distinction between the martial way and the tenets of expansionist Japan got blurred — frequently.
Students here were told that the behavior of their teachers was a reflection of the “bushido spirit.” They were encouraged to believe what they were doing linked them to the samurai past of Japan. In reality, much of the spirit of the dojo has more to do with the imperialistic goofiness of Japan’s fanatical military of the 20th century.
Such misunderstandings have obscured much of the real spirit of budo.
Modern karateka sometimes dismiss the history of their art as irrelevant. It is not. Nor is the history of Japan unrelated to the study and practice of karate. Those of us in the dojo are, to the contrary, experiencing it every day.
