Samurai and Ninja: The Real Story Behind the Japanese Warrior Myth That Shatters the Bushido Mystique (10 page)

Life as a Samurai

The world of the samurai has formed and has now taken shape within your mind; the idea of the castles that they manned and the battle camps they erected is now firm within this new image. The next step is to form an idea of the life that the samurai and shinobi led.

Bunbu—The Brush and the Sword

The samurai were not just “butchers of men” and were not purely fighting machines—and I do not wish to give the impression that they were just ruthless killers. Quite the opposite; they were educated poet-warriors (to varying degrees). Samurai tried to adhere to the concept of
bunbu
, a concept that translates as “literature and the military,” or in Japanese, “the brush and sword.” A samurai was required to follow two ways:
the way of the soldier
and also the
way of education and literature
.

The first part, the military, is the way of the soldier. The way of the soldier means the arts of war, the equipment used and knowledge of conflict. A Natori-Ryu manual from the early Edo Period states the following about the martial arts that are to be used by the samurai:

武藝者之品々之事

Bugeisha no Shinajina no Koto

The types of martial artists A samurai serves through good martial arts; also, samurai are skilled in various paths that have been transmitted to them. The following are the kinds of arts in which samurai should train themselves:

1.
Yumi
– archery

2.
Uma
– horsemanship

3.
Kenjutsu
– swordsmanship

4.
Sōjutsu
– spearsmanship

5.
Gunjutsu
– the skills of war

6.
Yawara Jutoritei
– wrestling and grappling

7.
Teppō
– marksmanship

8.
Suiren
– Aquatic training

There are a myriad of other styles; however, they are offshoots from the above and all have benefits. Study each of these arts from someone who is skilled in that way.

The second part—literature, study and education, including the flowing topics—would also be in the samurai curriculum. Remember that subjects came into and moved out of fashion. This list covers the whole age of the samurai and may be added to:

1.  
Chinese literary classics

2.  
Chinese warfare classics

3.  
Etiquette

4.  
Japanese and Chinese grammar and written language

5.  
Calligraphy

6.  
Shinto

7.  
Buddhism

8.  
Confucianism and Neo-confucianism

9.  
Omyodo
esoteric magic

10.
Esoteric cosmology

11.
Astronomy and astrology

12.
Poetry

13.
Ballads

14.
Dance

15.
Tea ceremony

16.
Ritual magic

17.
Chi
(with connection to warfare)

18.
Command and leadership

19.
Hunting and falconry

20.
Ritual and ceremony of various smaller forms

Education in the Warring States Period focused on practical military ability. In the times of peace it centered on bureaucratic and artistic subjects. The level of attention to each of the above shifted, depending on each situation, but in the main the samurai were the educated warriors of their day. The samurai were not brute raiders and fighters alone, but comprised of educated upper middle class gentry who could involve themselves in deeds of warfare and bloodshed. Overall, the best among them were well educated and very dangerous; the thinking officer.

The Samurai and Shinobi Schools

For approximately half of the history of the samurai—that being the latter half—samurai formed themselves into “schools” and “traditions.” Starting around the fourteenth century but gaining popularity in the fifteenth century, they started to form organizations that collected under a single title.

They added the suffix “Ryu” to their names. Examples of these are Tenshin Katori Shinto-Ryu, and Shinkage-Ryu. The term “Ryu” can be translated in two ways that are not separate; first it is translated as “school” and second as “flow of tradition.” Therefore, Sekiguchi-Ryu means the “flow of traditions from in the Sekiguchi family.” However, this of course still holds the connotations of the codified school.

The school can either start with a family name or can adopt a name that the founder finds appropriate to his style. The following show both examples:

Natori-Ryu
—Named after the Natori family, they also adopted the name Shin-Kusunoki-Ryu as a secondary title due to their integration with Kusunoki tactics. Natori-Ryu is a school of Gungaku military study and concentrates on the higher tasks of warfare, such as tactics and warfare strategy. This school includes
shinobi no jutsu
—“the arts of the ninja.” Another example is Sekiguchi-Ryu, which is also based on a family name.

Mubyoshi-Ryu
—Literally “no rhythm school” was most likely named to show the elite nature of the founder. Started by Hagiwara Juzo in the 1600s—he took many teachings from Shinjin-Ryu—the name Mubyoshi is correctly translated as “the school without any discernible rhythm,” i.e., an enemy cannot predict their tactics. The school is a comprehensive martial arts school which includes martial arts of various forms, ritual magic, weapons training, criminal capture, martial philosophy and shinobi no jutsu—the arts of the shinobi.

Generally a school is founded by a single man who has a moment of divine inspiration, such as a god who came to them as they diligently trained in the mountains for a number of weeks or months. At this point a god or spirit gave them the secrets that their school was based on. In addition to this a school may also include a famous name from history, a great general, or famous fighter to help attract students. This was done to give a prestige to their image. Often examples such as Kusunoki and Takeda (including Koshu where the great general was from) are used to add that bit of extra appeal. Likewise for shinobi related schools—names such as Yoshitune were used for the same reason. People famed for their expertise in guerrilla warfare may have been added to a school’s background. These backgrounds may have been given because schools would be formed by a swordsman studying other arts, combining them to form a “new style.” Therefore they needed an anchor point in history. Founders may pick a god to establish the school, and maybe add a famous person from history that was well known; or at least highlighted during the founder’s lifetime. For example, the founder might use a person long dead, but whose name was known to give prestige to the school. But this was not always the case.

Generally a school has a central building that it uses as a headquarters, where the master will teach. It may have branches in certain areas. Each building will normally have a “kan” name, the ideogram “kan”
館
means “building” or “construction.” It is the name given to the place where that branch studies—for example, the previously mentioned Mubyoshi-Ryu had its headquarters in Kaga domain. Their training hall or group were called “Keibukan”
経武館
, meaning “To pursue the way of Samurai,” and of course any other branch was entitled to have their own “kan” name, while remaining under the overall banner of the school. It did not always have to follow this “kan” format. For example, the headquarters of Ichizen-Ryu, which was run by a samurai named Chikamatsu Shigenori in the 1700s in Nagoya castle, was called Rempeido.

To enter a samurai school a warrior normally had to make an oath to confirm that he would not reveal the school’s secrets to anyone. Often this would take the form of
keppan
—a blood oath. This was normally an oath to the gods with a small offering of blood to seal the vow between the student and the gods, not the instructor. A student could leave a samurai school if they wished, it was not a lifetime commitment. Upon formally leaving a school the samurai may have to give back any scrolls they had received or copied, and they would then be free to join another school. Samurai could train in multiple schools at the same time. This was not an issue. Some samurai would use a martial arts school to study combat and other schools to study military arts, ceremony and other facets of samurai life.

The following is a keppan from the school Oishi Shinkage-Ryu that was signed in 1837 or 1838.

The texts can be summed up as follows:

♦
Those of our school should not enter combat with people of other schools

♦
Do not give away the secrets of our school to others

♦
Do not speak ill of other schools

♦
Be reserved in your manner

♦
Do not transgress against our master

After this there is a list of gods to whom the student had to swear an oath.

Qualifications in samurai schools were also varied in format, but the most famous is the concept of
menkyo
—“licence.” The black belt is a modern invention. Proper samurai schools would be divided into students, both high and new, then instructors. At the top of all these were master teachers at the head of the school. Students on entering a school would move through a very limited selection of positions, ranks, or levels until they had mastered the style enough to be awarded menkyo, henceforth being recognized as a teacher of the art. The next and final step was to achieve the kaiden level, making them
menkyo kaiden
—“master teacher.” This was an extremely high position and required decades of training with a full knowledge of the school and all of its secrets. The level of training and skill to acquire this position must not be underestimated. For example, the above mentioned war master Chikamatsu Shigenori was a student of Naganuma-Ryu (considered an extremely prestigious samurai school) and out of around one thousand students at the time, only ten were awarded menkyo kaiden. Chikamatsu Shigenori was one of them—meaning his skills should have been exceptional.