Imperial japan saw itself as a ‘warrior nation’ – and the idea lingers today

In a warning to China on the eve of his first trip to Asia in November 2017, the US president, Donald Trump, called Japan a “warrior nation” that needed to be taken seriously. Trump’s

comments are just one example of the widespread view that Japan is a martial country with spiritual roots in the samurai warriors of old. But is it? Samurai remain among the most

recognisable aspects of Japanese culture and often feature in film, television, literature, and art. The events of World War II complicate this image, as the supposed samurai heritage was

used by all sides to explain imperial Japan’s behaviour. The legacy of that conflict continues to affect Japan’s international relations, and controversies over history are major obstacles

to reconciliation with China. Portrayals of Japan as a martial country typically focus on the samurai heritage, especially the concept of _bushido_ – “the way of the warrior”. _Bushido_ is

popularly seen as an ancient martial ethic that guided first the samurai and later the soldiers of Japan’s modern wars. This view overlooks important aspects of Japan’s history. Although the

samurai who ruled Japan were ostensibly a “warrior class”, they did not experience major domestic or foreign conflict for more than 200 years before the 1860s. Furthermore, there was no

widely-accepted samurai ethic in pre-modern Japan – and the word _bushido_ was largely unknown until the 20th century. RISING POWER Many new nation-states emerged during the 19th century,

among them all three of World War II’s Axis powers: Germany, Italy and Japan. After the Meiji Revolution that put the country back under imperial rule in 1868, the new government needed to

convince the Japanese people to identify with their new nation-state. As in Germany and Italy, many people in Japan were searching for a national identity, and in search of an example, many

Japanese thinkers looked to Britain, then ruler of the world’s most powerful empire. The Britain they observed was experiencing a “medievalist” revival. Knighthood and chivalry were popular

cultural themes and many public and private buildings imitated the appearance of medieval castles. These trends inspired some Japanese thinkers around 1890 to search for equivalents in their

own traditions. They compared samurai with European knights and proposed _bushido_ as a Japanese counterpart to chivalry and gentlemanliness. Japan’s victory over China in the Sino-Japanese

War of 1894-1895 gave _bushido_ a great boost, but also changed it. Before the war, _bushido_ was invoked as a potential equivalent to Western ideals – after the war, the mood in Japan

became more nationalistic and militaristic, and _bushido_ came to reflect these sentiments. The term now implied self-sacrifice, patriotism, and loyalty to the emperor; its promoters now

dismissed European chivalry as “mere woman-worship” and inferior to “manly” samurai ideals. This new “imperial _bushido_” rapidly became an important part of the state ideology, and was

widely used in civilian and military education in Japan until 1945. The _bushido_ boom that took place after 1895 also coincided with a dramatic shift in Sino-Japanese relations. In the

years after the war, thousands of Chinese travelled to Japan for study, business, or political exile, and those who arrived in the early 1900s – especially after Japan’s victory in the

Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 – encountered a Japan fascinated with _bushido_. Chinese students studied the “way of the warrior” in Japanese schools and military academies – like their

Japanese classmates, they were taught that _bushido_ was the key to Japan’s modernisation and military successes. They had little reason to question these teachings, as the evidence was

seemingly all around. Instead, influential Chinese reformers such as Liang Qichao searched for their own _bushido_ tradition that could help strengthen China. Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi),

who later go on to become president of the Republic of China, was a cadet at a Japanese military academy at the time. Chiang was deeply impressed by _bushido_ and sought to instil a similar

martial spirit in China after his return. LOOSE ENDS The imperial _bushido_ ideology was used to indoctrinate the Japanese servicemen who invaded China in the 1930s and attacked Pearl

Harbour in 1941. It was not surprising, therefore, that outsiders saw Japan’s wartime activity in the context of _bushido_ and the samurai heritage. After World War II, _bushido_ was

comprehensively rejected as a dangerous ideology. By the 1970s, however, _bushido_ was revived as a cultural explanation for Japan’s recovery and rapid economic growth. This new _bushido_

generally stresses loyalty, virtue, honesty and self-sacrifice, while rejecting overtly militaristic elements. Decades later, today’s mainstream _bushido_ closely resembles the early

theories inspired by idealised European chivalry. A vocal minority on the right is attempting to revive more extreme wartime ideals, taking historical revisionism to sometimes radical

extremes – but for now at least, these nationalists remain a political minority. In China, meanwhile, Japanese _bushido_ is understood in a way much closer to its wartime imperial meaning –

in part a reflection of just how unresolved the history of World War II still is in East Asia. The events of the 20th century are a heavy burden on Sino-Japanese relations to this day.

Dealing with these issues is further complicated by some of the lingering ideas of national identity, and _bushido_ in particular, which create distance and undermine trust on both sides.