Journal articles on the topic 'Bushido. Samurai'

Bushido as a moral teaching contains the principles of virtue to form the soul of a knight. A typical Japanese knight is a Samurai. The moral teaching is inherited verbally from generation to generation until now. Japanese people practice these teachings seriously into everyday life. They live every principle with full sincerity, honesty, and wholeheartedly to form a patriotic soul. The principles of teaching are formulated in writing into seven principles that are inseparable from one another. Because every principle underlies and animates other principles. A Samurai cannot abandon one principle of teaching because if he abandons one principle the quality of a samurai will disappear so that he does not have a patriotic soul. Therefore, Bushido is able to form a patriot who is always superior.

This paper looks at self-censorship and censorship in Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900) by Nitobe, Inazo (1862-1933) as well as in four different translations of the book. In Bushido, probably the best known of Nitobe’s books, the renowned Japanese writer and diplomat tried to act as an inter-cultural mediator between East and West and export the concepts and values of Bushido (the path of the samurai). Nitobe was descended from one of the great samurai families, but he converted to Christianity, married an American Quaker from Philadelphia and studied widely in the US and in Europe. Bushido was a valiant attempt to “translate” the ethical code of the samurais for the West, but perhaps in so doing Nitobe idealized the samurai caste by domesticating their values and teaching in order to bring them closer to Christian values and teaching. The main purpose of his book was to make Japanese culture acceptable to and valued by the West and in particular Philadelphia at the beginning of the 20th century, but he also had to assure the approval of the imperial authorities. The original text was written in English, which was not Nitobe’s mother tongue, and it can be studied as a self-translation that involves self-censorship. Writing in a foreign language obliges one to “filter” one’s own emotions and modes of expression. To a certain extent, it also limits one’s capacity for self-expression. Alternatively, it allows the writer to express more empathy for the “other culture.” Furthermore, one is much more conscious of what one wants to say, or what one wishes to avoid saying, in order to make the work more acceptable for intended readers. The four translations are the Spanish translation by Gonzalo Jiménez de la Espada (1909), the French translation by Charles Jacob (1927), the Japanese translation by Yanaihara Tadao (1938) and the Spanish translation by General José Millán-Astray (1941). A descriptive, diachronic study of the translation of selected cultural references shows the four translations to be good examples of the way translations vary over time. They also illustrate the relationship between context, pretext and text (Widowson, 2004) and the visibility or invisibility of the translator (Venuti, 1995). We have also found it useful to draw on skopos theory, as well as some aspects of the Manipulation School, in particular ideology, censorship and the emphasis on translation between distant languages and cultures. The analysis of the four translations shows that censorship of cultural references is evident during periods of conflict (such as the Japanese translation of 1938 and the Spanish translation of 1941). We hope to show that the context/pretext of the translator led to such manipulative or censorial translation decisions that Nitobe’s skopos was lost in at least one of the translations.

Though difficult to define as a clear set of moral precepts, aspects of so-called “samurai values”, the combination of orally-transmitted Confucian and Buddhist lore to which Nitobe Inazō refers in his Bushido, can clearly be discerned in Japanese society today. As evidence for the influence of “samurai values”, I have provided examples from two fields with which I am personally familiar: journalism and education. Although in recent years several academic works have exposed historical anomalies in widely-held beliefs about actual samurai behaviour, I argue that the effectiveness of ideologies does not depend on historical accuracy. For example, justification for the right of newspapers to criticise governments in Japan does not stem from inalienable rights originating with European Enlightenment philosophers. Instead, it is linked to the view that the former samurai who in the 1870s became Japan’s first news reporters could be trusted intermediaries between the government and the people, because as samurai they possessed higher standards of morality. That expectations of superior moral conduct continue to justify in the eyes of the general public the right of newspapers to speak truth to power can be seen by mass cancellations of subscriptions of newspapers whose staff betray these expectations through involvement in scandal. Likewise, the emphasis on “character building” (jinkaku keisei) in Japanese higher education is another link to perceived “samurai values.” Some of Japan’s leading private universities were founded in the late nineteenth century by former samurai. As in the case of journalism, the maintenance of superior moral conduct helps strengthen the claim to legitimacy of educational institutions in Japan. Finally, I will present a picture of Nitobe as an example of a former samurai who long after his passing continues to be revered for having adhered to the “samurai values” he both defined and embraced.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;" lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Though some attention has been given to the role that Bushido (the ethical system of the samurai) may have played in the development of nationalism in post-Meiji Japan, the martial arts themselves have largely been absolved of any complicity. I argue in this article that the martial arts did in fact play a role in the rise of Japanese nationalism and therefore share some of the blame for the events that took place leading up to and during the Second World War. The article demonstrates how the martial arts were used to popularize the precepts of Bushido and how these precepts in turn lead to the growth of expansionist nationalism. It also shows how the martial arts were used in the educational system and the military to inculcate the Bushido notions of honor and loyalty in the general public.</span></span></span></p>

AbstrakPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pemaknaan terhadap budaya seppuku yang terdapat dalam film Letters from Iwo Jima. Film ini mengangkat cerita tentang tentang perjuangan prajurit Jepang pada saat Perang Dunia II. Ketika menghadapi kekalahan, para prajurit Jepang yang ingin tetap mempertahankan harga diri dan kehormatannya memilih jalan seppuku. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode analisis Semiotika Charles Sanders Peirce, yang tandanya terbagi atas icon, index, dan symbol, serta didukung dengan literatur teori komunikasi massa dan literatur kode etik samurai. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa motif seppuku yang dilakukan oleh beberapa karakter di film ini berpedoman pada nilai-nilai bushido.

Modern budo master Fumon Tanaka demonstrates that the spirit of the old samurai Bushido code has survived to this day. Martial arts have become part of culture, and they are perceived with the reverence befitting science. He also reminds us that the beauty of being a warrior lies in the constant readiness to make the greatest of sacrifices. In common parlance, however, there is no difference between how martial arts are taught to students, how combat sports are taught to athletes and how police officers and soldiers are taught close quarters combat, as well as there being no difference in results between these types of training.

The phenomenon of clan-regional rulemaking during the military-oligarchic regime in medieval Japan is studied for the first time. The purpose of the study was a comparative analysis of the texts of the largest princely codes of daimyo and military houses, as well as the norms of the Bushido code . The analysis was carried out on the basis of historical-genetic and synchronous-logical methods using Japanese primary sources with a survey translation, as well as scientific and abstract materials of Japanese, English and Russian medieval studies. Among the results achieved, a typology and hierarchy of sources of traditional law of the Shogun period are identified. The evolution of the system of law sources from the Kamakura shogunate to the Miromati dynasty is traced. One of the most striking monuments of Kamakur law is examined (the military-estate code Goseibai Sikimoku, 1232). Its sources, structure, technic mode and criminal provisions are studied. The analysis of the Bushido code showed that this quasi-legal regulator of the samurai behavior was an eclectic code of norms and rules for the bushi warriors with their ideals of loyalty and patriotism. The main transition to a new stage in the legal history of Japan after the Kammu сode, 1336 and during the period of Warring Provinces was established. It was distinguished by an increase in the number and significance of local law monuments - princely and clan codes, city statutes and charters of merchants' houses. From this list, the author singled out and compared in juridical techniques the ten large bunkokuho codes published by the largest princes- daimyo in order to systematize local laws and streamline the administrative-judicial system.

The honor understood as a virtue or as axiological invariant is a term that comes human civilization since ages pristine and has an important role in the formation of the modern subject itself. Their existence raises the question of archetypes to explain how a term can be universalized among men in different times and in different historical contexts and with a strong connotation in the act of the subject. In this small article we will expose a possible reading about this term inside the modern ethic Japanese focused in the work Bushido – The Soul of Japan (1900) of Nitobe Inazo (1868-1933), which presents a reinterpretation of the samurai code of conduct aimed at disseminating modern Nipponese values to the international community of the twentieth century.

The traditional ethical culture of Japan is under the influence of Chinese Confucian culture. However, due to differences in historical tradition and social structure, in traditional Japanese culture, “loyalty”, as the highest value, is in preference to “filial piety” and it lays a foundation for universal moral principles of the society; while in the Chinese Confucian culture, “filial piety” is regarded as the first and “loyalty” is the natural expansion of “filial piety”. The main reason is the influence of the indigenous Shinto in traditional Japanese culture. After the internalization of the indigenous Shinto and the Tennoism as well as the indoctrination of over 600-year ruling of the samurai regime, “loyalty”, as the national cultural and psychological heritage, has the religious and irrational mysterious color, which is different from the secularization and the practical rationality of the pre-Qin Confucian ethics of China. Loyalty to the emperor and devotion to public interests advocated by Bushido is an important characteristic of traditional Japanese ethical culture, and the religious and absolute understanding of “loyalty” is hidden with the risk of nationalism and irrationality.

The term bushidō is widespread today and involves history, philosophy, literature, ­sociology and religion. It is commonly believed to be rooted in the ancient “way” of the bushi or samurai, the Japanese warriors who led the country until modern times. However, even in the past the bushi were seldom represented accurately. Mostly, they were depicted as the authors thought they should be, to fulfil a certain role in society and on the political scene.By taking into account some ancient and pre-modern writings, from the 8th to the 19th centuries, from the ancient chronicles of Japan, war tales, official laws, letters, to martial arts manuals and philosophical essays, and by highlighting some of the bushidō values, this article attempts to answer the questions how and why the representation of the bushi changed from the rise of the warrior class to the end of the military government in the 19th century.

The oscillation between fascination and derision directed toward bushidō in the last hundred or so years, both in Japan and abroad, is just one characteristic aspect of this ambiguous “samurai code of honour”. Ever since the notion of bushidō took the centre stage in the discourse on Japanese culture and national character in the Meiji period (1868–1912), various thinkers imbued the notion with the whole gamut of ideological interpretations, seeing in it everything from ultimate evidence of Japanese uniqueness on one end, to recognising in bushidō the symbol of Japanese civilized status by virtue of the universality of its ethical postulations on the other. Moreover, this vague and elusive idea of “samurai honour” continues to function as an empty shell for whatever ideological content wishes to occupy its place.

Modern commentators have too often attempted to treat bushidō as an enduring code of behaviour readily encapsulated in simplistic notions of honour, duty, and loyalty. The historical reality, however, is anything but simple. Samurai ethics and behavioural norms varied significantly from era to era—most especially across the transition from the medieval to early modern age—and in most cases bore scant resemblance to twentieth-century fantasies about samurai comportment.

In Japan, there are many kinds of dōs. The term has diverse and profound meanings, making it a challenge to define. Simply speaking, dō is a way for people to train the spirit by following specific practices, with the purpose of mastering life. Prominent examples of dōs include chadō / sadō (〔 茶 道 〕 so-called “tea ceremony”), kadō (〔 華 道 〕 so-called “flower arrangement”), shodō (calligraphy), and bushidō (the ethical code of the samurai). There are also sport practices such as jūdō (judo), kendō (kendo) and aikidō (aikido), all of which are also connected with the culture of dō.

La publicación de una nueva edición de la obra de Inazō Nitobe merece una recapitulación sobre el significado de dicho texto tanto en Europa como Japón, así como su alcance entre los lectores occidentales y especialmente españoles. Se trató de un libro publicado por primera vez en 1900 y que fue pionero en la divulgación del pensamiento japonés en Occidente. La nueva traducción de Sigrid Guitart anotada por Alexander Bennet, así como los componentes paratextuales del libro merecen una atención pormenorizada

This essay will address the evolution of the samurai warrior code (bushido), concentrating on its depiction in several prominent works of Japanese literature from 1185 to 1989. This essay will argue that rather than a concrete set of principles, bushido was actually a malleable set of romanticized qualities supposedly possessed by the samurai that were repeatedly adapted to a changing Japanese society in order to maintain a national identity predicated on the warrior class. Beginning with the introduction of the samurai through the Tale of the Heike, this essay will then proceed to discuss the blatant romanticization of the samurai until the early 1900’s as illustrated in such prominent works and mediums as the house codes of various feudal lords, Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s Hagakure, and Nitobe Inazo’s Bushido. The militarism of the Pre-World War II period will then be analyzed along with Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi while the culture of death affiliated with the Second World War will be examined as the high-water mark for romanticized bushido as a means of national identity. This essay will then conclude with an analysis of Mishima Yukio’s Patriotism, the definitive end to the Japanese people’s overt identification with samurai and their idealized code by 1989.

O corpo-samurai, marca a identidade do Japão desde a era medieval. A genealogia desse corpo indica que ele assume formas diferentes em função do prestígio dessa imagem e de sua relação com o Bushido. Na era Tokugawa, privilegiado pelo poder, torna-se uma metáfora da sociedade, depois na era Meiji, torna-se ícone do Japão. E atualmente desloca-se para o plano simbólico. Nesse estudo, analisamos a eficácia desse corpo-samurai e sua ética no Karatê. Observamos que a apropriação dessa imagem altera a subjetividade dos praticantes e tende a reduzir a eficácia do Bushido.

Abstrak Bushido adalah etika moral yang awalnya diterapkan kaum samurai sejak zaman Edo (1603-1868). Terdapat tiga sumber utama dalam aturan moral bushido antara lain ajaran Budha Zen, Shinto, dan Konfusianisme. Moral adalah ajaran tentang baik dan buruk dalam suatu masyarakat yang telah disepakati secara umum. Moral tidak hanya ditemukan dalam kehidupan nyata, namun juga dalam karya sastra. Salah satu jenisnya adalah haiku. Haiku adalah salah satu jenis puisi Jepang yang terdiri atas 17 suku kata yang dibentuk dari konsep 5-7-5. Masaoka Shiki merupakan salah satu penyair haiku yang terkenal di Jepang. Peneliti menggunakan haiku karya Masaoka Shiki karena pola pemikirannya yang mendapatkan pengaruh ajaran moral Bushido, sehingga sebagai putra seorang bushi, secara tidak langsung, ajaran moral yang diterimanya berpengaruh terhadap pola pemikiran sehari-hari, seperti kebesaran jiwa, kesabaran dan lainnya. Termasuk juga dalam penciptaan karyanya. Fokus permasalahan penelitian ini adalah moral Bushido dalam haiku karya Masaoka Shiki.Peneliti menggunakan teori Nitobe (2008: vii-viii) tentang tujuh nilai moral bushido yaitu, gi ‘kejujuran’, yu ‘keberanian’, jin ‘kebajikan’, rei ‘kesopansantunan’, makoto ‘ketulusan hati’, meiyo ‘kehormatan’ dan chugi ‘kesetiaan’. Penelitian ini adalah penelitian kualitatif. Sumber data penelitian ini diambil dari buku yang berjudul Shiki Hyakku karya Toshinori Tsubouchi dan Akio Konishi. Teknik pengumpulan berupa teknik kepustakaan dan untuk menganalisis data digunakan analisis deskriptif. Simpulan penelitian ini adalah ditemukannya empat moral bushido di dalam puisi haiku, yakni moral bushido jin ‘kebajikan’, moral bushido rei ‘kesopansantunan’, moral bushido yu ‘keberanian’ dan moral bushido meiyo ‘kehormatan’.Kata Kunci: Bushido, haiku, Masaoka Shiki, moral

Japan is undoubtedly a central component to understanding international order in Asia. Its actions from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s defined the region, and its consequences have had repercussions that have lasted into the present day (Shambaugh, 10). But where does one go to understand Japan? A place that many people would start is with the Bushido, “the code of conduct of the samurai” (Nitobe, x). In 1905, when noted writer Dr. Inazo Nitobe wanted to explain “why such and such ideas and customs prevail in Japan” (Nitobe, xii), he used the Bushido as his explanation. Introducing the Bushido as the Japan’s “Precepts of Knighthood” (Nitobe, 4), he then proceeded to lay out the various values and tenets that consist of its make-up.

O ensaio propõe reflexões sobre as estratégias usadas por Funakoshi para modernizar o karatê na era Meiji. Os resultados mostram que, ao deslocar o sentido da prática do karatê para ajustá-lo aos valores ocidentais, o Mestre abdicou do sentido tradicional do budo para investir numa via de formação onde a morte simbólica emerge como prioridade. Isso contribuiu para acelerar a desconstrução da imagem do samurai real e do bushido na modernidade. Funakoshi garantiu a sobrevivência da arte marcial, mas abriu caminhos para a emergência de éticas mitigadas e práticas não convencionais no karatê.

Samurai and Chinese martial arts themes inspire and permeate the uniquely philosophical lyrics and beats of Wu-Tang Clan, a New York-based hip-hop collective made popular in the mid-nineties with their debut album Enter the Wu-Tang: Return of the 36 Chambers. Original founder RZA (“Rizza”) scored his first full-length motion-picture soundtrack and made his feature film debut with Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch, 2000). Through a critical exploration of the film’s musical filter, it will be argued that RZA’s aesthetic vision effectively deterritorialises the figure of the samurai, according to which the samurai “change[s] in nature and connect[s] with other multiplicities” (Deleuze and Guattari, 9). The soundtrack consequently emancipates and redistributes the idea of the samurai from within the dynamic context of a fundamentally different aesthetic intensity, which the Wu-Tang has always hoped to communicate, that is to say, an aesthetics of adaptation or of what is called in hip-hop music more generally: an aesthetics of flow. At the center of Jarmusch’s film is a fundamental opposition between the sober asceticism and deeply coded lifestyle of Ghost Dog and the supple, revolutionary, itinerant hip-hop beats that flow behind it and beneath it, and which serve at once as philosophical foil and as alternate foundation to the film’s themes and message. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai tells the story of Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker), a deadly and flawlessly precise contract killer for a small-time contemporary New York organised crime family. He lives his life in a late 20th-century urban America according to the strict tenets of the 18th century text Hagakure, which relates the principles of the Japanese Bushido (literally, the “way of the warrior,” but more often defined and translated as the “code of the samurai”). Others have noted the way in which Ghost Dog not only fails as an adaptation of the samurai genre but thematises this very failure insofar as the film depicts a samurai’s unsuccessful struggle to adapt in a corrupt and fractured postmodern, post-industrial reality (Lanzagorta, par. 4, 9; Otomo, 35-8). If there is any hope at all for these adaptations (Ghost Dog is himself an example), it lies, according to some, in the singular, outmoded integrity of his nostalgia, which despite the abstract jouissance or satisfaction it makes available, is nevertheless blank and empty (Otomo, 36-7). Interestingly, in his groundbreaking book Spectacular Vernaculars, and with specific reference to hip-hop, Russell Potter suggests that where a Eurocentric postmodernism posits a lack of meaning and collapse of value and authority, a black postmodernism that is neither singular nor nostalgic is prepared to emerge (6-9). And as I will argue there are more concrete adaptive strategies at work in the film, strategies that point well beyond the film to popular culture more generally. These are anti-nostalgic strategies of possibility and escape that have everything to do with the way in which hip-hop as soundtrack enables Ghost Dog in his becoming-samurai, a process by which a deterritorialised subject and musical flow fuse to produce a hybrid adaptation and identity. But hip-hip not only makes possible such a becoming, it also constitutes a potentially liberating adaptation of the past and of otherness that infuses the film with a very different but still concrete jouissance. At the root of Ghost Dog is a conflict between what Deleuze and Guattari call state and nomad authority, between the code that prohibits adaptation and its willful betrayer. The state apparatus, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is the quintessential form of interiority. The state nourishes itself through the appropriation, the bringing into its interior, of all that over which it exerts its control, and especially over those nomadic elements that constantly threaten to escape (Deleuze and Guattari, 380-7). In Ghost Dog, the code or state-form functions throughout the film as an omnipresent source of centralisation, authorisation and organisation. It is attested to in the intensely stratified urban environment in which Ghost Dog lives, a complicated and forbidding network of streets, tracks, rails, alleys, cemeteries, tenement blocks, freeways, and shipping yards, all of which serve to hem Ghost Dog in. And as race is highlighted in the film, it, too, must be included among the many ways in which characters are always already contained. What encounters with racism in the film suggest is the operative presence of a plurality of racial and cultural codes; the strict segregation of races and cultures in the film and the animosity which binds them in opposition reflect a racial stratification that mirrors the stratified topography of the cityscape. Most important, perhaps, is the way in which Bushido itself functions, at least in part, as code, as well as the way in which the form of the historical samurai in legend and reality circumscribes not only Ghost Dog’s existence but the very possibility of the samurai and the samurai film as such. On the one hand, Bushido attests to the absolute of religion, or as Deleuze and Guattari describe it: “a center that repels the obscure … essentially a horizon that encompasses” and which forms a “bond”, “pact”, or “alliance” between subject/culture and the all-encompassing embrace of its deity: in this case, the state-form which sanctions samurai existence (382-3). On the other hand, but in the same vein, the advent of Bushido, and in particular the Hagakure text to which Ghost Dog turns for meaning and guidance, coincides historically with the emergence of the modern Japanese state, or put another way, with the eclipse of the very culture it sponsors. In fact, samurai history as a whole can be viewed to some extent as a process of historical containment by which the state-form gradually encompassed those nomadic warring elements at the heart of early samurai existence. This is the socio-historical context of Bushido, insofar as it represents the codification of the samurai subject and the stratification of samurai culture under the pressures of modernisation and the spread of global capitalism. It is a social and historical context marked by the power of a bourgeoning military, political and economic organisation, and by policies of restraint, centralisation and sedentariness. Moreover, the local and contemporary manifestations of this social and historical context are revealed in many of the elements that permeate not only the traditional samurai films of Kurosawa, Mizoguchi or Kobayashi, but modern adaptations of the genre as well, which tend to convey a nostalgic mourning for this loss, or more precisely, for this failure to adapt. Thus the filmic atmosphere of Ghost Dog is dominated by the negative qualities of inaction, nonviolence and sobriety, and whether these are taken to express the sterility and impotence of postmodern existence or the emptiness of a nostalgia for an unbroken and heroic past, these qualities point squarely towards the transience of culture and towards the impossibility of adaptation and survival. Ghost Dog is a reluctant assassin, and the inherently violent nature of his task is always deflected. In the same way, most of Ghost Dog’s speech in the film is delivered through his soundless readings of the Hagakure, silent and austere moments that mirror as well the creeping, sterile atmosphere in which most of the film’s action takes place. It is an atmosphere of interiority that points not only towards the stratified environment which restricts possibility and expressivity but also squarely towards the meaning of Bushido as code. But this atmosphere meets resistance. For the samurai is above all a man of war, and, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, “the man of war [that is to say, the nomad] is always committing an offence against” the State (383). In Ghost Dog, for all the ways in which Ghost Dog’s experience is stratified by the Bushido as code and by the post-industrial urban reality in which he lives and moves, the film shows equally the extent to which these strata or codes are undermined by nomadic forces that trace “lines of flight” and escape (Deleuze and Guattari, 423). Clearly it is the film’s soundtrack, and thus, too, the aesthetic intensities of the flow in hip-hop music, which both constitute and facilitate this escape: We have an APB on an MC killer Looks like the work of a master … Merciless like a terrorist Hard to capture the flow Changes like a chameleon (“Da Mystery of Chessboxin,” Enter) Herein lies the significance of (and difference between) the meaning of Bushido as code and as way, a problem of adaptation and translation which clearly reflects the central conflict of the film. A way is always a way out, the very essence of escape, and it always facilitates the breaking away from a code. Deleuze and Guattari describe the nomad as problematic, hydraulic, inseparable from flow and heterogeneity; nomad elements, as those elements which the State is incapable of drawing into its interior, are said to remain exterior and excessive to it (361-2). It is thus significant that the interiority of Ghost Dog’s readings from the Hagakure and the ferocious exteriority of the soundtrack, which along with the Japanese text helps narrate the tale, reflect the same relationship that frames the state and nomad models. The Hagakure is not only read in silence by the protagonist throughout the film, but the Hagakure also figures prominently inside the diegetic world of the film as a visual element, whereas the soundtrack, whether it is functioning diegetically or non-diegetically, is by its very nature outside the narrative space of the film, effectively escaping it. For Deleuze and Guattari, musical expression is inseparable from a process of becoming, and, in fact, it is fair to say that the jouissance of the film is supplied wholly by the soundtrack insofar as it deterritorialises the conventional language of the genre, takes it outside of itself, and then reinvests it through updated musical flows that facilitate Ghost Dog’s becoming-samurai. In this way, too, the soundtrack expresses the violence and action that the plot carefully avoids and thus intimately relates the extreme interiority of the protagonist to an outside, a nomadic exterior that forecloses any possibility of nostalgia but which suggests rather a tactics of metamorphosis and immediacy, a sublime deterritorialisation that involves music becoming-world and world becoming-music. Throughout the film, the appearance of the nomad is accompanied, even announced, by the onset of a hip-hop musical flow, always cinematically represented by Ghost Dog’s traversing the city streets or by lengthy tracking shots of a passenger pigeon in flight, both of which, to take just two examples, testify to purely nomadic concepts: not only to the sheer smoothness of open sky-space and flight with its techno-spiritual connotations, but also to invisible, inherited pathways that cross the stratified heart of the city undetected and untraceable. Embodied as it is in the Ghost Dog soundtrack, and grounded in what I have chosen to call an aesthetics of flow, hip-hop is no arbitrary force in the film; it is rather both the adaptive medium through which Ghost Dog and the samurai genre are redeemed and the very expression of this adaptation. Deleuze and Guattari write: The necessity of not having control over language, of being a foreigner in one’s own tongue, in order to draw speech to oneself and ‘bring something incomprehensible into the world.’ Such is the form of exteriority … that forms a war machine. (378) Nowhere else do Deleuze and Guattari more clearly outline the affinities that bind their notion of the nomad and the form of exteriority that is essential to it with the politics of language, cultural difference and authenticity which so color theories of race and critical analyses of hip-hop music and culture. And thus the key to hip-hop’s adaptive power lies in its spontaneity and in its bringing into the world of something incomprehensible and unanticipated. If the code in Ghost Dog is depicted as nonviolent, striated, interior, singular, austere and measured, then the flow in hip-hop and in the music of the Wu-Tang that informs Ghost Dog’s soundtrack is violent, fluid, exterior, variable, plural, playful and incalculable. The flow in hip-hop, as well as in Deleuze and Guattari’s work, is grounded in a kinetic linguistic spontaneity, variation and multiplicity. Its lyrical flow is a cascade of accelerating rhymes, the very speed and implausibility of which often creates a sort of catharsis in performers and spectators: I bomb atomically, Socrates’ philosophies and hypotheses can’t define how I be droppin’ these mockeries, lyrically perform armed robberies Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me Battle-scarred shogun, explosion. … (“Triumph”, Forever) Over and against the paradigm of the samurai, which as I have shown is connected with relations of content and interiority, the flow is attested to even more explicitly in the Wu-Tang’s embrace of the martial arts, kung-fu and Chinese cinematic traditions. And any understanding of the figure of the samurai in the contemporary hip-hop imagination must contend with the relationship of this figure to both the kung-fu fighting traditions and to kung-fu cinema, despite the fact that they constitute very different cultural and historical forms. I would, of course, argue that it is precisely this playful adaptation or literal deterritorialisation of otherwise geographically and culturally distinct realities that comprises the adaptive potential of hip-hop. Kung-fu, like hip-hop, is predicated on the exteriority of style. It is also a form of action based on precision and immediacy, on the fluid movements of the body itself deterritorialised as weapon, and thus it reiterates that blend of violence, speed and fluidity that grounds the hip-hop aesthetic: “I’ll defeat your rhyme in just four lines / Yeh, I’ll wax you and tax you and plus save time” (RZA and Norris, 211). Kung-fu lends itself to improvisation and to adaptability, essential qualities of combat and of lyrical flows in hip-hop music. For example, just as in kung-fu combat a fighter’s success is fundamentally determined by his ability to intuit and adapt to the style and skill and detailed movements of his adversary, the victory of a hip-hop MC engaged in, say, a freestyle battle will be determined by his capacity for improvising and adapting his own lyrical flow to counter and overcome his opponent’s. David Bordwell not only draws critical lines of difference between the Hong Kong and Hollywood action film but also hints at the striking differences between the “delirious kinetic exhilaration” of Hong Kong cinema and the “sober, attenuated, and grotesque expressivity” of the traditional Japanese samurai film (91-2). Moreover, Bordwell emphasises what the Wu-Tang Clan has always known and demonstrated: the sympathetic bond between kung-fu action or hand-to-hand martial arts combat and the flow in hip-hop music. Bordwell calls his kung-fu aesthetic “expressive amplification”, which communicates with the viewer through both a visual and physical intelligibility and which is described by Bordwell in terms of beats, exaggerations, and the “exchange and rhyming of gestures” (87). What is pointed to here are precisely those aspects of Hong Kong cinema that share essential similarities with hip-hop music as such and which permeate the Wu-Tang aesthetic and thus, too, challenge or redistribute the codified stillness and negativity that define the filmic atmosphere of Ghost Dog. Bordwell argues that Hong Kong cinema constitutes an aesthetics in action that “pushes beyond Western norms of restraint and plausibility,” and in light of my thesis, I would argue that it pushes beyond these same conventions in traditional Japanese cinema as well (86). Bruce Lee, too, in describing the difference between Chinese kung-fu and Japanese fighting forms in A Warrior’s Journey (Bruce Little, 2000) points to the latter’s regulatory principles of hesitation and segmentarity and to the former’s formlessness and shapelessness, describing kung-fu when properly practiced as “like water, it can flow or it can crash,” qualities which echo not only Bordwell’s description of the pause-burst-pause pattern of kung-fu cinema’s combat sequences but also the Wu-Tang Clan’s own self-conception as described by GZA (“Jizza”), a close relative of RZA and co-founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, when he is asked to explain the inspiration for the title of his album Liquid Swords: Actually, ‘Liquid Swords’ comes from a kung-fu flick. … But the title was just … perfect. I was like, ‘Legend of a Liquid Sword.’ Damn, this is my rhymes. This is how I’m spittin’ it. We say the tongue is symbolic of the sword anyway, you know, and when in motion it produces wind. That’s how you hear ‘wu’. … That’s the wind swinging from the sword. The ‘Tang’, that’s when it hits an object. Tang! That’s how it is with words. (RZA and Norris, 67) Thus do two competing styles animate the aesthetic dynamics of the film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai: an aesthetic of codified arrest and restraint versus an aesthetic of nomadic resistance and escape. The former finds expression in the film in the form of the cultural and historical meanings of the samurai tradition, defined by negation and attenuated sobriety, and in the “blank parody” (Otomo, 35) of a postmodern nostalgia for an empty historical past exemplified in the appropriation of the Samurai theme and in the post-industrial prohibitions and stratifications of contemporary life and experience; the latter is attested to in the affirmative kinetic exhilaration of kung-fu style, immediacy and expressivity, and in the corresponding adaptive potential of a hip-hop musical flow, a distributive, productive, and anti-nostalgic becoming, the nomadic essence of which redeems the rhetoric of postmodern loss described by the film. References Bordwell, David. “Aesthetics in Action: Kungfu, Gunplay, and Cinematic Expressivity.” At Full Speed: Hong Kong Cinema in a Borderless World. Ed. and Trans. Esther Yau. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2004. Bruce Lee: A Warrior’s Journey. Dir./Filmmaker John Little. Netflix DVD. Warner Home Video, 2000. Daidjo, Yuzan. Code of the Samurai. Trans. Thomas Cleary. Tuttle Martial Arts. Boston: Tuttle, 1999. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP,1987. Forman, Murray, and Mark Anthony Neal, eds. That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2004. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. Dir. Jim Jarmusch. Netflix DVD. Artisan, 2000. Hurst, G. Cameron III. Armed Martial Arts of Japan. New Haven: Yale UP,1998. Ikegami, Eiko. The Taming of the Samurai. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995. Jansen, Marius, ed. Warrior Rule in Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Kurosawa, Akira. Seven Samurai and Other Screenplays. Trans. Donald Richie. London: Faber and Faber, 1992. Lanzagorta, Marco. “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” Senses of Cinema. Sept-Oct 2002. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/02/22/ghost_dog.htm>. Mol, Serge. Classical Fighting Arts of Japan. Tokyo/New York: Kodansha Int., 2001. Otomo, Ryoko. “‘The Way of the Samurai’: Ghost Dog, Mishima, and Modernity’s Other.” Japanese Studies 21.1 (May 2001) 31-43. Potter, Russell. Spectacular Vernaculars. Albany: SUNY P, 1995. RZA, The, and Chris Norris. The Wu-Tang Manual. New York: Penguin, 2005. Silver, Alain. The Samurai Film. Woodstock, New York: Overlook, 1983. Smith, Christopher Holmes. “Method in the Madness: Exploring the Boundaries of Identity in Hip-Hop Performativity.” Social Identities 3.3 (Oct 1997): 345-75. Watkins, Craig S. Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1998. Wu-Tang Clan. Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers. CD. RCA/Loud Records, 1993. ———. Wu-Tang Forever. CD. RCA/Loud Records, 1997. Xing, Yan, ed. Shaolin Kungfu. Trans. Zhang Zongzhi and Zhu Chengyao. Beijing: China Pictorial, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Eubanks, Kevin P. "Becoming-Samurai: Samurai (Films), Kung-Fu (Flicks) and Hip-Hop (Soundtracks)." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/11-eubanks.php>. APA Style Eubanks, K. (May 2007) "Becoming-Samurai: Samurai (Films), Kung-Fu (Flicks) and Hip-Hop (Soundtracks)," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/11-eubanks.php>.

The article examines the signs of devaluation of humanism in modern society in the context of multicultural thinking (English - Japanese). The objects of research are the novels of the Nobel (2017) and Booker (1989) Prize writer Kazuo Ishiguro - The Rest of the Day and Don't Let Me Go. In The Rest of the Day, an English writer of Japanese descent inherits and develops the tradition of the English novel, but at the same time synthesizes the peculiarities of the English mentality with the principles of honor and service in the Bushido samurai code. The subtle irony associated with the parallel "code of honor of the English butler and the Japanese samurai," according to the authors of the article, largely explains the logic of the plot of the work. The article also notes that Kazuo Ishiguro managed to reflect the deep commonality of postcolonial Englishness with the refined Japanese perception of being and duty. Although the author himself in his interviews and comments often insists that he remembers almost nothing about Japan and that he is interested in writing on universal topics, this practically always has a shocking effect in his novels. The novel Don't Let Me Go helps to understand that the peculiarity of this work is the proclamation of humanism as one of the main values of mankind at any time and under any conditions. It is noted that this idea is manifested in a conflict with the modern interpretation of the concept. Humanistic values in the novel are also revealed in the inner thoughts of the heroine, the relationship of the heroes, the actions of the heroes, and the author, even in a non-standard anti-utopian situation of ideals, ready to reflect on the moral foundations without which human life is unthinkable. In addition, the motive of man's detachment from his roots, which is very characteristic of Japanese culture, is projected on the modern European vision of the problem.

The article deals with the analysis of the image of the protagonist, depicted in the novel “The Remains of the Day” written by Kazuo Ishiguro. Created at the crossroads of various cultural paradigms, the novel belongs to the space of multicultural literature, which increasingly attracts the attention of the present-day researchers. A mention also should be made that multicultural authors are defined as carriers of the unique vision of the world, since the so-called intercultural sensibility, that appears to be a result of cultural accumulation, brings about a qualitatively new type of creativity. It is to this generation of writers that the creativity of the modern English writer of Japanese origin, Kazuo Ishiguro, belongs to. The special position of a hybrid writer, who cannot be credited neither to the generation of Japanese nor to the generation of English writers, gives rise to a unique style of narration. This style of narration combines the most prominent features of both cultures. It should be stressed that the image of the protagonist of the analysed novel makes it possible to identify a number of ethno-cultural units that are common to both the Japanese and the English. In addition to this, the author creates a cross-cultural image. The English nature of writing is manifested in the references to the characteristic features of the typical Englishman, whose image originates from the time of the Victorian novel. First and foremost, such features as loyalty, diligence and dedication should be noted as an example. The eastern element of the image of the protagonist is manifested in the appeal to the Eastern philosophy of Buddhism and the implementation of the basic principles of the samurai code of honour. However, it is difficult to distinguish different national components in the novel, because both nations have a common set of attributes that form the so-called “interspace” of the novel. Due to the successful manoeuvring of these attributes, certain ethno-cultural stereotypes are being eroded. However, the juggling of the stereotypes is not an end in itself. They rather serve as an auxiliary means of disclosing the author's philosophy. The above-named problems are studied on the example of the works devoted to the concept of Englishness and Japanesseness and well as the treatises “Hagakure: Book of the Samurai” by Yamamoto Tsunetomo and “Bushido: The Soul of Japan” by Inazo Nitobe.

Este trabajo sigue la tendencia reciente de estudiar el contenido económico de obras que no revisten un carácter económico, ya sean obras filosóficas, de la literatura, etc. El Bushido era un código de conducta y de ética que existió en Japón en la Edad Media, desde el siglo XII hasta finales del siglo XIX. El Bushido como filosofía y código de conducta surgió en el siglo XII y estará en vigor durante siete siglos hasta su abolición en 1868, con la revolución industrial y el desmantelamiento de la sociedad tradicional aunque ello no quita que continuase presente en el Japón de la vida política, social y económica. Responde al objetivo trazado de analizar el contenido económico del texto de Yuzan.

Os povos ocidentais na modernidade demonstram deslumbre ao terem contato com informações sobre o Japão e o seu povo, especialmente referentes ao cotidiano. No imaginário ocidental criou-se a imagem que todos os japoneses são extremamente corretos e corteses. Contudo, tal imagem é fruto da propaganda nacionalista difundida ao final do século XIX que visava à aproximação com as potências econômicas da época. Neste artigo veremos como a releitura do antigo código de conduta dos samurais, o bushidô, feita por Inazo Nitobe (1862- 1933) contribuiu para a construção desta imagem do japonês como herdeiro da ética dossamurais e as implicações políticas desta construção artificial para o Japão da época.