Before I started teaching, I had a pretty standard image of the classic classroom: rows of desks facing the podium in front of the room. Later came the typical college style lecture hall. At best, uninspiring institutional architecture.
Then I took my first class with Dr. Barbara Clark in Martin Luther King Memodrial Hall, California State University Los Angeles. Her’s was a wide departure from the norm:
I walked into a large room covered by a brightly colored area carpet, soft furniture including students seated in bean bag chairs, others on the carpeted floor in a circle. Inspirational posters on the walls but not a single desk in the room. It felt like we were meeting in Barbara’s home or in a traditional Japanese home instead of an institution.
I learned from Barbara that teachers were in the wonderful and unusual position of being able to redesign their classrooms to be student centered. Now this was an environment that felt like a good place to learn.
Over the years, I realized that I was unconsciously following the same code of conduct that my samurai ancestors did historically.
My teacher code of conduct is the same as the 7 samurai virtues:
1. Respect
2. Sincerity
3. Honesty
4. Honor
5. Loyalty
6. Justice
7. The Courage to conduct your life by the first principles.8. 良い例 Some say there might be an 8th Virtue: To set a good example.
Popular media portrays samurai as loyal and fierce warriors, but according to everything I’ve read, samurai spent less than 3% of their time in warrior mode. Most of their duties were administrative, building community, taking care of those needing help. In fact the word samurai means servant.
THE SAMURAI CODE of HOW TO BE A GOOD HUMAN BEING
Only in Japan can there be a "life-giving” sword...
Katsujin-ken: The Sword That Gives Life
Yagyu Munenori – Life-Giving Sword
by: Nate Weed
Yagyu Munenori lived from 1571 to 1646 and served as the sword master and a key leader in the Tokagawa Shogunate (essentially serving as the director of intelligence and the author of a key book on swordsmanship called the Heiho Kadensho, one of the most influential martial arts books ever written.
Munenori established the idea of a “killing sword” and a “life-giving sword.” Using the life-giving sword, a martial artist does not lose but also does not strive to win.
One of the strongest principles Yagyu Munenori instilled in his students was the idea that swordsmanship was not a skill learned to kill but rather to fully realize one’s true self.
--Nate Weed: http://aikidoolympia.net/2019/11/yagyu-munenori-life-giving-sword/
Click HERE for
the Legend Of The Life Giving Sword
At this point, after 9 visits to Japan I sense that while popular media has focused on the "life-taking”sword, setsunin-to, the essence of sword resonates with the... “life-giving sword, katsujin-ken --Toby Manzanares
Bushido. Samurai Virtues.
At their peak, Samurai numbered less than 10% of Japan's population yet their teachings can still be found today in everyday life.
In 1274 and 1281 Mongols and Chinese mounted great military expeditions to cross the sea and attack Japan but each time typhoons destroyed their fleets and doomed the invasions. The only times the Great Kubla Khan was defeated. These great invasion attempts unified the many Japanese clans against the threat of external invasion for the first time in their history.
While samurai were trained in strategy and the martial arts, a measure of how they spent their time shows they were administrators, leaders, teachers for more that 99% of their duties. They employed their training and were dedicated to the arts of helping people. Take a look at the code of bushido. All 8 virtues are community centered.
As a sensei, a teacher we have the same code of virtues.
人 PEOPLE
“Your great grandfather Kobayakawa was Samurai.” -- Tamaki Patricia Ishihara to her son.
His code of conduct:
Benevolence and compassion in taking care of and protecting people.
1. Respect
2. Justice
3. Honesty
4. Honor
5. Loyalty
6. Sincerity
7. The Courage to conduct your life by the first principles.
8. 良い例 Some say there might be an 8th Virtue: To set a good example.
http://www.thebushidocode.com/loyalty.html
BUSHIDO: originally... to serve
Following Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan drew on its strong sense of honor, discipline and devotion to community–in order to rebuild itself and reemerge as one of the world’s greatest economic and industrial powers. https://www.history.com/topics/japan/samurai-and-bushido
The unwritten Samurai code of conduct, known as Bushido, held that the true warrior must hold that loyalty, courage, veracity, compassion, and honor as important, above all else. An appreciation and respect of life was also imperative, as it added balance to the warrior character of the Samurai.
Though some scholars have criticized Nitobe’s work as romanticized yearning for a non- existent age of chivalry, there’s no question that his work builds on extraordinary thousand-year-old precepts of manhood that originated in chivalrous behavior on the part of some, though certainly not all, samurai. What today’s readers may find most enlightening about Bushido is the emphasis on compassion, benevolence, and the other non-martial qualities of true masculinity.
Here are Bushido’s Eight Virtues as explicated by Nitobe:
I. Justice
Bushido refers personal justice, is one of it’s central virtues, one’s power to decide upon a course of conduct in accordance with reason, without wavering. Without justice neither talent nor learning can make samurai.’
II. Courage
Bushido distinguishes between bravery and courage: Courage is worthy of being counted among virtues only if it’s exercised in the cause of Justice. Confucius said: ‘Perceiving what is right and doing it not reveals a lack of Courage.’ In short, ‘Courage is doing what is right.’
III. Benevolence or Mercy
Love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, are traits of Benevolence, the highest attribute of the human soul. Both Confucius and Mencius would have said the highest requirement of a teacher is Benevolence.
IV. Politeness
Courtesy is rooted in benevolence: Courtesy and good manners have been noticed by every foreign tourist as distinctive Japanese traits. But Politeness should be the expression of a benevolent regard for the feelings of others. The highest form Politeness approaches love.
V. Honesty and Sincerity
Bushido encouraged thrift, not for economical reasons so much as for the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace, and severe simplicity was required of samurai.
VI. Honor
The sense of Honor, a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth, characterized the samurai, who were born and bred to value the duties and privileges of their profession. Fear of disgrace hung like a sword over the head of every samurai ... True patience means bearing the unbearable.’
VII. Loyalty
Only in the code of chivalrous Honor does Loyalty assume paramount importance.
VIII. Character and Inner Discipline
Bushido teaches that we should behave according to the highest moral standard, those that transcends logic. It is our obligation to teach children moral standards through the model of our own behavior: The first objective of samurai education was to build up Character. The subtler faculties
of prudence, intelligence, and dialectics were less important. Intellectual superiority was esteemed, but knowledge is nothing without action. Choosing compassion over confrontation, and benevolence over belligerence, teachers, samurai demonstrate ageless qualities.
Tim Clark blogs at Soul Shelter with novelist Mark Cunningham and is the author of The Swordless Samurai. https://acelebrationofwomen.org/2017/03/the-bushido-code-the-eight-virtues-of-the- samurai/
Master sword smith Gassan Sadatoshi at 5:36
This presentation on Kendo: The Principles of the Sword by Tusha Buntin contains the best perspective of Gassan Sadatoshi forging a samurai sword.
How to experience the Japanese martial art of kendo. Click HERE.
