The Scorpion's Tale
Don't Drop The Soap
What’s interesting when reading the biographies of many Japanese masters is how many proudly proclaim to be descended from the samurai. It almost seems to be a prerequisite for being a master. It is also notable how the samurai’s moral code of behaviour (as exemplified within Tashiro Tsuramoto’s Hagakure and Dr. Nitobe Inazo’s Bushido: The Soul of Japan) is one that many wannabe samurai of the East and the West seek to emulate in their training and daily lives.
But did you know that the samurai, from the highest to the lowest, were institutionally gay? And that the Hagakure and Bushido: the Soul of Japan were essentially fabrications?
Let’s start out with the gay samurai. There is ample evidence to suggest that men like Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokegawa Ieyasu, and even it is said, Musashi Miyamato, engaged in the samurai practice of forming a close emotional relationship with a boy. Prior to puberty, young boys would court the attentions of individual samurai, who would select their favourite whom they thought worthy. If the relationship developed, the samurai would engage in acts of sodomy and fellatio with their young pupils from between the ages of 13 and 18. When the apprentice came of age, the relationship became platonic and the samurai took on the role of mentor, while the pupil would turn around and continue the cycle with a young boy of his choice.
This bond was considered more important than forming a close emotional and sexual relationship with a woman. Obviously, the samurai did form relationships with women and have children.. But this usually occurred after their relationship with their young apprentice had ended. Women had no role to play in society other than to bear children and were thought to have had a feminizing effect upon both the child and the man; it was even believed that their menstrual cycle played havoc with a young man’s spiritual development! Yet, at the same time, the samurai encouraged their young lovers to dress and wear makeup so as to appear to be young girls.
Nanshoku (male love) Bi-do or the beautiful way, or Wakashudo, the way of youth or young men, (shudo for short), evolved from the sexual practices of Buddhist monks with young boys and was first introduced to the nobility and samurai when Kukai, founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, returned from China in the 9 th Century. (China had a well-established homoerotic tradition; there were even gay marriages.) Buddhism, like Taoism, has many sexual esoteric practices which include penile and anal stimulation as well as breathing and visualization techniques by which to increase sexual energy and prolong sexual activity. For example, they practiced semen retention in order to channel sexual energy to the brain, by pressing on the point between the anus and scrotum. It was thought that the semen would be redirected up the spine to the brain itself; those who practiced this technique never realized that the semen was simply redirected to the bladder. Buddhism, along with Confucianism, had a profound influence upon the culture and thinking of the nobility and samurai class since its introduction into Japan, so it’s hardly surprising that the sexual practices of Buddhist monks with young boys were both accepted and practiced by the samurai.
Indeed having an erotic relationship with an adolescent male was considered to be more passionate and noble than heterosexual love, to the point that the young male body was seen as an expression of perfect aesthetic form and was the object of adoration, more desirable than the female form. The emotional, sexual and educational bond that existed between an old samurai and his young apprentice was revered and encouraged by the samurai class. Such practices flourished between the 12 th and 17 th centuries, a prolonged period of war, and gradually went into decline during the enforced peace of the Tokugawa era, and more rapidly so when missionaries and Western merchants entered Japan.
It was through this intimate bond that the samurai’s customs, beliefs, aesthetics, and practices including the martial, were upheld and passed from one generation to the next. The practice of butching up boys through homoerotic practices/rituals with older warriors so as to boost fighting spirit, loyalty, bravery, morality and valour etc. is nothing new in the annals (no pun intended) of history, from the ancient Greeks to the ferocious, ruthless Melanesian headhunters of New Guinea. (The latter remove young boys from their mothers from between seven and fourteen to live in bachelor houses, where their ‘uncles’ force them to engage in rituals of fellation and anal sex. They believe that semen contains the essence of masculinity, and so by regularly passing it on both orally and anally, they increase their young charges’ masculinity.) Now you could postulate the reasons why the samurai, like the Greeks and headhunters of New Guinea, engaged in genital bonding with adolescent males until the cow jumps over the moon. But the important thing for me is that what I previously believed to be the foundation upon which Japanese budo stood (namely the transmission of the compendium of all successful combative knowledge of a ryu from one generation to the next through the close relationship that existed between master and pupil), was in fact inspired by ultra macho gay warriors with pedophilic and transvestite tendencies.
Still want to be a samurai?
Let’s turn to the Bushido. This code of behaviour, by which it is said that the samurai lived and died, comes down to us principally through two texts. One is the Hagakure, written by Tashiro Tsuramoto who compiled the stories and teachings of Yamamoto Tsunetomo. The other is Dr. Nitobe Inazo, author of Bushido, the Soul of Japan. The Bushido was used for propaganda and indoctrinational purposes by the Japanese military and ultra-nationalists from the end of the nineteenth century to the end of the Asian Pacific War. It has also been willingly swallowed, hook line and sinker, by millions of wannabe samurai both in Japan and in the West, ever since.
But the Bushido is a lie. Here, briefly, is why.
The musket was introduced by Portuguese adventurers at Tanegashima Island in 1543 and was subsequently put to successful tactical and strategic usage by Oda Nabunaga at the Battle of Nagashiro in 1575. Nabunaga’s Christian convert musketeers in ranks of three, protected by wooden palisades and firing from a superior position, wiped out the northern cavalry of Takeda Katsuyori, thereby setting a precedent for battles to come. These were to be battles in which the samurai, irrespective of his battlefield experience and skills, could be shot down like a dog by a conscript armed with a musket and with only six months training in its tactical usage.
The realization of this failure would have undoubtedly caused many samurai to reconsider not only their role as warriors but also the purpose of their martial skills and practices. This tendency would have become most marked during the Tokugawa Era (1603-1867/8). Following the defeat of those armies loyal to Toyotomi Hideyori (son and designated heir to Toyotomi Hideyoshi) at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and the wiping out of the Toyotomi clan in 1615, Tokegawa Ieyasu set about laying the foundation of a military government run along neo-Confucian lines that would last over 250 years. Strict controls were placed upon the activities of the Daimyo and their retainers, and the emphasis was placed upon literature, the arts, filial duty and social decorum according to the doctrines of Chu His rather than on things martial. There were also bans on duelling. As a result of this period of enforced peace and isolation (not only from the rest of the world but from each other, the majority of the samurai changed from warriors into wimps.
By the time of the Sonno Joi movement (‘revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians’) in response to the arrival of Commodore Matthew Galbraith Perry in 1853-4 and the threat by Western powers to carve up Japan much as they had done in China by the use of force if necessary, the majority of samurai had become effete and indolent due to lack of combative experience and realistic martial practices. This point applies even to those of the Tozama (outside) domains who were considered more warrior-like than their Fudai (urban) counterparts. And although attempts were made to revive the fighting spirit of the samurai through the practice of martial arts, you can’t put back in a few months or even years what has taken 250 years to remove.
It is notable that those Kiheitai (surprise units) of Choshu that took on the Tokugawa forces and the British were not made up exclusively of samurai; far from it. Rather they were manned by those more spirited individuals of the lower classes. This is something of which Yamagato Aritomo, principle architect of the Imperial Army who had commanded a Kiheitai unit, was undoubtedly aware when he introduced universal conscription during the Meiji Era; he drew on the commoners to form his army. Like Oda Nabunaga, he was aware that even a battle-hardened samurai was no match for a conscript armed with a rifle and trained in Western methods.
Not that the antiquated weapons, fighting skills and training methods of the samurai were completely worthless in the light of modern war. In simplified forms these quasi-disciplines could still be used to invoke in their practitioners the warrior ethos (as popular fiction and indoctrination as those had practiced them believed it to be). In this way, the rank and file of Japan were to be made more spiritually ready to sacrifice their lives on the battlefields of Asia for their emperor and blindly obey the commands of their superiors, no matter how immoral.
It is true that at the beginning of the Tokugawa Era those more combatively oriented samurai turned their energy towards personalizing their combative skills and testing them in duels against those of like mind, whilst others through more austere practices of the martial arts directed their energies towards more spiritual goals; i.e., the vanquishing of their self rather than their enemy. However, it is also true that as peace became the norm and duelling less frequent, the martial practices of the samurai, many of whom had become bureaucrats, administrators and educators, became more concerned with the punctilious detail of the aesthetics of a skill; this was typical of all art forms within the Tokugawa. The forms which had once represented the combative experiences of the men who practiced them became nothing more than flamboyant displays in which the performer somehow managed to convince himself as well as those who followed him that the forms were a viable means of preparing for combat, somehow conveniently forgetting that form is a consequence of combative experience and not the other way round. Form can’t replace the actual experience of combat; it can only reflect it.
As the Tokugawa Era of enforced peace progressed and the duelling ban took hold, those who remembered real combat were no longer alive. Increasingly the samurai began to draw on and glorify the folklore images of their warrior ancestors as they believed or imagined them to have been, so as to give greater credibility to themselves who were in the main warriors in name only. They lived in a society in which they were at the top of the hierarchy in name, but in practice they had been disenfranchised by the merchant class.
One such warrior was Yamamoto Tsunetomo. He had never been to war or engaged in a duel, and his only experience of killing was performing executions. Following the death of his lord Nabeshima Mitsuhige, he even seems to have avoided committing suicide on the pretext of some law. Yamamoto retired and became a Buddhist monk, and the Hagakure was a compilation of the folklore that he told to his young samurai followers. Yamamoto’s fantasies about the samurai (particularly their willingness at the drop of a hat to die for their lord in battle or to commit ritual suicide upon his death), were recorded by one of his followers Tashiro Tsuramoto in the Hagakure (‘In the Shadow of Leaves’). In this eighteenth century work the only criticism of the samurai you will find was that having a male lover might distract you from your duties to your lord and master.
Although the Hagakure talks of such diverse topics as how to go about seeking revenge, wearing makeup, attacking one’s enemy, concealing a yawn, engaging in conversation, and the tea ceremony, its main thrust is about loyalty. This is emphasized to the extent that if your master drops the stick he is using to beat you, you are to pick it up and give it back to him. You are to die for him in battle as well as commit suicide on his death. And all with utter stoicism.
The Hagakure’s is an interpretation of how the samurai ought to live as envisioned after a hundred years of enforced peace. It cannot be considered to be representative of the ethos of the medieval warriors. And as the doctrine of a member of a warrior class in peacetime, it must be remembered that the Hagakure is one man’s vision. As a Buddhist monk surrounded by young samurai in search of a group identity, Yamamoto was scarcely going to wax on about the barbarism of the real samurai, assuming he even knew about it. He was attempting to help his young charges get on in life and raise their self-esteem at a time when the samurai class was in decline. This was a neo-Confucian period. The emphasis had gone from literature and the pratice of martial arts to manners and social decorum according to your position on the social hierarchy. In the Rules for the Military Families, martial practices were no longer emphasized. Martial arts was irrelevant. This was the context in which the Hagakure was written.
Speaking of etiquette: amongst fighting men etiquette will always have its place, but it has to be understood what the reason for the etiquette is. The reason is that if you say the wrong thing or look at somebody the wrong way, you could end up in a fight—possibly to the death. It’s not etiquette for the sake of etiquette. It’s etiquette for the sake of avoiding unwanted conflict. But in the Tokugawa the role of etiquette came to be a way of supporting and enforcing a strict social structure: manners according to one’s ‘worth’ to one’s superiors in the hierarchy. As time went on, etiquette became a matter of establishing social controls rather than putting some necessary controls on a killer. And the obsession with hierarchy persists in the contemporary martial arts. The etiquette has survived, but the fighting man hasn’t.
But it is one thing to argue that the Hagakure was a misrepresentation of the medieval samurai’s ethos. It is another thing to consider the uses to which this early 18 th Century work would ultimately be put.
Following the fall of the Tokugawa regime, the samurai’s way of life was destroyed through land reforms, class restructuring, pension reforms and the loss of their exclusive right to bear arms following the introduction of universal conscription in 1873. Many samurai were left destitute and riots resulted, culminating in the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877 led by Saigo Takamori, which was brought to a close by Yamamoto Aritomo with his newly formed Imperial Army armed with rifles. Saigo, who could have been considered to have been the last of the real samurai, subsequently committed suicide.
The Hagakure remained obscure in the Nabeshima Clan for over a hundred years. When it surfaced, it was to be used by the Japanese military to promote the national identity/essence of Imperial Japan. Together with the Prussian military code, the Hagakure would be used to inspire and discipline new recruits in the Imperial Japanese Army.
The Hagakure was never intended to promote the superiority of the Japanese way, but the superiority of the samurai class and their way of living and dying compared to the other classes. Nitobe’s translation in his later book Bushido: The Soul of Japan is nationalistic; he talks about a ‘Japanese spirit.’ But Nitobe was writing at a time when Japanese nationalism was very high following Japan’s victories against China in 1894-5 and Russia 1904-5. This kind of interpretation was never intended in the original Hagakure.
The Hagakure, despite being a combination of misrepresentations and idealizations, has had a profound influence upon the lives of a great many people, both within Japan and in the West. For some reason, there are a lot of people out there who want to believe in the Bushido so much that they lose touch with both the reality of the historical samurai and the reality of their daily lives. One bizarre and tragic example of this phenomenon is the way that Hagakure’s preoccupation with death and honour found its way into the life and work of Japanese playwright and writer Mishima Yukio. An ultranationalist who wanted to see a return to the Emperor rule and rearmament of Japan, Mishima was obsessed not only with the Hagakure but with martial arts (he was graded in Kendo and JKA karate), bodybuilding, young men—and especially death (of the latter, he was even more obsessed, it would emerge, than Yamamoto). He even had his own private army (The Shield Society) who wore camp, Nazi-style uniforms (they looked like they were auditioning for ‘The Producers’). On 25 November 1970 Mishimi with some members of the Shield Society occupied the Tokyo headquarters of the self-defence corps. Mishima stood on a balcony and made a speech in which he urged those present to take part in a coup and restore Emperor rule. Humiliated when he failed to convince his jeering audience, he later retired to an office and, with the assistance of the members of the Shield Society, committed ritual suicide. (Though it took three attempts to sever his head from his body.)
Toshiro Tsuramoto’s Hagakure might have been a ‘fairy’ story, but nevertheless, like Dr. Nitobe Inazo’s fantasy about warrior saints, Bushido, the Soul of Japan, it was heavily used for propaganda and indoctrinational purposes by the Japanese military and ultranationalists from the end of the 19 th Century to the end of the Asian Pacific War so as to inculcate the belief in the Emperor system and the superiority of the Japanese way. And indeed, these two works are still being used by both Japanese and Western martial artists to promote the belief in the moral superiority of the samurai and their fighting skills, and even the moral superiority of the Japanese, their culture and way of life.
A brief examination of Dr. Nitobe Inazo (popularizer, though not inventor, of the term ‘bushido’) reveals that this author of Bushido: The Soul of Japan, was a member of a prominent samurai family, as well as an educator and Quaker with strong Christian values. There seem to be shades within his work of the muscular Christianity of Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes, two influential Englishmen whose work glorified war and saw the playing of field sports such as rugby in the public schools (Eton, Rugby) and boxing in working class clubs as a vehicle for advancing British Imperialism. They saw sport as a way of promoting Christian morality, health and fitness, and of turning boys into men with Christian values.
Kingsley and Hughes believed in patriotism, honour, daring, fairness, endurance, self-restraint, sportsmanship, loyalty, obedience, courage, discipline, and team spirit. Sound familiar? I’ll be talking about these very qualities in later writings with reference to karate and modern budo.
By borrowing some of these muscular Christian values, Nitobe and his co-writer Anna Harshorne (a Canadian) sought to give Westerners a more favourable view of Japanese culture. Bushido: The Soul of Japan depicts the medieval samurai as warrior-saints in the mold of Sir Thomas Malory, who wrote romantically about King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Malory’s 15 th Century vision of chivalrous Arthur and his holy knights is now seen as a quaint example of wishful thinking, yet Inazo’s work is still taken as gospel in martial arts circles.
In truth is far more likely that the medieval samurai would have resembled the Knights Templar of Europe; i.e., ruthless sadistic killers. The samurai lived in a dog-eat-dog age and were more likely to engage in surprise attacks or butcher the women and children of their enemy than to engage them in Hollywood-style hand-to-hand combat. The samurai lived in an age when the acquisition of land, usually by foul means rather than fair, meant rice. And rice meant wealth, which in turn meant bigger armies. And more power. Your only real loyalty was to the man from whom you anticipated you would reap the greatest reward, and you would probably switch allegiances if the reward was right. Sure, the samurai would have fought to the death, but only if they had no other choice. And yes, they would have committed suicide if capture would have meant being tortured and eventually executed. The glorification of suicide is probably linked to the 17 th Century law that prevented an executed man’s estate being passed on to his heirs, but this did not apply to those who committed suicide.
The code of behaviour of the samurai was only formalized during the Tokugawa era of peace, so it is impossible to know what it really was when it was in practical use. However, I personally believe it would have been more akin to those codes of behaviour and oaths of allegiance that bind together criminal organizations such as the Yakuza, Triads, Italian and Russian mafia, and inmates within prisons. Within these codes, if you step out of line, you face execution or mutilation. Nitobe makes the samurai sound like a bunch of boy scouts when in fact, from the highest to the lowest, they were cold-blooded killers.
What I find interesting is that the militarists, ultranationalists, fascists, criminal organizations and religious extremists who instigated and perpetrated those crimes against peace and humanity in Korea, Manchuria, China and Southeast Asia from 1895 to the end of the Asian Pacific war in 1945--men such as Yamagata Aritomo and Toyama Mitsura, leader of the Black Ocean Society--were more like their medieval samurai ancestors than those depicted by Yamamoto Tsumetomo or Dr. Nitobi Inazo. Yamagata and Toyama had both been involved in the assassination of Queen Min of Korea in 1895, who after being hacked and slashed by her killers, was then burnt alive. Men like Yamagata and Toyama had networks of assassins and spies drawn from their loyal Soshi (young stalwarts) all trained in the martial arts. But they didn’t corrupt the code of bushido, because it never existed. It only existed in the minds of Yamamoto and Nitobe, and those who were indoctrinated to believe in it, so that they would be willing to sacrifice their lives on the battlefields of Asia and obey the orders of their superiors.
The simple truth is that the samurai, apart from being cold-blooded killers, were heavily into pederasty and that the Bushido was an inaccurate representation of the medieval samurai, to the point of being virtually fictional. This is the unspeakable truth that very few martial artists want to admit to, let alone the Japanese, in that it not only undermines the very foundation upon which budo stands—i.e., the samurai and their way of life—but also that of the Japanese national identity. Much of the national identity of the Japanese has been drawn by the militarists and ultranationalists from the mythos of the samurai created by the Hagakure and Bushido: The Soul of Japan from the beginning of the twentieth century to 1945. And this ultranationalistic view of the samurai and the bushido has never been corrected. By contrast to post WWII Germany, where a program of re-education took place with regard to the myth of Aryan superiority, no such re-education program took place in Japan. The myths fostered by the militarists and ultranationalists have been allowed to continue to the present day, and have found a new foothold in the minds of Western martial artists.
People often talk of the corruption of the true bushido. But there was no such thing. I suppose the real corruption was of the youth of Japan, who were indoctrinated to believe in the divinity of the Emperor and the sacredness of the islands of Japan, the moral superiority of the Japanese and her institutions, and that it was their duty to bring the world under the guidance of the Emperor. And the problem with believing you are a morally superior human being or race, as history has shown, is that there is a strong likelihood you will kill your fellow man in order to achieve what you believe is the greater good (George W. Bush and his miniature poodle Tony Blair being the perfect examples).
If only in the 50s and 60s the Japanese film director Kurozawa Akira would have had the courage to show the actor Mifune Toshiro, famous for his rugged masculine samurai roles, in an erotic relationship with an adolescent male! Then the inspiration I gained from watching his heroes fight would not have led me to becoming interested in the Japanese martial arts and eventually travelling to and living in Japan. But having said that, if I’d had known of the heinous crimes committed by the Japanese in Korea, etc. and the relationship many Japanese masters had with ultranationalistic factions responsible for those crimes, and how the martial arts like karate were used in simplified forms to indoctrinate the youth of Japan into the Emperor system, then I would never have become interested in the Japanese martial arts at all. Why is it that things are never as you believe them to be? We always find out too late…but better late than never.
Now I know I’m going to be accused of being homophobic, but the truth is I’m not into male bonding in the showers, or having somebody wash my back in the communal bath, or doing a strip during a victory celebration. And you could argue that history is full of examples of sexual practices that would be frowned on today, but were tolerated in those times. But in the case of Ancient Greece, it’s well known what they were up to. I can study Greco-Roman wrestling and not get involved with the culture that surrounded it. But the mythos of the samurai is a moral one, and practitioners of the Japanese martial arts are expected to buy into this morality.
However, the morality being sold is one of Yamamoto and Nitobe, and even in the most generous interpretation, it comes from a time of peace—so what does it have to do with being a warrior?
But actually, the Bushido as interpreted by the Japanese militarists and ultranationalists of the 20th century was never to do with being a warrior. Its purpose was to inculcate the youth of Japan into a self-sacrificing state of mind. And we’ll see more about this in my later notes.
But while I am on the subject of morality, let me say one thing.
Interestingly, many martial artists today (I do not include those involved in the combative sports of MMA, boxing, Muay Thai, judo, wrestling, etc.) have much in common with the samurai of the Tokugawa Era. This is not surprising, as much of the method, rationale, and moral principles they have been taught were drawn from traditions of that period. These people were raised in a relatively non-violent, non-threatening environments and the majority of them can’t fight, yet nevertheless they engage in practices and boast of grades, titles, and accreditations which are meant to suggest that they can. They are always referring to fighting ability, deeds, and morality of the samurai of the past, as well as to the contemporary masters whom they believe also possess these qualities. And they are forever going on about the importance of moral behaviour and decorum within the dojo, life, and even in a fight.
This is true of none more than Harry ‘the moral educator’ Cook, who never misses a chance to take a dig at my character. When reading a Uechi-ryu forum in which the membership (none of whom know me) assassinated my character, I couldn’t help noticing that, after my corpse had been kicked around metaphorically by everyone present, Harry Cook jumped in to concur with what they’d said, and concluded with some cute quote about morality. Cook reminds me of one of Nitobe’s pious samurai, who were always ready to provide a haiku for any occasion! But at least Nitobe's samurai made up their own haiku. Cook just seems to have a handy quote for any occasion—doesn’t this guy ever think for himself?
I’m not into codes of allegiance and morality, and indeed this piece is more about hypocrisy than morality. But I am more likely to be persuaded by codes that are the consequence of engaging in punishing and challenging workouts and mentally and physically tough competition, either individually or in team sport, than by codes that are the result of engaging in some quasi-martial art discipline like karate. When it comes to deferential reverence, bowing before the portrait of some dead master and in unison reciting the dojo kun that reflects the master’s personal moral beliefs, I can’t help but wonder how many Japanese during the Asian-Pacific War did just that, and then went on to commit the well-documented atrocities that they did.
When I talk about hypocrisy, I’m not just talking about the Japanese. There are plenty of masters (both Japanese and Western) walking around today who have got more than one skeleton in their cupboard that they wouldn’t want to have revealed. I know I’m not the only one who is aware of many cases in the martial arts of moral degradation of every stripe, by people who are instructing others in moral codes.
I’ve made no secret of the fights I’ve gotten into. I’ve done some bad things to guys, but beyond that I’m clean. If anything, my fucking integrity has ruined my financial life! Why my character is being assassinated whilst a blind eye is being turned to the despicable activities of these other guys, I can’t understand. But again: it’s one of those unspeakable truths nobody wants to talk about because nobody wants to rock the Good Ship Lollipop.
As a martial artist I should be concerned with the practical value of a move or a training method, and not be influenced by somebody’s color, creed, or sexual preference. But I feel I’ve been sold a lie by the Japanese, along with many others, about the samurai and the bushido. Sure, I have my personal prejudices; who doesn’t? But the greater prejudice, I feel, lies with those who have kept the truth about the samurai a secret and perpetuated the myth of the Bushido. And it’s understandable why they lied—if they had told the truth, a lot of people would have felt exactly the way I do. The myth of the samurai is the basis of much of the martial art community. Without it, what’s left?
I know I should have a more enlightened view on such matters. But I’m sorry. When I discovered that the samurai were gay, as a high-testosterone heterosexual male, the image of what I believed the samurai to be was shattered. My view of a warrior was not someone who shared his bed with another male, let alone a boy—quite the contrary. But that’s what many warriors did throughout history. It just shows you how wrong you can be.
Why would these ultra-macho males want to dress boys up as girls? It’s speculation, but one answer is simple misogyny, a way of enforcing male-dominated hierarchies and keeping women out of the picture entirely, except for breeding purposes. Most of these men wouldn’t have been biologically homosexual. Statistics are against this. In other words, they were homosexual by nurture, not by nature.
So in order to get around the problem in a warrior society, and to keep men from being distracted by women, the bonds (including sexual) would have needed to be all male. Fighting side by side, having allegiances to each other, and even dying for someone you loved—the ultimate esprit de corps. On the battlefield, this would have been very powerful. But by today’s standards, conditioning a boy in this way is nothing short of abuse.
I believe that really we’re talking about an expression of dominance hierarchies. The monkey on top buggering the submissive monkey below, to keep him in line. And the one on the bottom can’t wait to get his chance to do the same. It’s the ultimate dominance of a male—he’s turned his fellow male into a female. It takes place in prisons. It seems to be something in our species, and it’s very base. It’s impossible to know exactly what the samurai got up to in their homosexual relationships. It isn’t stretching the imagination to suppose that there would probably have been much rivalry over the prettiest of the boys. Whilst some samurai would have sought to form close emotional relationships with those boys they selected,. others would have been promiscuous. And some, just as we see within the prison communities today, would have simply taken who they wanted.
At best, it was a form of gay love. At worst, it was abuse.
The question for me becomes, what part of this samurai do I want to empathize with? How can I cut out the sex side and keep the rest? It’s all of a piece. And I have to ask, when I read of the ‘love of one’s master’ what does that really mean? What’s its origin? Well, we know what its origin is. It might have changed since then, but the hierarchy remains. ‘Beatings with loving kindness’. What the fuck?
So what’s the solution if you’re a martial artist and you have a view not unlike mine? My advice is to stay away from the past, ditch your traditions, and concentrate on what currently works (i.e. MMA). And whatever you do…never drop the soap!
