Secrets of the Samurai - Oscar Ratti

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the clans of the emperor and the nobles (kobetsu), known as the Imperial Branch, while the second included the Divine Branch, or clans of other, less specified subjects (shimbetsu). Both groups of clans claimed the same divine origins, tracing these back to two divinities, Izanagi and Izanami, but the kobetsu tribes reportedly coalesced “when the sun came into being,” while the shimbetsu tribes took shape “when the lower forces of nature were evolved” (Brinkley2, 5). According to a prevalent school of thought, it seems that “the invaders of Japan, in the sixth century before the Christian era, found the islands already inhabited by men of such fine fighting qualities that mutual respect grew out of the struggle between the two, and the vanquished received in the new hierarchy a position little inferior to that assumed by the victor” (Brinkley2, 182-83). Below these two major groups of noble tribes was the “mass of the people” forming the Foreign Branch (bambetsu). Every claun belonging to a particular tribe seemed to embrace both direct and indirect (lateral and collateral) descendants from the same ancestors, and their original bond was, accordingly, one of blood. Like the ancient Chinese clan (tsu), the Japanese uji developed its kinship ties into territorial bonds which were primarily related to the countryside and villages in a certain vicinity. Although the clan had a strict relationship to (almost an identification with) rural groups of people descended from common ancestors, its basic pattern of structure and functionality was quite smoothly and effectively adapted to town and city life, where it blended with, and reinforced, other forms of organizations, such as professional guilds and corporations. Kinship and territoriality, whatever their basis, seem also to have found their primary spiritual expression in a religicous cult centered upon a clan’s ancestors and upon the latter’s origins. Each clan, therefore, worshiped its own deities (uji-kami) and strove to impose them upon others, as appears evident from the progressive encroachment and eventual primacy of the solar cult of the Yamato clan.

      In structure, each clan consisted of a central, dominating house or family, which gave the clan its name, and various affiliated units known as tomo or be. Other categories of subjects also appear, confusedly, in the records, between those two classes of clansmen and the serfs or slaves known as yakko at the very bottom of the ladder (who bore no family name). All were subject to the power of a headman (uji-no-osa), who was the absolute and undisputed leader and master of the clan. This interesting figure seems to have played a predominant role in determining the direction and function of clan life. Originally a military leader, as indicated by the references to an invasion from continental Asia, he seems to have subsequently evolved into a hierarchical representative of, and link to, the divinity. As military skill, following the natural process of specialization of functions and roles in an age of settlement, was increasingly delegated to sub-leaders, the particular capacity to contact the gods, reveal mysteries, and appease the forces of heaven through invocations (norito) and an intricate liturgy (matsuri) became the primary role and function of the highest clan leaders and, to a supreme degree, of the emperor. This religious character, it should be noted at this point, eventually became one of the most salient expressions of power and privilege. Every clan which was later allowed to develop, regardless of its particular raison d’être, found its highest justification and strength in the mystical powers of its leaders. A pattern of vertical, mystical supremacy was also apparent in those groups of people with special professional skills, such as earthenware-makers (suebe), carpenters (takumibe), and masons (ishizukuri-be), whether they endeavored to function alone or, as was more frequently the case, attached themselves to the major clans of the nobles. In the first case, the members of these professional guilds looked upon their own leaders as the repositories of an awesome professional knowledge, divinely inspired, which the leaders generally monopolized. In the second case, they and their professional leaders looked upon the clan headman, uji-no-osa, as the exclusive repository of an even more comprehensive type of knowledge, whose overtones of divine inspiration made it doubly potent politically. The most noted examples of the persistence to the present day of this mystic concentration of power are swordsmiths and masters of martial arts who refer, in their practices and teachings, to secret rituals and forms directly or indirectly related to the metaphysical dimensions of man’s existence. This element will appear over and over again as an important factor in the evolution of bujutsu.

      The clan, as a primary social unit, had achieved self-sufficiency through the cultivation of its own rice paddies and the production of its own artifacts, textiles, agricultural instruments, and, naturally, weapons. From the very beginning, the history of these clans was not one of peaceful coexistence. The archaic weapons found in the mounds and dolmens of the period from 250 B.C. to A.D. 560 indicate that, as was true during every other national age of formation, warfare was the predominant condition. By 600, these weapons were quite highly developed. Chinese records, compiled at the court of the Sui dynasty on the basis of testimonials given by Japanese envoys a century before the first written classic of the Japanese nation came into existence, related that “bows, arrows barbed with iron or bone, swords, crossbows, long and short spears, and armor made of lacquered hide constituted their warlike equipment” (Brinkley2, 105).

      Historians are still searching for other, more illuminating references to the five original kobetsu clans: the Otomo, the Kumebe, the Nakatomi, the Imibe, and the Mono-nobe, which are mentioned in the early records of the nation together with the clan of Emperor Jimmu, the Yamato. Eventually, this clan gained supreme but by no means unchallenged ascendancy over all the others. From its central hierarchy and from its descendants came the emperors who were to be titular heads of the nation, while its cult of the sun goddess, Amaterasu, overcame and absorbed all the other cults in the hitherto simple polytheistic worship of the age which is the root of Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan. Every major clan had its own cohorts of warriors, but three clans in particular seem to have been concerned with the art of combat and, therefore, with its traditional specializations. The Otomo, for example, were referred to as Great Escorts, the Kumebe as Military Corporations, and the Mononobe as Corporations of Arms, while the Nakatomi and the Imibe were linked to more specifically religious and political functions. It is not clear whether these military clans and their affiliated “corporations” (be) were independent units (as the feudal clans emerging from the provinces centuries later proved to be) or simply branches of the imperial clan through which it carried out its policies of expansion and centralization of power. Given the gradual but relentless consolidation of power by the Yamato clan, the second thesis seems more plausible. The very existence and specific compactness of these early military clans, however, clearly implies the existence of strong opposition and competition among various militant forces, in addition to the resistance provided by the alien Ainu at the ever receding frontiers.

      The clan, then, was the sum of the Japanese soul. Seligman, in fact, qualified the Japanese subject as being, throughout his long history, “essentially a clansman, with all the group feelings which a clan organization implies” (Seligman, 129). In such “group feelings” many historians find the first roots of a human commitment to force as the primary instrument for imposing a new social entity, as well as for preserving the primacy of that social form. This commitment to the use of arms in developing the earliest structures of Japanese society seems to have been particularly intense—to the extent of actually relegating all the other features of their national psyche to a subordinate position even when the necessity for fighting in defense of clan interests ceased to be an overriding one. In his observations concerning the Japanese character, Seligman wrote that “fighting came to him so naturally that when, as was generally the case, there was no outside enemy, clan fought against clan and district against district, so that the greater part of Japanese history, at least up to the Tokugawa times, is a series of civil wars” (Seligman, 129). The facility with which the Japanese resorted to armed and unarmed violence became identified, in the eyes of Western observers as well as in the eyes of the Japanese themselves, with his nature, with his interpretation of man’s role in reality, with his tradition. St. Francis Xavier (1506-52) was among the first Westerners to define them as “very warlike,” and centuries later, even such an aesthete as Okakura Kakuzo (1862-1913) still referred to them as “fierce warriors.”

      After the seventh century, with the adoption of the Chinese system of political centralization and recognition of the imperial court as the nucleus of an expanding and homogeneous nation, all clans provided soldiers for a unified army through a system of general conscription which, although widely despised, was the only possible answer

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