Lords of the Samurai

[Mark]

Art review: 'Lords of the Samurai'
Kenneth Baker, Chronicle Art Critic

Saturday, June 13, 2009

"Lords of the Samurai," which opened Friday at the Asian Art Museum, evokes a martial ethos completely antithetical to the remote-controlled carnage of today's high-tech warfare.

The samurai of premodern Japan belonged to a social order in which the cultivation of martial virtue did not preclude but encouraged cultivation of artistry in other disciplines such as calligraphy, painting and the composing of poems.

The core precepts: that as guardians of civil order, samurai ought to internalize something of their culture's highest accomplishments, and that the ideal of an honorable death implied that of a worthy life.

In a catalog essay, Takeuchi Jun'ichi, director of the Eisei-Bunko Museum in Tokyo, from which most of the exhibition comes, recounts an extraordinary incident of the emperor's intervention to end a battle that jeopardized the life of the daimyo, or warlord, Hosokawa Yusai.

Head of the Hosokawa clan at the time, Yusai (1534-1610) was probably the only man in Japan at the time with full knowledge of a canonical poetry anthology and of an orally transmitted esoteric commentary upon it. This knowledge, probably more than his hereditary prerogatives and his military and civil achievements as daimyo, argued for his life being spared.

Takeuchi speculates that even the attackers besieging Yusai's castle, aware of the knowledge he embodied, feared to prosecute their full strategic advantages, hopeful for some resolution that would preserve the cultural treasure he personified.

Can we imagine anything parallel occurring in the modern world of military affairs? Just think back to the fate of the Baghdad Museum this century.

rest at

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...DDFG183SDA.DTL

[Michael]

Darth Vader was a Samurai in the 18th century.

Seriously, I've found a lot of interesting old pictures from 19th century Japan on Flickr. Some of the Samurai photos are accompanied by a standard declaration that the Samurai had very close relationships with their boy retainers. I've never heard that before and don't know what to make of the claim, so I would prefer not to link to those pictures (not wishing to promote what for all I know is nonsense).

Still, we can actually catch glimpses of ancient Japanese society in 19th century photographs because the nation was still in transition at the time. A fair number of flickr contributors have uploaded scans of old Japanese photos (probably offering them for sale in many cases).