SDHF Newsletter No.195 KO BUNYU’s Defining History 5

KO BUN’YU’S DEFINING HISTORY
A macroscopic analysis of the differences among the histories of
East Asian nations: Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea
No.5- Chapter 4 Japanese History: Progress Without Murder

December 22, 2017

Over 16,000 years of the Jomon period, Japan did not develop a culture of murder.
Of course, there were wars in Japanese history. Even during imperial succession, there were occasional battles, the largest of them was the Jinshin War, which erupted in AD 672. But it was small in scale and random killing was officially prohibited. This Japanese battle pales in comparison with, for example, the huge and extremely brutal war of succession of the second Emperor of the Tang dynasty, which took place in 626.
The author presents a unique point–that Bushido would never have come into being if Japan had not been at peace, which may seem, at first glance, contrary to conventional wisdom. But the fact is that while samurai kept Japan at peace, a spiral turning to a favorable direction was at work, and Bushido became even stronger in a peaceful society. If the spiral had been broken from the outside and a great number of people were unjustly killed, Bushido would soon have disappeared.
Since warfare was the objective of the samurai, a casual glimpse makes one think that the existence of samurai and warfare were two sides of the same coin. In that case, one could conclude that the mere existence of samurai was harmful to peace because they destroyed peace and caused wars. But this is a simplistic conclusion.
While the samurai needed to be strong, they were also required to be kind. Since they had the power to kill, when Bushido, which restrains the samurai from meaningless killing, was created, the samurai’s objective became maintaining and preserving peace.

URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/1083/

PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/KO-BUNYU-No.4.pdf
Profile of Ko Bunyu: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/72_S3.pdf

Questions are welcome.

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact