I remember reading from a history book about Japan a few years back about how Zen Buddhism turned Japanese samurai into powerful, fanatical warriors. I don't know how fighting fits in with Buddhism, other than them using Zen Buddhism. If you know anything about how it works Paladin, I'd be interested to know.
Hi Saltmeister —
I can recommend Karl F. Friday with Seki Humitake,
Legacies of the Sword: The Kashima-Shinryu and Samurai Martial Culture (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997).
Two things:
The influence of Zen on the warrior tradition has been greatly exagerated, at the cost of other influences. It was there, but well over 90% of sword engravings are of Shinto origin, rather than Zen, and the influence of Shingon and Mikkyo Buddhism is far, far greater than Zen during the centuries of conflict (9th-16th).
The great sword schools (Kashima Shinto Ryu, Kashimna Shinryu, Muso Shinden Ryu) are all attached to Shinto Shrines.
By 1600 a 'final conflict' (Sekigahara) established the Tokugawa shogunate and a peace of sorts was established after centuries of civil war. Miyamoto Mushashi, author of
The Book of Five Rings, was wounded at Sekigahara. It was his first and only large-scale battle. His reputation was forged on individual combat.
Never a favourite of mine, sadly. I rather prefer Kamiizumi Nobutsuna (Shinkage Ryu) and his students, notably the Yagyu family. They were battlefield samurai. (Yagyu Munenori is the only attested account of a samurai swordsman in armour, taking out other men in armour, a tremendously difficult feat despite what the movies would have you believe. He was an escort of the Shogun, over a mile behind the lines, when ambushed by a raiding party. He cut down seven men single handed before his comrades had even recovered their wits... )
Prior to this the Way of the Warrior was the 'Way of Horse and Bow' — the classical samurai image is of a mounted archer, and the spear was the queen of the battlefield (rapidly being replaced by firearms). The sword, although esteemed, had not yet attained its near-mythical prestige.
Battles were a thing of the past, but the risk of personal attack from friend and enemy was ever-present in the infighting at local level. The mafia has nothing on these guys for schemes, betrayals and dirty-dealing ... and their sense of honour and insult was so highly attuned as to be hysterical. This was the age of the proliferation of sword schools and the development of technique went on apace ... the majority of techniques assumed civilian attire, and fights not on the battlefield ... but already the peacetime samurai was becoming something of a bureaucrat and a scholar... this was the age when they turned their minds to Zen study.
The value of Zen was for its psychological training, and Karl Friday's book is an expert commentary. But it was Shinto that forged the warrior tradition, Shingon and Mikkyo that gave it its mystique, and Zen that added a gloss of culture, as well as some very useful psychodynamic mind/body training tips.
Thomas
("Cut-'em-down Tom" in his day, sandan, Muso Shinden Ryu)
