Bushido's Shifting Code: Kamakura Head-Hunters to Corporate Japan

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The polished image of the honorable samurai hides a far grittier past. In the Kamakura period, from the late 12th to the 14th century, there was no word bushido; warriors spoke of kyuba no michi, the way of the bow and the horse. They retreated when outmatched, used night raids and espionage, and sometimes practiced tsujigiri, testing a new sword on a random traveler at a crossroads. Before fighting they announced their names and ancestors to claim credit, and afterward washed, combed, and even made up enemy heads to present to their lord as proof for payment. In 1274 at Hakata Bay, Mongol formations ignored this etiquette entirely, and typhoons the Japanese called kamikaze, divine wind, wrecked the invasion fleets.

After the Tokugawa shogunate unified Japan in 1603, a warrior class with no wars was steered toward Neo-Confucian duty, Shinto loyalty, and Zen detachment from death, and the Buke Shohatto regulated samurai lives by law. The Meiji government abolished the samurai class after 1868, yet the idea grew stronger. The episode follows Bushido into militarism, the postwar boardroom, and the modern dojo.

• The Kashoki of 1642, one of the first texts to use the word bushido, was written in plain language for commoners.
• Nitobe Inazo, a Quaker married to an American, published Bushido: The Soul of Japan in English in 1899, likening samurai to European knights.
• Hideki Tojo's Senjinkun field code told soldiers never to suffer the shame of capture, and the old word kamikaze was given to suicide pilots.
• The postwar ideal of seihin, honorable poverty, helped keep the gap between Japanese executives and factory workers far smaller than in the United States.
• Former Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui credited the Bushido spirit he learned in youth as the base of his leadership.