Hi Phil, first I must say that I see much more effort going into making your posts understandable. Thank you for that. It is also evident that you are reading quite a bit. That is always a good thing.
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Philip Burgess wrote:
FWIW, because this really is a burr under my horse's saddle blacket. The comment I would like to make on Nitobe's view of bushido being “FUNDAMENTALLY false and misguided” isn’t a new view. It has been a view for now what 20 years which was born out of the internet. It is an internet vogue thingy started by those who are non-Japanese directed to those who are not Japanese.
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I am afraid that this is just not true. There are works in Japanese that discuss this book, and that come to much the same conclusions, and well before the internet came into "vogue", or for that matter, even existed.
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What I am saying the modern Japanese didn't go around and make an effort to debunk it.
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I'll post a link to a thread below which will list some possible sources to check out that should show this to be false.
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I think they too used it as a model for something they really consciously didn't understand. In my copy of Nitobe's book it said in the preface that Nitobe was arguing morality and ethics between Japan and Europe. And somewhere down the line that was totally missed on a lot of people thinking he was defining bushido rather using an abstract instrument in contrast to European chivalry codes of morals and ethics to relate Japanese ethics and morals in his argument. I think you need to look at Nitobe's book in this way, and not as a guide to bushido as other much older books on bushido that the Japanese took seriously.
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I think this is probably a valid way to read that book, and in any case, opinions on the same book differ often enough where to me, it's not worth debating.
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IMO, Nitobe's book taken as I discribed it to be should not be argued if it is or isn't a defining model of bushido. If someone wants a model I can suggest what I do. You look at the Japanese solider of today to be the closed thing. Why because bushido was practiced and subscribed to by soilders, not martial artists, not ryu's etc. but the solider back than who put a weapon in his hand and marched upon that field following orders to fight, and expecting not to live to see the next day. Don't look at martial artists, because what we are, are artists after all. FWIW.
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I think there are several issues with this last statement, but those are addressed on other posts, so I'll leave to the gentle reader to decide.
Best,
Ron (the thread I was speaking of can be found here:
http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthre...ghlight=nitobe)
PS, it should also be noted that this book was orinally written in English, and later translated into Japanese...