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Old 12-25-2012, 08:24 PM   #10
Tom Verhoeven
Dojo: Aikido Auvergne Kumano dojo
Location: Auvergne
Join Date: Aug 2011
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Re: Double standards

Quote:
Christopher Li wrote: View Post
Well, Saito Setsudo (Shido Yoron) was another late Tokugawa Confucian scholar who had some romantic ideas about the samurai - without ever having really experienced battle. Like Nitobe, he also turned towards the West later on. There's nothing wrong with his ideas, some of them are quite nice, but I wouldn't take them as standard practice for the samurai class in Japan.

Going back to the original post - I'll agree that double standards are not usually a nice idea, does anyone really disagree with that? But of course, since people may disagree about whether double standards are being applied or not, without a specific example the question is kind of meaningless...

Best,

Chris
Who said anything about the ideas in Shido Yoron as being standard practice for the Samurai?

The term "romantic" does not apply here. Saito Setsudo was a neo-confucian scholar with some very well formulated ideas. Quite a number of budoka still find his words inspiring.
If you do not agree with his ideas then do try to come up with some understandable counterarguments.
It is true that he had no battle experience - and how is this relevant? How much samurai battle experience do you have?

Tom
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