Soldiers and Swords

THIS week in one of my classes, one of my students mentioned, as part of a report on the press history of Japan, a bit of trivia. She mentioned that of those Japanese who survived the sinking of the Titanic, their countrymen said they were cowards. Some of that aforementioned class got that right away. Most didn’t.

Within the Japanese context, courage has its usual meaning – bravery. That inner strength to do one’s duty, pleasant or un. Deeper within that Japanese construct, there is a caste system and a warrior class much written of and revered. In a particular period of Japanese history, there is the legendary samurai. The samurai are legendary for their code of honor, a code that includes the courage to do right by their liege lords, to serve them loyally and not to bring them shame.

Much is also written of the samurai sword, so well crafted and so pure and so well ritualized that is sings. The samurai and his sword are the stuff of legend, most recently and yet again immortalized by Keanu Reeves and company in the movie 47 Ronin. That final scene is to die for, pun intended. The ronin are restored to samurai status for having lived by the code of the warrior, Bushido, even as they are ordered to commit ritual seppuku, and die with honor intact. Yes, the stuff of legend, the stuff of

romance.

The bit of trivia mentioned by my student necessitated a whole explanation against which the bit of trivia could be understood and then appreciated. The class had to be introduced to the word seppuku and its attendant construct. Why a second is part of that construct, even. All to understand why it could be that Japanese could indeed laugh at countrymen who had survived the Titanic.

That day of that report, our very own Senate was grilling a top soldier. In class, I avoided talking about that grilling, even if it did organically come up, because within the construct of soldiers who fall on their swords to do the honorable thing, we just suffer too much by comparison, fair or unfair.