Books by Oleg Benesch
Co-edited with Judith Vitale and Miriam Kingsberg Kadia
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An innovative examination of heritage politics in Japan, showing how castles have been used to re... more An innovative examination of heritage politics in Japan, showing how castles have been used to re-invent and recapture competing versions of the pre-imperial past and project possibilities for Japan's future. Oleg Benesch and Ran Zwigenberg argue that Japan's modern transformations can be traced through its castles. They examine how castle preservation and reconstruction campaigns served as symbolic ways to assert particular views of the past and were crucial in the making of an idealized premodern history. Castles have been used to craft identities, to create and erase memories, and to symbolically join tradition and modernity. Until 1945, they served as physical and symbolic links between the modern military and the nation's premodern martial heritage. After 1945, castles were cleansed of military elements and transformed into public cultural spaces that celebrated both modernity and the pre-imperial past. What were once signs of military power have become symbols of Japan's idealized peaceful past.
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Inventing the Way of the Samurai examines the development of the 'way of the samurai' - bushidō -... more Inventing the Way of the Samurai examines the development of the 'way of the samurai' - bushidō - which is popularly viewed as a defining element of the Japanese national character and even the 'soul of Japan'. Rather than a continuation of ancient traditions, however, bushidō developed from a search for identity during Japan's modernization in the late nineteenth century. The former samurai class were widely viewed as a relic of a bygone age in the 1880s, and the first significant discussions of bushidō at the end of the decade were strongly influenced by contemporary European ideals of gentlemen and chivalry. At the same time, Japanese thinkers increasingly looked to their own traditions in search of sources of national identity, and this process accelerated as national confidence grew with military victories over China and Russia.
Inventing the Way of the Samurai considers the people, events, and writings that drove the rapid growth of bushidō, which came to emphasize martial virtues and absolute loyalty to the emperor. In the early twentieth century, bushidō became a core subject in civilian and military education, and was a key ideological pillar supporting the imperial state until its collapse in 1945. The close identification of bushidō with Japanese militarism meant that it was rejected immediately after the war, but different interpretations of bushidō were soon revived by both Japanese and foreign commentators seeking to explain Japan's past, present, and future. This volume further explores the factors behind the resurgence of bushidō, which has proven resilient through 130 years of dramatic social, political, and cultural change.
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At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the vocabulary of civility and civilization is very... more At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the vocabulary of civility and civilization is very much at the forefront of political debate. Most of these debates proceed as if the meaning of these words were self-evident. This is where Civilizing Emotions intervenes, tracing the history of the concepts of civility and civilization and thus adding a level of self-reflexivity to the present debates. Unlike previous histories, Civilizing Emotions takes a global perspective, highlighting the roles of civility and civilization in the creation of a new and hierarchized global order in the era of high imperialism and its entanglements with the developments in a number of well-chosen European and Asian countries.
Emotions were at the core of the practices linked to the creation of a new global order in the nineteenth century. Civilizing Emotions explores why and how emotions were an asset in civilizing peoples and societies - their control and management, but also their creation and their ascription to different societies and social groups. The study is a contribution to the history of emotions, to global history, and to the history of concepts, three rapidly developing and innovative research areas which are here being brought together for the first time.
Authors: Margrit Pernau, Helge Jordheim, Orit Bashkin, Christian Bailey, Oleg Benesch, Jan Ifversen, Mana Kia, Rochona Majumdar, Angelika C. Messner, Myoung-kyu Park, Emmanuelle Saada, Mohinder Singh, and Einar Wigen
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Teaching Documents by Oleg Benesch
A virtual tour of Hiroshima Castle, examining the modern history of the site from the Meiji Resto... more A virtual tour of Hiroshima Castle, examining the modern history of the site from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to the present day. This video investigates the role of Hiroshima Castle as a military site, including the controversies over this heritage after 1945. We look at a range of historical artifacts that remain in and around Hiroshima Castle as witnesses to its modern past, including the concrete castle keep that was reconstructed in 1958.
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A virtual tour of Osaka Castle, examining the modern history of the site from the Meiji Restorati... more A virtual tour of Osaka Castle, examining the modern history of the site from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to the present day. This video investigates the role of the castle as a military and heritage site, including the reconstruction of the castle keep (tenshu) in 1931. We look at a range of historical artifacts that remain in and around Osaka Castle as witnesses to its modern past.
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A virtual tour of Himeji Castle in Western Japan, examining the modern history of the site from t... more A virtual tour of Himeji Castle in Western Japan, examining the modern history of the site from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to the present day. This video investigates a range of historical artifacts that remain in and around Himeji Castle as witnesses to its modern past.
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Papers by Oleg Benesch
The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 2024
For almost 150 years, the Yūshūkan military museum on the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine has been one... more For almost 150 years, the Yūshūkan military museum on the grounds of Yasukuni Shrine has been one of the most prominent tourist sites in Tokyo. Opened in 1882 as Japan’s first Western-style museum, the Yūshūkan is often seen as the emblem of the so-called “Yasukuni view of history,” which downplays Japanese militarism and imperialism and is at the heart of tensions with other nations. This study is the first dedicated treatment of the long history of the Yūshūkan from its conceptualization in the 1870s to its place in Japan and the world in the 2020s. It argues that the origins of the Yūshūkan should be seen in the context of the global spread of the military museum as an institution in the late nineteenth century. Over the past 140 years, the Yūshūkan has gone from appealing to an emerging global standard to claiming a Japanese uniqueness as justification for its existence and has always been closely intertwined with global discourses on war, commemoration, and Japan’s place in the world.
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Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan, 2023
Co-authored with Judith Vitale and Miriam Kingsberg Kadia
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Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan, 2023
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Nationalising the Crusades: Engaging the Crusades, Volume Eight, 2023
This chapter explores that the crusades were a significant concept in the social, religious, and ... more This chapter explores that the crusades were a significant concept in the social, religious, and cultural dynamics of the Meiji and Taisho periods, and influenced Japan's evolving relationship with the rest of the world. It further explores that consideration of the crusades in Japan should be seen as part of a response to, and participation in, a larger global medievalist moment that reached virtually all societies in some form in the decades before the First World War. The chapter focuses on the period from the broad dissemination of the concept of the crusades in Japan in the 1870s to the relative decline of the universal European medievalist model around the time of the First World War. It discusses Japan's engagement called the ‘global medievalist moment’ that began in the late nineteenth century, and considers how European models were entangled with the rediscovery and rehabilitation of Japan's historic samurai warriors.
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The Journal of Asian Studies, 2020
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The Visual Culture of Meiji Japan, 2022
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Sport in History, 2020
One of the longest-standing debates in the martial arts relates to their being either ‘sports’ or... more One of the longest-standing debates in the martial arts relates to their being either ‘sports’ or methods of self-cultivation. Traditionalists often ascribe unique spiritual characteristics to the martial arts, while criticising the ‘sportification’ of certain practices. In this view, the martial arts are seen to have declined from ancient ideals and become focused on ‘superficial’ competition and techniques. This paper argues that the supposedly intrinsic connection between martial arts and mental self-cultivation is largely a product of the last 150 years, and developed from the historical context of Japan’s modernisation in the late nineteenth century, as martial arts were codified while experiencing a powerful challenge from the arrival of Western sports. This dynamic was closely related to the development of the nationalistic ideology of bushido, the ‘way of the samurai’, which was frequently invoked by promoters of the martial arts. In this context, intangible elements such as ‘spirit’ were used by martial artists to include and exclude people along lines of gender, nationality, and ethnicity. This paper uses three Tokyo Olympics, 2020, 1964, and the cancelled 1940 games, to examine how the Japanese martial arts were ‘spiritualised’, and to consider the enduring legacy of imperial ideologies.
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The Asia-Pacific Journal, 2019
On October 31, 2019, a massive fire tore through the UNESCO World Heritage site of Shuri Castle i... more On October 31, 2019, a massive fire tore through the UNESCO World Heritage site of Shuri Castle in Okinawa, sparking a global reaction and comparisons with another World Heritage site. As in the case of Notre Dame, government officials immedicately declared their intention to rebuild, and donations flooded in from Okinawa, throughout Japan, and other countries. Shuri Castle is widely recognized as the symbol of the former Ryukyu kingdom. This article shows that the significance of Shuri Castle can only be fully understood by examining it in the context of castles in modern Japan. By understanding the commonalities and differences between Shuri Castle and mainland castles, we use the site as a tool to examine Okinawa's modern history. In spite of Shuri Castle's early origins and architecture differing somewhat from mainland Japanese castles, it was treated similarly to these other sites in the modern period. Like hundreds of other castles, Shuri Castle was taken over by the central government in the early Meiji period (1868-1912). Like dozens of other castles, Shuri Castle eventually became a garrison for the modern military. Like the castles at Nagoya, Hiroshima, Wakayama, Okayama, Ogaki, and Fukuyama, it was destroyed by US bombs in 1945. Like many other castles, it was demilitarized under the US Occupation and came to host cultural and educational facilities. The reconstruction of Shuri Castle from wood using traditional techniques in 1992 echoed similar projects at Kanazawa, Kakegawa, and Ōzu, as well as dozens of planned reconstructions. For many regions in Japan, castles have played a similar role to Shuri Castle, serving at times as symbols of connection to the nation, and at times as symbols of a local identity opposed to the often oppressive power of the central state. Examining the modern history of Shuri Castle as a Japanese castle can further complicate our understandings of the complex dynamics of Okinawa's relationship with Japan over the past 150 years.
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Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2018
Castles are some of Japan's most iconic structures and popular tourist destinations. They are pro... more Castles are some of Japan's most iconic structures and popular tourist destinations. They are prominent symbols of local, regional and national identity recognised both at home and abroad. Castles occupy large areas of land at the centre of most Japanese cities, shaping the urban space. Many castles have their roots in the period of civil war that ended in the early seventeenth century, and now house museums, parks and reconstructions of historic buildings. The current heritage status of Japan's castles obscures their troubled modern history. During the imperial period (1868–1945), the vast majority of pre-modern castles were abandoned, dismantled or destroyed before being rediscovered and reinvented as physical links to an idealised martial past. Japan's most important castles were converted to host military garrisons that dominated city centres and caused conflict with civilian groups. Various interests competed for control and access, and castles became sites of convergence between civilian and military agendas in the 1920s and 1930s. This paper argues that castles contributed both symbolically and physically to the militarisation of Japanese society in the imperial period. The study of these unique urban spaces provides new approaches to understanding militarism, continuity and change in modern Japan.
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Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, Jan 2015
The characterization of Japan as a martial country, as opposed to a China that emphasizes civil v... more The characterization of Japan as a martial country, as opposed to a China that emphasizes civil virtues, has colored views of the two societies for centuries. This was reinforced by apparent differences in their traditional governments, with Japan ruled by warriors while China was marked by a scholarly examination system. The underlying conception of a martial Japan was carried into the modern age, where it flowed into the emerging discourse on bushido, or “the way of the warrior,” which began to be popularized around the time of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Rather than a continuation of an ancient tradition or a manifestation of a “national character,” however, bushido is largely a modern invention, interpretations of which have tended to primarily reflect the conditions under which they were formulated. The samurai spirit has at times been credited for Japan’s economic success and technological progress, but also associated with militaristic imperialism.
In China, bushido, or wushidao, has played an important role in shaping views of Japan from the late nineteenth century onward, as the period of bushido’s greatest growth and popularization coincided with an unprecedented influx of Chinese students, reformers, and exiles to Japan. Chinese intellectuals credited bushido with driving the Meiji Restoration and subsequent reforms, while students at Japanese civilian and military schools were exposed to the pervasive bushido ideology. As relations between Japan and China worsened, attitudes towards wushidao became increasingly negative, although there remained a significant diversity among interpretations. Discourse on the subject declined in both Japan and China after 1945, but was revived in Japan in different forms relatively soon after the war. In China, interest in wushidao began to grow in the 1980s, and recent diplomatic tensions contributed to a tremendous increase in Chinese studies of the subject over the last two decades. Wushidao is often put forth as a possible explanation for supposedly “traditional” Japanese militarism, and is one of the most common themes in Chinese cultural and historical studies of Japan. By placing its examination of Chinese views into the broader historical context of bushido discourses in Japan and other countries, this study considers their influence and implications for reconciliation and inter-cultural relations.
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Abstract
The binary of martial and civil virtues (wen-wu) is one of the oldest and most pervasive... more Abstract
The binary of martial and civil virtues (wen-wu) is one of the oldest and most pervasive concepts in East Asian thought. This paper examines the transmission of Chinese wen-wu thought to Japan, and its subsequent independent development in that country. Whereas in China and Korea, primacy has traditionally been given to civil virtues over martial ones, the unique warrior-centered social and governmental structure that developed in Japan led its thinkers to more strongly emphasize the martial. As a result, at least in the context of wen-wu, many Japanese were willing to accept, rather than invert, the China/barbarian binary that marked continental interpretations. In comparison, many Japanese Confucians and related schools of thought had otherwise tended to revise ideas imported from China in ways that removed them from their source and relocated the moral center to Japan. The identification of Japan as the “martial country” and China/Korea as the “civil countries” came to be broadly accepted by intellectuals in all three societies. At the same time, the exact nature of Japanese “martiality” varied greatly among different thinkers, often to the extent that definitions of the concept could be polar opposites. This paper argues that it was this vagueness and flexibility of the wen-wu binary that ensured its continued prominence as the concepts were adapted to new situations, and further led to movements by Chinese and Korean thinkers to introduce Japanese martiality into their own nations around the turn of the twentieth century. In this process, Japanese bun-bu (wen-wu) theories were variously packaged with the teachings of Wang Yangming and the modern martial ethic of bushido (the way of the warrior), and this paper considers the roles of the reformers Liang Qichao and Pak Un-sik in the dissemination of bun-bu thought in China and Korea, respectively.
摘要
文、武二分法是東亞思想中最古老且最為普遍的概念之一。本文檢視中國文武思想傳至日本,及其在該國的後續獨立發展。「文」在中國和韓國傳統上位於「武」之上,居首位,而日本因發展出以武士為中心的獨特社會與政治結構,使其思想家特別強調「武」。因此,至少在文、武的脈絡下,許多日本人願意接受,而非轉化,標誌著大陸解釋的華夷之辨。相較而言,許多日本儒家及相關學派的思想卻傾向於將自中國傳入的思想以將其與源頭分離,並將道德中心重置於日本的方式,加以修訂。日本等同「武國」,中國和韓國等同「文國」為三個社會的知識分子廣泛接受。與此同時,各思想家對於日本「武」的真正內涵卻有極為不同的見解,其間的歧異往往到對該概念的定義可以完全相反的程度。本文主張,便是這種對文武二分法的含糊不清與彈性,確保其在適應新形勢時能持續突顯,並進而導致中國和韓國思想家於二十世紀初將日本的「武」介紹給其祖國的運動。在此過程中,日本的文武理論與王陽明的學說、武士道的現代武術倫理有各種不同程度的結合。本文分別討論改革家梁啟超和朴殷植於文武思想在中國與韓國傳布上的角色。
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Books by Oleg Benesch
Inventing the Way of the Samurai considers the people, events, and writings that drove the rapid growth of bushidō, which came to emphasize martial virtues and absolute loyalty to the emperor. In the early twentieth century, bushidō became a core subject in civilian and military education, and was a key ideological pillar supporting the imperial state until its collapse in 1945. The close identification of bushidō with Japanese militarism meant that it was rejected immediately after the war, but different interpretations of bushidō were soon revived by both Japanese and foreign commentators seeking to explain Japan's past, present, and future. This volume further explores the factors behind the resurgence of bushidō, which has proven resilient through 130 years of dramatic social, political, and cultural change.
Emotions were at the core of the practices linked to the creation of a new global order in the nineteenth century. Civilizing Emotions explores why and how emotions were an asset in civilizing peoples and societies - their control and management, but also their creation and their ascription to different societies and social groups. The study is a contribution to the history of emotions, to global history, and to the history of concepts, three rapidly developing and innovative research areas which are here being brought together for the first time.
Authors: Margrit Pernau, Helge Jordheim, Orit Bashkin, Christian Bailey, Oleg Benesch, Jan Ifversen, Mana Kia, Rochona Majumdar, Angelika C. Messner, Myoung-kyu Park, Emmanuelle Saada, Mohinder Singh, and Einar Wigen
Teaching Documents by Oleg Benesch
Papers by Oleg Benesch
In China, bushido, or wushidao, has played an important role in shaping views of Japan from the late nineteenth century onward, as the period of bushido’s greatest growth and popularization coincided with an unprecedented influx of Chinese students, reformers, and exiles to Japan. Chinese intellectuals credited bushido with driving the Meiji Restoration and subsequent reforms, while students at Japanese civilian and military schools were exposed to the pervasive bushido ideology. As relations between Japan and China worsened, attitudes towards wushidao became increasingly negative, although there remained a significant diversity among interpretations. Discourse on the subject declined in both Japan and China after 1945, but was revived in Japan in different forms relatively soon after the war. In China, interest in wushidao began to grow in the 1980s, and recent diplomatic tensions contributed to a tremendous increase in Chinese studies of the subject over the last two decades. Wushidao is often put forth as a possible explanation for supposedly “traditional” Japanese militarism, and is one of the most common themes in Chinese cultural and historical studies of Japan. By placing its examination of Chinese views into the broader historical context of bushido discourses in Japan and other countries, this study considers their influence and implications for reconciliation and inter-cultural relations.
The binary of martial and civil virtues (wen-wu) is one of the oldest and most pervasive concepts in East Asian thought. This paper examines the transmission of Chinese wen-wu thought to Japan, and its subsequent independent development in that country. Whereas in China and Korea, primacy has traditionally been given to civil virtues over martial ones, the unique warrior-centered social and governmental structure that developed in Japan led its thinkers to more strongly emphasize the martial. As a result, at least in the context of wen-wu, many Japanese were willing to accept, rather than invert, the China/barbarian binary that marked continental interpretations. In comparison, many Japanese Confucians and related schools of thought had otherwise tended to revise ideas imported from China in ways that removed them from their source and relocated the moral center to Japan. The identification of Japan as the “martial country” and China/Korea as the “civil countries” came to be broadly accepted by intellectuals in all three societies. At the same time, the exact nature of Japanese “martiality” varied greatly among different thinkers, often to the extent that definitions of the concept could be polar opposites. This paper argues that it was this vagueness and flexibility of the wen-wu binary that ensured its continued prominence as the concepts were adapted to new situations, and further led to movements by Chinese and Korean thinkers to introduce Japanese martiality into their own nations around the turn of the twentieth century. In this process, Japanese bun-bu (wen-wu) theories were variously packaged with the teachings of Wang Yangming and the modern martial ethic of bushido (the way of the warrior), and this paper considers the roles of the reformers Liang Qichao and Pak Un-sik in the dissemination of bun-bu thought in China and Korea, respectively.
摘要
文、武二分法是東亞思想中最古老且最為普遍的概念之一。本文檢視中國文武思想傳至日本,及其在該國的後續獨立發展。「文」在中國和韓國傳統上位於「武」之上,居首位,而日本因發展出以武士為中心的獨特社會與政治結構,使其思想家特別強調「武」。因此,至少在文、武的脈絡下,許多日本人願意接受,而非轉化,標誌著大陸解釋的華夷之辨。相較而言,許多日本儒家及相關學派的思想卻傾向於將自中國傳入的思想以將其與源頭分離,並將道德中心重置於日本的方式,加以修訂。日本等同「武國」,中國和韓國等同「文國」為三個社會的知識分子廣泛接受。與此同時,各思想家對於日本「武」的真正內涵卻有極為不同的見解,其間的歧異往往到對該概念的定義可以完全相反的程度。本文主張,便是這種對文武二分法的含糊不清與彈性,確保其在適應新形勢時能持續突顯,並進而導致中國和韓國思想家於二十世紀初將日本的「武」介紹給其祖國的運動。在此過程中,日本的文武理論與王陽明的學說、武士道的現代武術倫理有各種不同程度的結合。本文分別討論改革家梁啟超和朴殷植於文武思想在中國與韓國傳布上的角色。
Inventing the Way of the Samurai considers the people, events, and writings that drove the rapid growth of bushidō, which came to emphasize martial virtues and absolute loyalty to the emperor. In the early twentieth century, bushidō became a core subject in civilian and military education, and was a key ideological pillar supporting the imperial state until its collapse in 1945. The close identification of bushidō with Japanese militarism meant that it was rejected immediately after the war, but different interpretations of bushidō were soon revived by both Japanese and foreign commentators seeking to explain Japan's past, present, and future. This volume further explores the factors behind the resurgence of bushidō, which has proven resilient through 130 years of dramatic social, political, and cultural change.
Emotions were at the core of the practices linked to the creation of a new global order in the nineteenth century. Civilizing Emotions explores why and how emotions were an asset in civilizing peoples and societies - their control and management, but also their creation and their ascription to different societies and social groups. The study is a contribution to the history of emotions, to global history, and to the history of concepts, three rapidly developing and innovative research areas which are here being brought together for the first time.
Authors: Margrit Pernau, Helge Jordheim, Orit Bashkin, Christian Bailey, Oleg Benesch, Jan Ifversen, Mana Kia, Rochona Majumdar, Angelika C. Messner, Myoung-kyu Park, Emmanuelle Saada, Mohinder Singh, and Einar Wigen
In China, bushido, or wushidao, has played an important role in shaping views of Japan from the late nineteenth century onward, as the period of bushido’s greatest growth and popularization coincided with an unprecedented influx of Chinese students, reformers, and exiles to Japan. Chinese intellectuals credited bushido with driving the Meiji Restoration and subsequent reforms, while students at Japanese civilian and military schools were exposed to the pervasive bushido ideology. As relations between Japan and China worsened, attitudes towards wushidao became increasingly negative, although there remained a significant diversity among interpretations. Discourse on the subject declined in both Japan and China after 1945, but was revived in Japan in different forms relatively soon after the war. In China, interest in wushidao began to grow in the 1980s, and recent diplomatic tensions contributed to a tremendous increase in Chinese studies of the subject over the last two decades. Wushidao is often put forth as a possible explanation for supposedly “traditional” Japanese militarism, and is one of the most common themes in Chinese cultural and historical studies of Japan. By placing its examination of Chinese views into the broader historical context of bushido discourses in Japan and other countries, this study considers their influence and implications for reconciliation and inter-cultural relations.
The binary of martial and civil virtues (wen-wu) is one of the oldest and most pervasive concepts in East Asian thought. This paper examines the transmission of Chinese wen-wu thought to Japan, and its subsequent independent development in that country. Whereas in China and Korea, primacy has traditionally been given to civil virtues over martial ones, the unique warrior-centered social and governmental structure that developed in Japan led its thinkers to more strongly emphasize the martial. As a result, at least in the context of wen-wu, many Japanese were willing to accept, rather than invert, the China/barbarian binary that marked continental interpretations. In comparison, many Japanese Confucians and related schools of thought had otherwise tended to revise ideas imported from China in ways that removed them from their source and relocated the moral center to Japan. The identification of Japan as the “martial country” and China/Korea as the “civil countries” came to be broadly accepted by intellectuals in all three societies. At the same time, the exact nature of Japanese “martiality” varied greatly among different thinkers, often to the extent that definitions of the concept could be polar opposites. This paper argues that it was this vagueness and flexibility of the wen-wu binary that ensured its continued prominence as the concepts were adapted to new situations, and further led to movements by Chinese and Korean thinkers to introduce Japanese martiality into their own nations around the turn of the twentieth century. In this process, Japanese bun-bu (wen-wu) theories were variously packaged with the teachings of Wang Yangming and the modern martial ethic of bushido (the way of the warrior), and this paper considers the roles of the reformers Liang Qichao and Pak Un-sik in the dissemination of bun-bu thought in China and Korea, respectively.
摘要
文、武二分法是東亞思想中最古老且最為普遍的概念之一。本文檢視中國文武思想傳至日本,及其在該國的後續獨立發展。「文」在中國和韓國傳統上位於「武」之上,居首位,而日本因發展出以武士為中心的獨特社會與政治結構,使其思想家特別強調「武」。因此,至少在文、武的脈絡下,許多日本人願意接受,而非轉化,標誌著大陸解釋的華夷之辨。相較而言,許多日本儒家及相關學派的思想卻傾向於將自中國傳入的思想以將其與源頭分離,並將道德中心重置於日本的方式,加以修訂。日本等同「武國」,中國和韓國等同「文國」為三個社會的知識分子廣泛接受。與此同時,各思想家對於日本「武」的真正內涵卻有極為不同的見解,其間的歧異往往到對該概念的定義可以完全相反的程度。本文主張,便是這種對文武二分法的含糊不清與彈性,確保其在適應新形勢時能持續突顯,並進而導致中國和韓國思想家於二十世紀初將日本的「武」介紹給其祖國的運動。在此過程中,日本的文武理論與王陽明的學說、武士道的現代武術倫理有各種不同程度的結合。本文分別討論改革家梁啟超和朴殷植於文武思想在中國與韓國傳布上的角色。
After 1868, samurai and castles faced the new Meiji order as relics of the discredited old regime. Viewed as backward and “feudal” in an age of “civilization and enlightenment,” samurai and castles suffered similar fates in the 1870s and 1880s as victims of popular apathy and even resentment. The eventual rehabilitation of the popular image of the samurai was a long and complicated process. Influenced by Western, especially Victorian, ideals of gentlemanship and medieval chivalry, a number of Japanese thinkers proposed similar moral guidelines for the new Japan. The “way of the samurai,” or bushidō, that emerged from this discourse rapidly gained in popularity after victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, and was soon widely portrayed as an ancient ethic and even the very “soul of Japan.”
This talk will explore the development of bushidō in modern Japan, comparing the ideological “revival” of the samurai spirit with the growing appreciation for castles, as efforts increased to “save” both of these “national symbols” in an era of growing national strength and confidence. The talk will further consider parallels in their subsequent histories up to the present day.
Bringing together themes from Benesch’s recent book, Inventing the Way of the Samurai, and his current research project, this talk explores the development of Bushido in modern Japan, comparing the ideological “revival” of the samurai spirit with the growing appreciation for castles, as efforts increased to “save” both of these “national” symbols in an era of growing national strength and confidence.