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Bushido literally translates into ‘the way of the warrior.’ Founded as an ethical system in feudal Japan, it governed the behavior and etiquette of fighting nobles known as ‘samurai.’¹⁵⁵ In contrast with Western ethical systems that have grown out of religious texts or the thought of a principal author, the Bushido code “was founded not on the creation of one brain, however able,

153 Ben-Ami Shillony, "Universities and Students in Wartime Japan," (The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol.

45, No. 4, 1986), 779.

154 It is interesting to note that students majoring in the hard sciences, medicine or engineering were allowed to continue their studies.

155 Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of Japan, (Tokyo: Charles Tuttle Company, 1969), 4.

or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. [Instead] [i]t was an organic growth…[coming from] decades and centuries of military [experience].”¹⁵⁶ The two most important principles extolled by the Bushido code are a fearlessness of death and loyalty to one’s master.

Bushido sought to teach the warrior stoicism especially in the face of danger. In order to face a foe without fear or restraint, it was necessary for the warrior to embrace death. Indeed, the principal lesson of Bushido is found in the hagakure, the book of the samurai, which states that the “the Way of the Samurai is, morning after morning, the practice of death, considering whether it will be here or there, imagining the most slightly way of dying, and putting one’s mind firmly in death.”¹⁵⁷ To say that the Bushido code is fixated on death is no exaggeration.

By far the most common and oft repeated theme in the hagakure is how the warrior should prepare for death. The hagakure tells the warrior that the only real choice one has to make is either to die or not to die and that one should always choose death over life.¹⁵⁸ The true samurai had to cultivate a state of mind that impeded self-interested, rational calculation, which Tsunetomo called the shini gurui or the ‘death frenzy.’¹⁵⁹ This required the warrior to confront death daily whether it was on the battlefield or in one’s mind. According to the hagakure,

156 Ibid., 5.

157 Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure The Book of the Samurai, 73. ‘Hagakure’ literally means ‘hidden amongst the leaves.’ The book is a collection of samurai wisdom as recorded through conversations with Yamamoto Tsunetomo who was a retainer to a powerful Japanese lord located in the Saga prefecture.

158 Ibid., 17. The hagakure notes that “the Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult.”

159 Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 281.

“Your day must begin with a meditation upon death as the ultimate event. Every morning, with a calm mind, form a picture in your head of the last moment of your life-such as being slain by bow and arrow, gun, sword, or spears; or being carried away by ocean waves; jumping into a big fire; being struck by lightening in a thunderstorm;

swallowed up by a great earthquake; falling down hundreds of feet from a high cliff;

death by sickness; or unexpected sudden death. Every morning, be sure to take time to think of yourself as dead.”¹⁶⁰

Thus, one of the most important tenets of bushido is that the true samurai was willing to risk his life when called by his lord to do so, and that he actually looked forward to the opportunity to sacrifice himself in the line of duty.¹⁶¹ Arthur Swinson confirms this and notes, “the essence of bushido was that the young warrior should aim at dying…[i]n any event, death for the samurai was not something that should be avoided; it was ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished;’ it was the realization of a great and wonderful ideal.”¹⁶² It was believed that the emphasis placed on death not only made one a more formidable warrior, but it also helped the samurai cultivate an unflinching loyalty to his master.

Perhaps just as important as death in the Bushido code is loyalty. Historically, samurai were servants of a powerful lord or daimyo, and it was expected that they follow one’s lord to whatever end even if that meant the samurai’s own death.¹⁶³ The loyalty of the samurai to his lord “is said to have been unconditional and utterly selfless.”¹⁶⁴ This intense focus on loyalty is

160 Ibid.

161 Karl Friday, “Bushido or Bull? A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition,” (The History Teacher, Vol. 27, No. 3, 1994), 341.

162 Arthur Swinson, Four Samurai: A Quartet of Japanese Army Commanders in the Second World War, (London: Hutchinson Press, 1968), 18. Italics from the original text.

163 Doris Bargen, Suicidal Honor, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006), 14.

164 Karl Friday, “Bushido or Bull? A Medieval Historian’s Perspective on the Imperial Army and the Japanese Warrior Tradition,” 341.

due, in part, to the lack of separation between the individual and the group in the Bushido code.

Indeed, Bushido, unlike Western concepts of individualism, does not distinguish the individual person from the group. As Inazo Nitobe notes, Bushido finds that the interest of the individual in relation to the group, usually family and the national polity, are “one and inseparable.”¹⁶⁵ This extreme form of loyalty is best demonstrated through the story of forty-seven ronin.

The tale of the forty-seven ronin, which are samurais without masters, describes a true event that occurred in 1702 during the Edo shogunate. A young daimyo lord, Asano Takumi Naganori, was holding an annual reception consisting of imperial messengers at Edo castle. He had been given the task to greet a shogun governor named Kira Kozuke Yoshinaka. Upon arrival, Kira became upset with Asano due to the latter’s refusal to offer the former bribes. Kira, becoming enraged, insulted Asano in front of other shogun officials. Asano believed that Kira had humiliated him publicly so he drew his dagger and attacked the governor. Asano struck Kira in the face with his dagger, but the wound did not kill him. Asano’s actions violated reception protocol and the government wasted little time before coming to a decision to punish Asano.

The government condemned Asano to death by disembowelment while praising Kira’s restraint during the heated situation.

The samurai serving Asano believed this to be an unjust punishment, as the government did not address Kira’s unbecoming behavior of demanding a bribe upon being received at Edo castle. The group of forty-seven masterless samurai plotted revenge against Kira. One year later, the ronin enacted their revenge as they broke into Kira’s house and decapitated him. While the ronin avenged their master’s death, they also violated the Shogun’s law, which prohibited revenge killings. The Shogun was aware that their deed was popular amongst the Japanese

165 Inazo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of Japan, 79.

people. With this in mind, the Shogun allowed the ronin to commit ritualistic suicide or seppuku.¹⁶⁶

The importance of this story should not be underestimated. Indeed, as John Allyn notes, this is the national story of Japan, which has seeped into Japan’s national consciousness as it continues to be celebrated in song, story, drama and, more recently, motion pictures.¹⁶⁷ Not only does the story powerfully demonstrate the absolute loyalty that warriors have toward their lord, but it also serves as the embodiment of the samurai virtue, which confirms that the way of the warrior is found in death. Both these characteristics are widely found in the kamikaze diaries.

The willingness to embrace death and the premium placed on loyalty allowed the kamikaze pilots to carry out the extreme orders they had been given. Former pilot Yokota Yutaka notes that when “you become a member of an attack force, you become deathly serious.

Your eyes become set. Focused. Your life was dedicated to self-sacrifice, committed to smashing into the enemy.”¹⁶⁸ He goes on to reflect on the maxim that Bushido is a constant search for a place to die. He notes that this “was our fervent desire, our long-cherished dream.

A place to die for my country. I was happy to be born a man. A man of Japan. I don’t care if that makes me sound egotistical, but that’s how I felt. The country was in my hands.”¹⁶⁹

166 For the entire story of the forty-seven ronin, see Hiroaki Sato, Legends of the Samurai, (New York: The Overlook Press, 1995), 304-338. See also John Allyn, The Forty-Seven Ronin Story, (Rutland: Charles Tuttle Company, 1970).

167 John Allyn, The Forty-Seven Ronin Story, 8.

168 Yokota Yutaka quoted in Haruko Cook and Theodore Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History, 308-309.

169 Ibid., 309.

Hachiro Sasaki echoes the ease at which the pilots embraced death. He finds that as “a young man living in Japan at this point in history, the opportunity to participate in the actual making of history is an extraordinary honor.”¹⁷⁰ As a result, he feels an “honorable obligation to dedicate [his] self to the nation” and wishes to “die most beautifully as a person in the midst of a supreme effort.”¹⁷¹ Indeed, for the kamikaze pilots, the good death is one that is freely accepted without hesitation or regret. As Takenori Nako notes, “[d]eath comes to all of us who are given life on this earth and to everything that exists in this real world [so that] to live well is to die well.”¹⁷² Yohei Aboshi reiterates the sentiment of the sublime death. He states that ‘I am confident…that when the time comes for me to die, I can do so composedly and without getting unnecessarily excited.”¹⁷³ He goes on to state that he wants to die “after achieving a victory over the rest of the world” and that Japan must “create [its] own fate” against the enemy she faces.¹⁷⁴ Ryoji Uehara, reflecting on the anniversary of the Japanese victory over Russia in 1905, notices that “[w]hen we compare the situation that prevailed then to that of today, we see that the scale is quite different, but I think of the people’s spiritual condition then and now as pretty much the

170 Hachiro Sasaki in Midori Yamanouchi, Listen to the Voices from the Sea. Translated by Joseph Quinn, (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2000), 121.

171 Ibid., 122.

172 Takenori Nakao in Midori Yamanouchi, Listen to the Voices from the Sea. Translated by Joseph Quinn, 141.

173 Yohei Aboshi in Midori Yamanouchi, Listen to the Voices from the Sea. Translated by Joseph Quinn, 245.

174 Ibid., 246.

same.”¹⁷⁵ This spiritual condition would ensure victory for Japan and help her “conquer the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union,” which would allow Japan “to spread a cultural life that would even exceed theirs. In time, as it was with the British Empire of the past, wherever one goes he would see the Japanese flag unfurled with dignity and power, and Japanese would be made the language of the world.”¹⁷⁶ The student pilots also mention another prominent theme in their diaries, which is the commitment the pilots had to their family and their country.

There is a belief created through popular fiction and motion pictures that the Emperor figured prominently into the motivations of the kamikaze pilots.¹⁷⁷ The kamikaze diaries dispel this belief and replace it with a deep commitment to kin and country. As Lieutenant Yukio Seki, the man selected to lead the first kamikaze sortie, notes:

“Japan is finished! Killing ace pilots like me, strewth! If it was up to me, I know I could get a direct hit on the flight deck of a carrier with a number 50 [500 lb bomb] without plane ramming. I am not going out for the Emperor…[but I am] going for my beloved wife. If Japan were defeated, I reckon she would be raped by American GIs. I am dying to protect her.”¹⁷⁸

As kamikaze pilot survivor Ryuji Nagatsuka recounts:

“I too would have thought my death worthwhile if it saved my family and friends from being massacred by the Americans. My thoughts never, at any moment, turned to the Emperor, who, in any case, had closed his eyes when this rash and inhuman tactic had been described to him. Did the Emperor have any idea of what went on in the mind and feelings of a suicide pilot?...I would have liked to cry out to him: ‘Look at me, wasting

175 Ryoji Uehara in Midori Yamanouchi, Listen to the Voices from the Sea, translated by Joseph Quinn, 232.

176 Ibid., 232.

177 Emiko Tierney-Ohnuki, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalism: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, 299.

178 Lt. Yukio Seki quoted in Peter Hill, “Kamikazes, 1943-1945,” in Diego Gambetta ed., Making Sense of Suicide Missions, 24.

copying out these hollow phrases! To hell with it! Give me some fuel and good weather, not your words!. I would set out this minute on a suicide-mission to defend my family and my country, but I do not want to die for a man who calls himself Emperor!”¹⁷⁹

The two pilots mention a recurring theme, believing that the Americans were barbarians and if allowed to invade Japan would rape and pillage at will. A female survivor of the Battle of Okinawa confirms this and says that “from the time we’d been children, we’d only been educated to hate them [Americans]. They would strip the girls naked and do with them whatever they wanted, then run over them with tanks. We really believed that. Not only us girls.

Mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, [and husbands] all were cowering.”¹⁸⁰ The pilots also believed that participating in a special attack was a great honor, one that carried some otherworldly benefits.