Historian Spotlight - Thomas Conlan

Thomas Conlan is an Associate Professor of History at Bowdoin College (ME).

Check out his bio here.

Conlan has authored some really great works in recent years. In Little Need of Divine Intervention and Weapons and Fighting Techniques of the Samurai Warrior are two valuable resources for me in my current personal library. Along with those 2 works, Conlan has also authored State of War: The Violent Order of Fourteenth Century Japan.

You can also find him from time to time making appearances for History Channel specials.

Conlan has also done some tremendous work putting together some virtual online scrolls. (I won't go into these that much here because they are going to be discussed in further detail in the near future.) I have already wasted more than a few hours digging through these scrolls and reading over the great information that Conlan has provided for them. You can find these scrolls on the link that I provided earlier in this post.

The Myth of Bushido and the "Code of the Samurai"

Bushido. There is a common misconception in the West that the warriors of pre-modern Japan lived and died by this code.

The truth is this "code" is a formulation of the Edo period. Hagakure was written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo during this period. As most of you know, this is basically the "bible" of bushido, for lack of a better term. The Daimyo of the Edo period saw this as a way of keeping their respective Samurai totally subservient to them. (It was also used to great effect during WWII, but that's for a later post.)

Hagakure and bushido came about nearly a century and a half after the fighting had ended in Japan. The fact is, there are countless documented acts of treachery, betrayal and what can be called "cowardice" during the Sengoku period that would not have been allowed under bushido.

In fact, Japanese history would be incredibly different if Bushido was in fact practiced during the Sengoku Period. At the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) Tokugawa Ieyasu won a decisive victory over Ishida Mitsunari. However, his victory was only assured when Kobayakawa Hideaki switched sides and attacked his former allies.

One of the most-quoted lines of the Hagakure is "The way of the samurai is found in death." This is all well and good in a period of peace. There's not too much fear of death. It also gave Samurai of the Edo period a reason to protect their superiority over their countrymen.

However, in the times of constant warfare with death always surrounding them, a great Samurai was often judged by his ability to survive.

In Weapons and Fighting Techniques of the Samurai Warrior: 1200-1877 A.D., Thomas Conlan does a great job of juxtaposing the above quote by Tsunetomo with a quote from a daimyo named Tsuchimochi Nobuhide made in 1336, "We suffered casualties, our forces withered to nothing, and we fled."

Nobuhide knew that it was necessary for him to live and protect his lands as a daimyo. As Conlan puts it, his survival mattered more than his reputation.