Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T23:26:12.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - Samurai, Masculinity and Violence in Japan

from Part III - Intimate and Gendered Violence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2020

Robert Antony
Affiliation:
Guangzhou University
Stuart Carroll
Affiliation:
University of York
Caroline Dodds Pennock
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Get access

Summary

In the period 1600–1868 Japan shifted from incessant civil war of the Warring States period (1467–1600) to an era of extended peace that lasted more than two centuries. This early modern experience, defined as it was by the absence of warfare, is quite remarkable in world history. It was a peace, however, imposed by a large-scale military aristocracy, the samurai (6–7 per cent of the population), who disarmed other social groups (commoners) below them in the social hierarchy and forbade them from carrying weapons. Although this created a type of garrison state, samurai were constrained legally in their ability to freely use their weapons, a long and a short sword. Moreover, the extended period of peace resulted in two currents of tension related to samurai identity: a dynamic tension between the civil arts, or the arts of peace (bun) and the military arts (bu); and a tension that arose from the lack of opportunity for samurai to demonstrate their martial skills and valour on the battlefield, resulting in a hypersensitivity in defending their honour. This chapter explores how a culture of honour violence developed among male samurai during the centuries of the Tokugawa peace and considers its importance in the construction of samurai masculinity.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliographic Essay

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×