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Brief Lives

Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719)

Martin Jenkins considers the way of the samurai.

It is a paradox of early modern Japanese history that this highly militarised society only once attempted a foreign war – the invasions of Korea in the 1590s. The samurai mostly fought each other in civil wars, until the battle of Sekigahara in 1600 led to the establishment of Tokugawa Ieyasu as shogun (regent/dictator). Tokugawa created a peaceful regime which lasted until 1868. In doing so he also created a period of ethical reflection: what was the role of a warrior elite in a society which had effectively abolished war?

Arguably the greatest ethical text to emerge from this period was Hagakure, the work of a once obscure samurai named Yamamoto Tsunetomo.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo portrait by Clinton Inman 2019

The Forging of a Warrior Philosopher

He was born in 1659 on Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese islands, as far as possible in Japan from the capital Edo and the shogun.

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