In honor of the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the US at Pearl Harbor, the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations has published a series of essays on the event and historical memory issues; HNN has reprinted it (with a useful index post). John Gripentrog’s “The Road to War” is a solid discussion of the political and ideological differences which put the US and Japan on a collision course. HNN’s supplemental piece, by Rupert Colley, tracks how the attack brought the US into the European conflict. And Emily Rosenberg discusses how iconic attacks like Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and their rhetorical and cultural resonances.

Those are fine, but the articles I find most interesting are the other two. Greg Robinson writes about the effect of the Pearl Harbor attack on Japanese Americans at that time and the way in which it becomes part of the rhetoric of race and bias in the decades to come.¹ Finally, Yujin Yaguchi describes an intercultural teachers’ seminar which brought together Japanese and American teachers with time to explore their biases, perspectives, and to encounter new ones. The historiographical issues aren’t terribly new to academic historians, but for teachers working in a national curriculum context, it was quite enlightening.

Update: This article by Jonathan Parshall and J. Michael Wenger is the first interesting new scholarship I’ve seen on Pearl Harbor in years. Mostly it’s about the development of the Japanese aircraft carrier group as an operational unit, an unforseen shift in naval tactics.

1. The twitter chatter as the disaster this spring unfolded frequently, shockingly, referenced Pearl Harbor with a vicious karmic glee

The Asia/Pacific Journal, aka Japan Focus, has a fascinating interview with Heinrich Reinfried, Senior Lecturer in East Asian Studies at the University St. Gallen, Switzerland, conducted by a Swiss weekly. “Sushi and Samurai: Western Stereotypes and the (Mis)Understanding of Post-Tsunami Japan” begins and ends with a credible historical and thematic deconstruction of some of the less helpful stereotypes of Japan: Japan as samurai state, kamikaze, zen masters. I particularly liked the short bit on Herrigel

Nazi Germany made use of the samurai ideal of one who obeys orders unconditionally, who sacrifices himself on orders from above, who although not a Christian has a noble soul. This is the ideological basis of Zen in the Art of Archery by the Nazi Eugen Herrigel, a book which has exerted a powerful influence over the years. Some Swiss still today regard this book as the open sesame to Japan. It is amusing to hear of Europeans with an anti-authoritarian upbringing who go to Japan to let a Zen master hit them should they doze off during meditation.

He mentions early 20th century ideas about national character, and Saidian othering

we use Japan as a negative role model incorporating the opposite of the positive qualities we attribute to ourselves.

And he talks about the Cold War re-exoticisation of Japan as a land of Geisha and gardens, class-less capitalism. I’m not sure Henry Luce is as much to blame as Reinfried, nor am I terribly convinced by his analysis of Japan’s response/role in the process:

Reinfried: Japanese are quick to realize what others see in them. They are eager to incorporate foreign images into their self-image, above all, of course, those which are self-aggrandizing. This is what happened during the Cold War when Japanese adapted and subsequently internalized the positive image that the Western world had propagated in order to mark Japan off from communist China. This self-perception enabled the country to reach the goal it had envisaged since the Meiji-Period, namely to “catch up to and go beyond“ the West. It made Japan unique but also nurtured its own brand of nationalism.

DM: There are those who maintain that Japanese just love playing the exotic role assigned to them by foreigners.

Reinfried: To some extent every country puts on a show for others. That is part of the success story of many nations. We Swiss, too, like to pretend that we are cowherds addicted to cheese. It is only when disaster occurs that we take note of the fact that we all live in one and the same world. Exceptionalist claims regarding culture then immediately fade into irrelevance.

There’s an argument to be made there, I suppose, but there’s too much going on here which glosses over complications: tourism, nationalism, the extent to which Japan’s self-image created or was created by foreign discourses, and the China-Japan cultural tension which was over a half-century old before the Cold War started.

This is typical, though, of the middle section of the interview, in which Reinfried engages in substantial myth-making and othering of his own. Aside from a well-earned swipe at foreign journalists shallow reportage, there’s a whole litany of chestnuts, conventional images of Japan, highly questionable generalizations presented as nearly-universal truths about all Japanese, without a hint of the critical perspective of the rest of the article. Most of them are about Japan as a collective, connected society. For example:

• “In Japan, even a disaster is handled in an organized manner. Japan is generally characterized by a very high degree of organization. This also applies to disaster management. Japanese rely heavily on organization, simply because they do not see any real alternative to getting themselves organized.”
• “People in the Western world basically believe in their capability to live on their own, whereas Japanese tend to see themselves as part of a system. They do not see themselves as being capable of existing without an external system such as the state.”
• “In Japan, man and nature are not in contradiction, since in their view man was not blessed by God with a mind and then placed in Nature. In Japan, man and what we call Nature together form a unity. This realm can be either orderly or chaotic, bestowing blessings at times, at other times demonstrating that its might cannot be controlled, such as when it produces huge tsunami or rattles the earth. At the same time, the conviction that man can keep the dangers of Nature at bay with the help of technology is being nurtured. Scientists refer to a disaster as an “occurrence.“ A disaster is the result of the fact that man settled in places he is not intended to settle.”
• “Religious beliefs are a strictly private concern. There is, however, a strong link with one’s ancestors, to whom Japanese feel very close. Religious feelings do exist in the form of gratefulness towards them as well as towards fellow human beings in general. The notion is widely accepted that in a society based on division of labor, one’s existence depends precariously on one’s fellow citizens doing their jobs properly. This, in essence, is the least common denominator in Japanese religion.”
• “In Japan there is the view that man is neither good nor bad, but malleable: Just as water assumes the form of the vessel it is contained in, man must always be embedded in a vessel, be it family, community or company.”
• “In Japan, public discourse constitutes mainly an exchange of factual information, not of worldviews or personal convictions. … Japanese public debates on TV generally run in orderly fashion. In Japan, differences of opinion are attributed to differences in the level of information and not to ideological differences. We have behind us a long tradition of disputes between believers and non-believers. In Japan, there are only those who know and those who do not. In case of disagreement, people do not raise their voices to outshout each other but go home to recheck the vital facts. Saying this, I don’t in any way want to suggest that Japanese are unable to raise their voices in a quarrel if they feel the need.”
• “Japanese are not successful because they are ready to die for their company. Japanese are successful because they think in terms of systems. The individual is of little importance in this dimension of strategic thinking, so these handbooks are misleading. In Japan, everything is conceived as a system. Individuals and their achievements are of secondary importance.”

I could go on. The idea of Japan as a systematic, organized society has deep roots, and there are ways in which these statements could be construed as true, with caveats, limitations, and an awareness of the way in which these ideas serve the needs of the state and a kind of social order. What’s most odd, I suppose, is the degree to which Reinfried fails to recognize that these are cultural tropes of great power as well as fairly commonplace images of Japan, both within and abroad. There’s a saying I heard once, and can’t find a source for, that man for man, the Chinese can beat the Japanese, but that four Japanese can beat four Chinese because they work together.¹ There have been movies² and books galore on these themes, not to mention a whole cottage industry of debunking scholarship on most of them.

This ended up being a very frustrating article to read, because it started out so well….

1. I’m pretty sure I heard it about economic productivity regarding Japan and the US, too. If anyone can find sources, I’d be interested to see them.
2. Gung Ho, among others

Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House series is intended to educate and entertain by taking its protagonists to different times and places, real and mythical. These Scholastic books are mainstays of schools, libraries, and primary curricula, and some of the books have companion “Research Guide” publications for kids who want to know more about the historical, cultural or scientific background. Some of these books are aimed at early readers: the first 28 in the series are short, with short, simple sentences appropriate to 1st or 2nd graders; after that the series shifts into the slightly more fantastical “Merlin Mission” mode, longer stories with more complex writing suitable for 2nd or 3rd grade students; the research guides seem to be aimed at 2nd through 4th graders.¹ In these stories, Jack and Annie are given a book which, combined with the magic of the tree house, takes them to a time and place where they can carry out a mission of some kind, while learning about the site of their adventure. The whole thing is supposed to be an encouragement to learning, so to speak, showing the value of book reading. Twice in the series, Jack and Annie have visited Japanese history: in the earlier, shorter work, we get nature-loving ninja and threatening samurai; in the later adventure, we get the nature-loving poet Basho, a magical dragon, and threatening samurai.²

The text that Jack and Annie work from — more Jack than Annie: he’s the cautious, bookish one, and she’s the impulsive, intuitive one — gives an explicit frame to the story, and the book is never wrong. Because of Annie’s impulsiveness, they never get to read through the book carefully, but look up facts as they become relevant: the facts are short, context-free chunks of information that usually explain what the characters are seeing, and remembering these bits often comes in handy at critical moments. In addition to the books they read, they often get guidance from people they meet: many of the adventures feature a “local informant” who helps them navigate local custom and landscape and often is critical to their larger mission; usually they are supposed to return to the Magic Tree House with a specific item or piece of information.³ As with the books that bring them to these times and places, their local informants are never wrong, either, though sometimes they misjudge Jack or, more often, Annie.⁴

The first Japan adventure is Night of the Ninjas⁵ in which Jack and Annie return to an unidentified moment in Japan’s medieval period. Here’s what their book has to say about it:

• “Very little is known about the shadowy warriors called ninjas. Historians believe that ninjas lived in Japan between the 14th and 17th centuries. Both men and women were ninjas. Sometimes they fought to protect their families. Sometimes warlords hired them to be spies.” (15-16)
• “Sometimes ninjas held meetings in hidden mountain caves to plan secret missions.” (31)
• “Ninjas took orders from a ninja master. The master was a mysterious wise person who knew many secrets of nature.” (31)
• “The samurai were fierce Japanese fighters. They carried two swords to cut down their enemies.” (45)

This is the most authoritative information Jack and Annie have available, and the vast majority of it is entirely incorrect. Ninja — the black-suited nemesis of samurai living an independent existence in the hills, etc. — are a figment of early modern imaginations built on a sliver of truth, reified by modern martial artists’ pseudo-historical self-justifications and entertainment industries more than willing to dramatize and amplify the mythologies for fun and profit.⁶ The myth of hostility between ninja and samurai, though, runs through a lot of Japanese historical fiction.⁷ (38) The idea of the ninja as a kind of eco-warrior seems to be a relatively new addition to the mythology: it’s an interesting way of working “harmony with nature” into this Japanese narrative:

“Remember three things,” said the master…”Use nature. Be nature. Follow nature.” (38)

The nature-ninja turns the samurai into a kind of modernist nightmare.⁸ But samurai, described in the book as “fierce,” are all bark and no bite: their armor is made of “bamboo” (45), they wander around the woods at night with torches looking for ninja (37, 58), and they can be fooled by a kid in a hoodie pretending to be a rock. (48-49)

In Dragon of the Red Dawn⁹ samurai are also a threat, again in a distinctly modernist mode, because of the ban on foreigners. As their guidebook “A Journey to Old Japan” (7)¹⁰ says,

• “The late 1600s in Japan were years of peace and prosperity. Art and culture thrived. But it was a time when the country was completely closed to the outside world. No one was allowed to come in. The citizens of Edo were frequently checked to make sure they had passports.” (15-16)
• “Anyone who did not have a passport was considered a spy and punished severely.” (16)

All samurai, in this version of Genroku Japan, are police agents: the only samurai who are mentioned are either former samurai, like the poet Basho, or some form of patrolling security who are quick to draw their swords and challenge people who are out of place. (21, 42, passim) Basho tells Jack and Annie that “You must remember, seek harmony with your surroundings. … Observe the people of Edo and do as they do. If you do not stand out, you will not be noticed by the samurai.” (25-26) Jack and Annie have to learn how to use chopsticks — while eating makizushi, which it’s a little early for — under the gaze of samurai who are on the lookout for foreigners. (42) Oddly, the samurai they face suspect them because of where they are but not how they look, whereas Basho can tell immediately that they are foreigners; this may be part of the magic of the tree house, which also gives them appropriate clothing and gear and skips right over language issues. (25, etc.) In spite of the fact that Jack and Annie repeatedly come under suspicion of being spies, the samurai questioning them are thrice convinced that they are merely poetry apprentices (22, 48-52, 96-98) who do not need to show their passports, twice by extemporizing poetry.¹¹

In addition to their simple duties and simple-mindedness, samurai are part of a very simple political system. As often happens, Osborne has conflated the past and present, Shogunal and Imperial institutions. Here’s what “A Journey to Old Japan” says:

• “In the 1600s, the Imperial Garden surrounded the Imperial Palace in the capital city of Japan. The city was called Edo (Say EE-doh). In the mid-1800s, its name was changed to Tokyo (Say TOH-kee-oh.)” (14)
• “In the 1600s, the military ruler known as the shogun (say SHOW-gun) lived in the center of the Imperial Garden in a palace that had hundreds of rooms.” (17)
• “Often the shogun’s warriors traveled with him. They were called samurai (Say SAM-uh-rye).” … “Samurai were excellent horsemen well trained in the arts of fighting. The code of the samurai was strict. Samurai did not show their feelings. They had great powers of concentration.” (18)

There’s a pronunciation error, the elimination of daimyo from the political picture, the bushido stoicism and assumption that all samurai are the same, and the confusion engendered by referring to the Shogunal keep by its modern title. Osborne carefully refers to the Shogun as “the military ruler” but doesn’t explain the distinction between the Shogunal and Imperial institutions or note that the castle and grounds were not considered “Imperial” until the 1860s.

But the samurai are just an obstacle: the heart of the story is poetry, fire and magic. Despite their failings, Basho admits “Yes, the samurai greatly honor the art of poetry. Poetry helps focus the mind. The samurai believe a truly brave warrior should be able to compose a poem even in the midst of an earthquake, or while facing an enemy on the battlefield.” (61) Basho instructs the children in the art of haiku¹² and shares the frog pond verse which he wrote just yesterday, even giving Jack the piece of paper on which the world’s most famous haiku is written. (62) The guide book tells us that “Basho is one of Japan’s greatest poets. He wrote short, beautiful poems that speak to people as clearly today as they did during the Edo period of Japan.” (59) Some of them certainly do: Basho has about the same linguistic issues as Shakespeare, namely that he’s one of the writers whose work shaped the early modern language, but idiom and usage have changed over time.

Unlike Night of the Ninjas, this book has a precise historical moment. Or, rather, several precise moments: the frog poem was written in 1686, but the main action of the book focuses on the fire that destroyed Basho’s home in 1682, after which he embarked on his famous travels. Also, the cherry blossoms are blooming. Aren’t they always? Anyway, on their first walk through the city, Basho notes the drought-like conditions and remembers the 1657 Meireki Fire.¹³

“When the weather is very dry, the people of Edo worry about fire. … Twenty-five years ago, during a dry spell, half our city was destroyed by a terrible fire. Thousands died.” (30)

Probably a hundred thousand or more. But there’s an up-side to fires, he says later:

“I suppose that is why the ancients called our fires ‘the flowers of Edo.’ … After something is destroyed by fire, a good new thing often takes its place. Just as after the bleakest winter, beautiful flowers return with the spring.” (89)

This is not, of course, the actual source of the “flowers of Edo” idiom, which is both relatively recent at that time instead of “ancient”, and sarcastic rather than heartening. But Basho himself endured several fires that destroyed his home, and did take the opportunity to travel, producing some of his greatest work (including the above-mentioned poem) as a result.

When the fire breaks out, Jack and Annie join the citizens of Edo fighting the fires – no mention of the competitive firefighting teams, their uniforms or equipment, just people with buckets – and then draw on their magic to invoke the Cloud Dragon, “one of the guardian animals of the four directions. She has the power of flight and commands the rain clouds.” (37) Though a very minor figure in Japanese astrology, the Cloud Dragon answers their call with a drenching rain.

There are a few interesting touches: yo-yos, which are a long-standing Japanese toy; hot towels at meals; sumo wrestling as entertainment, though it’s unlikely that Genroku-era wrestlers would have been 400+ pounds. (38, 39, 46)

But as educational materials, these books represent a huge step backwards, a terribly wasted opportunity. According to the Wikipedia page, these books have been translated, along with most of the series, into Japanese. I can only imagine what the Japanese thought of them.

1. Check the Scholastic web site for official suitability levels. Also if you have any doubt about the fact that these are aimed at an education audience….
2. I could put a spoiler alert here, but how many 2nd-4th graders are reading this blog, who haven’t already moved beyond Jack and Annie adventures? Well, my son wants to read this post when I’m finished with it, but other than him?
3. Missions are part of larger projects: the series is built around four-book units which share a problem and theme. Jack and Annie accumulate skills and credentials over the series. This makes up for the fact that the individual books are very short, and acculturates young readers to longer works. That’s the general idea, anyway.
4. I suspect that most of my readers at this point are either familiar with the series, or have stopped reading. But I want to establish the authority of the voices: readers of the series are acculturated, if they read more than one or two, to accept the authority of the guiding book and teachers.
5. Book 5, published in 1995 by Random House, with illustrations by Sal Murdocca.
6. And, as with most Japanese nouns, the plural of “ninja” is “ninja” not “ninjas”
7. And is almost certainly based on self-serving mythologies of post-pacification samurai
8. The picture on p. 46 is the only time they are depicted visually
9. Book 37, Scholastic, 2007
10. Complete with pseudo-bamboo typography
11. including, I regret to inform you, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” Basho likes it.
12. though without any of that picky stuff like syllables or turning words, or seasonal indicators
13. They also see puppet plays on “a row of stages built along the riverbank” (36)

I just want to take a moment to share a photo that I think captures an interesting and perhaps a bit of an awkward moment. The photo is taken from a 1946 report on the “mop-up” of Japanese troops in the summer of 1945 in the Philippines.¹ In it we see a, possibly staged, moment of interaction between a US Nisei (Japanese-American) soldier and Japanese POWs sometime after August 15, 1945, who are about to go out and attempt to persuade their fellow Japanese soldiers in the area to surrender.

I was hit by a range of emotions and thoughts when I saw this. On the one hand is the interaction of this Japanese-American, whose loyalty has always been seen as suspect by his fellow Americans, with the Japanese, who most probably see the Nisei as a traitor to his own people.

Completely separate from this interaction is the predicament of the POWs who are about to leave the camp, which was likely no pleasant hotel, but which represented a site of sufficient food and safety reached only after an extremely risky surrender. At that moment of surrender they faced the possibility of being shot either by Americans, or even more likely, their own officers or fellow soldiers. Only a few pages before this photo we read that while, “the good faith displayed by the Americans in holding their fire” (which was not by any means universal on the part of US troops) had lead to many desertions, “many Japanese soldiers were shot by their own troops as they tried to make their way to the American lines.”

Here we see these POWs about to return to the jungle where fellow soldiers were starving and dying of disease. Instead of mounting active attacks on US forces by this time, these Japanese remnants were reportedly only launching desperate nighttime raids for food on local communities. These scenes are, of course, common to almost every description of Japanese forces throughout the Pacific in the summer of 1945. As the report records, “Patrols found individuals and small groups who had apparently starved to death…prisoners of war told of acts of cannibalism,” and of active fighting between the Army and Navy over remaining food supplies.” If these POWs failed to persuade their dying comrades to surrender, would they be able to make their way out safely again? Would they be forced to remain with the others?

One thing that we might keep in mind is that the jungles and hills of Luzon of that summer were full of “Japanese” who were not from the archipelago, as the final report on casualties and POWs from July 1 to August 20 operation reveals:

Dead 20,311
Japanese Prisoners 1,254
Formosans (Taiwanese) 1,065
Koreans 77

1. Report of the Commanding General Eigth Army on the Luzon Mop-up Operation 27 February 1946. Surplus Copy found in Widener Library, Harvard University.

The third installment of Chris Bradford’s Young Samurai series shifts modes mid-book, when the action moves from the original Harry Potter-esque bildungsroman mode to the tragic — Young Jack is on the side of the Toyotomi, as it turns out — Battle of Osaka.

[More Spoilers Ahead]¹

The book is considerably longer than the first two installments, a common feature of end-of-series climaxes, and continues with the cultural and historical bad habits noted in the first two works.² At least, being a climactic moment, many of the historical alterations are clarified — if not well justified. There are two substantial changes to the historical record, which explain most of the other distortions: postponing the Tokugawa dominion of Japan until after the Battle of Osaka, and transforming the banning of Christianity into xenophobic nationalism and a popular movement, rather than a geo-political calculation.³ And ninja. Lots of ninja. I’m going to focus on the historiographical oddities this time, though I reserve the right to note new contextual and literary failings.

The action in this book runs from 1613 through the end of the Battle of Osaka, though the two campaigns are collapsed into a single sequence of battles mostly focused on the Battle of Tennōji,⁴ a little Winter Truce interlude,⁵ and the subsequent fall of Himeji Castle. The historical timeline leading up to this point is still a little murky in my mind, but it seems that the Battle of Sekigahara⁶ was the final battle in Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s unification campaign, after which he died, resulting in a surprisingly stable Council of Regents.⁷ (166-168) The Toyotomi⁸ house is the Imperial house, suggesting either that the imperial institution had a continuous martial tradition⁹ or that Hideyoshi actually took that last step¹⁰ and supplanted the Imperial house.¹¹ The Battle of Osaka, then, is the real Sekigahara,¹² though with the added element of having the Hideyoshi house actually participating. In this rendition, the Hideyoshi/Imperial heir is the “good guy” (also Christian): the Tokugawa house is a usurper whose forces are made up of opportunists, racists and ronin.¹³ Also, it was Tokugawa/Lord Kamakura’s decision to switch sides which determined the result of the Nakasendo battle, and we all know that switching sides is something that honorable samurai warlords never did. (82, 168) A literary rendition of the early 1600s from the Toyotomi perspective could be powerful stuff, exploration of still-unstable political and ethical ethos and real tragedy. Needless to say, that’s not what we’ve got here.

I suppose the vision of the Tokugawa house as religious and racial chauvinists could also be a matter of perspective: it’s true that the expulsion of Christianity from Japan was a violent process, though I don’t remember any sources that describe it as any sort of popular movement.¹⁴ In fact, in Bradford’s Japan, the Buddhist and Shinto religious leadership whom you’d expect to be at the forefront of an anti-foreign movement are largely agnostic on the question of Christianity. Also, oddly, the Tokugawa-ish Kamakura house never rhetorically connects the anti-foreign and anti-Toyotomi movements, though the fact that the “heir apparent” is a Christian (308) and working closely with the subversive Jesuits (320) would make it eminently sensible for them to use it as leverage; really, they’re just mean.¹⁵ The descriptions of the anti-Christian movement resemble the Boxer Rebellion or 1930s Germany more than the actual historical events which left non-Catholic foreigners alone. (253) I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: the actual historical events are more than sufficiently dramatic to be interesting; distorting them through a modern pseudo-fascist lens is gilding the lily, at best. Curiously, the anti-foreign Tokugawa forces are much better equipped with firearms and cannon than the Jesuit-supported Toyotomi side. (335, 392, etc.)¹⁶

The identity of the über-ninja Dokuganryu is revealed early on in the book (50-51), and while I’m sure this was intentional from the beginning, I still think that Bradford both missed an opportunity and did great damage to the biography of historical figures. Actually, the identity would have been obvious if I had paid more attention to the common nicknames of daimyo, because the “One-Eyed Dragon” moniker is associated with smallpox-scarred Date Masamune, whose disfigurement and family history the character share. However, Bradford changes the name to Hattori, a name associated in real life with both ninja and the Tokugawa house, taking Date’s life in a very strange direction at the time of Sekigahara,¹⁷ and ignoring the real history and character of Date Masamune himself, who lived and served the Tokugawa ably into the 1630s. In this version, the ninja pulls the strings, using the xenophobia of the Kamakura/Tokugawa as leverage to take vengeance on the Toyotomi/Hasegawa and Masamoto/Miyamoto.

In the end, the vast majority of the characters die in battle, which is likely to be somewhat emotionally wrenching given the Harry Potterish way in which nobody important dies (after the initial onslaught that orphans Jack) despite spending two and a half books playing with weapons, attempting deadly challenges and fighting off ninja. Even the super-ninja Dokuganryu appears to die, though Jack doesn’t have time to verify the ninja’s death, which takes the combined effort of both a ninja-trained young woman¹⁸ and a number of other of Jack’s colleagues. However, the survival of Jack (plus his romantic interest, of course) means sequels,¹⁹ and sequels means that Jack needs a worthy enemy. Jack’s chief student nemesis also survives; like Gollum, due to the mercy of the protagonist (473). In an amusingly implausible bit of historical preservation, Masamoto/Miyamoto survives his Horatio-at-the-bridge last stand and is forced into retirement by the Tokugawa/Kamakura: he takes the tonsure, which will allow him to do the writing he’s always wanted.²⁰

There are two new cultural themes which are bad enough to deserve note. First, swords get seriously weird. Swords in Bradford’s milieu have the makers’ names stamped on the blade, rather than hidden on the tang. (29-30, 75) Swords have characters which affect their wielders, and evil ones demand blood before resheathing. (29, 35-38, 48, 375) Finally, the sharper the blade, the more effective: in some ways that’s true, certainly, but a sharper blade doesn’t make you a better fighter. (433) Second, poetry is a running theme, and while Bradford uses some actual works from the period,²¹ the poetry competition is themeless and the poems prepared beforehand. (234, etc.) And at one point a Japanese character turns Aesop’s Tortoise and Hare into a haiku. (143) Poetry is associated with women (100, 147) and with the “soft, cultured features of a nobleman” (83-85) though most of the major (and minor) poets of the age were samurai-born men.²²

Finally, for a work written by a martial artist, the descriptions of combat and battle are still oddly bad. Early on, an arrow passes “within a hair’s-breadth of his heart” (18) though clearly Jack doesn’t get a near-fatal chest wound at that point, not even a scratch. At one point “A cold steel blade was pressed against Jack’s throat” (150) though he had a cloth sack over his head which usually makes this sort of thing difficult. In a climactic scene, an arrow is shot through a hand which is holding a sword handle (473), an unlikely shot, at best. The elite Red Guard of the Kamakura/Tokugawa, vicious and effective warriors who give no quarter, are described late in the battle as “mean-looking.” (447) There are other little things: siege engines which are never described or used (405), the inexplicable explanatory chat break in the middle of a raging battle (377), the kiai shout as a mystical attack speciality of sohei warrior-monks (177), distinction between ashigaru, ronin and samurai (151, 159).²³

Works like the Young Samurai series claim to be originalist, purist representations of a fine culture, but really they are presentist projections of ahistorical apologia which apparently require not just revisionism, but wholesale historical reorganization to be credible. Some of these changes are probably justified, in Bradford’s mind, as simplifications: the dual Emperor/Shogun system is a little counter-intuitive, and having the greatest samurai of the age participate in a civil war for less than pure, honorable reasons would obviate the martial culture Bradford is promoting. These are, at best, excuses and rationalizations, rather than adequate reasons. As I said before, no disclaimer can excuse a presentation this far removed from reality claiming educational value. At least, having read the books, I feel a little more prepared for the onslaught of error I’m going to be seeing in my students’ work and the popular press.

1. I don’t really consider that a spoiler; it’s an actual event. Knowing how things turn out is fundamental to historical work. Though I must concede that Bradford’s willingness to mess with the timeline does raise some doubt.
2. The Way of the Warrior and The Way of the Sword. Also, the book jacket copy is unchanged.
3. Needless to say, the historical changes require substantial alterations to the characters of many historical figures. One can only hope that the bad pseudonyms shield young readers from connecting these caricatures with real people. At one point, the Miyamoto Musashi stand-in orders Jack to commit seppuku, then retracts it and calls it a “little joke.” (72)
4. very simplified, minus cavalry, with the addition of super-soldier elite troops
5. So the Tokugawa side can be made to look even more treacherous (350)
6. called Nakasendo here, after the highway
7. And no invasion of Korea!
8. called “Hasegawa”
9. And Hideyoshi, then wasn’t a commoner.
10. and given his pretensions to divinity, why not? It’s always a little tricky explaining to students why and how the imperial institution survived this era
11. Oddly, the living Hasegawa, Toyotomi Hideyori’s stand-in, is referred to as the “heir apparent” (167) which would mean that the throne is empty, which never happened. Child emperors with regencies were SOP. Also, “royal geisha.” (126)
12. Or Dan-no-ura, given the echoes of the Gempei war created by conflating the samurai and aristocratic traditions. (217, 308, etc.)
13. In the actual war of 1614-15, it’s the Toyotomi forces which were miscellaneous odds and ends, including ronin who, if they weren’t samurai, we’d more properly call mercenaries.
14. A lot of people outside of the xenophobic movement spend a lot of time being mildly racist (47, 55, 158) and apparently there’s a neutral term for foreigner — gaijin is considered derogatory — but we’re never told what it is. (129)
15. Their children are thuggish punks; their elite forces are implacable, nameless; and they don’t respect culture. Also, they use legalistic tactics. (350)
16. And Jack, who is supposed to be more experienced in these matters, apparently doesn’t realize that well-trained military forces know how to keep their powder dry in wet conditions and can keep using firearms and cannon in the rain. (390)
17. using the kagemusha dodge to allow him to appear dead while he joins the ninja (424), becomes an undefeatable assassin who somehow keeps losing.
18. among the least-surprising reveals of the book
19. at least three, apparently detailing Jack’s attempt to get to Nagasaki and escape Japan
20. Oddly, however, his home is not under surveillance after the battle, which allows Jack an avenue of escape that really wouldn’t exist if the Tokugawa were as effective and powerful as they’re portrayed here.
21. Historical poet Saigyo is called on to judge the contest. (197)
22. Since the imperial institution is conflated with the warlords, I’m not sure where these “soft” noblemen come from, either.
23. My favorite example is when one character challenges another to action with “Are you ashigaru or samurai?” (361)