Legacy of the Samurai

Press, 19 December 1981, Page 18

Legacy of the Samurai

The Shogun Inheritance: Japan and the Legacy of the Samurai.- By Michael • Macintyre. Collins, 1981. 216 pp. $29.95. (Reviewed by Bronwen Jones) Because. of the number of glossy photographs, • I began to read this book with the apprehension that it would be just another pretty-pretty, neat and clean presentation of Japan. Surprise, surprise, however. There is plenty of intelligently written and compelling’ prose to hold those people who have an interest in Japan, but who have never been there, as well as those old hands who are familiar with the country and its people. The book focuses on the complex character of the people, inherited over 2000 years, but consolidated by the feudalistic, uncompromisingly hierarchical time of the samurai, the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Shinto, Zen buddhism, and Confucianism have closely intermingled, ever complementary, to result in a unique people. Whether or not Japan is described as living mostly under a thin veneer of Westernisation, and whether or not it is felt that the people have sold their souls for Western mannerisms and technology, today the ever-fascinating paradox of the infinite adaptability and yet fundamental native character of Japan remains.

Macintyre brings out this paradox of modern Japan especially in his chapters on sex and children. He points out the puzzling fact that although “Playboy" is censored with strategic black patches, the cartoon comic books poured over by businessmen on trains are full of lurid sado-masochistic scenes, and although much of the Japanese film industry is devoted to usually sickeningly violent porn, never a pubic hair is seen. However. Macintyre partly blames the West and its perverted sense of sin in sex for overriding the traditional, healthy Japanese attitude to the human body, and for creating the 'present atmosphere of moral confusion. How well-deserved this accusation is, is left for the reader to decide. And Macintyre does not consider the fact that Confucianism relegated women to a life of submission during the warrior society of the samurai, submission not only to her husband, but also to her husband's parents and her male children. This very much second-class citizen attitude exists today as part of the inheritance from the days of the Mighty Male. Macintyre ends each chapter with pages and pages of beautiful photographs showing the tangible effects of Japan’s history on the thoughts and activities of today.’ (It’s not all sex: there's art too,)