Loyalty in Seventeenth and Eighteenth CenturySamurai Discourse

OLIVIER ANSART, University of Sydney, Australia

Chu, usually translated as loyalty, is supposed to have been the paramount virtue of samurai,

inspiring them to the selfless service of their daimyo. Analyzing the understandings of this

notion among samurai thinkers of seventeenth and eighteenth century Japan, this article stresses

that, far from there being one understanding of chu, many interpretations were competing with

each other; it examines the various dynamics that can explain this fragmentation. One, opening

the possibility of higher values, was the necessity of justifying the demands of chu. Another was

the competition from other moral notions, such as the concern for one’s reputation. The problems

that chu inevitably encountered in practice—the dilemma of conflicting loyalties, or the rivalry

from non moral goods like wealth and power—were also powerful factors. Yet another dynamic

was the weakening of the private feudal bonds and the subsequent recognition of the contractual

nature of many social relationships. The cumulative effect of those dynamics explains that in the

end chu could even become an object of incomprehension or derision. Ultimately chu only sur-

vived because it was enlisted to construct a relationship that could withstand any test, being, quite

unlike that of samurai and daimyo, purely imaginary and empty: that between the Emperor and

his subjects.

A traditional view, still very popular, holds that in Tokugawa Japan the virtue of

chu 1—usually translated as loyalty—required from the samurai absolute and uncondi-

tional loyalty to their lord, and that this requirement was scrupulously honored in

practice.

Watsuji Tetsuro called this absolute and actual loyalty kenshin no dotoku, the virtue of

total dedication.2 Early last century, Tsuda Sokichi argued that it was unknown in

China.3 Scholars of feudalism added that it was absent in Europe: Marc Bloch and

countless others stressed the lack, in Japanese feudal relations,4 of the contractual dimen-

sion so striking in the West, and which has been widely recognized as one of the ferments

of the subsequent democratization of Europe.5

There is apparently plentiful evidence in support of this interpretation of the meaning

of chu and of its importance in practice. The bushido literature typically describes the

1But also chusetsu, chusei, chugi, gi, or giri.2Watsuji, Nihon rinri shisoshi, 2 : 482 ff.3Tsuda, Bungaku ni arawaretaru kokumin shiso no kenkyu, 6 : 350.4Some object to the use of the term feudalism in respect to Tokugawa society. I do not need to enter the

polemic here, and will just remark that, whatever the non feudal characteristics—urbanization, role of

money, bureaucratization, absolutist tendencies in some shoguns, etc.,—relationships within the elite

strata, between shogun and daimyo, daimyo and retainers still retained that private dimension so charac-

teristic of what we understand by feudalism.5Bloch, La societe feodale, 301, 320, 618.

Japanese Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2, September 2007

ISSN 1037-1397 print/ISSN 1469-9338 online/07/020139-16 # 2007 Japanese Studies Association of AustraliaDOI: 10.1080/10371390701494150

ideal retainer in the service of his lord as ‘as if already dead, and a ghost’, and vehemently

rejects the idea that loyalty could be given in return for a favor.6 The author of the Haga-

kure, Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659–1719), reports approvingly the remark that ‘To

serve while receiving the favor of the lord is not to serve. To serve when the lord is

without heart or reason is to serve’.7 And indeed many curious practices, from the

junshi—the ritual suicide upon the natural death of one’s master—to the loyalist vendet-

tas and the enthusiasm they provoked, suggest that chu was truly absolute in meaning and

actual in practice.

Partly because of its obvious political implications, this popular view has not gone

unchallenged. However, critics wishing to make a case for the contractual nature of

the relationships between retainers and their lords have all focused on the presence, or

rather (for them) the absence, of such absolute chu in the actual behavior of the

samurai, contrasting this with the hollow rhetoric of the bushido tracts.8 Certainly,

their studies have convincingly suggested that most retainers, constantly and fiercely

resisting encroachment on their traditional privileges by their lord, were not greatly

inspired to the sort of loyalty extolled in the Hagakure.9

While I share the skepticism of these critics about the traditional view, in this paper I

take a different approach. The focus here is not on the actual behavior of the retainers,

but on the evolution of the understanding of the concept of chu in samurai moral

discourse—and this mainly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. More

specifically, my aim is to make a systematic preliminary survey of the varied dynamics

shaping the interpretations of chu—that is, its diverse possible articulations with other

ideas—in samurai moral discourse of this period.10 In such an approach there is little

to gain, and a lot to lose, from framing the issue in terms of a gap between the

meaning of an idea and its reflection in actual behavior. It risks obscuring the fact

that there was no agreement on what chu required. Further, what is important in

understanding the dynamic of the evolution of the meanings of chu is not the docu-

mentation of a gap between the idea and instances of individual behavior. What is

important is, rather, the explanation of the relationships between the very different

understandings of this idea and the social practices (not the individual behavior)

they were interacting with. This paper suggests how such relationships might be

approached.

6Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, 230.7Ibid., 503.8See Ienaga, ‘Shuju dotoku no ichi kosatsu’; Kasaya, Nihon kinsei shakai; Kitajima, ‘Buke no hokonin’, 74.

The debunking of the myth has also been carried by popular writers; see Inoue, Fu chushingura, and

Sakaiya, ‘Debunking the Myth of Loyalty’. A very general overview in English is in Hurst, ‘Death,

Honor, and Loyalty’.9But even in the most spectacular conspiracies and betrayals of the oie sodo (the internal quarrels in the

daimyo houses) chu was likely to be invoked by all parties. I shall come back to this dimension of chu

as a convenient device for justifying one’s behavior.10The limitation of my enquiry to ‘samurai discourse’ is justified by the importance of the issue for

samurai. Some of the most prominent bourgeois thinkers—Ito Jinsai would be a good case in point—

had very little to say about loyalty. Others engaged in a sort of mimicry of samurai loyalty, inserting it

in the world of economic and commercial relationships, but this is an altogether different issue.

‘Samurai discourse’ was that held by those thinkers, many of whom appear in this paper, who saw them-

selves as belonging to the bushi group. The loyalty I am concerned with is the one retainers owed to their

daimyo. I am less concerned by the loyalty owed by those daimyo to the shogun, because dynamics were

slightly different. And loyalty to the Emperor, I will argue in the last section, was of a very different kind.

140 Olivier Ansart

Understandings of Loyalty

My starting point is that there was no agreement among samurai authors about the

meaning of chu, that is–since chu is a moral concept–about what it required. True, all

saw chu as binding one individual to another. Contrary to our contemporary usage of

‘loyalty’ which leaves room for loyalty to a cause, a country or even an idea, chu was

deeply personal. The constant parallel with filial piety confirms this dimension. Other

terms—gi, michi—referred to obligations toward the public good or higher morality.

Of course there was also loyalty to o-ie, the daimyo house, but this house consisted

necessarily of individuals. Still, this shared view of chu as an obligation to specific

persons could not hide a lack of agreement as to the scope, the conditions, the objects

of chu. The simplest way to prove this point would seem to be a survey of the available

definitions for the term. On the one hand, there were those who, like Yamamoto

Tsunetomo, took chu as absolute obeisance (not that he believed that the retainer

should not remonstrate with his master and abdicate all judgment; but he stressed that

he ultimately should obey, whatever the cost). Other works in the bushido tradition,

like the Budo Shoshin Shu of Daidoji Yuzan (1639–1730) and the Bushi kun of Izawa

Banryu (1668–1731), also affirmed repeatedly that a samurai does not belong to

himself but to his master. On the other hand, Ogyu Sorai (1666–1728) expressed the

visceral repugnance he felt for the idea that ‘our bodies belong to our lords and are no

longer ours’, a view which he thought was good only for ‘wives and concubines’.11 He

stated that chu was simply ‘doing things for others as we would for ourselves’.12 Such

contrasted general definitions certainly give us a sense of the extent of the disagreements

on the meaning of chu. However, the divergences are best illustrated by the judgments

offered on specific instances of loyal or disloyal behavior. Only in these discussions

and arguments appear the various concerns, the other moral notions, the considerations

of all sorts that put chu in perspective—in very different perspectives, in fact. Two such

cases generated considerable discussion.

The most famous is that of the vendetta of the ‘Forty Seven Loyal Retainers’ (ronin)

who, in 1703, murdered a high ranking official their own lord had tried in vain to kill—

an action for which he had been condemned to ritual suicide. A well-studied series of

tracts, essays and replies, spread over two main waves in the eighteenth century, offers

ample testimony to the divergent analyses of the episode. Some thinkers approved the

conception of chu they saw implicit in the ronin actions; other criticized it, all for differ-

ent reasons. Among the critics, Yamamoto Tsunetomo harshly condemned their

patience and calculations as conflicting with the chu of authentic bushido.13 Ogyu

Sorai believed that the private loyalty they had displayed could not override public

interest.14 Dazai Shundai (1680–1747) was more severe, arguing that sages would

totally reject their conception of loyalty that he also considered as clearly conflicting

with the imperatives of the government.15 Sato Naokata (1650–1719) similarly

rejected the ronin view of chu, but did so by arguing both from the Neo Confucian

ri—principle or reason of things—and from a quasi legalist support for higher

orders.16 Among supporters, whose degree of enthusiasm varied greatly, Hayashi

11Ogyu Sorai, Tomonsho, 190.12Ibid.13Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, 237.14Ozawa, Nihon shiso ronso shi, 261.15Dazai Shundai, ‘Ako shijurokushi ron’, 406–407.16Sato Naokata, ‘Shijurokushi ron’, 378–379.

Loyalty in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Samurai Discourse 141

Hoko (1645–1732) claimed that if their chu was ethically correct, it still was liable to

penal sanction.17 More supportive Muro Kyuso (1658–1734) argued that the ronin

view of chu was moral, while Miyake Shosai (1662–1741) explained and justified

their action as the result of purely spontaneous emotion.18 In all those cases, there

were clearly different understandings at work: different interpretations of the require-

ments of chu, and of its relationships with notions like public interest, laws, feelings,

natural order of things, morality, other focuses of obedience and so on. In this

controversy around the 47 retainers, however, not only was the debate distorted by

attempts of its protagonists to throw discredit upon other schools and thinkers, but

the opposing interpretations of loyalty were also entangled in very different interpret-

ations of both the facts and the intentions of the ronin—as a number of previous

studies have shown.19

Even more revealing, because of the relative absence of disagreements on irrelevant

matters, was the debate around the actions of the ancient Chinese Tang and Wu who,

denouncing their kings as tyrants, had murdered them and founded the new dynasties

of Shang and Zhou.20 Outright rejection of the actions of Tang and Wu certainly had

a lot of support.21 Yamazaki Ansai (1618–1682), for example, as quoted by his disciple

Asami Keisai (1652–1711), seems to have found it difficult to even envisage the case of a

bad lord against whom one might consider disobedience.22 Others argued that in cases of

wicked government continued remonstrance—clearly ruled out in Ansai’s assumption

that there simply could not exist such a thing as a bad lord–and subsequent martyrdom

were the only possible behavior and manifestation of true loyalty. This was the position of

Kumazawa Banzan (1619–1691) who conspicuously left Tang and Wu out of the list of

the most excellent sages, although he did include them as lesser ones.23 Others still advo-

cated taking leave of one’s wicked master, considering the ties of loyalty to be dissolved in

such a case: ‘It is the ancient way to leave [our lord] if our remonstrance has been

ignored’, said Yamaga Soko (1622–1685).24 Others, like Hayashi Razan, went further,

believing that wicked lords who failed in their responsibilities exposed themselves to per-

fectly legitimate attacks.25 Ogyu Sorai was among the most outspoken supporters of

Tang and Wu. Not only did he vigorously defend their inclusion in the ranks of the

sages, he also affirmed that it was inevitable that the quality of leadership should

worsen over time. It was in consequence only natural for low born men to displace the

17Hayashi Hoko, ‘Fukushu ron’, 372.18Muro Kyuso, ‘Ako gijin roku’, 274 ff. For Miyake’s position, see Ozawa & Imai, eds., Nihon shiso, 269–

270.19I refer interested readers to the articles by McMullen, Bito and Smith published by Monumenta Nippo-

nica on the 300th anniversary of the incident: McMullen, ‘Confucian Perspectives on the Ako Revenge’;

Bito, ‘The Ako Incident;’ Smith, ‘The Capacity of Chushingura’.20This specific debate was not merely academic; it had been instigated by Tokugawa Ieyasu himself,

before he attacked the son of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Obviously looking for justification, he had asked scho-

lars whether actions such as Tang and Wu’s were permissible.21The kokugakusha were among the most critical of Tang and Wu’s actions. I do not consider their criti-

cism here because most of them were chonin (commoner) thinkers and also because their object of loyalty

was the Emperor.22Asami Keisai, ‘Koyuso shisetsu’, 235.23Cf. Kumazawa Banzan, Shugi washo. On p. 21, he lauds people who chose martyrdom rather than

rebellion, and who refused to serve those who had dislodged a wicked ruler; on p. 323, he makes a

ranking among the sages—something Sorai would vehemently reject as the height of arrogance—and

excludes Tang and Wu from the highest group.24Yamaga Soko, Yamaga gorui, 6 (maki 15): 133.25Hayashi, Bunshu, 208.

142 Olivier Ansart

ones who had been in power too long.26 Tang and Wu were kings in another time and

another country, but the polemic around their actions is striking testimony to the diver-

sity of views among Tokugawa samurai thinkers. Although they all seemed to accept the

idea of chu as the devotion of a servant to his master, they had fundamentally divergent

visions of the scope, the conditions and the limits of this devotion.27

It is not necessary here to make an exhaustive inventory of the varied understandings of

the explicit and implicit requirements of chu amongst the above-mentioned thinkers. But

since chu was viewed in such different ways, it is clearly important to trace the dynamics

inspiring those multiple interpretations and structuring the evolution of chu in the web of

moral concepts.

The Web of Rival Concerns

A first dynamic was purely philosophical. It did not directly shape any specific understand-

ings of chu. But it made them possible. Chu, after all, is a moral concept. One can certainly

use the word in a purely descriptive way, as a simple reference to one type of behavior.

However, because the word is used to request or inspire the special type of behavior it

denotes, it is also a moral concept necessarily exposed to the question of justification. As

a moral concept it must assume that there is something larger than itself, that is, morality.

Of course, some Tokugawa thinkers tried to avoid the problems looming here by sub-

suming, directly or implicitly, all moral issues under the concept of loyalty, thus trans-

forming it into morality itself. One could thus deny any possibility of conflict between

chu and other moral obligations. Yamazaki Ansai, claiming that there simply is no such

thing as a bad or wicked ruler, could pretend that loyalty was always good and right.28

Through a different argument, Yamamoto Tsunetomo reached a similar conclusion.

Stressing that the ideal retainer, ‘at one with his master, serves him [as selflessly] as a

corpse’, he remarked that this absolute and selfless loyalty entailed the abandonment

not only of all self interest but also of all other ethical considerations.29 The loyal retainer

does not follow his master because his master is good and doing the right things.30 He

follows his master, ‘leaving to him [all considerations of] good and evil and renouncing

his own body’, and does whatever he is asked to do, simply because he is his master’s

servant.31 In such an argument the specific notion of chu becomes morality itself.

26The inclusion of Tang and Wu in the list of the sages is vigorously defended in Sorai’s Benmei, 255. The

idea that the overthrow of regimes too old and corrupted is inevitable is in his Seidan, 365. Muro Kyuso

approves similarly of Tang and Wu (Shokan, 302 ff.). On this controversy, see, in English, Tucker, ‘Two

Mencian Political Notions’.27Lastly, it could be pointed out that these divisions went so far that, from the mid Tokugawa onward,

some playwrights and novelists could even make loyalty into an object of ridicule and derision.

Tsuruya Nanboku’s (1755–1829) Yotsuya kaidan, Hoseido Kisanji’s kibyoshi parody, Anadehon tsujingura

(1779), and Shikitei Sanba’s Chushingura henchikiron (1812) are all cases in point (see Smith, ‘Chushin-

gura in the 1980s’). If we consider how devoid of all heroic dimension, how prosaic samurai lives had

become in Tokugawa—witness that very common type of samurai, interested only in food, wine and

gossip, portrayed in the memoirs of Asahi Bunzaemon (see Kaga, Genroku kakyubushi no seikatsu, and

Kosaka, Genroku otatami bugyo no nikki)—they probably were not far from the mark.28See Asami Keisai, ‘Koyuso shisetsu’, 235.29Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, 221.30The forty seven ronin, as their correspondence revealed, had no clue as to why their master harbored a

grudge against Lord Kira. They were not avenging or redressing a wrong; they were merely doing what

their master had been prevented from doing.31Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, 223.

Loyalty in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Samurai Discourse 143

This interpretation had, however, too many rivals to stay immune from challenge.

Indeed, as the author of Hagakure so well perceived, in order to be sustained such an

exaltation of chu called for a blind and obstinate disregard for anything else, for a sort

of insanity. ‘Chu is madness’, said Tsunetomo, announcing his resolve to become a

fanatic.32 Admittedly, this was an extreme solution. In more pensive moments Tsune-

tomo allowed that, as a moral concept, chu entailed something bigger than itself—

morality—which he called michi.33

This recognition of a higher morality, however, is the beginning of all manner of trou-

bles. The concept is now part of a much bigger scheme where it articulates and vies with

other concepts, and where it has to find justification. In Tokugawa Japan moral notions

did not constitute a unified and uncontroversial set of norms. They were a collection of

ideas from very diverse origins, be they Shinto, Buddhist or Confucian, and each was

likely to be interpreted in different ways. Thus, in any moral argument, chu was con-

fronted with rival or broader concepts. Immediately, different views of their relations

became possible, each entailing a different view of chu.

The higher good most likely to weaken the claims of loyalty was the good of the state

and of its population. The house codes of Tokugawa Japan show very well that the ulti-

mate justification of daimyo power was the good of their domain. Numerous statements

by the lords of Okayama, Fukuoka, Yonezawa, Tsu, or Obama, for example, all clearly

expressed the idea that only effective governance and care of the land and its people

could justify their continued ownership of their domain.34 Implied here was the recog-

nition that their retainers’ obedience and loyalty were conditional on this effective

governance.

Another powerful rival for the concept of loyalty, especially at the beginning of the

Tokugawa period, was the notion of na, reputation and fame, usually understood as

‘honor’.35 True, the pursuit of fame through military exploits, which had been such an

important dimension of the concern for honor before Tokugawa times, was no longer

an option. The regime had no social ladder. Ranks obtained in 1603 were, for most

samurai families, ranks that would be held for two and a half centuries. But na had

been too closely identified with samurai behavior and self-representation to be easily dis-

carded, and a more subdued dimension of na—the concern for one’s reputation—was

still very much alive. In fact loyalty itself could be subsumed under the concern for

one’s reputation when one’s good reputation was thought to entail the reputation of

loyalty. However, more often than not, relationships between the two ideals were

tense. In the new political circumstances, to defend one’s name and respond to the slight-

est hint of insult was to embark on private fights, kenka. And private fights contravened

the famous daimyo and bakufu kenka ryoseibai policies, which imposed punishment on

both parties to a private quarrel, whatever the rights or wrongs. A conflict between

32Ibid., 237, 257, 265, 267, 1–55, 144, 188, 194.33Ibid., 233. I take as characteristic of a ‘moral obligation’ that it entails a broader picture of what human

beings are, a picture where it finds an explanation. Without this, the obligation becomes a simple

command backed solely by force—which is not what we can understand by moral obligation.34For Okayama, see Hall, Government and Local Power in Japan, 403. For Fukuoka, see Kuroda Naga-

masa, Kuroda Nagamasa yuigon, 30. For Yonezawa, see Kasaya, Shukun ‘oshikome’ no kozo, 252 ff. For

Tsu and Obama, see Tahara, ‘Kinsei chuki no seiji shiso’, 300.35It is indeed striking that, in many early Tokugawa descriptions of samurai behavior, in novels and plays

like Saikaku’s bukemono, or Chikamatsu’s jidaimono, honor always seems to loom larger than loyalty.

‘Samurai seek fame and disregard gain. Merchants seek wealth and disregard honor’ writes Chikamatsu

in Nebiki no kadomatsu, 279.

144 Olivier Ansart

honor and loyalty could thus have no happy resolution. Honor demanded that

provocation be answered, while loyalty forbade such answer. Death for all parties was

the logical answer to an absurd predicament, and it took a while before patience in the

face of insult, that is, loyalty to the lord’s wishes, was cleansed of any suspicion of

dishonor.36 Clearly, just like the greater good of the state and of the population, honor

was another rival concern that could check the claims of loyalty in samurai ethics.

The Danger from Within

Originating this time from within the concept of chu, another dynamic explaining the

many views on what this concept required manifested itself whenever it was confronted

with social realities. This was the problem of ‘divided loyalties’. No society can be so

simple as to offer each of its members one and only one focus of loyalty. The popular

Tokugawa slogan ‘filial son, faithful wife, loyal servant’ (koshi, seppu, bokushin) rep-

resented three expressions of loyalty (as the Hagakure said, ‘filial piety is chu; this is

the same thing’)37 to three different foci. It was based on the simplest model of social

organization, formed around the notorious ‘three basic relations’, but even in such an

ideal, oversimplified scheme the problem of divided loyalties could not disappear.38

The difficulty, indeed, was common knowledge. As a certain Nozawa Kanemori

bluntly remarked, it was next to impossible to simultaneously fulfill one’s duties to

one’s lord, parents and family.39 In fact, more often than not, individual situations

were much more complex than the three-party structure; opportunities for divided

loyalties were multiplying, toward one’s teachers, master, older mentor, benefactor,

even friends and equals.40 This immediately allowed for multiple views of chu to

emerge.

Here again, some tried to get rid of the problem in the most radical way. When he was

affirming that there was simply no such thing as a bad master or a bad parent, Yamazaki

Ansai was excluding the mere possibility of conflicting moral claims—assuming, as he

probably did, that there was only one way to be right. This strategy of denial did not con-

vince many. Others preferred to claim that there was no conflict of loyalty because, for

the samurai in the land of the rising sun, the lord had priority over all other possible

foci of loyalty, including the father. The rules of the Sakai samurai house, sternly

warning retainers that they should always put lord before father, provide one of the clear-

est expressions of this allegedly defining difference between Japanese and Chinese politi-

cal culture.41 But this solution did not go unchallenged either. The Meikun kakun,

attributed to Muro Kyuso, claims that one should not betray one’s parents, even if

36See some striking examples in Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai, 142 ff.37Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, 226.38Do we not find in the compendium of filial actions by virtuous subjects collected by the Tokugawa auth-

orities, the Kankoku kogiroku, the story of that boy who, being told by his father to take his geta to go out

because it would be raining, and by his mother to rather take his zori because it would be sunny, put a geta

on his right foot and a zori on his left? Conflicting loyalties could not alas always be managed in this

comical way. On the Kogiroku, see Ikegami, ‘Koki Edo kaso chonin no seikatsu’.39Quoted in Sawada, Practical Pursuits, 80.40Cf. the often quoted incident of the Otori Ichibyoe’s gang of kabukimono in 1612, when a servant mur-

dered his master for having killed one of his friends, another of this master’s servants. The subsequent

investigation discovered the existence of a gang of kabukimono tied to each other by a pledge of mutual

loyalty.41See Sakai ke kyorei, 59; other examples are found in Tsuda, Bungaku, 356.

Loyalty in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Samurai Discourse 145

they had acted contrary to the demands and laws of the daimyo.42 A similar declaration is

found in the Tokugawa jikki.43

Yet other thinkers were unhappy with both answers, and very reluctant to prioritize

those loyalties. In this group some recognized the possibility of divided loyalty, but

refused to resolve the problem. A good example of such a position is given by Arai

Hakuseki in his Oritaku shiba no ki, when he claims that it is impossible to assign any

order of priority among the three foci of loyalty: ‘the three basic relationships are the

ones between lord and subject, parent and child, and husband and wife. Concerning

those relationships, lord, parents and husband must all be equally respected.’44 The

unwillingness to prioritize the various foci of loyalty had a very high cost, however.

The same Hakuseki tells the tragic story of a young woman who, worrying about her

vanished husband, had unwittingly let the authorities discover that, unbeknown to

her, her father had murdered him. Hakuseki then comments that, caught between two

such loyalties, a true lady would have committed suicide.45 Obviously the most realistic

solution was of the kind proposed by Yamaga Soko, that defender of bushido, who

suggested that anyone caught in the dilemma of divided loyalties should consider the

favors received and act accordingly.46 Tokugawa Mitsukuni (1628–1700), the famous

Mito Komon, similarly left the decision to the individuals concerned.47

All these different views and analyses confirm that it would be futile indeed to look for

any clear-cut, widely accepted definition and understanding of chu. In the end, the word

was used in moral discourse as a useful, because socially accepted, and even obligatory

notion to legitimize behavior that was most likely spurred by very complex motivations:

moral convictions, emotions of love and gratitude, social pressures, purely selfish strat-

egies. After all, most moral judgments are made through negotiations and rationaliz-

ations, and on a case by case basis. Protection of samurai na, honor, could easily be

made to appear as real chu, because incurring shame would bring dishonor to the

lord,48 and retainers could invoke real chu to get rid of masters who were, they said,

endangering their house and its glorious history, or to justify a shift in the focus of

allegiance.49

To come back to the point illustrated in the preceding sections, the reasons for the

inherent instability of chu, for the impossibility of a clear-cut understanding of the

notion, are clear. As a philosophical concept, chu was cast into the arena of philosophical

dispute where it had to contend with other concepts and values. As a social norm, it was

42Muro Kyuso, ‘Meikun kakun’, 77.43See entry for the 30th day of the 7th month, 1659. While it is tempting to see here the influence of Con-

fucianism, such an explanation begs the question why the Confucian argument was accepted in the first

place. Confucianism simply offered arguments to people who were looking for some in the rationalizing

exercise I shall shortly mention.44Arai Hakuseki, Oritaku shiba no ki, 339.45Women were typical victims of the syndrome of conflicting loyalties. They were going from one family to

another and acquiring a new loyalty without renouncing the former, since it is only to the extent that they

were retaining ties with their original family that matrimonial alliances had any meaning at all in samurai

society.46Yamaga Soko, Yamaga gorui: 6 (maki 17): 212.47Tokugawa Mitsukuni, ‘Instructions of a Mito prince to His Retainers’, 126. A good overview of the

problem of divided loyalties is in MacMullen, ‘Rulers or Fathers?’.48See the incident reported in Ikegami, Taming of the Samurai, 214 ff.49See the use of the notion in the famous case of usurpation of power in the Saga domain by the

Nabeshima house, in Okuda, Oie sodo, 47; a case also studied in Takano, Kinsei daimyo kashindan to

ryoshusei, 26 ff.

146 Olivier Ansart

confronted with the destabilizing influence of honor and other motivations, emotions

and desires. And as a political principle supposed to organize the community, it was

threatened by the sheer complexity of society and divided by different foci.

None of the above reasons, however, explain the specific evolution of the understand-

ings of chu. We do not find over time a random distribution of the different interpret-

ations of loyalty, as absolute and unconditional, as obedience to one’s lord, or to one’s

parents, as professional conscientiousness, as a moral attitude informed by higher con-

cerns, or as return of favor. What we see rather is that an initial emphasis on absolute

loyalty to one’s lord—as expounded by Yamazaki Ansai and the warrior house codes—

is later more and more likely to be confronted by the more complex or weaker accounts

provided by Hakuseki, Soko, or Kyuso, and eventually, as we shall see, emptied of all

content by Kaiho Seiryo (1755–1817) in the late eighteenth century. In the late seven-

teenth century the Hagakure’s position, as the lamenting tone of its author suggests, is

already quite exceptional. This direction that specific interpretations and evaluations

of chu were taking is explained by yet another sort of dynamic, found this time in

social practices and real life.

Loyalty as a Function of Economic Dependency

My starting point here is a remarkable statement by Torii Mototada (1539–1600), a

retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu. His lord had asked him to hold back the advance of

enemy troops in the year of Sekigahara, 1600. When everything possible had been

done, and as he was about to commit suicide to avoid capture, Mototada sent his son

a famous last letter. There he mentioned that in order for the Torii family to continue

loyal service to the Tokugawa, it was imperative not to become a daimyo—presumably

a fudai daimyo of the Tokugawa clan. Large landholders like daimyo, thought Mototada,

even though they pledge allegiance to their overlord, the shogun, cannot be loyal retai-

ners. This was because too much—presumably wealth—was at stake.50 What Mototada

is implying here is that loyalty is a function of economic dependence. With economic and

hence military autonomy comes the end of loyalty, because the weight of self-interested

considerations simply becomes too heavy. If one desires to be a loyal retainer, one has to

put oneself in circumstances where the will is naturally constrained in this direction.

Mototada was stating a well-known truth. Pre-Tokugawa samurai were indeed

customarily divided into miuchi and tozama. The former were much like house servants;

the latter were warriors with a measure of military and economic autonomy. Whereas

treachery from miuchi was seen as shameful, it was accepted that more powerful

samurai, even though they had pledged allegiance to a greater lord, were simply pursuing

their own interest, at whatever moral cost. No absolute loyalty could be, or ever was,

expected of them. Hojo Shigetoki (1198–1261) had stressed this fundamental distinc-

tion between dependants and semi-autonomous retainers a long time before, when he

remarked that while dependants could be easily manipulated, one had to be especially

cautious about the semi-autonomous retainers.51 Studies of medieval samurai who

choose to stay loyal to their lords to the bitter end confirm that they were almost

always their blood relatives or dependants.52

50Torii Mototada, ‘Torii Mototada isho’, 29.51Hojo Shigetoki, ‘Hojo Shigetoki kakun’, 314–315. On the distinction between miuchi and tozama, see

Sato, Kamakura bakufu sosho seido no kenkyu.52See evidence quoted in Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai, 110.

Loyalty in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Samurai Discourse 147

With the coming of Pax Tokugawa this logic initially imposed the quasi unanimous

exaltation of loyalty, because the degree of dependency of retainers upon the daimyo

(and of the daimyo on the shogun) had suddenly increased in extraordinary measure.

Just as the daimyo had to make an oath of allegiance to the shogun in order to inherit

their fief, and could even, in some cases, see the fief transferred or confiscated, retainers

pledged allegiance to their lord and were at his mercy. They were usually living in the

castle town, and they were impoverished, if not by the expenses sustained in urban

life, at least by the diminishing price of rice. More importantly, they often were no

longer land-owning samurai, but salaried bureaucrats whose livelihood depended on

the coffers of the fief. Granted, the traditional picture of a vast and all encompassing

trend toward such bureaucratization of the retainers’ group is probably too simple: kur-

aimaitori, that is stipended and not enfeoffed samurai, were indeed the majority, but the

chigyotori, enfeoffed samurai, received more than half of the income of the samurai group.

Even allowing for this, however, it is clear that the Tokugawa chigyotori cannot be com-

pared to the independent-minded samurai of the Sengoku period. These tozama or

tozama hopefuls had always been looking for an opportunity to wrest their autonomy

from their nominal master. By contrast the land of most Tokugawa chigyotori was

useless as a power base, because it was commonly divided into non contiguous parcels

(bunsan chigyo, tobichi), so much so that often a single village and a single paddy field

were under different chigyotori. The extent of the rights they enjoyed on their land

varied a lot, but as a rule even the basic land tax was not decided by them, and many

enfeoffed samurai had no power of justice over the inhabitants of their fiefs. In such

conditions chu was a mere moralistic veneer on a conduct that was largely imposed by

rational self interest.53 Rebellion was simply unthinkable.

The Contractualization of Feudal Relationships

How, then, was it that the vigorous affirmation of unconditional loyalty, well explained by

these new conditions of the social order, could not be maintained over time?

The paradox is that the very same dynamic toward a greater dependency of the retainers

on their daimyo would, in the longer term, undermine the understanding of chu as absolute

loyalty, and eventually empty the concept of all substance in the eyes of many in the

samurai group. While the transformation of the warrior class into a peaceful stipended

bureaucratic corps increased the dependency on each next-higher level, and made

loyalty the rational choice that it had not always been in the previous period, it also ren-

dered more and more obvious the contractual nature of the relationships. Two interrelated

factors were probably at play here: peace, and the role of the merchant economy.

One consequence of the Pax Tokugawa was a new distance between daimyo and their

retainers: because of the sankin kotai (alternate attendance) system54, of the bureaucra-

tization of samurai status and of the ceremonial pomp, most retainers simply did not have

any personal contact with the daimyo they were supposed to serve under a personal

bond. Another important consequence of peace was that it encouraged rational self-

interested behavior. True, pre-Tokugawa samurai were obviously no strangers to egoistic

53This shift toward loyalty after the golden age of opportunists had in fact started before the establishment

of the Tokugawa regime. The powerful warlords had largely consolidated and fixed their domains and the

resident population at the end of the sengoku jidai.54The feudal lords had to spend part of the year in Edo and leave there their family as hostage when they

returned to their land.

148 Olivier Ansart

considerations. In the Nanbokucho period (1336–1392), Kitabatake Chikafusa railed

against the warriors who behave ‘like merchants’ asking for reward after the smallest con-

tribution to the loyalist cause.55 In fact, in the Middle Ages, the term chu was even used

in the sense of action or merit worthy of reward. Samurai would thus talk of the ‘loyalty’

(chusetsu) of taking an enemy head, of arriving at encampment, of building arrow store-

houses, of being wounded, of having lost sons, and thus make lists of their alleged chu in

their petitions for rewards.56 And in the early Tokugawa period even statements purport-

ing to express the idea of absolute devotion to a master more often than not let creep in

the idea of an exchange—and of conditional loyalty: in the Shinshu Kawanakajima gassen

by Chikamatsu (a chonin author to be sure, but of samurai descent), one character

asserts, ‘to throw one’s life away on the battlefield, and receive the favor of a fief, such

is the way of chu’.57 This tendency is quite striking in the selection of quotations that

Tsuda offers as evidence for the weight of the idea of absolute loyalty.58 There we see

that, according to the Shokoku monogatari and the Furyu Gunbai-uchiwa, samurai gave

‘a life in exchange for a fief’ (chigyo ni kaheraretaru ichimei, or roku no kahari ni hozu

beki mi). This extraordinary resilience, in statements which purport to express the

notion of absolute loyalty, of the concept of an exchange between a service given, hoko

or chu, and a reward, go’on, or go hobi, should not surprise us. It is indeed very difficult

to justify the obligation of a totally unreciprocated service—probably because, as even

Kant had to acknowledge in his analysis of the antinomy of practical reason, it is imposs-

ible to make sense of a moral duty that would not, in some way, lead to a good for its

author. Still, even if we thus have to make a large place for self-interested considerations

in the behavior of pre-Tokugawa samurai, we may also imagine that, in times of incessant

battles and turmoil, strong emotional feelings of solidarity between masters and retainers

could often hide, to a certain extent, the self-interested nature of their relationship.

Historians of mentalities have often documented what Elias called the different

‘emotional structure’ in men and women of the Middle Ages.59 Feelings of intense devo-

tion could thus motivate warriors fighting for their lord—but could also be followed by

sudden explosions of resentment and betrayal.

In the Pax Tokugawa however, the calculating and self-interested dimension of chu

could no longer be hidden by the emotions and feelings of solidarity forged in the

drama of heroic battles. Among the samurai, especially those who were employed and

who were offering concrete services for which they would be paid, a pragmatic, self-inter-

ested conception of their relationships with the daimyo would eventually dominate. As I

mentioned at the outset, we do not lack testimonies about this development of self-

interest in samurai mentalities. Yamamoto Tsunetomo might be the grumpy old man

lamenting the passing of better times and better men, but his remarks on calculating

and self interested samurai find too many echoes to be summarily discounted.60 An

intriguing work, Bushi toshite wa, even advised samurai to lie and deceive in order to

avoid being involved in kenka, as they were only a source of troubles.61 Self-interest

triumphed, unhindered by other more sentimental or heroic passions.

55See a letter by Chikafusa added to his Jinno shotoki, 459.56Cf. Conlan, ‘Largesse and the Limits of Loyalty in the Fourteenth Century’, 39–65.57Chikamatsu, Shinshu Kawanakajima gassen, 500.58Tsuda, Bungaku, 6: 308.59Elias, The Civilizing Process.60Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, 223–224. Another good example is Niime Masamoto, Mukashi

mukashi monogatari: 397.61Quoted in Ujie, Edo hantei monogatari, 18.

Loyalty in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Samurai Discourse 149

Another factor likely to facilitate the spread of a very pragmatic understanding of the

relationship between vassals and daimyo was the diffusion of urban life and the money

economy, and the subsequent reshaping of human relationships. The spread of the

money economy went hand in hand with the diffusion of contractual relationships.

Relations based on mutual benefit and a self-conscious quest for profit were becoming

the norm. Merchants and artisans were paradigmatic examples of this form of life, but

so were the ubiquitous wage laborers, day laborers, domestic servants, shop clerks,

palanquin bearers and others who received money in exchange for a service, usually

stipulated in a contract. And samurai, after all, were living in the same towns as

those people. As Kaiho Seiryo (1755–1817) wryly remarked, they were even engaging

with them in commercial relationships, selling rice, and buying all the commodities

and services necessary to the sustenance of life in towns. Furthermore, many among

them had to supplement their stipend with productive work. Buyer/seller relationships

were infiltrating the samurai group itself as retainers were also paying wages to their

own servants, called hokonin. The latter increasingly consisted of dekawari hokonin,

or temporary house servants, replacing the older hereditary servants or fudai hokonin

as the measures taken initially to discourage employment of the dekawari hokonin in

samurai households—for example the prohibition of short contracts—became a dead

letter.62 In his Seidan, Sorai remarks that the dekawari hokonin were part and parcel

of what he called the ‘life in inns’ (ryoshuku)—that is, this urban life where samurai,

away from their roots in the land, had to use money ‘even to get a toothpick’.63 He

proclaimed that the consequence of those contractual relationships now established

between masters and employees in samurai houses was that there was between them

no more feeling than between two strangers passing each other on the way.64

Samurai thus were not immune to the spread of contractual relations, and they saw

themselves more and more as offering a service and being rewarded with a salary. Nego-

tiations for employment of samurai illustrate well this mentality. Ronin looking for reem-

ployment (always possible in spite of the bakufu’s attempts to limit or forbid this)

prepared a curriculum vitae, stated their merits and, explicitly or implicitly, made their

claims.65 We have thus examples of monetary negotiations which amply demonstrate

that both parties were thinking in terms of contract, of offer and demand, especially in

the case of specialized positions—like those of Confucian jusha. Arai Hakuseki was

recruited in the House of Kai, that of the future shogun Ienobu, after negotiations

62Kigoshi, ‘Buke hokonin no shakai teki ichi’. See also Tokoro, ‘Edo no dekaseginin’.63Ogyu Sorai, Seidan, 295 ff.64Ibid., 275, 293. True, we have also cases where hokonin furnish examples of a loyal attitude that was

getting rarer among samurai. Most probably we have here cases of mimicry whereby despised lowly

persons uphold the ethics of the group they want to assimilate into, to the point of surpassing in

this respect the average representative of the group. The most famous example is that of the 47th

ronin of the Ako vendetta, Terasaka Kichiemon, the lowest ranking, the only ashigaru, of the Forty

Seven Loyal Retainers, who was—incorrectly believe most historians today—suspected not to have

been part of the revenge, because he was the only one to escape after the attack and to avoid

punishment.65More and more, technical merits were appreciated. This may be the reason why the famous explanation

in Hasegawa Nyozekan’s article ‘Yuibutsu shikan Ako gishi’ and Tamura Eitaro’s Ako roshi, of the Forty

seven loyal retainers’ vendetta—Hasegawa and Tamura claimed that they were only trying to boost their

chances to find reemployment after the death of their lord—is not entirely convincing. Daimyo may not

have been terribly impressed by this sort of attitude, unless they in turn wanted to make some statement

about the morality of their retainers.

150 Olivier Ansart

over salary that he mentions in his autobiography.66 Yamaga Soko, for his part, was

letting the world know that he would only accept a stipend of 10,000 koku—officially

the lowest for a daimyo!—for the immense service he had to offer.67

Eventually someone had to articulate this very novel conception of human relation-

ships. It would be, at the very end of the eighteenth century, the thinker of samurai

origin Kaiho Seiryo:

Since antiquity, the relation between lord and retainer is [like] the way of the

market. [The lord] gives a fief to his retainer and has him work for him; the

retainer sells his strength to his lord and buys his rice. The lord buys his

retainers, the retainer sells to his lord. This is buying and selling. Buying and

selling is good.68

How can we make sense of such a drastic transformation of the perceptions of the

relationships between lord and retainer? In any society, humans need representations

of what they are and of what sort of society they make. They need this social imaginary

in order to make sense of their lives. Traditional, inherited representations have the

obvious advantage of seeming to be confirmed by time and generations. However,

when what humans must do in order to survive sits so uncomfortably with the available

social imaginary, some of them at least will revisit the old representations and recast them

so as to better justify their actual practices. A pure absolute chu could still be invoked reg-

ularly–as a rhetorical claim, as a poor justification of parasitism on the part of the

samurai, a nostalgic expression of happier times, or as one those deluded self-represen-

tations that people, after all, so frequently entertain about themselves–but many choose

to look elsewhere.

A theoretical framework is needed to explicate the variety and complexity of the links

between the contractual practices spreading through Tokugawa society and the different

representations of human relationships, but that must remain an objective for another

occasion. In any event, Seiryo’s statements on the mercantile nature of samurai relations

show clearly the extent to which the old concept of loyalty had been undermined by the

facts of life in Tokugawa society. However flexible and elastic the interpretations of chu

had been, they all had to retain the core meaning of some personal devotion to

another. This core meaning, in the eyes of many at least, had lost all serious, consistent

reference in real life, and chu was a ghost vessel drifting at sea. The concept, it seemed,

was all but doomed, and not even the watered down interpretations offered by Soko,

Hakuseki and Sorai could save it. Against all odds, however, chu survived.

Another Focus of Loyalty

It survived indeed—but only once it had found again this once almost forgotten alterna-

tive focus: the Emperor. Having done so, it then not only survived but thrived as never

before, it seems, in the fanatical loyalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The reinstatement of the Emperor as the prime focus of loyalty is fascinating when we

consider the powerful forces that had so effectively, for many minds at least, emptied

66Arai Hakuseki, Oritaku shiba no ki, 203–204. Hinting also at the contractual nature of the relationship,

Arai mentions in another passage (p. 200) that retainers were asking to be relieved of all duties and were

leaving their lord when he was reducing their stipends because of hardships.67Yamaga Soko, Haisho zampitsu, 75.68Kaiho Seiryo, Keiko-dan, 222.

Loyalty in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Samurai Discourse 151

loyalty to daimyo of all substance. But it is also unsurprising when we realize that those

forces were totally ineffective against the new focus. The spread of the money economy,

the bureaucratization of the samurai group, the influence from the contractual practices

prevalent in the chonin world, had all worked well against the concept of loyalty to the

daimyo because the relationship between daimyo and retainers was a real relationship

between real people. As such, its expressions in daily life were constantly subjected to

the test of power relationships and shifting interests. And, as it happened, the traditional

absolutist understanding of loyalty could hardly make sense of the actual relationships

and the exchange of services that were going on between samurai and their daimyo

employers. Things were different in the case of the Emperor, simply because, quite

unlike that between samurai and their daimyo, the relationship between the Emperor

and his subjects was purely imaginary. Consequently, it could be viewed in the most fan-

ciful ways, become the subject of the grossest exaltation, and stand immune from any

refutation. Its emptiness itself ensured its almost unchallenged glorification.69

Conclusion

My aim was to make a preliminary survey of the different dynamics at work behind the

fate of a specific concept. Deliberately leaving aside, as a residue too difficult to prop-

erly analyze, the personal or idiosyncratic dimension of individual attitudes, I have

traced on the one hand the structural weaknesses of the concept that explain why it

could be interpreted in very different ways (the moral dimension, the competition

from others norms, the inner division between conflicting loyalties), and on the

other hand, the external and social circumstances (the influence of peace, of bureau-

cratization and of the spread of money economy) which pushed interpretations of chu

in specific directions.

Attempting to explain the evolution of this moral concept, I have used a philosophical

approach, a historical perspective on the evolution of ideas and social structures, and a

sociology of knowledge. Much remains to be done in each of those three approaches

to get nearer to a satisfactory account of what happened to chu, but particularly in the

third, that of a sociology of knowledge. The next step in this endeavor will be to

provide a theoretical account of the relations between the idea of loyalty and the social

circumstances of those who were grappling with the concept. As I have suggested

here, a fuller understanding of the complex and shifting character of the concept of

chu is the first step in explicating the mental landscape of the elite in Tokugawa society.

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