Sarah Paine: commitment

Transcript context

…had been teaching, was Soviet tactics. And it will become the A course. If anyone can teach this, go ahead, because I don't know a damn thing about it. 0:06:27 Talk about being unprepared for seminar. And then think about it. Where are the Japanese actually fighting most of the time? What is the country that most matters to them at the end of the day? It would be China. And that's not what their war colleges are studying. Something's up here. Now, they're clearly making a really bad net assessment about the United States. Okay, this country also is known for lousy net assessments. I don't believe ours about Vietnam was particularly good either. And that's one part of the problem. 0:06:58 So here's my game plan for this evening. I'm first going to talk about traditional Japanese theorists and then it’s going to be talking about Japanese practice - how if you believe, if you have this belief system, how explanatory it is for practice. This is my game plan right now. So the Japanese don't have just the one book like Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," or Clausewitz's "On War." What they have is Bushido, Code of the Samurai. It's a whole literature, and it was written in the Tokugawa period, which, quite ironically, was a period known for peace, not warfare. Never mind. And what's interesting about this literature from a western perspective, it's really not about military strategy. It's about deportment. It's how a samurai should conduct himself. And this reflects Japanese values and the things that they emphasize.. 0:07:55 And so I'm going to go through it with you. And starting, here's the game plan on the theorists: first I'm going to talk about the philosophical origins of bushido, then the values that underpin it, and then the operational preferences that grow out of it. That's the game plan for first half. And I'm going to use as my cultural bridge this man, Nitobe Inazō, who wrote a book much later in 1900, "Bushido: Soul of Japan." Why am I doing this? Because he provides concise definition of Bushido, and you can see he's an important figure in Japan. Not everybody gets their mug on the 5,000 yen note, so he's an important figure in Japan. 0:08:36 He had spent 18 years abroad, and he had received higher education in Japan and a variety of Western institutions. He married, believe it or not, I don't make up these things, a Philadelphia Quaker, and he converted to Christianity. And he spent his life trying to serve as a cultural bridge, and that's how I'm going to use him today. And what he said is, unlike in the West, where notions of morality come from religion, in Japan they come from Bushido. And what is it? It's a code of, chivalrous code of honor for the warrior class, these precepts of knighthood. And from this, there are three pillars of Bushido according to Nitobe. 0:09:21 They're Buddhism, Shinto, and Confucianism. From Buddhism, it's where you see Japanese fatalism, the origin of it. And here you have Nitobe saying, it's this “calm trust in fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable”, a “friendliness with death”. And it strikes Westerners reading this Bushido literature, is a preoccupation with death. obe saying, it's this “calm trust in fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable”, a “friendliness with death”. And it strikes Westerners reading this Bushido literature, is a preoccupation with death. That, for instance, Clausewitz will talk about violence in warfare, but he's not interested in what constitutes an honorable death, let alone choreographing a soldier's final moments. Different culture. And from Buddhism, there are four noble truths of Buddhism. One is that existence is suffering, pessimistic view of this life. Second, it's caused by craving and attachment, so don't cling to this life or the things in it. It's all ephemeral. It's like a cherry blossom, blooms for a day and then it's gone. And, but there's a good ending to it all, which is nirvana. And how do you get there? The fourth noble truth is through forms of right conduct. So, the emphasis isn't on what you achieve in your life. It's how you lead it. It's a focus on deportment. It's different from the West. 0:10:45 Second pillar, Shinto, is this extreme patronism, reverence for the emperor and the third pillar is Confucianism, these imported ideas from China. And what Confucianism is at heart, of how it’s organizing a society and regulating it through interlocking social obligations, hierarchical, and through ritual and etiquette. So in the West, there's much talk about equality. Right? And in the east, it's duty. It's what you owe other people. In the east, there is no such thing as social- in China, in Japan- of equality. Even twins have a birth order. And it's not about freedom either. It's about what you owe others. 0:11:35 So, if you think that these value systems seem really different, yeah, no kidding. It has nothing to do with the Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian West. Completely different value system. And so, Alice, welcome to Wonderland. Buckle up, we're off for a ride. And I'm going to start, here's my first piece of the Tokugawa literature, Yamamoto Tsunetomo's "The Hagakure" that he wrote in the early 18th century. It translates variously as “Hidden Leaves”, “Hidden by the Leaves”. And in it, he is describing, I'm going to read you some short passages from it all. What was he? He was a retainer for a daimyo, a feudal lord in Japan. He hadn't actually done any fighting, even though he's writing all about it. So if you don't do, what do you do? You publish. 0:12:32 And I will tell you what the man had to say. One of the first things is this preoccupation with death. And here is Yamamoto: "The way of the samurai is imagining the most sightly way of dying. Merit lies more in dying for one's master than in striking down the enemy. The way of the samurai is found in death. It is not necessary to gain one's aim, but if you live on without achieving it, it's cowardice. However, if you don't gain your aim and die, that's okay." This is really different from Clausewitz, where it's all about achieving the policy objective. It's not about how the soldier's leading his life. And here you can see the consequences of this, right? If you're focusing on no fears of death, and if you can't succeed, living on is a disaster. So, think of the banzai charges. r's leading his life. And here you can see the consequences of this, right? If you're focusing on no fears of death, and if you can't succeed, living on is a disaster. So, think of the banzai charges. When Japanese remnants would go headlong into oncoming machine gun fire, knowing full well what was going to happen. This is not the way other armies have behaved. Different value system. 0:13:45 In addition to death, the Bushido literature's emphasis is on honor. Back to Yamamoto. "The way of avoiding shame is different. It's simply death. Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate." Think of General Tojo and Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku. And here's the, if you suffer a catastrophic defeat, here's the solution. In the event of a mortifying failure, you're gonna wind up committing suicide. 'Cause the alternative, if you live on in shame, you're bringing everyone you're associated with shame. So how does the suicide work? It's seppuku, hara-kiri. The Samurai who's doing it kneels down with short sword, he plunges it into his belly tries to do a full revolution. And then his second, usually a close associate, takes the long sword, if he does it right, one sweep, head in lap, upright corpse, blood everywhere. 0:14:47 Diplomats in the 19th century, Western diplomats, were told to witness this. If a samurai had murdered a Westerner, okay, the diplomats had to come in and watch the proceedings. They just about lost their lunch. So the Japanese think that they are showing, and what the Westerners think they're seeing, aren't aligning. And I'm going to use Nitobe to be the cultural bridge. He said, "in our minds, this mode of death is associated with the instances of nobles, deeds and most touching pathos. So this form of death assumes a sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life." It's a way to escape from disgrace. And in Japanese literature, there is the tragic hero who is pursuing noble but unattainable aims, and rather than making disagreeable compromises, goes down in flames. 0:15:42 This is what seppuku is all about and Nitobe is saying look, death involving a question of honor was accepted in bushido as a key solution to many complex problems. And you can think in World War II, yeah, it was. Complex problems like battle plans not working out and a war that was truly not working out. And you can see the suicide going on both individual and group. And I remember going in the caves in Okinawa and understanding how that works because you could see a lot of the damage. If your commanding officer decides to commit suicide and tosses a grenade in the right direction, the entire room goes with him. All right, so in addition to death and suicide and honor, we've got loyalty. It's another key value. I'm back to Yamamoto: "Being a good retainer is nothing other than being a supporter of one's lord. A man is a good retainer to the extent that he earnestly places importance in his master. Having only wisdom and talent is the lowest tier of usefulness." So much for Silicon Valley.…

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