Arts Culture & Entertainment
January 6, 2014
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 11
Truth and myth in samurai culture
SAMURAI HISTORY. “Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel
Barbier-Mueller Collection,” an exhibit of full suits of armor, helmets and
face guards, weapons, horse trappings, and more, is on display at the
Portland Art Museum (PAM) through January 12. Talks have been held
in conjunction with the exhibit, including an event last month featuring
Maribeth Graybill, PAM’s curator of Asian art. She spoke about images
of the samurai, drawing from works in PAM’s Japanese galleries and on
view in the “Samurai!” exhibit, including the Tosei Gusoku armor (pic-
tured) with features of a tengu, a part-bird, part-human creature with
a distinctive beak, golden eyes, and striking eyebrows. (AR Photo/
Jan Landis)
By Mike Street
Special to The Asian Reporter
ew icons that represent Japan are as enduring and
important as the feudal samurai warriors.
Renowned for swordsmanship, loyalty, and
bravery, samurai have impacted artists worldwide, and
myths about them are accepted as fact.
Last month, Maribeth Graybill, Ph.D., presented a
lecture, “Samurai in Myth, History, and Art,” at the
Portland Art Museum (PAM) in conjunction with the
“Samurai! Armor from the Ann and Gabriel Barbier-
Mueller Collection” exhibit. Graybill, PAM’s curator of
Asian art, highlighted her entertaining and educational
lecture with images from PAM exhibits, exposing — and
occasionally debunking — the roots of our samurai
perceptions.
Our earliest impressions of Japanese samurai come
from the Heian Era, dominated by the Fujiwara clan at
the end. Minamoto Raiko and his father, members of the
Minamoto warrior clan, attached themselves to the
Fujiwaras and rose in prominence through a series of
shrewd political moves.
Although Raiko was granted both a powerful
governorship and the rare honor of an imperial audience,
he is better known for the story of how he rid Mount Oe of a
group of bandits. In the popular retelling, an ogre leads
the bandits, who bring him local youths to feast upon.
Raiko, on orders from the emperor, goes to destroy the
ogre, first praying at a Shinto shrine, where he receives a
magic helmet and poisoned saké.
After infiltrating the bandit group, Raiko poisons and
beheads the ogre, but the head survives and attacks
Raiko, who is saved by his magic helmet. Graybill pointed
out that this is the first example of a samurai using a
divine helmet; it is also an illustration of a samurai’s
supernatural strength, cunning, and bravery in the
service of his master.
The next samurai representation comes from a painted
screen in PAM’s collection, depicting the Death of
Atsunori from The Tale of the Heike. The plot of Heike
surrounds a civil war between the Taira and Minamoto
clans; it became an often-used source for Japanese drama,
dance, and paintings.
The screen shows Atsunori, a young Taira captain
fleeing Minamoto troops into the ocean, hoping to reach
his family’s ships. When the head of the pursuing troops
demands that Atsunori stop and fight like a man, the
young captain returns for one-on-one combat. During the
fight, Atsunori’s helmet comes off, and his opponent sees
that he is fighting someone as young as his own son.
Although he wants to spare Atsunori, the warrior sees
more Minamoto troops approaching. Apologizing, he
decapitates Atsunori to save him from a long and painful
death at their hands. This episode shows the familiar
samurai conflict between personal honor and loyalty to
clan, a conflict that results in suicide in popular films like
Harakiri. It also shows the samurai’s grim acceptance of
F
death when Atsunori returns to face his pursuer.
As Graybill pointed out, these qualities are undoubt-
edly exaggerated in samurai fiction. The pursuing
Minamoto warrior, consumed by regret, later became a
Buddhist monk, but never committed suicide. Similarly,
Atsunori might have understood that his death was
inevitable, or he might have hoped for a quick death — not
necessarily an honorable one. Extreme emotions produce
good art, but not good history.
One of Japan’s most famous historical figures, Oda
Nobunaga began the process of unifying Japan into the
shogunate that lasted until the Meiji Restoration. To show
how he represented several political, military, and social
aspects of samurai life, Graybill analyzed another PAM
piece, a brightly painted screen that shows a young and
rebellious Nobunaga meeting his father-in-law.
Followed by his famous spear troops and aware of the
importance of appearances, a young and rebellious
Nobunaga is garishly dressed — a “young punk,” as Gray-
bill described. Nobunaga changed to more conservative
clothes before formally meeting his father-in-law, and this
mixture of rebellion and conformity would be typical of
him throughout his career.
After flouting convention to aggressively unify Japan,
Nobunaga became its formal leader, and looked and acted
the part. Similarly, samurai can be presented as rebels or
military lords: Akira Kurosawa provides examples of
both, from the reckless ronin in Yojimbo to the regal (if
treacherous) leaders in Ran.
A further aspect of Nobunaga’s life shows the less-
martial side of samurai. Samurai often cultivated
civilized pursuits, and Nobunaga became an aficionado of
formal tea wares. Matsunaga Hisahide, a contemporary of
Nobunaga, was similarly obsessed with the crockery,
which the men used — oddly — as political weapons.
Hisahide rebelled twice against Nobunaga, but he was
forgiven for the first after the gift of a prized tea set. The
second time, Nobunaga would spare his life in exchange
for a simple tea ladle. Instead, Hisahide destroyed the
ladle and all of his tea wares, to prevent them from joining
his rival’s collection. While samurai usually battled with
blades, these two fought with their tea sets.
In the late eighteenth century, Uragami Gyokudo
exemplified this lesser-known artistic aspect of samurai
culture. When the shogunate brought peace, samurai
turned their abilities even further to poetry, music,
painting, and calligraphy; Gyokudo occupied his time
with philosophy and zither playing.
When the branch of Confucianism that Gyokudo
studied was officially banned, he abandoned his imperial
duties (risking a death penalty) to pursue painting.
Known for quick brushstrokes reminiscent of zither
strumming, Gyokudo typified the new, peaceful samurai.
One of the beautiful paintings he produced, “Mysterious
Forces: Sages at Play,” is on display at PAM.
In a lecture that transported its listeners across nearly
a millennium of Japanese history, Graybill exposed the
roots of popular samurai representations. Bringing to
light lesser-known aspects of samurai culture while
showing the fallacies of other assumptions, Graybill also
showed the breadth of PAM’s collection. Be sure to visit
the “Samurai!” exhibit before it closes on January 12, and
hear her entire, enlightening lecture on PAM’s YouTube
site.
The final lecture in this series, “What Became of the
Samurai in Modern Japan?,” will be presented on Sunday,
January 12 at 2:00pm in PAM’s Whitsell Auditorium.
Tickets are free for museum members and College Pass
holders, $20 for nonmembers, and $17 for students and
seniors. The price includes admission to the museum and
the “Samurai!” exhibit. The Portland Art Museum is
located at 1219 S.W. Park Avenue in Portland. To learn
more, call (503) 226-2811 or visit <www.portlandart
museum.org>.
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