虚実皮膜: The Philosophy of Non-Separation in Art

The mere mention of the word samurai often allows the image to sprint ahead, leaving the substance behind. The samurai, commonly misunderstood as an elite class, is now regarded as an entity that is no longer actual—entangled with the disguised misconception that the Edo period was synonymous with feudalism. In truth, none of us have ever seen a samurai, nor met one. We do not know the look in their eyes, the architecture of their thoughts, or the cadence of their gait. The familiar lie that the Edo period was purely feudal is nothing more than impression manipulation by the new rulers who overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate through a military revolution, disguising their regime as a new era—the Meiji government. When viewed in this light, the last 160 years feel as though various discourses were cast into the void, and from the debris, the image of this nation called Japan was forcibly constructed. We speak of the Edo period, but it was an era that spanned nearly three centuries; if one discerns the nuance of such a duration, the foolish logic that equates the Edo period with simple feudalism would never arise.

It was not only samurai—sword-bearing, adhering to strict etiquette, and dedicating their lives to the domain or Shogunate—who reigned for centuries. There were many who, even if it meant discarding the status of the warrior class spoken of as privilege, chose to live in accordance with their own convictions. However, because such people were called yosutebito—those who cast aside the world—they do not remain in documentary records. The history that remains in documents is but a mere sediment. The deception and violence that erect this sediment as “general history” constantly mistake the truth, becoming the foundation for the sophistry of ideologies asserted in the modern day. Yet, very rarely, there were yosutebito who remained in the records. The symbolic existence among them is Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725).