Musuis story summary

Jing Ning HIST248

Summary of Musui’s Story 3/8/2016

I have watched some animations and television shows on samurai’s life and their stories before. They are always depicted as men with strong spiritual power and it seems that there is the “soul of samurai” naturally within their bodies. They also seem to be born with bravo and loyalty. However, in Musui’s Story written by Katsu Kokichi, a samurai in Japan’s late Tokugawa period who adopted the name Musui after his retirement, he reveals an exceptional account on the real life experience ofsamurai. And the truth is they actually suffered from their status and the cruel reality confronting them.

Katsu Kokichi was adopted by the Katsu family in his early age to become the son-in-law as we discussed in the course, since his brother inherited from his father their family rank and thus his brother successed the family name instead of him. In his childhood, he was required by his father to learn many samurai lessons such as judo, riding, fencing in different places and Chinese academics in Shogunate academy. His role as a samurai was actually well played by him. He was good at riding and fencing and even established a fencing school later in his adult years. But soon he ran away from home twice because he could not bear his living conditions. In his twenties, when he was taken home from his running away, his father kept him in cage for three years and during this time, he formally learned how to read and write. At the age of thirty-six, he was obliged to retire and pass family headship to his son Rintaro. Afterwards, he wrote this autobiography to record his life experience and to give advice to his heirs. He wants them to take his story as a lesson and not to misbehave and make mischief as he did.

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From my point of view, although the aim of Katsu Kokichi to write such an autobiography is to teach a lesson to his heirs, the description of his life experience in this book are more like a heroic record than a reflection and confession. I think Katsu Kokichi himself was actually proud of what he had done to enjoy his life and got everything he wanted. Even in the hardest period, he chose to irresponsibly run away from his debt rather than working hard to pay it back.

Furthermore, he noted the remarkable opinion-change event in his life, which is he was persuaded by an old man to treat others well. From that point, he began to kindly help people in his community to solve problems, from personal to financial, and his reputation among his community was successfully established. In his description, it is obvious to find his arrogance while reading these parts. Especially in the life after retirement part, he successfully helped his landlord to raised money from farmers in a village near Osaka. When I was reading this part, I think the family of his landlord and even himself treated this event as his triumph. But it is hard to tell if he was recording based on the truth since this is his autobiography and exaggeration is common in this kind of books. Anyway, his story still validly passes a message of encouraging well- deed. From now on I would like to talk more about the social reality of late Edo period that I found in this book.

In the late Tokugawa period, due to the great number of samurai in the society, unemployment became common among this tier of people, and they have to live on the little stipend provided by government. However, they were not able to raise their family with such small amount of income. Therefore, many of the low-ranking samurai had to work illegally to earn extra wage like trading.

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In the introduction part of the book, there is a detailed depiction of how the samurai in Tokugawa period were assigned jobs. They had to submit job applications and were strictly investigated by the shogunate inspectors on their behavior, education and personal life. Then the commissioners would choose few applicants to recommend to higher officials to be designated jobs. Most of them may never be recommended since the large number of the applicants and the relatively tiny number of the jobs. Katsu Kokichi, in his middle-age, also applied for a job like this and he even wrote a confession letter to commit his misdeed, but he did not receive a reply.

Moreover, the sizes of armies of the Daimyos were cut according to the stipulation of Shogun. Many samurai worked for Daimyo lost their occupations. In my opinion, as we talked about in the class, Tokugawa period ended the warring period in Japan and the previous function of samurai as warriors and soldiers was gradually losing its strengthen because the society was extremely peaceful without warfare.Therefore, it is not unreasonable for the low employment among samurai. Also, according to Katsu Kokichi’s description, many of them including himself were heavily indebted. Life was extremely hard for the low-ranking samurai. But the merchant, although classified far lower than samurai, became wealthy.

The story of Katsu Kokichi, the main character of this book, a normal samurai in the late Tokugawa period, epitomizes the degeneration and insecurity of the identity, income and life of common low-ranking samurai. He was not a famous man who had achieved great honor with many records in the history and respectfully memorized by people later. Compared to men like that, Katsu Kokichi was so normal and so real. In his story, in order to earn money, he became a

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beggar when running away from home; he traded swords at street fairs; he stole tax money for which his brother was in charge.

Compared to the “standardized” samurai, he was a rule-breaker. I think this is exactly the point of the book, that in this cruel conditions during the late Tokugawa period, the rules of samurai were destined to be broken, not only by samurai themselves, but by the pressure of the whole society. Consequently, three years after Katsu Kokichi’s demise, a boat from the United States thoroughly open the gate of Japan and samurai no longer existed after the beginning of Meiji Restoration.

Overall, in my view, this book is well-written. I am quite confused by people changing their names in different stage of life at first and the Japanese names were really hard to remember so that the relationship of characters was very hard to tell. Since it was translated from Japanese, some problems like culture, translation, and currency were inevitable. However, unlike other book talking about history, the depiction of this book is very lively and easy to understand. It does not discuss about the big event in the history, but it discloses what the real life of a normal samurai is like in the late Tokugawa period. 18020000 18080000 18150000 18230000 18230000-18260000 Katsu Kokichi was born Musui’s Story Adopted by the Katsu family at Musui’s Story age 7 First run away Musui’s Story Second run away Put into cage Musui’s Story Musui’s Story 4

18250000 18380000 18430000 18500000 18530000 Applied for job Retirement Wrote autobiography Pass away Black Ship came Musui’s Story Musui’s Story Musui’s Story Musui’s Story Musui’s Story 5