"Unraveling the Origins of the Samurai: Hybrid Antiquity, Emergent Middle Ages"

2019/02/13

My motivation for writing this book was impure. I had a different research theme. Heian-kyo was a "theater city" for staging political shows since ancient times, but when the samurai became the main political actors in the medieval period, how was it reconstructed, and when, by whom, and as what kind of message-sending medium did it function? That was my theme.

To pursue that theme, it was necessary to clarify whether the samurai were born within Heian-kyo and the Imperial Court, or in the provincial societies outside. However, experts in samurai theory had abandoned that debate, and there was no prospect of an answer. Since that would have caused my entire research to fail, I had no choice but to tackle it myself.

I have only been studying the theory of the samurai's formation for one year, starting from scratch. Therefore, there are likely flaws and mistakes. However, if this book has an absolute, unwavering significance, it is that I tackled the theme of "where the samurai came from" head-on, constructed a hypothesis that could be presented to others, and mustered the courage to present it without fear of loud criticism. It is just courage, but in a world where almost no one shows such courage, it is surely not worthless.

Looking back, one could say it was the culture of Keio University that cultivated this nature of mine. Whenever I see the social constraints of national universities, which appear to be apprentice-like "village societies" in the academic world, I feel fortunate to have studied at the Faculty of Letters at Keio University. For better or worse, they left me alone and did not ostracize me even when I stuck to my own ways. Come to think of it, that was natural; it was a pasture where a village society did not exist in the first place.

At any rate, I arrived at a reasonably logical answer regarding the theory of the samurai's formation. Why? Because I had to break through this problem at all costs and return to my original research theme as soon as possible. On the other hand, perhaps the reason experts cannot solve this problem is that they spend their whole lives dealing with it and are not in a hurry. Whether research progresses or not is determined by the presence or absence of a pressing motivation: "I want to know the answer, the truth, right now, no matter what." I believe I gained such an insight through the writing of this book. For a while, I plan to persistently instill this insight into my juniors.

"Unraveling the Origins of the Samurai: Hybrid Antiquity, Emergent Middle Ages"

Yuichiro Momosaki (Author)

Chikuma Shinsho

356 pages, 980 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and job titles are as of the time of publication.