Yamato-damashii - Later History

Later History

The record of Yamato-damashii dates back one millennium to the Heian period (794-1185) of Japanese history, when Chinese culture and Chinese language were highly influential.

Yamato-gokoro (大和心 "Japanese heart; Japanese mind" is the closest synonym of Yamato-damashii. The Heian poet Akazome Emon first used Yamato-gokoro in her Goshūi Wakashū (後拾遺和歌集 "Later Collection of Waka Gleanings," 1086).

Since Wa 和 commonly abbreviates Yamato 大和 "Japan; Japanese", 和魂 (also read Wakon) is a contraction of Yamato-damashii. The Konjaku Monogatarishū (circa 1120) first uses it describing a burglar who murdered a nattering scholar of Chinese classical law. "Although Kiyohara no Yoshizumi (清原善澄) had admirable learning, he is said to have died in this childish way because he did not have the slightest knowledge of the Japanese spirit" (tr. Carr 1994:283).

For centuries after its use by Heian authors Yamato-damashii was rarely recorded until the late Edo period (1600-1868). One notable Kamakura Period exception is the Gukanshō history (ca. 1220), which uses Yamato-damashii (和魂) in praising the character of child Emperor Toba (r. 1107-1123).

Still, he had the personality of (his uncle) Fujiwara no Kinzane (藤原公実) characterized by Chinese learning and followed in the footsteps of (his ancestor) Sugawara no Michizane, but Toba had even more Japanese spirit than either of them. (adapted from Carr 1994:283)

Three new "Japanese spirit" phrases originated around the 1867 Meiji Restoration. First, the modernization Nihon-damashii (日本魂?) was fashioned by Kyokutei Bakin, a famous samurai author of Gesaku. His Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki ("The Crescent Moon", 1811) quotes Minamoto no Tametomo discussing seppuku rituals: "I admit that a person who does not care about dying when on the verge of death may superficially have the Japanese spirit, but I think this is a misunderstanding from not having learned about it." (tr. Carr 1994:284). Second, Wakon-kansai (和魂漢才 "Japanese spirit and Chinese scholarship") occurs in the Kanke ikai (菅家遺戒 "Sugawara's dying instructions"). Third, Wakon-yōsai (和魂洋才 "Japanese spirit and Western techniques") was created by Yoshikawa Tadayasu (吉川忠安) in his Kaika sakuron (開化策論, "Questions and Themes on Progress", 1867).

Following the Japanese victories in the First Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, nationalists made Wakon-yōsai into a catchphrase for modernization and militarization, and developed Yamato-damashii into what Miller (1982:13) calls "the official rallying cry for the Japanese armed forces in World War II."

In the present day, Yamato-damashii is historically associated with Japanese nationalism, but is commonly used in Nihonjinron discussions and sports media. It is most notably known as the motto for the international Purebred mixed martial arts school headed by Japanese-American Enson Inoue. Professor David Pollack predicts that Yamato-damashii will become extinct.

Synthesis comes to an end only when antithesis ceases to appear. For many centuries Japan found its most significant antithesis in China. During the last century and a half the West has been the antithetical term in the dialectic, and as always it has been in that "other" that Japan has sought its own image, peering anxiously for signs of its own identity into the mirror of the rest of the world. After the challenge of Western technology has been successfully met, one wonders what will be left that is "alien," besides the very fact that the historically necessary "other" is lacking. In that case, "Japanese spirit" (Yamato-damashii) will find itself face to face with the most frightening "other" of all – its lack – at which point opposition must cease or else feed upon itself. (1986:52-3)