"We Live and We Die"

We can draw nothing beyond that. Really?

The REAL Shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, as depicted by Kano Tan-yu.

“We live and we die.” Those words are spoken by Lady Mariko, the heroine in the FX historical drama “Shogun.” She is speaking to the character James Blackthorne, known as  Anjin-san, about the inevitability of fate. The year is 1600, when a century of violent civil war in Japan is coming to a dramatic, unknown conclusion.

Played by Anna Sawai, Lady Mariko delivers her line with unforgettable power and grace. The show’s producers deliver just as powerfully. “Shogun” just set a record of 25 Emmy nominations for a drama series. That tally is particularly remarkable for a historical drama spoken mostly in Japanese with subtitles.

Let’s go back 50 years from now, to the 1970s. Japan was having a moment. The economy was surging, with double-digit annual economic growth. It’s hard to imagine now, but Japan was a young, energetic country keen to tell the world a different story after a disastrous World War.

The samurai films of Akira Kurosawa and other directors helped carry that story. Films like “Rashomon,” “Seven Samurai,” “Yojimbo,” and “Hara Kiri” reached global audiences. Then, in 1975,  “Shogun,” the James Clavell novel rose to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, followed in 1980 by the television mini-series, starring Richard Chamberlain and Toshiro Mifune. Japan was BIG, and so were the samurai.

In 1975, I thought I was going to be a lawyer. I had just graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in history. Terrible timing on my part. Unemployment was 8.5% and inflation hit 9.1%. A history major wasn’t the brightest idea, either. Becoming a lawyer was all I could imagine. Sad, I know.

To delay my inevitable fate, I signed up for a six-week summer study trip to Kobe, Japan (Seattle’s sister city). I returned, changed. Instead of reporting for incarceration at the UW Law School, I signed up for an MA program in Japanese Studies. Eight years later, I woke from my fevered dream with a PhD in East Asian Studies, having written a dissertation on—get this!—Japan’s samurai in the sixteenth century. I must have been truly desperate to avoid a real job except—get this!—the UW hired me as a professor to teach other unemployable people about Japan’s samurai warriors.

What kind of world do we live in?

According to Lady Mariko, we live in a world driven by a preordained fate. “We live and we die.” Then she continues with subliminal effect, “We can draw nothing beyond that.”

What? Wait a second!

We live and we die. Okay, true enough. But nothing beyond that? Really?

In fact, the samurai approach to fate was complex and powerful. As warriors living on the razor-edge of life and death, their training imbued them with a profound appreciation of the discipline and skill to build and create tangible beauty in a transient world.

As a character, Lady Mariko herself exhibited that duality. She ably performed the tea ceremony with her husband; she bested her supreme lord in an ad hoc poetry contest; she spoke fluent Portuguese with her Catholic priest; she wielded a fearsome naginata (sword spear) against a crowd of intimidated male samurai; and, she confidently extolled the civilized beauty of her country, cuisine, castle, and city. Lady Mariko is a cultured, confident, and courageous woman. And, she did all of that while dressed in exquisite kimono.

It's a great story, and she’s a great character. What’s more, it’s deeply rooted in history.

Beyond their martial prowess, the samurai were superb learners, builders, and artists. Judging by the long lines and crowds today, their cultual legacy endures as a global celebration of the personal pursuit of creative distinction. Although defined as a class, the samurai stand out for the cultivation of their personal capacity across a wide spectrum of creative arts from tea to ink drawings to Zen gardens, and so on.

By contrast, our screens flicker with hyper-impermanence, and Generative AIs now force us to question what is human about our intelligence, creativity, and even our existence.

The samurai offer us much to consider. They would remind us that to resist the irresistible is to deny the human capacity to discern truth in the world. Even the real Luddites recognized the futility of their resistance. The samurai would also remind us that the intentional cultivation of creative skill and craft gives each of us a unique path to the future.

The “Koto” tea bowl

To examine this “Koto” tea bowl made by the sixteenth-century master craftsman Chojiro is to glimpse the tangible combination of function and art. For samurai, tangibility was highly prized in an impermanent world. The five senses framed the refined essence of human experience, especially when shared with a friend or comrade-in-arms. The art of tea brought all of that to life, for an achingly brief moment.

As Lady Mariko said, we live and we die. But beyond that, we can in fact draw something essential. We can heed our deepest human impulse. We can learn, build, and create for others to experience and cherish.

In future posts, Samurai Pivot will explore how the samurai focus on the individual cultivation of the martial and creative arts can inspire us to take our own step toward creative action in a challenging world.

Next post: Unemployed samurai does good.