Lives and Afterlives of Bushidō: A Perspective from Overseas

Abstract

Bushidō has had many different lives in many different places around the world. These transformations and afterlives constitute valuable witnesses that offer competing narratives of Japan’s modern development and of its changing roles in the world. Beyond Japan they speak to the multiple ways that the country both inspires and (sometimes) displeases other nations. These lives and afterlives also serve to illustrate the myriad ways that intersections of the local and translocal, the past and present, refract perspectives. Bushidō is not unique in its ability to assume divergent connotations and implications in accordance with the contours of the frame within which it is placed. Its elusiveness exemplifies the amorphous characteristics of our global world’s nomadic lexicon.

Keywords

• bushido
• Nitobe
• invention of tradition
• nomadic concepts