Page 23 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

1281. Suenaga had the scrolls painted to glorify himself and his exploits
for posterity and to lay claim to spoils for his contribution to the salvation
of the country. The two scrolls express Suenaga's leadership, his fearless-
ness, and his ferociousness in hand-to-hand combat with the invaders.
They may exaggerate his individual contribution to the rout of the Mon-
gols but they do give a vigorous impression of the martial ideal of the
bushi as it existed in the late thirteenth century.
Another illustration of the life of the Kamakura warrior and his
disdain for the ways of the courtier is provided by the Obusuma Saburo
ekotoba ( Tale of Obusuma Sdburo, cat. 79). Painted around the year 1300,
this scroll contrasts, we might almost say caricatures, the lives of two
eastern warriors from Musashi Province, Obusuma Saburó and his elder
brother Yoshimi Jiro. Yoshimi Jiro is presented as an aesthete who has
admiration only for the ways of Kyoto and its courtiers. His residence,
completely out of place in the frontier territory of the eastern provinces,
is a copy of a nobleman's palace. He takes as his wife a noblewoman from
the imperial court, who bears him a daughter. He shows no interest in
the cultivation of martial skills but instead devotes his days and nights to
composing poetry and playing the flute.
Obusuma Saburó, by contrast, is a dedicated warrior who thinks
of nothing but the cultivation of martial arts. The text of the scroll sums
up his attitude in this way:
Because I was born in a warrior house, [yumiya no ie], what could be more natural for
me than to practice the skills of the warrior. What is the use of filling one's heart
with thoughts of the moon or flowers, or composing verse, or plucking a lute? The
ability of strum a zither or blow a flute doesn't count for much on the battlefield.
Everybody in my household—women and children included—will learn to ride wild
horses and train daily with the longbow.
Saburo takes as his wife an ill-favored but stalwart woman from the
eastern provinces. She gives him three sons and two daughters, all of
whom are obliged by Saburó to devote their days to martial pursuits.
One autumn the two brothers are called to Kyoto to perform
military service as guards at the imperial palace. Saburó sets out first,
with his retinue. On the way he encounters a band of brigands in the
mountains but the mere reputation of his martial ability frightens them
off. Some days later Jiro and his men encounter the same bunch of
brigands. The bandits are less intimidated by the courtly Jiro and his
band. They kill him and rout his retinue. When Saburó returns from the
capital, in spite of the fact that he has sworn to take care of his elder
brother's interests, he steals Jiró's lands, makes his wife and daughter his
servants, breaks off a marriage arrangement between Jirô's daughter and
the local provincial governor, and tries to interest the governor in marry-
ing his own ugly daughter. The last section of the handscroll has been
lost, but stories like this were generally provided with happy endings,
often through the intervention of a compassionate Buddhist deity.
Whatever the original intent of the scroll, it reveals a tension
between bu and bun in thirteenth-century warrior society and an aware-
ness that over-indulgence in courtly or literary arts could undermine the
warrior spirit and bring disaster to warrior families. The behavior of
Saburó, ready at every turn to advance his own, and his family's, interests
was perhaps intended as a caricature of the martial spirit and realism of
eastern warriors.
Warrior leaders like Yoritomo and the Hójó regents frequently
warned their vassals against excessive indulgence in scholarly and literary
pursuits and preached the virtues of spartan living, battle readiness, and
cultivation of the martial arts. Early medieval warriors, especially the
warrior elite, those who would later be described as daimyo, also culti-
vated the civilian arts, due to necessity and personal interest. As they

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