Why Samurai?

My fascination with hidden histories

Mounted samurai archer

I’ve been trying to figure out how long I’ve been working on my new novel, Samurai Bluegrass. The short story, the impetus for the story, was published in 2007 by Carve magazine. But I’ve probably been working on this novel for around seven years, give or take.

So why the fascination with samurai?

Travel with me back to a time I like to call “art school.” Back then, I landed on a book that talked about the kamikaze pilots in WW2, and mentioned something called the code of the bushido. I found this fascinating, especially since I’d never had any of this history taught to me in my school on the Canadian prairies. I did a couple of paintings, read some more about the history, and then moved onto something else.

Fast forward to later in the eighties, when a friend introduced me to world cinema. Because of a few art houses, both in Calgary and Toronto, I started watching films that didn’t come out of Hollywood. I loved German movies, and Italian, and oh, those French (a long love affair began with the French New Wave), but when I started watching Japanese films… oh wow. This was something altogether different.

There’s better covers, but I like the cheeseball quality here.

The gateway for me was Kurosawa. I’d heard of Seven Samurai, but I watched Yojimbo first. I didn’t know that this was actually the same movie as Fistful of Dollars (or that Leone had ripped it off), but I recognized in it the same vibe that I fell in love with as a kid, and then a teen. The swagger was all there, the dusty streets, the cool soundtrack, and the dead guys gunned down by the anti-hero… no wait, they used swords. Eventually I found a copy of Seven Samurai, and then Sanjuro, and many more after that—films were harder to track down them. There were Criterion versions that I could rent, but there was no streaming service of Criterion Channel… because there was no internet. Ancient times. We went to mailboxes, and our phones were connected to the wall.

I digress.

Rather than go down the film geekery spiral, what really began my deeper interest in samurai culture, and Japanese history in general, was that I started to read about it again. One of the themes in my stories and novels is the idea of hidden knowledge. This is best exemplified in my novel Fall in One Day, when I explored the hidden, or at least forgotten, history of LSD. Watergate shows up in that novel as well… if you want to talk about things hidden.

The more I read about the samurai, and learned how their history wove through Japan’s history, I started to get a different picture than the one shown in Kurosawa films. For one thing, when samurai first emerged (10^th Century, or perhaps even earlier) they were archers. The rise of the samurai sword came much later (12^th Century and beyond… I’ve read a lot of different accounts of this. Seems the time period is sketchy, but a lot later.)

Enter one of the coolest podcasts I’ve ever listened to: The Samurai Archives Podcast. Here is where my education really began. This group of scholars, some from Japan, some for places like Honolulu, do deep dives into the history of Japan, notably the samurai. Not only did I listened repeatedly to several years of episodes, I reached out to the hosts when I had a particular question I couldn’t answer. Like, “when was the term Daimyo, a Japanese feudal lord and magnates, first used?” They were lovely people, and often responded quite quickly.

True this was for research, but so much of what I learned I knew would never end up in the novel. That’s usually the way it goes. It’s Hemingway’s iceberg theory rising up once again. Oh, and here’s a writerly tip: write what you want to know (instead of that other bullshit adage).
Research should compel you… or else why bother doing it?

Actual photo of Papa H. living on an iceberg.

The hidden history that began to emerge about the true history of the samurai made me reconsider a lot of what I previously believed about the samurai. I wanted my 12^th Century samurai to be all about the code of the bushido, and to consider his death every day (as the code of the bushido suggests… uh, commands.) But when I learned about the myths of the samurai, and how the code of the bushido was not really followed as much as first thought, a different picture emerged.

When I started to learn this, there was a sadness. But I wanted to be truer to the actual history. Of course, I was ever-aware of the danger of the info-dump. And in every pass, more history and backstory got cut. Also, this was the story not just of a man who believes himself to be a 12^th Century warrior, but one stuck in a land and a time so very different than the one he came from. Or so he believes.

(Yes, I’m being cagey.)

I still read articles on the samurai, and I’m still fascinated by the history. I hope for those who read Samurai Bluegrass, that there is a sense of the authentic in the novel. But I also hope that the story moves like a mofo.
(An early reader told me the novel was quite compelling—and that was something I was really hoping for.)

I’ll leave it there for now. Ask me questions here, or on the twitter-box. I love to talk about this stuff.

Lastly, if you’d like to pre-order a copy of Samurai Bluegrass (and I hope you do. Pre-orders are hugely important) here are some links:

Samurai Bluegrass eBook on Amazon
Samurai Bluegrass paperback from Literary Wanderlust

The book release is July 1!

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Thanks for reading, as always, tell a friend, hug your partner, and feed your cat.
He looks hungry.