The North Carolina Museum of Art’s, “Samurai: The Making of a Warrior,” is up until Feb. 2 in Raleigh. Morgan Pitelka, Bernard L. Herman Distinguished Professor in the departments of history and Asian and Middle Eastern studies, and Megan McClory, Ph.D. student in the department of history, served as scholarly consultants on the project. They were joined by Matthew Hayes, the Japanese studies librarian at Duke University.
McClory, who is on a yearlong fellowship in Japan, provided some insight about the exhibit.
Q: Were there key myths about samurai that the team wanted to dispel or clarify?
A: One of the most important things we wanted to address was that samurai were more than just fighters. Although to a certain extent the concept of samurai began that way, over time “samurai” became a status group with complex artistic and peaceful cultural traditions off the battlefield. My own work focuses on separating “sword as weapon” from “sword as cultural symbol,” and I was keen to express that while working on the exhibit. I think the NCMA did a wonderful job articulating the multifaceted identity of samurai culture. I hope that guests are able to walk away with a fuller concept of what it meant to be a samurai in Japanese history.
Q: What period in history are we talking about in Japan?
A: The majority of the artifacts in the exhibition date from the Edo period, roughly the 17th to the 19th century, with some older pieces, including several swords from the early 14th century. The Edo period was an interesting era in terms of samurai culture, a turning point of sorts. The ruling government, known as the shogunate, was headed by a military leader, but the era is called the Great Peace by historians. After a century of intense civil war, the country was unified by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu at the end of the 16th century, and large-scale violence all but disappeared until the mid-1800s. During this time, we see an explosion in samurai culture — developments in tea culture, fashion, literature, weapons design and political hierarchy. Although samurai were not necessarily economically privileged, their status as the societal elite created an environment where samurai culture could flourish.
Q: What do you find special about this collection?
A: The collection is absolutely astounding. My research deals with the way weapons evolved as a kind of status symbol during the Edo Period, so one practice I find particularly fascinating is that old long swords might be cut down — sections of the tang and even the bottom of the blade were removed to create a shorter sword, in a process known as suriage. The practice speaks to the way weapons were respected for their historical value as much as their practicality. There is one sword in the exhibit in particular, a long sword (tachi) that dates from the Nanbokuchō era in the second half of the 14th century. I think it is a great example of this. The shortening of the blade most likely occurred during the period of civil war called the Sengoku period, nearly two centuries after the sword was forged, in accordance with changes in fighting style as the focus shifted from cavalry charges to masses of infantry. It’s also possible that the blade was altered even later during the Edo Period, when the sword became an accessory and status symbol that samurai were expected to carry around in their peaceful daily life.
Q: What can you tell us about the role of samurai women?
A: When one considers samurai as a legal status group rather than as soldiers, it’s much easier to understand the role of samurai women. Women did, on occasion, fight — to the point that the naginata, a type of polearm, is closely associated with women — but samurai women also participated in the same cultural endeavors as their male counterparts during the Edo period, including tea ceremony, calligraphy, poetry, art and even politics, although this last was in the background. One term for wife in Japanese is oku-san, or inside person, referring to a woman’s control of the household. Their domain was inside the home, from where they were able to influence their husbands and sons.
Q: You are in Japan working on your dissertation research. What is the focus of that?
A: I am currently a research fellow at Kokugakuin University in Tokyo, working with Dr. Yabe Kentarō. My dissertation focuses on weapons, using swords as a lens to study the Edo period from a social, political and military standpoint. In 1588, Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued an edict now known as the “Sword Hunt,” which was essentially meant to prohibit non-samurai from owning weapons —including swords, polearms and firearms. In reality, it was a lot more complicated than simply disarming the peasantry. As a result of the Sword Hunt, swords became a status symbol representing the samurai social group and came to be a way for people to show off their wealth and position.
The following students — as part of the UNC Japanese History Lab led by Pitelka — also contributed to the project: Ph.D. student Jason Castro, M.A. student Sylvie Hack and undergraduates Sarah Martin, Jack Snyder and Catherine Williamson.
Read a blog post on the NCMA website by Castro, “Who Could Become a Samurai?”
Interview by Kim Spurr, College of Arts and Sciences