Introduction

Use anger to throw them into disarray, use humility to make them haughty.
Tire them by flight, cause division among them.
Attack when they are unprepared, make your move when they do not expect it.
Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness,
Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness,
Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

During one of the recent flare-ups of trade friction between the United States and Japan, a prominent critic was complaining to a member of the Diet about the Japanese attitude toward international relations. The critic contended that even as Japan claims it is misunderstood, it does not try to make itself understood. The dietman smiled ironically. " That," he said, "is Japanese!"

Perhaps everyone has heard of the mysterious East or the inscrutable Orient. It may be assumed that the Japanese are inscrutable, for example, because Oriental cultures are inherently difficult for outsiders to understand. Less frequently suspected is the originally deliberate and later subconscious use of bafflement and mystification, as part of the ancient art of war.

All sorts of Western attempts to take advantage of Japanese resources, from their economic power to their Zen Buddhism, have been thwarted or distorted by bafflement and mystification, in cases where the ulterior logic and method of bafflement and mystification are unknown. The impression of mystery may appear to veil a secret, but the main secret may turn out to be that mystery itself is a weapon, an art of war.

The veil of mystery is just one of the arts of war that permeate Japanese political, cultural, and social life. For those trying to understand the Japanese mind and civilization—and that may include anyone involved in the modern world—there is no practical way to overlook the military rule and martial culture that have dominated Japan for many centuries, virtually up to the present day. So steeped in the way of the warrior has Japanese civilization been that some of the manners and mentality of this outlook remain embedded in the deepest strata of the individual and collective unconscious of that nation.

The sword is one of the three basic symbols of Shinto, the ancient Japanese religion, and so of the imperial heritage, which emerged after centuries of racial and tribal wars in ancient Japan. The sword became the soul of the samurai, who gradually extended their control from the frontiers and provinces to become the dominant power in Japan for nearly eight hundred years.

Even in the social and cultural spheres, Japan today still retains indelible impressions of the samurai Bushido, the way of the warrior. This is true not only in education and the fine arts, but also in characteristic attitudes and conduct marketing the course of political, professional, and personal relations. Well-known attributes such as the reserve and the mystery of formal Japanese behavior, as well as the humility and the hauteur, are deeply rooted in the ancient strategies of the traditional art of war. To understand Japan and the Japanese in depth, therefore, it is essential to understand the culture of strategy crafted by the Japanese art of war.