The Concept of “Warrior Virtue” (butoku) in the Treatise of Tsugaru Masakata (1682–1729) Buji teiyo (“The Fundamental Principles of Warrior Rule”)

During its centuries-old history, Japan has repeatedly turned to the experience of neighboring China in search of models for the construction of state insti­tutions, ideological foundations, and has widely borrowed the achievements of Chinese culture. Japan of the Tokugawa era (1603–1867) was no exception in this regard. When building the bakuhan state, it sought to rely on the experi­ence of state building in the Middle Kingdom and on Confucian thought, which had occupied a central place in the state ideology of the Chinese empires for many centuries. Japanese scholars of that time made a great effort to master and adapt the achievements of Confucian thought to the needs of Japan, and created a number of interpretations of Confucian teachings that better met the conditions and needs of Japanese society. In the 17th century, the emphasis was more often placed on the need to “civilize” the samurai, to instill “civic virtues” in the samu­rai. However, the signs of crisis in the bakuhan system that emerged at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, the degradation of the samurai, the decline of the military spirit among the samurai, and the decline in their military pre­paredness soon pushed the Japanese elite to carry out large-scale reforms, and the ideologists of the samurai to create more “militaristic” interpreta­tions of Confucianism. This tendency was especially evident during the reign of the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune (reigned 1716–1745). It was under him that the high-ranking vassal of the Hirosaki domain and expert in the Yamaga-ryu school of military science Tsugaru Masakata (1682–1729) created and pre­sented to his suzerain a treatise entitled Buji teiyo (“The Fundamental Principles of Warrior Rule”), in which he proposed an original “militaristic” interpretation of Confucian virtues and gave a number of pieces of advice on how to correct the governance of the Hirosaki domain. The article, based on the material of this work, examines Masakata’s proposed interpretation of the most important con­cept of bushido, “warrior virtue” (butoku), which appears as a product of the syn­thesis of moral, volitional, intellectual and physical qualities and specialized knowledge in the field of military art, ensuring, in Masakata’s opinion, the suc­cess of governing Japan as a “country of warriors”.