I have just finished reading “Le Masque du Samourai”, an essay by Aude Fieschi (Éditions Philippe Picquier). It is a didactic book, well written, which presents the different facets of the Samurai through the Japanese Middle Ages until its decline with the advent of modern Japan.

Tracing very well the great eras of this mythical warrior, restoring certain forgotten truths, not forgetting to scratch established facts worthy of the coffee shop, it reviews the essential of what constituted the identity of the Samurai.

Aude Fieschi bases herself on the reference texts (we forget more and more this evidence of starting or starting from the fundamental texts because we think that we can invent everything all the time). The Hagakure of Yamamoto Jôchô or even, closer to us, Bushido, the soul of Japan of Nitobe Inazo, to quote only these two works forms the base of the great knowledge of Aude Fieschi. Great knowledge that she shares in a simple and accessible language. A great knowledge well digested which does not listen to writing.

Aude Fieschi devotes in particular very well documented and very well felt pages on the ethics of the Samurai and its many religious influences (Buddhism, Shintoism, and Confucianism when it is not a Christian samurai!). One could criticize the author for her lack of love for Christianity, which she only touches upon when speaking of the Jesuits and the firearms they had “brought with them”. Saint François-Xavier arrived in Japan on board a military ship, it is well known. There is a confusion here—almost Japanese, moreover—in believing that the ecclesiastics were the forward arm of a European invasion. Thereafter, she evokes the importance of Christianity, but without going much further than the evocation of the masterpiece of Shusaku Endo, Silence. In short, the samurai who converted to Christianity went under cover (see on this subject the excellent book by Tom Novak, The Way of the Christian Samurai).

We will have understood that Le Masque du Samourai is a very good book, very precise and didactic (this should not always be understood as a negative point).

I have just received a book that I have wanted for a very long time:

A true bible of Kyoto, this work is a ship on which we embark. It weighs more than ten kilograms and is full of illustrations, early photographs and very scholarly texts on life in Kyoto through the centuries. An odyssey.