
Zitat von
Karl Friday
"There was also, however, very clearly at least some level of self-conscious reflection among warriors concerning what constitutes proper warrior behavior. But there are no treatises expounding on this subject--nothing like the sorts of texts that we see in the Tokugawa period […]. Awareness of a status and writing about it are very diffrent things. Members of high school cliques and the like can be self- conscious about rules and mores pertaining to their status, but they don't write essays explaining them. This was (or appears to have been) true of Heian and Kamakura warriors as well.
We actually have no descriptions of warrior behavior written by warriors (except, perhaps, the Azuma kagami), so we have to derive insights about warrior behavior and values from descriptions written by others [...]. 'Kyuba no michi', 'yumiya no michi' and other similar phrases refer to the profession of arms itself--the art of being a warrior--not to the ethical codes and values of those who practiced this profession. There is, as I noted above, no direct account of the latter from any period prior to the Tokugawa age--when samurai were no longer fighting and therefore became obsessed with defining what they were and what their role in society should be“.