The Bunbu Paradigm Reconsidered: Warrior Literacy and Symbolic Violence in Late Medieval Japan

The ideal of the cultured warrior is a recurrent theme in premodern Japanese writings. This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of discourses on violence and/in knowledge as synthesized in the motto bunbu nidō 文武二道, the “double path of writing and warring.” Recent scholarship on the topic has shown how the bunbu binary changed constantly over time, adapting to the contingencies of each historical juncture. Between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the weakening of Ashikaga authority opened the way for regional potentates, whose claim to power often found its legitimating source in this rhetorical weapon. Prescriptive textbooks from those years promote the “civil virtues” (bun) as an indispensable prerequisite for any would-be leader, exhorting him to pursue a variety of interests for the sake of good governance. However, the acquisition of cultural capital from literacy alone was arguably insufficient in an age of discord; thus the need arose to establish tighter control through the exercise of force (bu)—if not materially, at least discursively. As a consequence, contemporary warrior house precepts displayed a growing interest in the military sphere, significantly altering the bunbu equilibrium as it was expounded in previous sources. This paper sheds new light on medieval social representations by comparing the didactic pamphlet Sekyōshō (Mirror of the World) and other texts written by warriors of different provenance and status. In particular, I argue that the recursive trope of bunbu served the purpose of empowering an ever-shifting rule, substantiating warriors’ essential traits and justifying their political primacy in inter- and intra-class conflicts. Furthermore, I show how this notion and the varying degrees of its components (bun/bu) spread across social classes and—borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s expression—emerged as a peculiar form of symbolic violence.