Hagakure
The Book of the Samurai
A retired samurai dictating a warrior code to a generation that had no more use for it, fragmentary and severe throughout.
Dictated by a samurai turned monk in the early eighteenth century, when the wars were long over and the warrior class had become administrators, this insists on a code its own era had already abandoned. It is fragmentary, contradictory and often severe, and its most quoted line holds that the way of the samurai is found in death. William Scott Wilson translates.
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Maria Popova
How to ensure that our feedback falls on receptive ears is what the Japanese samurai turned Zen priest Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659–1719) explores in a portion of his classic Hakagure (public library) — the posthumously published collection of his teachings, which also gave us his immortal guide to living fully by dying every day.
Article · July 2026
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