Byakkoutai 白虎隊

This is actually a miniseries shown on TV in Japan. It is about a group of young samurai (18 years and below) formed as part of the effort to defend the Aizu fief during the Boshin War, which took place as part of the Meiji Restoration.

I won't go into the details of the TV show, that you can easily find out either by watching it (there is a DVD out there if you stay outside Japan) or by checking out the show's website. What I want to do is talk about some of the things that this show made me think about.

One of the teachings that samurai in Aizu is taught is that ならぬことはならぬ。This means that what must not be, must not be. Or, we must do what must be done. This is such a simple phrase, yet it sets out the importance of fulfilling one's duty, of having the moral courage to do what is right, of being willing to face up to challenges and not back away when the going gets tough. While some may say that such thinking is outdated in our modern world, a look at how youths are behaving nowadays, and I think, "If these kids are taught all these, would we have the social problems that we have now?" A recent piece of news has a kid from a famous school in Singapore beating up a bus driver. Should we condone such practices ("he is just a kid", "give the kid a chance", etc.) or should we teach the little one (our future generation, our hope for the future) to behave properly, to bear the social responsibility for his own actions?

Another teaching is that one should not cause one's parents to worry. No matter how old we are, we should be thankful to our parents. It is because of them that we exist. And thus, no matter what we do, we should not cause them to worry. While parents are inevitably worried about their children, as children, on our part, we should act in a way that we don't cause them unnecessary worry, that assures them that we know what we are doing, that we know the consequences of our actions, and we are acting in a responsible manner.

立派に死ぬには立派に生きなければならない。To be able to die in an exemplary manner, one must lead an exemplary life. Or, the manner that we live our lives will determine the manner that we die. We can choose to lead an honourable life, and die with honour and be remembered as a person of integrity. Or we can shirk responsibility in all we do, and die being remembered as a coward.

And the sun always appear after the rain. We should not give up hope even when things look grim. All we need to do is to bear through the rough patch, and we will eventually get to better times. The important thing is to persevere and not to take the easy way out by running away from our problems, or a sticky/tough situation.

Aizu produced many good warriors. And I think this could be because they devote time and effort as a whole towards educating their children. Not just sending them to school and teaching them to read and write. But rather, education in terms of inculcating in future generations the correct values. Education is not about learning a skill. It is about learning how to lead life, and includes the skills and values that we need. To produce people of calibre like those from Aizu, we should focus on educating our future generations in the correct manner. While having great engineers and cunning businessmen may bring about economic growth in the near term, to be a great nation, we cannot depend on having the tallest buildings or the biggest airports to survive in the long term. It is the quality of our people that will determine whether we can survive all challenges that the future may have for us.

Byakkoutai on Wikipedia
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