Bushido Hero

[kahuna's bro]

My understanding is that failure itself is not dishonorable and wouldn't require suicide. Losing in a battle didn't result in suicide. Maybe fleeing in cowardice would require it, but getting beaten wouldn't.

thats how i understand it to be

[Markdoc]

The Japanese had developed crucifixion independently of the Romans (the two cultures had no idea the other existed) and used it regularly to punish and shame criminals. Like Roman crucifixion is was a death by torture. Samurai had the power of summary judgment over the lower castes, although incidents like beheading a peasant for not showing proper deference were probably not as common as literature depicts them.

Just a followup comment on this: as Lawnmower Boy noted, Japanese culture in the Roman period was totally different from the essentially renaissance era culture we think of as Japanese today. But we can't be sure that the Romans and their contemporary Japanese opposite numbers were unaware of each other's existence. There's pretty good evidence the Romans had contact with China. The chinese name for the Roman empire was Tach'in and the Annals of the later Han Dynasty (in a copy dating from the 400's) record a visit via Vietnam of an embassy from Antun, the King of the Tach'in in 166 AD. Antun is generally though to be Antoninus, the emperor at the time. Given that the embassy came via Vietnam, not via the silk road route suggests that the embassy came by sea. The same annals state that the Tach'in merchants were active in what's now Cambodia and Vietnam. That's supported by Roman writings - Ptolemy refers to the lands beyond India, describing Golden Chersonese (usually identified as the Malay peninsula) and archeological evidence: isolated Roman finds have popped up in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia and Vietnam - the latter including medals minted in the Antonine period. By themselves they don't prove anything (they could be trade goods) but together with the evidence of Roman settlements in southern and eastern India (including at Muziris, where according to a Roman map - the original of the tabula peuteringeriana - there was a settlement with a temple to Augustus, and from where trading records still exist suggesting there was a roman trade settlement and bank) it makes a pretty good case for Roman merchants and their agents sailing in the South China sea.

Did they ever reach Japan? Probably not. It's a long way from Vietnam to Japan. But we can't be sure of that, nor do we know what information may have been exchanged through middlemen: both Japanese and Romans were intensely interested in the silk trade.

And if nothing else, the image of Roman merchants and soldiers sailing along the Mekong is worth thinking about

cheers, Mark