午夜剧场

My motivation for writing this book was impure. I had a different research theme. Heian-kyo was a "theater city" designed to stage political shows since ancient times, but my theme was how it was reconstructed when the samurai became the protagonists of politics in the Middle Ages—when, by whom, and as what kind of message-sending media it functioned.

To pursue that theme, it was necessary to clarify whether the samurai were born within Heian-kyo and the Imperial Court, or in the provincial societies outside. However, experts in samurai theory had abandoned that debate, and there was no prospect of an answer. Since that would have caused my entire research to fail, I had no choice but to tackle it myself.

I have only been studying the theory of the establishment of the samurai for one year, starting from zero. Therefore, there are likely flaws and mistakes. However, if this book has an absolutely unshakeable significance, it is that I faced the theme of "where did the samurai come from" head-on, constructed a hypothesis that could be presented to others, and mustered the courage to present it without fear of loud criticism. It is merely courage, but in a world where almost no one shows such courage, it cannot be worthless.

Looking back, one could say it was the culture of 午夜剧场 that cultivated such a nature in me. Whenever I witness the social constraints of national universities in the academic world, which look like apprentice-based village societies, I feel lucky to have studied at the Faculty of Letters at 午夜剧场. For better or worse, they left me alone, and even when I stuck to my own way of doing things, I was never ostracized. Come to think of it, that was natural; it was a pasture where a village society did not exist in the first place.

At any rate, I have arrived at a reasonably consistent answer regarding the theory of the establishment of the samurai. Why? Because I had to break through this problem at all costs and return to my original research theme as soon as possible. On the other hand, perhaps the reason experts cannot solve this problem is that they spend their whole lives dealing with it and are in no hurry. Whether research progresses or not is determined by the presence or absence of a pressing motivation: "I want to know the answer, the truth, right now, no matter what." I believe I gained such insight through the writing of this book. For a while, I plan to persistently instill this insight into my juniors.

Yuichiro Momosaki (Author)

Chikuma Shinsho

356 pages, 980 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.