Trevor Leggett was head of the Japanese Department of the BBC and this  is a part of one of his broadcasts

New Currents: SUTEMI

There is no single English word for the Japanese SUTEMI. Kenkyusha’s Japanese-English dictionary gives ‘self-abandonment’, and (in Judo) ‘somersault trick’. But the main definitions are given under SUTEMI-ni: ‘at the risk of one’s life’, ‘with the courage born of desperation’, ‘abandonment to despair’, ‘get desperate’, ‘risk one’s life’, ‘resort to one’s last trick”; and even ‘stoop to conquer’.

The last definition is: ‘burn one’s bridges (= boats) behind one.’

I do not wish to comment on these definitions, except to say that to ‘stoop to conquer’ is today generally used about women; probably this is from association with a famous play: ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ What I want to point out is, that the average length of the definitions is about four words. Four words in English for a single Japanese word! That means that the idea does not very often appear in English speaking and writing. If it was frequent, we should have a single word for it.

We do have a phrase: ‘throw yourself into it’. But this is not the same as sutemi, which means to throw oneself away. To throw oneself into study, or into a movement to protect the public against pollution, or into a campaign to reduce noise levels in the cities, would mean to put one’s whole energy into it. One might go so far as to risk one’s life, but one would not at the beginning, make a resolution to lose one’s life. To reduce noise levels in cities is a fine thing, but it is not worth a life.

But sutemi is not really a question of balancing advantages against disadvantages: it means, that having made a decision, one should be ready to throw everything into carrying it out, even one’s life itself. Once having begun, one must not entertain little doubts about the action. One must not think: ‘Suppose it fails, what shall I do then?’ One must be wholly committed: one must be absolutely certain.

This is where British people tend to look at things a little bit differently. There is no absolute certainty in life: there is only ninety-nine per cent probability. So, one must always be ready to look at some new piece of evidence which appears, and modify one’s behaviour accordingly. It seems to us that Japanese people want to find absolute certainties, and then sacrifice themselves for it. This may take the form of absolute faith in a single person, and readiness to sacrifice oneself for him or her.

We notice in the Jidai-geki plays on the Japanese television, that very often the hero is carrying out some feat of loyalty to a group, whereas in the American Westerns, the gun-shooting hero is justifying his own courage and honour.

It is noticeable that after some play dealing with a difficult problem, there is often a Japanese TV commentator, perhaps a professor, who sums up the play in a few sentences and then tells us what to think about it. In British television, after a very important play or programme there is sometimes a discussion between two or three critics. But they rarely reach a unanimous conclusion, and the audience is left to judge. It is different from the Japanese presentation, which is to our eyes rather ‘schoolmasterly’. But the Japanese tend to have more confidence in the judgement of a well-informed person like a professor than in their own judgement.

They would be right to do so in the case of a very specialized subject like medicine or law. But in a play about life in general, for instance, there is no reason to think that a professor has any better judgement than anyone else.

We can get an appearance of certainty by narrowing down the field until it is very small, like a chessboard so to speak. Then all the factors can be looked at clearly, like the possible moves on a chessboard.

Certainly, it seems a fine thing to narrow one’s vision to a single point, and throw one’s whole self at that point. No hesitation, no doubts. In some cases, it can lead to brilliant success. But it can also lead to spectacular failure. The failure may be heroic, but sometimes it is avoidable, and then the hero’s life has been wasted. A traditional Japanese hero may say: ‘That does not matter: I am willing to throw away everything without regrets for my country, or my great purpose. ‘ This is still a powerful idea in Japan. I don’t mean that the ordinary Japanese has any intention of throwing his life away in sutemi for some purpose. But he or she is impressed by someone who does. It does have an influence. I noticed that after Mishima’s apparently entirely futile death, the fanatics on the other side began to imitate him, with dramatic and murderous gestures. They had been reluctantly impressed by him, and they began making sutemi too.

Some people think that sutemi is peculiarly Japanese, and a manifestation of Japanese tradition. But I believe that this is not so. There is a higher tradition in Japan, and I first heard of it from my Judo teacher, who when a young man had trained in one of the Jujutsu schools. He remarked one day to a few of his top pupils, about the sutemi throws in Judo: ‘To throw one’s own body down, in order to throw the opponent, may be good in winning contests on the Judo mat. But it is not good as a training for life, and it is against the principle of Judo.

Judo is learning how to deal with life by studying and practising attack and defence on the Judo mats. If we begin to think that success just on the mats, against just one opponent, is success in Judo, we are wrong. In life, there may be more than one opponent. Even if you throw the first one by sutemi, so that he is knocked out, still you are on the ground yourself, and cannot meet the next opponent on equal terms. At the end of a Judo throw, your opponent should be on the ground, but you should be standing perfectly balanced and ready for another opponent if necessary. It is true that on the Judo mats, there will not be another opponent. But in actual life, there may be. Your Judo training should be for life. ‘

These words made a deep impression on me. When I looked at history with this in mind, I began to understand many things. I saw how the Industrial Revolution in Britain had made sutemi on manufacturing. Britain did indeed become the ‘workshop of the world’, as it was said, by this sutemi. But there was another opponent, which we were not able to meet. The rivers and air of Britain were hideously polluted. If we read the novels of the first half of this century, we find such sentences as this: ‘There was a fog that night. It seemed to be putting a red-hot wire into our lungs, and twisting it there. ‘ Only after 1956 did we begin to clean up the air, so that today in London there is more than 50 per cent more sunshine than thirty years ago. Perhaps Japan has been having a similar experience: sutani on industrial recovery, but at the cost of pollution of air and water.

Well, the ideal of the gentleman is to be able to try very hard in a limited sphere, without losing sight of the broad field. It is an ideal of sport: the sportsman tries extremely hard at his game, but does not become exultant in victory or depressed in defeat. He has a wider view which enjoys the effort itself, without being concerned too much with the result. He can enjoy a hard-fought game equally, whoever wins.

Can this be applied to life? Perhaps it can. It gives a sort of margin to life, a space. And in that space, new ideas can come: they do not come much to a mind always obsessed or busy.

© Trevor Leggett