I finally got around to watching Ghost Dog by Jim Jarmusch. I had been meaning to see it for a few years. It stars Forest Whitaker as a hitman who’s inspired by the Bushido samurai code of honor and conduct. The movie features passages from the Hagakure (which means ‘hidden leaves’ or ‘hidden by the leaves’) recorded from a series of conversations around 1716. There are some good lessons in it as well as some which are less useful but nevertheless interesting like this one:
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The warriors of old cultivated mustaches, for as proof that a man had been slain in battle, his ears and nose would be cut off and brought to the enemy’s camp. So that there would be no mistake as to whether the person was a man or a woman, the mustache was also cut off with the nose. At such a time the head was thrown away if it had no mustache, for it might be mistaken for that of a woman. Therefore, growing a mustache was one of the disciplines of a samurai so that his head would not be thrown away upon his death. Tsunetomo said, “If one washes his face with water every morning, if he is slain his complexion will not change. ”
It’s interesting and maybe a little ironic that books like Hagakure, Musashi’s Book of the Five Rings, and Sun Tzu’s Art of War have been adopted so wholeheartedly by people in management and business.