Chivalry Without Women: The Way of the Samurai and Swinton’s World History in 1890s Japan

An American world history text—read, interpreted, and used in entirely unintended contexts—shaped what we now see as a quintessentially Japanese concept: the way of the samurai (bushidō). William Swinton’s 1874 textbook, Outlines of the World’s History, was widely read in Japan both in the original and in translation. Proponents of the new and evolving idea of bushidō in the 1890s found Swinton’s chapter on European chivalry particularly useful, adopting his logic to assert the existence of a way of the samurai, akin to European chivalry, as the basis of Japan’s civilized national character, while defining that way as fundamentally opposed to the immoral “woman worship” of the West. In sum, Swinton’s textbook fueled a backlash in 1890s Japan that would give rise to a conception of chivalry without women: a purportedly native way of the samurai, inherently male supremacist, thought to constitute Japan’s national spirit, with a mission to civilize Japan and, for some proponents, the world.