Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo

In a 1955 article titled “A Writer’s Vacation,” the renowned Japanese intellectual Yukio Mishima first expressed his devotion to the *Hagakure*. He confessed that he had only begun reading it during the war and defined it as a book of unparalleled morality, energetic and soothing. Thus began the success, including in publishing, of a classic that from its inception in the early eighteenth century had circulated secretly among the samurai, only to be published in 1906 and transform into the (controversial) bible of the kamikaze. The *Hagakure*, literally “hidden by the leaves,” collects the memories of Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a samurai who, upon his lord's death, being unable to commit ritual suicide, decided to withdraw from the world. A masterpiece that periodically returns to the spotlight (Jarmusch’s 2000 film *Ghost Dog*, with its unforgettable protagonist, is one such instance), it is not only a code of conduct for samurai, but also a testament to a mythical era and, even more so, a moral and spiritual manifesto for men of all time.