The Nobility Of Failure: Tragic Heroes In The History Of Japan
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: No dust jacket. Page Condition: Yellowed, price clipped. Markings: none. Binding condition: Good.
What does it mean to fail magnificently? Ivan Morris's The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan chronicles nine centuries of Japanese history through the lives of its most celebrated losers — warriors, rebels, and idealists who chose death over compromise and were immortalised for it. From the legendary warrior Yamato Takeru to the kamikaze pilots of the Second World War, Morris presents a sweeping cultural study that argues failure, in the Japanese tradition, is not the opposite of heroism but its very essence. The book is anchored in the concept of the noble failure — the hero who fights a doomed cause with absolute sincerity, whose defeat only magnifies his moral stature. Morris, a distinguished scholar of Japanese literature and culture, writes with both academic rigour and narrative elegance, drawing on poetry, folklore, and historical chronicle to illuminate a cultural psychology utterly distinct from the Western triumph narrative. The Nobility of Failure stands as one of the great works of cross-cultural history — a book that does not merely describe Japan but instructs the Western reader in an entirely different way of understanding courage, honour, and the human condition. Whether the ultimate Japanese hero is a man of action or a man of feeling, Morris leaves the reader with an unsettling and enduring question: what, in the end, is victory worth?
Author: Ivan Morris
Format: Hardback
Published: 1975, Secker & Warburg
Genre: Asian history
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: No dust jacket. Page Condition: Yellowed, price clipped. Markings: none. Binding condition: Good.
What does it mean to fail magnificently? Ivan Morris's The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan chronicles nine centuries of Japanese history through the lives of its most celebrated losers — warriors, rebels, and idealists who chose death over compromise and were immortalised for it. From the legendary warrior Yamato Takeru to the kamikaze pilots of the Second World War, Morris presents a sweeping cultural study that argues failure, in the Japanese tradition, is not the opposite of heroism but its very essence. The book is anchored in the concept of the noble failure — the hero who fights a doomed cause with absolute sincerity, whose defeat only magnifies his moral stature. Morris, a distinguished scholar of Japanese literature and culture, writes with both academic rigour and narrative elegance, drawing on poetry, folklore, and historical chronicle to illuminate a cultural psychology utterly distinct from the Western triumph narrative. The Nobility of Failure stands as one of the great works of cross-cultural history — a book that does not merely describe Japan but instructs the Western reader in an entirely different way of understanding courage, honour, and the human condition. Whether the ultimate Japanese hero is a man of action or a man of feeling, Morris leaves the reader with an unsettling and enduring question: what, in the end, is victory worth?