Conclusion

I find that idealised notions embedded in the premodern imperial order, such as loyalty, cosmic order and gender distinctions, underscore what appear to be quintessential representations of violence in the materially intelligible, mutilated male flesh.

This chapter has sought to localise the meaning of violence as it is represented in writings generated by a particular war in Japan's medieval times. It has used ‘violence' as a method to analyse representations of particular warfare conditions and illuminated the ideas of order and disorder and their manifold expressions. The gunchujo, which measured combatants' injuries as evidence of their meritorious work, and the Taiheiki, which narrated the progress of war in great detail and embellishment, both illumi­nated the value and function of violence as it manifested itself on human flesh, without identifying it by name. The mutilated male body was a caricature of disorder (ran), which was the war. The body was a register for cuts, punctures and other forms of mutilation, an investment underscored with a hope for a commensurate and tangible return. The textual appearance of seppuku and other forms of disfigurement expressed and possibly explained the operation of moral order and disorder, a concept deriving from highly gendered Confucian precepts. Mutilating acts and their out­comes textually validated the symbolic and economic worth of the injured, which excluded women. The most potent manifestation of moral disorder was belly (hara)-cutting, which marked the finale for the man and promise of a new order, while the hara of women stood for a generative site of propagation, residing outside the textual space governed by violence.