An elegant story about a pair of samurai swords threads its way through Disney’s Shogun (based on the James Clavell novel). To my mind, the little story encodes vital qualities of value, a concept that has come to be almost wholly dominated by economics. The literature on this foundational economic concept is of course vast, but this article is in no way an attempt to analyse it; I simply want to shine some light on how rich and subtle a concept value is.
A tale of two swords
We are first introduced to the swords when John Blackthorne ceremoniously gives his favourite pistol to Usama Fuji. Blackthorne wishes to express his gratitude for the graceful and sensitive way Fuji performs her enforced duty as his consort, and as lady of the house gifted to him by Lord Toranaga. Touched by Blackthorne’s appreciation and puppy-earnest gesture, Fuji is moved to part with a treasured family heirloom as a return gift.
On learning from Toda Mariko – appointed by Toranaga to Blackthorne as a translator – that the swords belonged to Fuji’s deceased father, Blackthorne is likewise deeply touched, and treasures the swords he thenceforward wears in the manner of a samurai of the period.
Gifts within gifts within gifts.
He later learns from Mariko that the swords were in fact purchased for two sacks of rice from some down-and-out samurai, to be presented to Fuji decorated with the lie about their ancestry, so as to mitigate her family’s shame by lending her much needed dignity and honour, so important in early 17th century Japan. This act was deemed appropriate to Fuji’s status and character by those who decided upon it, their conspiratorial deception merited, they judged, by Fuji’s noble character and great sacrifice. Earlier in the story, both her husband and baby son are obliged to give their lives in payment for an honour debt incurred by her husband’s fatally inappropriate behaviour.
Gifts evolving within gifts, radiating outwards as different acts of generosity.
Later still in the series, a powerful earthquake hits Izu, the village where the characters reside for much of the series. It occurs while Blackthorne is bickering with Mariko, a lover’s tiff for which Toranaga – who has granted Blackthorne an audience – has no appetite.
Toranaga walks away from the bickering lovers towards the top ridge of a hill, in search of silence for his lordly ruminations. The earthquake hits in that moment, violently shakes the surrounding landscape in booming undulations, and tugs Toranaga down with the collapsing hillside, apparently to his death.
First to react is Blackthorne. He scrambles down the disembowelled hill, now strewn with uprooted trees and unearthed rocks, until he finds Toranaga’s fan. He digs frantically into the loose soil and is joined by others arriving at the scene. Moments later, Toranaga is pulled free, but he is not breathing. Blackthorne thumps him on the back until Toranaga gasps back to life, as if reborn. As Toranaga comes to his senses, he notices he is without his swords and scrabbles to find them, in vain. A samurai without his swords is in disgrace, and Toranaga is the renowned Lord of Kanto.
Blackthorne pulls his recently gifted swords from his belt and hands them to Toranaga, explaining their ancestry, but not the deception. It is a moment rich in meaning. Some of the richness of that meaning passes into the swords.
Gifts within gifts within gifts, layered together in beautiful complexity, much like the process that folds steel in fine layers into incredibly sharp katana and wakizashi blades, and much like the tortured history Japan endured as it developed its highly skilled metallurgy to rich maturity.
As the gift giving compounds from moment to moment, so the impossible beauty of the fate of these two swords grows. And though this might well increase their monetary value, it’s not hard to see that no number, with or without a currency symbol attached to it and no matter how precise in terms of decimal places and market-based price discovery, could ever communicate the qualities that attach to these swords from their unique story.
What’s money got to do with it?
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. – Attributed to Oscar Wilde
Money is a jealous god. Perhaps we are justified in thinking money (price as exchange value) could live happily side by side with story value, or ineffable value, or utility value, but somehow it fails to do so. The social technology money is, seems to me incapable of doing anything other than consuming everything in its path, our imaginations included; we know the price of everything, but the value of nothing. Money has turned much of humanity into a disconnected mob of cynics. Have we become, in some important way, immeasurably poorer as a consequence?
Economics, master of money, tells us in complete sincerity that money, as price, measures value. But value – like wealth, like wisdom, health, love, and so many other essential qualities of reality – cannot be measured. I don’t know about you, but my soul yearns for a new form of societal governance, and organisation, that has in its deepest structuring a resilient reverence for the ultimate immeasurability of value. Price is one thing, value something else entirely.
