>>114355362His dad was stabbed through his chest, laughed, and decapitated three ninjas before he died. Cunning backed up by utterly hardass bushido spirit. I suspect his dad would have admired the spirit and suggested cunning could be developed with experience.
"Even if one's head were to be suddenly cut off, he should be able to do one more action with certainty... With martial valor, if one becomes like a revengeful ghost and shows great determination, though his head is cut off, he should not die. "
- Hagakure, "The Way of the Samurai"
Though that was written in peacetime by a clerk who had never been in a fight to codify bushido after Tokugawa had taken over and pacified everything, later picked up and treated seriously as a handbook by the Japanese government in WW 2.
It's not unique to Japan. The Western notion of Chivalry was simmilarly invented, and one rather suspects that if you could ask one of the Samurai or Knights who had actually been in the wars about the meaning of combat, they'd respond something more like "Stick 'em with the pointy end however you can till they stop moving and all their friends run away."
