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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:38:56 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:38:56 -0700 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/12096-0.txt b/12096-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3438e58 --- /dev/null +++ b/12096-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3390 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12096 *** + + BUSHIDO + THE SOUL OF JAPAN + + BY + INAZO NITOBÉ, A.M., Ph.D. + + Author’s Edition, Revised and Enlarged + + 13th EDITION + 1908 + + + DECEMBER, 1904 + + + TO MY BELOVED UNCLE + TOKITOSHI OTA + WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST + AND + TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI + I DEDICATE + THIS LITTLE BOOK + + + —“That way + Over the mountain, which who stands upon, + Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road; + While if he views it from the waste itself, + Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow, + Not vague, mistakable! What’s a break or two + Seen from the unbroken desert either side? + And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) + What if the breaks themselves should prove at last + The most consummate of contrivances + To train a man’s eye, teach him what is faith?” + —ROBERT BROWNING, + _Bishop Blougram’s Apology_. + + + “There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have + from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a + predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of + mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of + honor.” + —HALLAM, + _Europe in the Middle Ages_. + + + “Chivalry is itself the poetry of life.” + + —SCHLEGEL, + _Philosophy of History_. + + + + + PREFACE + + +About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof +of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our +conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of +religion. “Do you mean to say,” asked the venerable professor, “that you +have no religious instruction in your schools?” On my replying in the +negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I +shall not easily forget, he repeated “No religion! How do you impart +moral education?” The question stunned me at the time. I could give no +ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, +were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the +different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find +that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils. + +The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries +put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs +prevail in Japan. + +In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my +wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and Bushido,[1] the +moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume. + + [Footnote 1: Pronounced _Boó-shee-doh’_. In putting Japanese words + and names into English, Hepburn’s rule is followed, that the vowels + should be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in + English.] + +Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put +down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given +in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught +and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force. + +Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest +Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging +to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over +them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while +these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I +have often thought,—“Had I their gift of language, I would present the +cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!” But one who speaks in a borrowed +tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible. + +All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I +have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, +believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the +comprehension of foreign readers. + +Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious +workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity +itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and +with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the +teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the +religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as +well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God +hath made a testament which maybe called “old” with every people and +nation,—Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my +theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public. + +In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend +Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the +characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this +book. + + INAZO NITOBE. + +_Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899._ + + + + + PREFACE + + TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION + + +Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, +this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has +passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth +appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be +issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of +Messrs. George H. Putnam’s Sons, of New York. + +In the meantime, _Bushido_ has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev +of Khandesh, into German by Fräulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian +by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life +in Lemberg,—although this Polish edition has been censured by the +Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into +French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian +officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for +the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian +public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been +published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger +students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also +owe much for his aid in other ways. + +I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found +sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the +subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly +flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that +President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and +distributing several dozens of copies among his friends. + +In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have +largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, +as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on +Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot +of Japanese ethics—Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather +to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular +virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot +draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge +upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are +touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and +discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger +than it is. + +This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt +I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful +suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement. + + I. N. + + _Kyoto, +Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905._ + + + + + CONTENTS + + + Bushido as an Ethical System + + Sources of Bushido + + Rectitude or Justice + + Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing + + Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress + + Politeness + + Veracity or Truthfulness + + Honor + + The Duty of Loyalty + + Education and Training of a Samurai + + Self-Control + + The Institutions of Suicide and Redress + + The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai + + The Training and Position of Woman + + The Influence of Bushido + + Is Bushido Still Alive? + + The Future of Bushido + + + + + BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM. + + +Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its +emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique +virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living +object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape +or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware +that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society +which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as +those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed +their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of +feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother +institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the +language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the +neglected bier of its European prototype. + +It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so +erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that +chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either +among the nations of antiquity or among the modern Orientals.[2] Such +ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good +Doctor’s work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking +at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the +time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx, +writing his “Capital,” called the attention of his readers to the +peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of +feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would +likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study +of chivalry in the Japan of the present. + + [Footnote 2: _History Philosophically Illustrated_, (3rd Ed. 1853), + Vol. II, p. 2.] + +Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between +European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of +this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, +_firstly_, the origin and sources of our chivalry; _secondly_, its +character and teaching; _thirdly_, its influence among the masses; and, +_fourthly_, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these +several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I +should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national +history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most +likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative +Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt +with as corollaries. + +The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the +original, more expressive than Horsemanship. _Bu-shi-do_ means literally +Military-Knight-Ways—the ways which fighting nobles should observe in +their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the “Precepts +of Knighthood,” the _noblesse oblige_ of the warrior class. Having thus +given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the +word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable +for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, +engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must +wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a +national _timbre_ so expressive of race characteristics that the best of +translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice +and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German “_Gemüth_” +signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words +verbally so closely allied as the English _gentleman_ and the French +_gentilhomme_? + +Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were +required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it +consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from +the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a +code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful +sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets +of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however +able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an +organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, +fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English +Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to +compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in +the seventeenth century Military Statutes (_Buké Hatto_) were +promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with +marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but +meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time +and place and say, “Here is its fountain head.” Only as it attains +consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be +identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many +threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the +political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman +Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the +ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in +England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period +previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in +Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned. + +Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, +the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These +were known as _samurai_, meaning literally, like the old English _cniht_ +(knecht, knight), guards or attendants—resembling in character the +_soldurii_ whom Cæsar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the +_comitati_, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his +time; or, to take a still later parallel, the _milites medii_ that one +reads about in the history of Mediæval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word +_Bu-ké_ or _Bu-shi_ (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. +They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough +breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally +recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and +the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went +on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only “a rude race, +all masculine, with brutish strength,” to borrow Emerson’s phrase, +surviving to form families and the ranks of the _samurai_. Coming to +profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great +responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of +behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and +belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among +themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of +honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some +resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors. + +Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive +sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and +civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire +of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, “to leave behind him the name of a +fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one.” +And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which +moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even +so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions +endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom’s is the basis on which the +greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to +discover that _Bushido_ does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting +in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, +brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, “We know from what +failings our virtue springs.”[3] “Sneaks” and “cowards” are epithets of +the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life +with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and +its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher +authority and more rational sources for its own justification, +satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, +without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal +of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with +concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with +spiritual data. “Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a +perfect Christian knight,” says Lamartine. In Japan there were several + + + SOURCES OF BUSHIDO, + +of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust +in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in +sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with +death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil +master the utmost of his art, told him, “Beyond this my instruction must +give way to Zen teaching.” “Zen” is the Japanese equivalent for the +Dhyâna, which “represents human effort to reach through meditation zones +of thought beyond the range of verbal expression.”[4] Its method is +contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be +convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, +of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this +Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, +and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself +above mundane things and awakes, “to a new Heaven and a new Earth.” + + [Footnote 3: Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace + loving men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the + fervor of a worshiper of the strenuous life. “When I tell you,” he + says in the _Crown of Wild Olive_, “that war is the foundation of + all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high + virtues and faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover + this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable + fact. * * * I found in brief, that all great nations learned their + truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were + nourished in war and wasted by peace, taught by war and deceived by + peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word, that they + were born in war and expired in peace.”] + + [Footnote 4: Lafcadio Hearn, _Exotics and Retrospectives_, p. 84.] + +What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such +loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such +filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by +the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant +character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of +“original sin.” On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and +God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which +divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto +shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, +and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part +of its furnishing. The presence of this article is easy to explain: it +typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, +reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in +front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its +shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic +injunction, “Know Thyself.” But self-knowledge does not imply, either in +the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, +not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral +kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the +Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his +eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter +veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman +conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so +much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its +nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its +ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial +family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more +than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain—it is the +sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the +Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a _Rechtsstaat_, or even the +Patron of a _Culturstaat_—he is the bodily representative of Heaven on +earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. +Boutmy[5] says is true of English royalty—that it “is not only the +image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity,” as I +believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in +Japan. + + [Footnote 5: _The English People_, p. 188.] + +The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the +emotional life of our race—Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp +very truly says: “In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell +whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven +or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself.”[6] A similar +confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. +I said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect +on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of +national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a +systematic philosophy or a rational theology. This religion—or, is +it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion +expressed?—thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and +love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for +Shintoism, unlike the Mediæval Christian Church, prescribed to its +votaries scarcely any _credenda_, furnishing them at the same time with +_agenda_ of a straightforward and simple type. + + [Footnote 6: “_Feudal and Modern Japan_” Vol. I, p. 183.] + +As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the +most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral +relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), +father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between +friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had +recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, +benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts +was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling +class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the +requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius +exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often +quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic +natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the +existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under +censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment +in the heart of the samurai. + +The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books +for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere +acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in +no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an +intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant +of _Analects_. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling +sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be +boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little +smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more +so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge +becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the +learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was +considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to +ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike +spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, +that the cosmic process was unmoral. + +Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in +itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who +stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient +machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, +knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in +life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the +Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, “To +know and to act are one and the same.” + +I beg leave for a moment’s digression while I am on this subject, +inasmuch as some of the noblest types of _bushi_ were strongly +influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily +recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making +allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, “Seek +ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things +shall be added unto you,” conveys a thought that may be found on almost +any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese disciple[7] of his says—“The lord +of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, +becomes his mind (_Kokoro_); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever +luminous:” and again, “The spiritual light of our essential being is +pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up +in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called +conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of +heaven.” How very much do these words sound like some passages from +Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think +that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto +religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming’s +precepts. He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to +extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, +not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature +of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not +farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of +things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors +charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and +its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity +of temper cannot be gainsaid. + + [Footnote 7: Miwa Shissai.] + +Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which _Bushido_ +imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few +and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct +of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of +our nation’s history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our +warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of +commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the +highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands +of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. +An acute French _savant_, M. de la Mazelière, thus sums up his +impressions of the sixteenth century:—“Toward the middle of the +sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in +society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to +barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,—these +formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in +whom Taine praises ‘the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden +resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to +suffer.’ In Japan as in Italy ‘the rude manners of the Middle Ages made +of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.’ And this +is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the +principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one +finds there between minds (_esprits_) as well as between temperaments. +While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of +energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character +as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of +civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to +Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak +of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its +mountains.” + +To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazelière +writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with + + + RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE, + +the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more +loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The +conception of Rectitude may be erroneous—it may be narrow. A well-known +bushi defines it as a power of resolution;—“Rectitude is the power of +deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, +without wavering;—to die when it is right to die, to strike when to +strike is right.” Another speaks of it in the following terms: +“Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without +bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor +feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of +a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as +nothing.” Mencius calls Benevolence man’s mind, and Rectitude or +Righteousness his path. “How lamentable,” he exclaims, “is it to neglect +the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it +again! When men’s fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them +again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it.” Have we +not here “as in a glass darkly” a parable propounded three hundred years +later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself _the +Way_ of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray +from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and +narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise. + +Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace +brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it +dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet +_Gishi_ (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that +signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls—of whom +so much is made in our popular education—are known in common parlance +as the Forty-seven _Gishi_. + +In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and +downright falsehood for _ruse de guerre_, this manly virtue, frank and +honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly +praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to Valor, another martial virtue. +But before proceeding to speak of Valor, let me linger a little while on +what I may term a derivation from Rectitude, which, at first deviating +slightly from its original, became more and more removed from it, until +its meaning was perverted in the popular acceptance. I speak of _Gi-ri_, +literally the Right Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense +of duty which public opinion expected an incumbent to fulfil. In its +original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,—hence, +we speak of the _Giri_ we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to +society at large, and so forth. In these instances _Giri_ is duty; for +what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. +Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative? + +_Giri_ primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology +was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, +though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be some +other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated this +authority in _Giri_. Very rightly did they formulate this +authority—_Giri_—since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, +recourse must be had to man’s intellect and his reason must be quickened +to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of +any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous, Right +Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. _Giri_ thus understood is a +severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards +perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it +is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should +be _the_ law. I deem it a product of the conditions of an artificial +society—of a society in which accident of birth and unmerited favour +instituted class distinctions, in which the family was the social unit, +in which seniority of age was of more account than superiority of +talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb before +arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, _Giri_ +in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain +this and sanction that,—as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, +sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why +a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father’s +dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, _Giri_ has, in my +opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into +cowardly fear of censure. I might say of _Giri_ what Scott wrote of +patriotism, that “as it is the fairest, so it is often the most +suspicious, mask of other feelings.” Carried beyond or below Right +Reason, _Giri_ became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings +every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily have been turned +into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of + + + COURAGE, THE SPIRIT OF DARING + AND BEARING, + +to the consideration of which we shall now return. Courage was scarcely +deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in +the cause of Righteousness. In his “Analects” Confucius defines Courage +by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. “Perceiving +what is right,” he says, “and doing it not, argues lack of courage.” Put +this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, “Courage is doing +what is right.” To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one’s self, +to rush into the jaws of death—these are too often identified with +Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct—what +Shakespeare calls, “valor misbegot”—is unjustly applauded; but not so +in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, +was called a “dog’s death.” “To rush into the thick of battle and to be +slain in it,” says a Prince of Mito, “is easy enough, and the merest +churl is equal to the task; but,” he continues, “it is true courage to +live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die,” +and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines +courage as “the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he +should not fear.” A distinction which is made in the West between moral +and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai +youth has not heard of “Great Valor” and the “Valor of a Villein?” + +Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of +soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be +trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular +virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits +were repeated almost before boys left their mother’s breast. Does a +little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: +“What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your +arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit +_harakiri_?” We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little +boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little +page, “Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow +bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms +to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a +samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger.” +Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though +stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early +imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness +sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called +forth all the pluck that was in them. “Bears hurl their cubs down the +gorge,” they said. Samurai’s sons were let down the steep valleys of +hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of +food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for +inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter +strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the +sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to +their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they +frequently—once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of +learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without +sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny +places—to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be +haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when +decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the +ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the +darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the +trunkless head. + +Does this ultra-Spartan system of “drilling the nerves” strike the +modern pedagogist with horror and doubt—doubt whether the tendency +would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the +heart? Let us see what other concepts Bushido had of Valor. + +The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure—calm presence +of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical +manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave +man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the +equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the +midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake +him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the +menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, +for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain +in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing +or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of +what we call a capacious mind (_yoyū_), which, for from being pressed or +crowded, has always room for something more. + +It passes current among us as a piece of authentic history, that as Ōta +Dokan, the great builder of the castle of Tokyo, was pierced through +with a spear, his assassin, knowing the poetical predilection of his +victim, accompanied his thrust with this couplet— + + “Ah! how in moments like these + Our heart doth grudge the light of life;” + +whereupon the expiring hero, not one whit daunted by the mortal wound in +his side, added the lines— + + “Had not in hours of peace, + It learned to lightly look on life.” + +There is even a sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which +are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in +old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to +exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not +solely a matter of brute force; it was, as well, an intellectual +engagement. + +Of such character was the battle fought on the bank of the Koromo River, +late in the eleventh century. The eastern army routed, its leader, +Sadato, took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and +called aloud—“It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the +enemy,” Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted +an impromptu verse— + + “Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth” (_koromo_). + +Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when the defeated warrior, +undismayed, completed the couplet— + + “Since age has worn its threads by use.” + +Yoshiie, whose bow had all the while been bent, suddenly unstrung it and +turned away, leaving his prospective victim to do as he pleased. When +asked the reason of his strange behavior, he replied that he could not +bear to put to shame one who had kept his presence of mind while hotly +pursued by his enemy. + +The sorrow which overtook Antony and Octavius at the death of Brutus, +has been the general experience of brave men. Kenshin, who fought for +fourteen years with Shingen, when he heard of the latter’s death, wept +aloud at the loss of “the best of enemies.” It was this same Kenshin who +had set a noble example for all time, in his treatment of Shingen, +whose provinces lay in a mountainous region quite away from the sea, and +who had consequently depended upon the Hōjō provinces of the Tokaido for +salt. The Hōjō prince wishing to weaken him, although not openly at war +with him, had cut off from Shingen all traffic in this important +article. Kenshin, hearing of his enemy’s dilemma and able to obtain his +salt from the coast of his own dominions, wrote Shingen that in his +opinion the Hōjō lord had committed a very mean act, and that although +he (Kenshin) was at war with him (Shingen) he had ordered his subjects +to furnish him with plenty of salt—adding, “I do not fight with salt, +but with the sword,” affording more than a parallel to the words of +Camillus, “We Romans do not fight with gold, but with iron.” Nietzsche +spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, “You are to be proud of your +enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success also.” Indeed +valor and honor alike required that we should own as enemies in war only +such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. When valor attains this +height, it becomes akin to + + + BENEVOLENCE, THE FEELING OF + DISTRESS, + +love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, which were +ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes +of the human soul. Benevolence was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold +sense;—princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; +princely as particularly befitting a princely profession. We needed no +Shakespeare to feel—though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we +needed him to express it—that mercy became a monarch better than his +crown, that it was above his sceptered sway. How often both Confucius +and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist +in benevolence. Confucius would say, “Let but a prince cultivate virtue, +people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will +bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right +uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth an outcome.” Again, “Never has +there been a case of a sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not +loving righteousness,” Mencius follows close at his heels and says, +“Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power +in a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a +whole empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue.” +Also,—“It is impossible that any one should become ruler of the +people to whom they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts.” +Both defined this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, +“Benevolence—Benevolence is Man.” Under the régime of feudalism, which +could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we +owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter +surrender of “life and limb” on the part of the governed would have left +nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural +consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called “oriental +despotism,”—as though there were no despots of occidental history! + +Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a +mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote +that “Kings are the first servants of the State,” jurists thought +rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. +Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan, +Yozan of Yonézawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that +feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although +unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher +sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father +to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not +usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal +government—paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular +government (Uncle Sam’s, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and +a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey +reluctantly, while in the other they do so with “that proud submission, +that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, +even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted freedom.”[8] The old +saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the “king +of devils, because of his subjects’ often insurrections against, and +depositions of, their princes,” and which made the French monarch the +“king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and impositions,” but +which gave the title of “the king of men” to the sovereign of Spain +“because of his subjects’ willing obedience.” But enough!— + + [Footnote 8: Burke, _French Revolution_.] + +Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which +it is impossible to harmonize. Pobyedonostseff has clearly set before us +the contrast in the foundations of English and other European +communities; namely that these were organized on the basis of common +interest, while that was distinguished by a strongly developed +independent personality. What this Russian statesman says of the +personal dependence of individuals on some social alliance and in the +end of ends of the State, among the continental nations of Europe and +particularly among Slavonic peoples, is doubly true of the Japanese. +Hence not only is a free exercise of monarchical power not felt as +heavily by us as in Europe, but it is generally moderated by parental +consideration for the feelings of the people. “Absolutism,” says +Bismarck, “primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty, +devotion to duty, energy and inward humility.” If I may be allowed to +make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of +the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of “Kingship, by the +grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to +the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can +release the monarch.” + +We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright +Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the +gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned +against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with +justice and rectitude. Masamuné expressed it well in his oft-quoted +aphorism—“Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; +Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness.” + +Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is +universally true that “The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the +daring.” “_Bushi no nasaké_”—the tenderness of a warrior—had a sound +which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy +of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other +being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, +but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not +remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with +power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual +or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual, +since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the +recipient. + +Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to +turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius +taught concerning the power of Love. “Benevolence,” he says, “brings +under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: +they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to +extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots.” He also +says that “the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore +a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in +distress.” Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his +ethical philosophy on Sympathy. + +It is indeed striking how closely the code of knightly honor of one +country coincides with that of others; in other words, how the much +abused oriental ideas of morals find their counterparts in the noblest +maxims of European literature. If the well-known lines, + + Hae tibi erunt artes—pacisque imponere morem, + Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos, + +were shown a Japanese gentleman, he might readily accuse the Mantuan +bard of plagiarizing from the literature of his own country. + +Benevolence to the weak, the downtrodden or the vanquished, was ever +extolled as peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art +must be familiar with the representation of a priest riding backwards +on a cow. The rider was once a warrior who in his day made his name a +by-word of terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-ura, (1184 A.D.), +which was one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy +and in single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms. Now +the etiquette of war required that on such occasions no blood should be +spilt, unless the weaker party proved to be a man of rank or ability +equal to that of the stronger. The grim combatant would have the name +of the man under him; but he refusing to make it known, his helmet +was ruthlessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and +beardless, made the astonished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth +to his feet, in paternal tones he bade the stripling go: “Off, young +prince, to thy mother’s side! The sword of Kumagaye shall never be +tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o’er yon pass before +thy enemies come in sight!” The young warrior refused to go and begged +Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above +the hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time +before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; +there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who +this self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden +arms; the strong hand of the warrior quivers; again he begs his victim +to flee for his life. Finding all his entreaties vain and hearing the +approaching steps of his comrades, he exclaims: “If thou art overtaken, +thou mayest fall at a more ignoble hand than mine. O, thou Infinite! +receive his soul!” In an instant the sword flashes in the air, and +when it falls it is red with adolescent blood. When the war is ended, +we find our soldier returning in triumph, but little cares he now for +honor or fame; he renounces his warlike career, shaves his head, dons a +priestly garb, devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never +turning his back to the West, where lies the Paradise whence salvation +comes and whither the sun hastes daily for his rest. + +Critics may point out flaws in this story, which is casuistically +vulnerable. Let it be: all the same it shows that Tenderness, Pity and +Love, were traits which adorned the most sanguinary exploits of the +samurai. It was an old maxim among them that “It becometh not the fowler +to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom.” This in a large +measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered peculiarly +Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us. For decades before +we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had +familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe. In the +principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the +custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of +trumpets or the beat of drums,—“those clamorous harbingers of blood and +death”—stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and +tender melodies on the _biwa_,[9] soothing our fiery spirits, drawing +our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage. Polybius +tells us of the Constitution of Arcadia, which required all youths +under thirty to practice music, in order that this gentle art might +alleviate the rigors of that inclement region. It is to its influence +that he attributes the absence of cruelty in that part of the Arcadian +mountains. + + [Footnote 9: A musical instrument, resembling the guitar.] + +Nor was Satsuma the only place in Japan where gentleness was inculcated +among the warrior class. A Prince of Shirakawa jots down his random +thoughts, and among them is the following: “Though they come stealing to +your bedside in the silent watches of the night, drive not away, but +rather cherish these—the fragrance of flowers, the sound of distant +bells, the insect humming of a frosty night.” And again, “Though they +may wound your feelings, these three you have only to forgive, the +breeze that scatters your flowers, the cloud that hides your moon, and +the man who tries to pick quarrels with you.” + +It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler +emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged. Our poetry has +therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness. A well-known +anecdote of a rustic samurai illustrates a case in point. When he was +told to learn versification, and “The Warbler’s Notes”[10] was given him +for the subject of his first attempt, his fiery spirit rebelled and he +flung at the feet of his master this uncouth production, which ran + + [Footnote 10: The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the + nightingale of Japan.] + + “The brave warrior keeps apart + The ear that might listen + To the warbler’s song.” + +His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the +youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to +the sweet notes of the _uguisu_, and he wrote + + “Stands the warrior, mailed and strong, + To hear the uguisu’s song, + Warbled sweet the trees among.” + +We admire and enjoy the heroic incident in Körner’s short life, when, as +he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous “Farewell to +Life.” Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our +warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to +the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was +either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might +be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an +ode,—and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the +breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers. + +What Christianity has done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the +midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in +Japan. The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for +the sufferings of others. Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect +for others’ feelings, are at the root of + + + POLITENESS, + +that courtesy and urbanity of manners which has been noticed by every +foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait. Politeness is a poor virtue, +if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it +should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the +feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of +things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter +express no plutocratic distinctions, but were originally distinctions +for actual merit. + +In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love. We may +reverently say, politeness “suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, +vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, +seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of +evil.” Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six +elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, +inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of social intercourse? + +While thus extolling Politeness, far be it from me to put it in the +front rank of virtues. If we analyze it, we shall find it correlated +with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone? +While—or rather because—it was exalted as peculiar to the profession +of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there +came into existence its counterfeits. Confucius himself has repeatedly +taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as +sounds are of music. + +When propriety was elevated to the _sine qua non_ of social intercourse, +it was only to be expected that an elaborate system of etiquette should +come into vogue to train youth in correct social behavior. How one must +bow in accosting others, how he must walk and sit, were taught and +learned with utmost care. Table manners grew to be a science. Tea +serving and drinking were raised to a ceremony. A man of education is, +of course, expected to be master of all these. Very fitly does Mr. +Veblen, in his interesting book,[11] call decorum “a product and an +exponent of the leisure-class life.” + + [Footnote 11: _Theory of the Leisure Class_, N.Y. 1899, p. 46.] + +I have heard slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate +discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much +of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. +I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, +but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to +ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my +mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the +contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for +the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether +trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most +appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything +to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both +the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as +the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain +definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a +novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed +is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the +most economical use of force,—hence, according to Spencer’s dictum, the +most graceful. + +The spiritual significance of social decorum,—or, I might say, to +borrow from the vocabulary of the “Philosophy of Clothes,” the +spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward +garments,—is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us +in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our +ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave +rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book. +It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, +that I wish to emphasize. + +I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so +much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into +existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was +put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the +Ogasawara, in the following terms: “The end of all etiquette is to so +cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the +roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person.” It means, in other +words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the +parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such +harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of +spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word +_biensèance_[12] comes thus to contain! + + [Footnote 12: Etymologically _well-seatedness_.] + +If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it +follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful +deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine +manners, therefore, mean power in repose. When the barbarian Gauls, +during the sack of Rome, burst into the assembled Senate and dared pull +the beards of the venerable Fathers, we think the old gentlemen were to +blame, inasmuch as they lacked dignity and strength of manners. Is lofty +spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not?—All +roads lead to Rome! + +As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then +become spiritual culture, I may take _Cha-no-yu_, the tea ceremony. +Tea-sipping as a fine art! Why should it not be? In the children drawing +pictures on the sand, or in the savage carving on a rock, was the +promise of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. How much more is the drinking +of a beverage, which began with the transcendental contemplation of a +Hindoo anchorite, entitled to develop into a handmaid of Religion and +Morality? That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure +and quietness of demeanor, which are the first essentials of _Cha-no-yu_ +are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right +feeling. The scrupulous cleanliness of the little room, shut off from +sight and sound of the madding crowd, is in itself conducive to direct +one’s thoughts from the world. The bare interior does not engross one’s +attention like the innumerable pictures and bric-a-brac of a Western +parlor; the presence of _kakemono_[13] calls our attention more to grace +of design than to beauty of color. The utmost refinement of taste is the +object aimed at; whereas anything like display is banished with +religious horror. The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative +recluse, in a time when wars and the rumors of wars were incessant, is +well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. +Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company +assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their +swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, +there to find peace and friendship. + + [Footnote 13: Hanging scrolls, which may be either paintings or + ideograms, used for decorative purposes.] + +_Cha-no-yu_ is more than a ceremony—it is a fine art; it is poetry, +with articulate gestures for rhythm: it is a _modus operandi_ of soul +discipline. Its greatest value lies in this last phase. Not infrequently +the other phases preponderated in the mind of its votaries, but that +does not prove that its essence was not of a spiritual nature. + +Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart +grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, +springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and +actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever +a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should +weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Such +didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, +expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, +as one missionary lady of twenty years’ residence once said to me, +“awfully funny.” You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over +you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly +his hat is off—well, that is perfectly natural, but the “awfully funny” +performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down +and he stands in the glaring sun also. How foolish!—Yes, exactly so, +provided the motive were less than this: “You are in the sun; I +sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it +were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot +shade you, I will share your discomforts.” Little acts of this kind, +equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities. +They are the “bodying forth” of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of +others. + +Another “awfully funny” custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; +but many superficial writers on Japan have dismissed it by simply +attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every +foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in +making proper reply upon the occasion. In America, when you make a gift, +you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander +it. The underlying idea with you is, “This is a nice gift: if it were +not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to +give you anything but what is nice.” In contrast to this, our logic +runs: “You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you. You +will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my +good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token. +It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for +you.” Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate +idea is one and the same. Neither is “awfully funny.” The American +speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the +spirit which prompts the gift. + +It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety +shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to +take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass +judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or +to observe rules of propriety about eating? A Chinese sage answers, “If +you take a case where the eating is all-important, and the observing the +rules of propriety is of little importance, and compare them together, +why merely say that the eating is of the more importance?” “Metal is +heavier than feathers,” but does that saying have reference to a single +clasp of metal and a wagon-load of feathers? Take a piece of wood a foot +thick and raise it above the pinnacle of a temple, none would call it +taller than the temple. To the question, “Which is the more important, +to tell the truth or to be polite?” the Japanese are said to give an +answer diametrically opposite to what the American will say,—but I +forbear any comment until I come to speak of + + + VERACITY OR TRUTHFULNESS, + +without which Politeness is a farce and a show. “Propriety carried +beyond right bounds,” says Masamuné, “becomes a lie.” An ancient poet +has outdone Polonius in the advice he gives: “To thyself be faithful: if +in thy heart thou strayest not from truth, without prayer of thine the +Gods will keep thee whole.” The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Tsu-tsu +gives expression in the _Doctrine of the Mean_, attributes to it +transcendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine. +“Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity +there would be nothing.” He then dwells with eloquence on its +far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes +without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose +without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a +combination of “Word” and “Perfect,” one is tempted to draw a parallel +between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of _Logos_—to such height +does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight. + +Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly. The bushi held that +his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than +that of the tradesman and peasant. _Bushi no ichi-gon_—the word of a +samurai or in exact German equivalent _ein Ritterwort_—was sufficient +guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such +weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a +written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity. +Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for +_ni-gon_, a double tongue. + +The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of +Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher +not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to +their honor. I am well aware that they did swear by different deities or +upon their swords; but never has swearing degenerated into wanton form +and irreverent interjection. To emphasize our words a practice of +literally sealing with blood was sometimes resorted to. For the +explanation of such a practice, I need only refer my readers to Goethe’s +Faust. + +A recent American writer is responsible for this statement, that if you +ask an ordinary Japanese which is better, to tell a falsehood or be +impolite, he will not hesitate to answer “to tell a falsehood!” Dr. +Peery[14] is partly right and partly wrong; right in that an ordinary +Japanese, even a samurai, may answer in the way ascribed to him, but +wrong in attributing too much weight to the term he translates +“falsehood.” This word (in Japanese _uso_) is employed to denote +anything which is not a truth (_makoto_) or fact (_honto_). Lowell tells +us that Wordsworth could not distinguish between truth and fact, and an +ordinary Japanese is in this respect as good as Wordsworth. Ask a +Japanese, or even an American of any refinement, to tell you whether he +dislikes you or whether he is sick at his stomach, and he will not +hesitate long to tell falsehoods and answer, “I like you much,” or, “I +am quite well, thank you.” To sacrifice truth merely for the sake of +politeness was regarded as an “empty form” (_kyo-rei_) and “deception by +sweet words,” and was never justified. + + [Footnote 14: Peery, _The Gist of Japan_, p. 86.] + +I own I am speaking now of the Bushido idea of veracity; but it may not +be amiss to devote a few words to our commercial integrity, of which I +have heard much complaint in foreign books and journals. A loose +business morality has indeed been the worst blot on our national +reputation; but before abusing it or hastily condemning the whole race +for it, let us calmly study it and we shall be rewarded with consolation +for the future. + +Of all the great occupations of life, none was farther removed from the +profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the +category of vocations,—the knight, the tiller of the soil, the +mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and +could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the +counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social +arrangement. Montesquieu has made it clear that the debarring of the +nobility from mercantile pursuits was an admirable social policy, in +that it prevented wealth from accumulating in the hands of the powerful. +The separation of power and riches kept the distribution of the latter +more nearly equable. Professor Dill, the author of “Roman Society in the +Last Century of the Western Empire,” has brought afresh to our mind that +one cause of the decadence of the Roman Empire, was the permission given +to the nobility to engage in trade, and the consequent monopoly of +wealth and power by a minority of the senatorial families. + +Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of +development which it would have attained under freer conditions. The +obloquy attached to the calling naturally brought within its pale such +as cared little for social repute. “Call one a thief and he will steal:” +put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it, +for it is natural that “the normal conscience,” as Hugh Black says, +“rises to the demands made on it, and easily falls to the limit of the +standard expected from it.” It is unnecessary to add that no business, +commercial or otherwise, can be transacted without a code of morals. Our +merchants of the feudal period had one among themselves, without which +they could never have developed, as they did, such fundamental +mercantile institutions as the guild, the bank, the bourse, insurance, +checks, bills of exchange, etc.; but in their relations with people +outside their vocation, the tradesmen lived too true to the reputation +of their order. + +This being the case, when the country was opened to foreign trade, only +the most adventurous and unscrupulous rushed to the ports, while the +respectable business houses declined for some time the repeated requests +of the authorities to establish branch houses. Was Bushido powerless to +stay the current of commercial dishonor? Let us see. + +Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a +few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, +feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai’s fiefs were taken +and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to +invest them in mercantile transactions. Now you may ask, “Why could they +not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations +and so reform the old abuses?” Those who had eyes to see could not weep +enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with +the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably +failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through +sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival. When +we know that eighty per cent. of the business houses fail in so +industrial a country as America, is it any wonder that scarcely one +among a hundred samurai who went into trade could succeed in his new +vocation? It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes +were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; +but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth +were not the ways of honor. In what respects, then, were they different? + +Of the three incentives to Veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz: the +industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was +altogether lacking in Bushido. As to the second, it could develop little +in a political community under a feudal system. It is in its +philosophical, and as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that Honesty +attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues. With all my sincere +regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I +ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that “Honesty is the best +policy,” that it _pays_ to be honest. Is not this virtue, then, its own +reward? If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, +I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies! + +If Bushido rejects a doctrine of _quid pro quo_ rewards, the shrewder +tradesman will readily accept it. Lecky has very truly remarked that +Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as +Nietzsche puts it, “Honesty is the youngest of virtues”—in other +words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry. Without +this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most +cultivated mind could adopt and nourish. Such minds were general among +the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian +foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive. Industries advancing, +Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice. Just +think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the +professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of “a lamentable +lack of reliability with regard to German shipments _inter alia_, +apparent both as to quality and quantity;” now-a-days we hear +comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade. In +twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays. Already +our merchants are finding that out. For the rest I recommend the reader +to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this point.[15] It is +interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were +the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the +form of promissory notes. It was quite a usual thing to insert such +clauses as these: “In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I +shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;” or, “In case I +fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool,” and the like. + + [Footnote 15: Knapp, _Feudal and Modern Japan_, Vol. I, Ch. IV. + Ransome, _Japan in Transition_, Ch. VIII.] + +Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive +higher than courage. In the absence of any positive commandment against +bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply +denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable. As a matter of +fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and +its German etymology so identified with + + + HONOR, + +that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration +of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood. + +The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity +and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to +value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word +ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used +freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as _na_ (name) +_men-moku_ (countenance), _guai-bun_ (outside hearing), reminding us +respectively of the biblical use of “name,” of the evolution of the term +“personality” from the Greek mask, and of “fame.” A good name—one’s +reputation, the immortal part of one’s self, what remains being +bestial—assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its +integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (_Ren-chi-shin_) was +one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. “You will be +laughed at,” “It will disgrace you,” “Are you not ashamed?” were the +last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. +Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the +child’s heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its +mother’s womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being +closely bound up with strong family consciousness. “In losing the +solidarity of families,” says Balzac, “society has lost the fundamental +force which Montesquieu named Honor.” Indeed, the sense of shame seems +to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our +race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in +consequence of tasting “the fruit of that forbidden tree” was, to my +mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the +awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in +pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and +tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her +dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience +clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial +ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will +efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who +refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his +youth; “because,” he said, “dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which +time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge.” + +Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, +what Carlyle has latterly expressed,—namely, that “Shame is the soil of +all Virtue, of good manners and good morals.” + +The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks +such eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it +nevertheless hung like Damocles’ sword over the head of every samurai +and often assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were +perpetrated which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. +At the slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart +took offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary +strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a +well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea +jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple +and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which +feed on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble +warrior with a beast—I say, stories like these are too frivolous to +believe. Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; +(1) that they were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses +were really made of the samurai’s profession of honor; and (3) that +a very strong sense of shame was developed among them. It is plainly +unfair to take an abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any +more than to judge of the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of +religious fanaticism and extravagance—inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, +as in religious monomania there is something touchingly noble, as +compared with the delirium tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme +sensitiveness of the samurai about their honor do we not recognize the +substratum of a genuine virtue? + +The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined +to run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and +patience. To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as +“short-tempered.” The popular adage said: “To bear what you think you +cannot bear is really to bear.” The great Iyéyasu left to posterity +a few maxims, among which are the following:—“The life of man is +like going a long distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. +Haste not. * * * * Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine +own short-comings. * * * Forbearance is the basis of length of +days.” He proved in his life what he preached. A literary wit put a +characteristic epigram into the mouths of three well-known personages +in our history: to Nobunaga he attributed, “I will kill her, if the +nightingale sings not in time;” to Hidéyoshi, “I will force her to sing +for me;” and to Iyéyasu, “I will wait till she opens her lips.” + +Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In +one place he writes to this effect: “Though you denude yourself and +insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your +outrage.” Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy +a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath. + +To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could +reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, +for instance, this saying of Ogawa: “When others speak all manner of +evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect +that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties.” Take +another of Kumazawa:—“When others blame thee, blame them not; when +others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion +and Desire part.” Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon +whose overhanging brows “shame is ashamed to sit;”—“The Way is the way +of Heaven and Earth: Man’s place is to follow it: therefore make it the +object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with +equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love +others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy +partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou +comest not short of thine own mark.” Some of those sayings remind us of +Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality +natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings +remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts. + +It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of +magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing +clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few +enlightened minds being aware that it “from no condition rises,” but +that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than +for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in +Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, “’Tis in every man’s +mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly +honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men +confer is not good honor. Those whom Châo the Great ennobles, he can +make mean again.” + +For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, +as we shall see later, while Honor—too often nothing higher than vain +glory or worldly approbation—was prized as the _summum bonum_ of +earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal +toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he +crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it +until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother +refused to see her sons again unless they could “return home,” as the +expression is, “caparisoned in brocade.” To shun shame or win a name, +samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals +of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows +with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyéyasu, in +spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at +the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept +so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the +resources at his command. “Take comfort, Sire,” said he, “at thought of +the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there +will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself.” The boy fixed his +indignant gaze upon the man and said—“How foolishly you talk! Can ever +my fourteenth year come round again?” + +Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained +therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered +dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down. + +Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to +sacrifice, was + + + THE DUTY OF LOYALTY, + +which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other +virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, +with other classes of people, but this virtue—homage and fealty to a +superior—is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity +is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,—a +gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the +code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance. + +In spite of Hegel’s criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, +being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a +bond established on totally unjust principles,[16] a great compatriot of +his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue. +Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the _Treue_ he boasts of +was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but +because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people +where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where “everybody is as +good as anybody else,” and, as the Irishman added, “better too,” such +exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed +“excellent within certain bounds,” but preposterous as encouraged among +us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the +Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the +truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary +beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we +conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception +is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we +carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. Griffis[17] was +quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made +obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was +given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I +will relate of one “who could endure to follow a fall’n lord” and who +thus, as Shakespeare assures, “earned a place i’ the story.” + + [Footnote 16: _Philosophy of History_ (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. + IV, Sec. II, Ch. I.] + + [Footnote 17: _Religions of Japan_.] + +The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizané, +who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the +capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent +upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son—not yet +grown—reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept +by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizané. When orders are dispatched +to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a +certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He +ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the +boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children +born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protégé. His +despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is +announced—a comely boy of the same age as his master’s son, escorted by +a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between +infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In +the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his +life,—the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. +Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom +comes the suggestion. + +Here, then, is the scape-goat!—The rest of the narrative may be briefly +told.—On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to +identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the +false head? The poor Genzo’s hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to +strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination +defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him, +goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone, +pronounces it genuine.—That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother +we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for +his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the +wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of +Michizané’s bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced +her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family’s +benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but +his son could serve the cause of the grandsire’s lord. As one acquainted +with the exile’s family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task +of identifying the boy’s head. Now the day’s—yea, the life’s—hard work +is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his +wife, saying: “Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service +to his lord!” + +“What an atrocious story!” I hear my readers exclaim,—“Parents +deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of +another man’s.” But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is +a story of vicarious death—as significant as, and not more revolting +than, the story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases +it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of +a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or +heard by an outward or an inward ear;—but I abstain from preaching. + +The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for +father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief +the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest +of the family and of the members thereof is intact,—one and +inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection—natural, +instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural +love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? “For if ye love +them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the +same?” + +In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart +struggle of Shigemori concerning his father’s rebellious conduct. “If I +be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my +sovereign must go amiss.” Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying +with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may +be released from this world where it is hard for purity and +righteousness to dwell. + +Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and +affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself +contains an adequate rendering of _ko_, our conception of filial piety, +and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of +Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the +king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the +samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty. + +Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived +the state as antedating the individual—the latter being born into the +former as part and parcel thereof—he must live and die for it or for +the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will +remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the +city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he +makes them (the laws, or the state) say:—“Since you were begotten and +nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our +offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!” These are words +which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing +has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the +laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty +is an ethical outcome of this political theory. + +I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer’s view according to which +political obedience—Loyalty—is accredited with only a transitional +function.[18] It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue +thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe _that_ +day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem +says, “tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss.” We may +remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the +English, “the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity +which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has,” as Monsieur +Boutmy recently said, “only passed more or less into their profound +loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their +extraordinary attachment to the dynasty.” + + [Footnote 18: _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.] + +Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to +loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is +realized—will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence +disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to +another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of +a ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the +monarch who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years +ago a very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of +Spencer, made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal +to uphold the claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged +Christians with treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to +their Lord and Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without +the wit of Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of +the Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, “serve two +masters without holding to the one or despising the other,” “rendering +unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and unto God the things that are +God’s.” Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to +concede one iota of loyalty to his _dæmon_, obey with equal fidelity +and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His +conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the +day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the +dictates of their conscience! + +Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord +or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said: + + “Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot. + My life thou shalt command, but not my shame. + The one my duty owes; but my fair name, + Despite of death, that lives upon my grave, + To dark dishonor’s use, thou shalt not have.” + +A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak +or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the +Precepts. Such a one was despised as _nei-shin_, a cringeling, who +makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as _chô-shin_, a favorite who +steals his master’s affections by means of servile compliance; these two +species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago +describes,—the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his +own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master’s ass; +the other trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart +attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal +path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him +of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master +deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual +course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and +conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with +the shedding of his own blood. + +Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its +ideal being set upon honor, the whole + + + EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF + A SAMURAI, + +were conducted accordingly. + +The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up +character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, +intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part æsthetic +accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a +man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai +training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the +word _Chi_, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom +in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate +place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be +_Chi_, _Jin_, _Yu_, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A +samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of +his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his +profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; +he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish +courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed “’tis not the creed +that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed.” +Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual +training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth +that he strove after,—literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and +philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for +the exposition of some military or political problem. + +From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the +curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted +mainly of the following,—fencing, archery, _jiujutsu_ or _yawara_, +horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics, +literature and history. Of these, _jiujutsu_ and caligraphy may require +a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing, +probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of +pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was +accepted as indicative of one’s personal character. _Jiujutsu_ may be +briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose +of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not +depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in +that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such +part of the enemy’s body as will make him numb and incapable of +resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for +action for the time being. + +A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education +and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of +instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in +part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific +precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was +unfavorable to fostering numerical notions. + +Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius +that “ambition, the soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than +gain which darkens him.” Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear +and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in +hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrère of La Mancha. He disdains +money itself,—the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably +filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an +age is “that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death.” +Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as +their lavish use is panegyrized. “Less than all things,” says a current +precept, “men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is +hindered.” Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of +economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of +the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of +numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the +distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left +to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by +a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well +enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of +raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift +was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for +the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to +manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, +sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans. + +We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial +agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby +showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money +itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of +the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. +These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something +low—low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations. + +Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself +could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is +the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men +have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is +making its way in our time and generation! + +The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the +study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and +deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind +of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, +decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with +information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies +that Bacon gives,—for delight, ornament, and ability,—Bushido had +decided preference for the last, where their use was “in judgment and +the disposition of business.” Whether it was for the disposition of +public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a +practical end in view that education was conducted. “Learning without +thought,” said Confucius, “is labor lost: thought without learning is +perilous.” + +When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is +chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his +vocation partakes of a sacred character. “It is the parent who has borne +me: it is the teacher who makes me man.” With this idea, therefore, the +esteem in which one’s preceptor was held was very high. A man to evoke +such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed +with superior personality without lacking erudition. He was a father to +the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring. “Thy father and thy +mother”—so runs our maxim—“are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and +thy lord are like the sun and moon.” + +The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue +among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be +rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it +of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not +because it was valueless but because it was invaluable. Here the +non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than +modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for +services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas +the best service done in education,—namely, in soul development (and +this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or +measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, +is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their +teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were +not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients +as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, +too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg. They were +grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity. They were +an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were +thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines, + + + SELF-CONTROL, + +which was universally required of samurai. + +The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance +without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring +us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of +our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and +eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I +say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can +ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some +of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer +hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any +race under the sky. + +I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than +others—yes, doubly more—since the very attempt to restrain natural +promptings entails suffering. Imagine boys—and girls too—brought up +not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for +the relief of their feelings,—and there is a physiological problem +whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive. + +It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his +face. “He shows no sign of joy or anger,” was a phrase used in +describing a strong character. The most natural affections were kept +under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his +dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,—no, not in the presence of +other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth +in the remark of a witty youth when he said, “American husbands kiss +their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat +theirs in public and kiss them in private.” + +Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by +passion of any kind. I remember when, during the late war with China, a +regiment left a certain town, a large concourse of people flocked to the +station to bid farewell to the general and his army. On this occasion +an American resident resorted to the place, expecting to witness loud +demonstrations, as the nation itself was highly excited and there were +fathers, mothers, and sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The +American was strangely disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the +train began to move, the hats of thousands of people were silently taken +off and their heads bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of +handkerchiefs, no word uttered, but deep silence in which only an +attentive ear could catch a few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I +know of a father who spent whole nights listening to the breathing of a +sick child, standing behind the door that he might not be caught in such +an act of parental weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last +moments, refrained from sending for her son, that he might not be +disturbed in his studies. Our history and everyday life are replete with +examples of heroic matrons who can well bear comparison with some of the +most touching pages of Plutarch. Among our peasantry an Ian Maclaren +would be sure to find many a Marget Howe. + +It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for the +absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of Japan. +When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is +to quietly suppress any indication of it. In rare instances is the +tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of +sincerity and fervor. It is putting a premium upon a breach of the third +commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experience. It is +truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most +secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. “Dost +thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time +for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone +in quietness and secrecy,”—writes a young samurai in his diary. + +To give in so many articulate words one’s inmost thoughts and +feelings—notably the religious—is taken among us as an unmistakable +sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. “Only a +pomegranate is he”—so runs a popular saying—“who, when he gapes his +mouth, displays the contents of his heart.” + +It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant our +emotions are moved we try to guard our lips in order to hide them. +Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defined it, “the art of +concealing thought.” + +Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will +invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At first +you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you will get +a few broken commonplaces—“Human life has sorrow;” “They who meet must +part;” “He that is born must die;” “It is foolish to count the years of +a child that is gone, but a woman’s heart will indulge in follies;” and +the like. So the noble words of a noble Hohenzollern—“Lerne zu leiden +ohne Klagen”—had found many responsive minds among us, long before they +were uttered. + +Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the frailties +of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better +reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter +with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when +disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of sorrow +or rage. + +The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they find +their safety-valve in poetical aphorism. A poet of the tenth century +writes, “In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by sorrow, +tells its bitter grief in verse.” A mother who tries to console her +broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase +after the dragon-fly, hums, + + “How far to-day in chase, I wonder, + Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!” + +I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant +justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a +foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding +hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a +measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an +appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and +dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question. + +It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference +to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as +it goes. The next question is,—Why are our nerves less tightly strung? +It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be +our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the +Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read _Sartor +Resartus_ as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was +our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to +recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the +explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in +self-control, none can be correct. + +Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress +the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into +distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or +hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart +and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive +excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of +self-restraint is to keep our mind _level_—as our expression is—or, to +borrow a Greek term, attain the state of _euthymia_, which Democritus +called the highest good. + +The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of +the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely, + + + THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE + AND REDRESS, + +of which (the former known as _hara-kiri_ and the latter as +_kataki-uchi_) many foreign writers have treated more or less fully. + +To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only +to _seppuku_ or _kappuku_, popularly known as _hara-kiri_—which means +self-immolation by disembowelment. “Ripping the abdomen? How +absurd!”—so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may +sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to +students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus’ mouth—“Thy +(Cæsar’s) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper +entrails.” Listen to a modern English poet, who in his _Light of Asia_, +speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:—none blames him for +bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, +look at Guercino’s painting of Cato’s death, in the Palazzo Rossa in +Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, +will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this +mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most +touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars +our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, +of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a +sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else—the sign which +Constantine beheld would not conquer the world! + +Not for extraneous associations only does _seppuku_ lose in our mind any +taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body +to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of +the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph’s “bowels +yearning upon his brother,” or David prayed the Lord not to forget his +bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of +the “sounding” or the “troubling” of bowels, they all and each endorsed +the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was +enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and +kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term +_hara_ was more comprehensive than the Greek _phren_ or _thumos_ and +the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell +somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the +peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by +one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul +is located in the pineal gland, still insist in using the term _ventre_ +in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless +physiologically significant. Similarly _entrailles_ stands in their +language for affection and compassion. Nor is such belief mere +superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the +heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese +knew better than Romeo “in what vile part of this anatomy one’s name did +lodge.” Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, +denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are +strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental +physiology once admitted, the syllogism of _seppuku_ is easy to +construct. “I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares +with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean.” + +I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral +justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was +ample excuse with many for taking one’s own life. How many acquiesced in +the sentiment expressed by Garth, + + “When honor’s lost, ’tis a relief to die; + Death’s but a sure retreat from infamy,” + +and have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death when honor +was involved, was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many +complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure +from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to +be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are +honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive +admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius +and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly +existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the +philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his +pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the +state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities +of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even +offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his +whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical +compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of +the judges was compulsory: it said, “Thou shalt die,—and that by thy +own hand.” If suicide meant no more than dying by one’s own hand, +Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with +the crime; Plato, who was averse to it, would not call his master a +suicide. + +Now my readers will understand that _seppuku_ was not a mere suicidal +process. It was an institution, legal and ceremonial. An invention of +the middle ages, it was a process by which warriors could expiate their +crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their +friends, or prove their sincerity. When enforced as a legal punishment, +it was practiced with due ceremony. It was a refinement of +self-destruction, and none could perform it without the utmost coolness +of temper and composure of demeanor, and for these reasons it was +particularly befitting the profession of bushi. + +Antiquarian curiosity, if nothing else, would tempt me to give here a +description of this obsolete ceremonial; but seeing that such a +description was made by a far abler writer, whose book is not much read +now-a-days, I am tempted to make a somewhat lengthy quotation. Mitford, +in his “Tales of Old Japan,” after giving a translation of a treatise on +_seppuku_ from a rare Japanese manuscript, goes on to describe an +instance of such an execution of which he was an eye-witness:— + +“We (seven foreign representatives) were invited to follow the Japanese +witness into the _hondo_ or main hall of the temple, where the ceremony +was to be performed. It was an imposing scene. A large hall with a high +roof supported by dark pillars of wood. From the ceiling hung a +profusion of those huge gilt lamps and ornaments peculiar to Buddhist +temples. In front of the high altar, where the floor, covered with +beautiful white mats, is raised some three or four inches from the +ground, was laid a rug of scarlet felt. Tall candles placed at regular +intervals gave out a dim mysterious light, just sufficient to let all +the proceedings be seen. The seven Japanese took their places on the +left of the raised floor, the seven foreigners on the right. No other +person was present. + +“After the interval of a few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki +Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, +walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar +hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied +by a _kaishaku_ and three officers, who wore the _jimbaori_ or war +surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word _kaishaku_ it should be +observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. +The office is that of a gentleman: in many cases it is performed by a +kinsman or friend of the condemned, and the relation between them is +rather that of principal and second than that of victim and executioner. +In this instance the _kaishaku_ was a pupil of Taki Zenzaburo, and was +selected by friends of the latter from among their own number for his +skill in swordsmanship. + +“With the _kaishaku_ on his left hand, Taki Zenzaburo advanced slowly +towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then +drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps +even with more deference; in each case the salutation was ceremoniously +returned. Slowly and with great dignity the condemned man mounted on to +the raised floor, prostrated himself before the high altar twice, and +seated[19] himself on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, +the _kaishaku_ crouching on his left hand side. One of the three +attendant officers then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used +in the temple for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the +_wakizashi_, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a +half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor’s. This he +handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it +reverently, raising it to his head with both hands, and placed it in +front of himself. + + [Footnote 19: Seated himself—that is, in the Japanese fashion, his + knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his + heels. In this position, which is one of respect, he remained until + his death.] + +“After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which +betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a +man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in +his face or manner, spoke as follows:— + +‘I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners +at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel +myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing +the act.’ + +“Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down +to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to +custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from +falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling +forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand he took the dirk that lay +before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a +moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then +stabbing himself deeply below the waist in the left-hand side, he drew +the dirk slowly across to his right side, and turning it in the wound, +gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he +never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned +forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first +time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the +_kaishaku_, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching +his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in +the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with +one blow the head had been severed from the body. + +“A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood +throbbing out of the inert head before us, which but a moment before had +been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible. + +“The _kaishaku_ made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of paper +which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; +and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the +execution. + +“The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and +crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called to us to +witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been +faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the +temple.” + +I might multiply any number of descriptions of _seppuku_ from literature +or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will +suffice. + +Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen +years of age, made an effort to kill Iyéyasu in order to avenge their +father’s wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made +prisoners. The old general admired the pluck of the youths who dared an +attempt on his life and ordered that they should be allowed to die an +honorable death. Their little brother Hachimaro, a mere infant of eight +summers, was condemned to a similar fate, as the sentence was pronounced +on all the male members of the family, and the three were taken to a +monastery where it was to be executed. A physician who was present on +the occasion has left us a diary from which the following scene is +translated. “When they were all seated in a row for final despatch, +Sakon turned to the youngest and said—‘Go thou first, for I wish to be +sure that thou doest it aright.’ Upon the little one’s replying that, as +he had never seen _seppuku_ performed, he would like to see his brothers +do it and then he could follow them, the older brothers smiled between +their tears:—‘Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of +being our father’s child.’ When they had placed him between them, Sakon +thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and +asked—‘Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don’t push the dagger +too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees +well composed.’ Naiki did likewise and said to the boy—‘Keep thy eyes +open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels +anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy +effort to cut across.’ The child looked from one to the other, and when +both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the +example set him on either hand.” + +The glorification of _seppuku_ offered, naturally enough, no small +temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely +incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, +hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and +dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent +gates. Life was cheap—cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of +honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the +_agio_, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser +metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of +Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all +victims of self-destruction! + +And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike +cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and +was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself +hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with use, +his bow broken and arrows exhausted—did not the noblest of the Romans +fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like circumstances?—deemed +it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude approaching a Christian +martyr’s, cheered himself with an impromptu verse: + + “Come! evermore come, + Ye dread sorrows and pains! + And heap on my burden’d back; + That I not one test may lack + Of what strength in me remains!” + +This, then, was the Bushido teaching—Bear and face all calamities and +adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as Mencius[20] +taught, “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, +it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and +bones with toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to +extreme poverty; and it confounds his undertakings. In all these +ways it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his +incompetencies.” True honor lies in fulfilling Heaven’s decree and no +death incurred in so doing is ignominious, whereas death to avoid what +Heaven has in store is cowardly indeed! In that quaint book of Sir +Thomas Browne’s, _Religio Medici_, there is an exact English equivalent +for what is repeatedly taught in our Precepts. Let me quote it: “It is +a brave act of valor to contemn death, but where life is more terrible +than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.” A renowned +priest of the seventeenth century satirically observed—“Talk as he +may, a samurai who ne’er has died is apt in decisive moments to flee +or hide.” Again—“Him who once has died in the bottom of his breast, no +spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of Tametomo can pierce.” How near +we come to the portals of the temple whose Builder taught “he that +loseth his life for my sake shall find it!” These are but a few of the +numerous examples which tend to confirm the moral identity of the human +species, notwithstanding an attempt so assiduously made to render the +distinction between Christian and Pagan as great as possible. + + [Footnote 20: I use Dr. Legge’s translation verbatim.] + +We have thus seen that the Bushido institution of suicide was neither +so irrational nor barbarous as its abuse strikes us at first sight. We +will now see whether its sister institution of Redress—or call it +Revenge, if you will—has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose +of this question in a few words, since a similar institution, or call it +custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all +peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the +continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain +recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? +Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and +only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time +which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, and only the +vigilant vengeance of the victim’s people preserves social order. “What +is the most beautiful thing on earth?” said Osiris to Horus. The reply +was, “To avenge a parent’s wrongs,”—to which a Japanese would have +added “and a master’s.” + +In revenge there is something which satisfies one’s sense of justice. +The avenger reasons:—“My good father did not deserve death. He who +killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not +tolerate a deed like this: Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the +will of my father; it is the will of Heaven that the evil-doer cease +from his work. He must perish by my hand; because he shed my father’s +blood, I, who am his flesh and blood, must shed the murderer’s. The same +Heaven shall not shelter him and me.” The ratiocination is simple and +childish (though we know Hamlet did not reason much more deeply), +nevertheless it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice +“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Our sense of revenge is as +exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation +are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone. + +In Judaism, which believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, +which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; +but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a +kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be +judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven +Ronins was condemned to death;—he had no court of higher instance to +appeal to; his faithful retainers addressed themselves to Vengeance, the +only Supreme Court existing; they in their turn were condemned by common +law,—but the popular instinct passed a different judgment and hence +their memory is still kept as green and fragrant as are their graves at +Sengakuji to this day. + +Though Lao-tse taught to recompense injury with kindness, the voice of +Confucius was very much louder, which counselled that injury must be +recompensed with justice;—and yet revenge was justified only when it +was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One’s own +wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne +and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal’s +oath to avenge his country’s wrongs, but he scorns James Hamilton for +wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife’s grave, as an +eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray. + +Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their _raison +d’être_ at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of +romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the +murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family +vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale +of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the +injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society +will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is +no need of _kataki-uchi_. If this had meant that “hunger of the heart +which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of +the victim,” as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs +in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it. + +As to _seppuku_, though it too has no existence _de jure_, we still hear +of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as +long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of +self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with +fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have +to concede to _seppuku_ an aristocratic position among them. He +maintains that “when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at +the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it +may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by +madness, or by morbid excitement.”[21] But a normal _seppuku_ does not +savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost _sang froid_ being +necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which +Dr. Strahan[22] divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the +Irrational or True, _seppuku_ is the best example of the former type. + + [Footnote 21: Morselli, _Suicide_, p. 314.] + + [Footnote 22: _Suicide and Insanity_.] + +From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of +Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in +social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called + + + THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE + SAMURAI, + +and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed +that “The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell,” he only echoed a +Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It +was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was +apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a +_go_-board[23] and initiated into the rights of the military profession +by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk +with which he had been playing. After this first ceremony of _adoptio +per arma_, he was no more to be seen outside his father’s gates without +this badge of his status, even if it was usually substituted for +every-day wear by a gilded wooden dirk. Not many years pass before he +wears constantly the genuine steel, though blunt, and then the sham arms +are thrown aside and with enjoyment keener than his newly acquired +blades, he marches out to try their edge on wood and stone. When he +reaches man’s estate at the age of fifteen, being given independence of +action, he can now pride himself upon the possession of arms sharp +enough for any work. The very possession of the dangerous instrument +imparts to him a feeling and an air of self-respect and responsibility. +“He beareth not his sword in vain.” What he carries in his belt is a +symbol of what he carries in his mind and heart—Loyalty and Honor. The +two swords, the longer and the shorter—called respectively _daito_ and +_shoto_ or _katana_ and _wakizashi_—never leave his side. When at home, +they grace the most conspicuous place in study or parlor; by night they +guard his pillow within easy reach of his hand. Constant companions, +they are beloved, and proper names of endearment given them. Being +venerated, they are well-nigh worshiped. The Father of History has +recorded as a curious piece of information that the Scythians sacrificed +to an iron scimitar. Many a temple and many a family in Japan hoards a +sword as an object of adoration. Even the commonest dirk has due respect +paid to it. Any insult to it is tantamount to personal affront. Woe to +him who carelessly steps over a weapon lying on the floor! + + [Footnote 23: The game of _go_ is sometimes called Japanese + checkers, but is much more intricate than the English game. The + _go-_board contains 361 squares and is supposed to represent a + battle-field—the object of the game being to occupy as much space + as possible.] + +So precious an object cannot long escape the notice and the skill of +artists nor the vanity of its owner, especially in times of peace, when +it is worn with no more use than a crosier by a bishop or a sceptre by a +king. Shark-skin and finest silk for hilt, silver and gold for guard, +lacquer of varied hues for scabbard, robbed the deadliest weapon of half +its terror; but these appurtenances are playthings compared with the +blade itself. + +The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his +workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and +purification, or, as the phrase was, “he committed his soul and spirit +into the forging and tempering of the steel.” Every swing of the sledge, +every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a +religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of +his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as +a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there +is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface +the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate +texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which +histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting +exquisite grace with utmost strength;—all these thrill us with mixed +feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror. Harmless were its +mission, if it only remained a thing of beauty and joy! But, ever within +reach of the hand, it presented no small temptation for abuse. Too often +did the blade flash forth from its peaceful sheath. The abuse sometimes +went so far as to try the acquired steel on some harmless creature’s +neck. + +The question that concerns us most is, however,—Did Bushido justify +the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As +it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its +misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on +undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use +it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count +Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our +history, when assassinations, suicides, and other sanguinary practices +were the order of the day. Endowed as he once was with almost +dictatorial powers, repeatedly marked out as an object for +assassination, he never tarnished his sword with blood. In relating some +of his reminiscences to a friend he says, in a quaint, plebeian way +peculiar to him:—“I have a great dislike for killing people and so I +haven’t killed one single man. I have released those whose heads should +have been chopped off. A friend said to me one day, ‘You don’t kill +enough. Don’t you eat pepper and egg-plants?’ Well, some people are no +better! But you see that fellow was slain himself. My escape may be due +to my dislike of killing. I had the hilt of my sword so tightly fastened +to the scabbard that it was hard to draw the blade. I made up my mind +that though they cut me, I will not cut. Yes, yes! some people are truly +like fleas and mosquitoes and they bite—but what does their biting +amount to? It itches a little, that’s all; it won’t endanger life.” +These are the words of one whose Bushido training was tried in the fiery +furnace of adversity and triumph. The popular apothegm—“To be beaten is +to conquer,” meaning true conquest consists in not opposing a riotous +foe; and “The best won victory is that obtained without shedding of +blood,” and others of similar import—will show that after all the +ultimate ideal of knighthood was Peace. + +It was a great pity that this high ideal was left exclusively to priests +and moralists to preach, while the samurai went on practicing and +extolling martial traits. In this they went so far as to tinge the +ideals of womanhood with Amazonian character. Here we may profitably +devote a few paragraphs to the subject of + + + THE TRAINING AND POSITION OF + WOMAN. + +The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of +paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the +comprehension of men’s “arithmetical understanding.” The Chinese +ideogram denoting “the mysterious,” “the unknowable,” consists of two +parts, one meaning “young” and the other “woman,” because the physical +charms and delicate thoughts of the fair sex are above the coarse mental +calibre of our sex to explain. + +In the Bushido ideal of woman, however, there is little mystery and only +a seeming paradox. I have said that it was Amazonian, but that is only +half the truth. Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman +holding a broom—certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively +against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more +harmless uses for which the besom was first invented—the idea involved +being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the +English wife (weaver) and daughter (_duhitar_, milkmaid). Without +confining the sphere of woman’s activity to _Küche, Kirche, Kinder_, as +the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood +was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions—Domesticity and +Amazonian traits—are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, +as we shall see. + +Bushido being a teaching primarily intended for the masculine sex, the +virtues it prized in woman were naturally far from being distinctly +feminine. Winckelmann remarks that “the supreme beauty of Greek art is +rather male than female,” and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral +conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised +those women most “who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their +sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the +bravest of men.”[24] Young girls therefore, were trained to repress +their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate +weapons,—especially the long-handled sword called _nagi-nata_, so as to +be able to hold their own against unexpected odds. Yet the primary +motive for exercises of this martial character was not for use in the +field; it was twofold—personal and domestic. Woman owning no suzerain +of her own, formed her own bodyguard. With her weapon she guarded her +personal sanctity with as much zeal as her husband did his master’s. The +domestic utility of her warlike training was in the education of her +sons, as we shall see later. + + [Footnote 24: Lecky, _History of European Morals_ II, p. 383.] + +Fencing and similar exercises, if rarely of practical use, were a +wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But +these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could +be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood, +were presented with dirks (_kai-ken_, pocket poniards), which might be +directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their +own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them +severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of +self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and +Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a +Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her +father’s dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a +disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to +perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in +anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must +know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever +the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty +with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of +the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an +abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our +bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among +us.[25] On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the +samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner, +seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery, +says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to +write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction. +When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves +her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these +verses;— + + “For fear lest clouds may dim her light, + Should she but graze this nether sphere, + The young moon poised above the height + Doth hastily betake to flight.” + + [Footnote 25: For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing + see Finck’s _Lotos Time in Japan_, pp. 286-297.] + +It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was +our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the +gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and +literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our +literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women +played an important role in the history of Japanese _belles lettres_. +Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of _geisha_) +only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale +the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the +technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate +object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of +sound is attainable without the player’s heart being in harmony with +herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in +the training of youths—that accomplishments were ever kept subservient +to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and +brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I +sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in +London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in +his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of +business for them. + +The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social +ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social +parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,—in other words, as a +part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided +their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women +of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly +intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost +sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and +integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and +day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to +their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her +father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from +earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of +independence, but of dependent service. Man’s helpmeet, if her presence +is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she +retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth +becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but, +when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties, +disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal +wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, +in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon +pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take +her husband’s place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon +her own devoted head. + +The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before +taking her own life, needs no comment:—“Oft have I heard that no +accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that +all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common +bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to +our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two +short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow +followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being +loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be +the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving +partner. I have heard that Kō-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China, +lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave +as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt +farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope +or joy—why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I +not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime +tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good +master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as +deep as the sea and as high as the hills.” + +Woman’s surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and +family, was as willing and honorable as the man’s self-surrender to the +good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no +life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well +as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than +was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was +recognized as _Naijo_, “the inner help.” In the ascending scale of +service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might +annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I +know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of +Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of +each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator. +Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service—the serving of a cause +higher than one’s own self, even at the sacrifice of one’s +individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that +Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission—as far as that +is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth. + +My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish +surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced +with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by +Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The +point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so +thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was +required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its +Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the +view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman’s rights, who +exclaimed, “May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against +ancient customs!” Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female +status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the +loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which +are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part +of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can +the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the +true course for their historical development to take? These are grave +questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime +let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen +was really so bad as to justify a revolt. + +We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to “God and +the ladies,”—the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we +are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that +gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker +vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot +contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences, +while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is +feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily +low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M. +Guizot’s theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer’s? In reply I might +aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to +the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the +military nobles, the _daimio_, and the court nobles, the _kugé_—these +higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were +masses of the common people—mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants—whose +life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as +the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have +been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the +industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This +is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she +experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the +lower the social class—as, for instance, among small artisans—the more +equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility, +too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked, +chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex +into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally +effeminate. Thus Spencer’s dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As +to Guizot’s, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will +remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration, +so that his generalization applies to the _daimio_ and the _kugé_. + +I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words +give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do +not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man’s equal; but until +we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will +always be misunderstandings upon this subject. + +When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves, +_e.g._, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble +ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American +Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had +no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what +Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal +rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the +only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it +would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in +pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in +comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it +enough, to compare woman’s status to man’s as the value of silver is +compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a +method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important +kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In +view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil +its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its +relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from +economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a +standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of +woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very +little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this +double measurement;—as a social-political unit not much, while as wife +and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among +so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly +venerated? Was it not because they were _matrona_, mothers? Not as +fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So +with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the +government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers +and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted +to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were +primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the +education of their children. + +I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among +half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression +for one’s wife is “my rustic wife” and the like, she is despised and +held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as “my foolish +father,” “my swinish son,” “my awkward self,” etc., are in current use, +is not the answer clear enough? + +To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further +than the so-called Christian. “Man and woman shall be one flesh.” The +individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband +and wife are two persons;—hence when they disagree, their separate +_rights_ are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their +vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and—nonsensical +blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband +or wife speaks to a third party of his other half—better or worse—as +being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of +one’s self as “my bright self,” “my lovely disposition,” and so forth? +We think praising one’s own wife or one’s own husband is praising a part +of one’s own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad +taste among us,—and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have +diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one’s consort +was a usage most in vogue among the samurai. + +The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe +of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the +Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of +the numerical insufficiency of women[26] (who, now increasing, are, I am +afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the +respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief +standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main +water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was +located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul +and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the +early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader’s +notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as +lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion +presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being +founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, +though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions +which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me +the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, +which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment +doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,—a +separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in +Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I +might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and +Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties +as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan. + + [Footnote 26: I refer to those days when girls were imported from + England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.] + +It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in +the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military +class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of + + + THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO + +on the nation at large. + +We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which +rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more +elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its +rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually +casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first +enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from +amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, +and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are +no less contagious than vices. “There needs but one wise man in a +company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion,” says Emerson. No +social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral +influence. + +Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely +has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of +the squires and _gentlemen_? Very truly does M. Taine say, “These three +syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English +society.” Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement +and fling back the question—“When Adam delved and Eve span, where then +was the gentleman?” All the more pity that a gentleman was not present +in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for +his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more +tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful +experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor, +treason and rebellion. + +What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of +the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed +through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the +populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their +example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these +were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the +commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of +virtues for their own sake. + +In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a +small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says—“In English +Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to +Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman).” Write in place of +Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the +main features of the literary history of Japan. + +The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction—the +theatres, the story-teller’s booths, the preacher’s dais, the musical +recitations, the novels—have taken for their chief theme the stories of +the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire +of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsuné and his faithful retainer +Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with +gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its +embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The +clerks and the shop-boys, after their day’s work is over and the +_amado_[27] of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story +of Nobunaga and Hidéyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes +their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to +the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is +taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of +ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and +virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour +with greedy ear the romance of the samurai. + + [Footnote 27: Outside shutters.] + +The samurai grew to be the _beau ideal_ of the whole race. “As among +flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord,” so sang +the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class +itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity, +no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus +from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly +the work of Knighthood. + +Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, “Aristocracy and +Evolution,” has eloquently told us that “social evolution, in so far as +it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of +the intentions of great men;” further, that historical progress is +produced by a struggle “not among the community generally, to live, but +a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct, +to employ, the majority in the best way.” Whatever may be said about the +soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the +part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our +Empire. + +How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in +the development of a certain order of men, known as _otoko-daté_, the +natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of +them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen +and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of +hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that +samurai did to daimio, the willing service of “limb and life, of body, +chattels and earthly honor.” Backed by a vast multitude of rash and +impetuous working-men, those born “bosses” formed a formidable check to +the rampancy of the two-sworded order. + +In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where +it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral +standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at +first as the glory of the élite, became in time an aspiration and +inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not +attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet _Yamato Damashii_, +the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the _Volksgeist_ of the +Island Realm. If religion is no more than “Morality touched by +emotion,” as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better +entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoöri has put the mute +utterance of the nation into words when he sings:— + + “Isles of blest Japan! + Should your Yamato spirit + Strangers seek to scan, + Say—scenting morn’s sun-lit air, + Blows the cherry wild and fair!” + +Yes, the _sakura_[28] has for ages been the favorite of our people and +the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition +which the poet uses, the words the _wild cherry flower scenting the +morning sun_. + + [Footnote 28: _Cerasus pseudo-cerasus_, Lindley.] + +The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild—in the sense +of natural—growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental +qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its +essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But +its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and +grace of its beauty appeal to _our_ æsthetic sense as no other flower +can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, +which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are +hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she +clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop +untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy +odors—all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no +dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at +the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light +fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its +showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is +volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious +ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is +something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the +_sakura_ quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to +illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more +serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of +beauteous day. + +When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his +heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that +the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the +whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a +time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs +and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily +tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one +is the sakura the flower of the nation. + +Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the +wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, +is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so +frailly mortal? + + + IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE? + +Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already +wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline? + +It were a sad thing if a nation’s soul could die so fast. That were a +poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The +aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national +character, is as tenacious as the “irreducible elements of species, of +the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the +carnivorous animal.” In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations +and brilliant generalizations, M. LeBon[29] says, “The discoveries due +to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or +defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: +they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for +centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities.” +These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over, +provided there were qualities and defects of character which _constitute +the exclusive patrimony_ of each people. Schematizing theories of this +sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and +they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In +studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon +European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that +no one quality of character was its _exclusive_ patrimony. It is true +the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is +this aggregate which Emerson names a “compound result into which every +great force enters as an ingredient.” But, instead of making it, as +LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord +philosopher calls it “an element which unites the most forcible persons +of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; +and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack +the Masonic sign.” + + [Footnote 29: _The Psychology of Peoples_, p. 33.] + +The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in +particular, cannot be said to form “an irreducible element of species,” +but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. +Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the +last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it +transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely +widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has +calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, +“each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty +millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D.” The merest peasant +that grubs the soil, “bowed by the weight of centuries,” has in his +veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as “to the +ox.” + +An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the +nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when +Yoshida Shôin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote +on the eve of his execution the following stanza;— + + “Full well I knew this course must end in death; + It was Yamato spirit urged me on + To dare whate’er betide.” + +Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor +force of our country. + +Mr. Ransome says that “there are three distinct Japans in existence +side by side to-day,—the old, which has not wholly died out; the new, +hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now +through its most critical throes.” While this is very true in most +respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete +institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions, +requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old +Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove +the formative force of the new era. + +The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the +hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, +were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of +Knighthood. Some writers[30] have lately tried to prove that the +Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making +of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this +honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it +will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of +preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they +have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian +missionaries are doing great things for Japan—in the domain of +education, and especially of moral education:—only, the mysterious +though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in +divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet +Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the +character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged +us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern +Japan—of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the +reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:—and you +will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought +and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and +observation of the Far East,[31] that only the respect in which Japan +differed from other oriental despotisms lay in “the ruling influence +among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious +codes of honor that man has ever devised,” he touched the main spring +which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is +destined to be. + + [Footnote 30: Speer; _Missions and Politics in Asia_, Lecture IV, + pp. 189-190; Dennis: _Christian Missions and Social Progress_, Vol. + I, p. 32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.] + + [Footnote 31: _The Far East_, p. 375.] + +The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a +work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one +were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When +we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the +latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study +Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the +development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much +less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of +oriental institutions and peoples has written:—“We are told every day +how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those +islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan, +but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of +organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful. +She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before +imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence,” continues +Mr. Townsend, “unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea +of China. Where is the European apostle,” asks our author, “or +philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made Japan?”[32] Mr. +Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought +about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he +had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation +would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than +Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as +an inferior power,—that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or +industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of +transformation. + + [Footnote 32: Meredith Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, N.Y., 1900, 28.] + +The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read. +A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most +eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the +working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The +universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly +ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance, +fortitude and bravery that “the little Jap” possesses, were sufficiently +proved in the China-Japanese war.[33] “Is there any nation more loyal +and patriotic?” is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer, +“There is not,” we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood. + + [Footnote 33: Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and + Yamada on _Heroic Japan_, and Diosy on _The New Far East_.] + +On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and +defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of +abstruse philosophy—while some of our young men have already gained +international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved +anything in philosophical lines—is traceable to the neglect of +metaphysical training under Bushido’s regimen of education. Our sense of +honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; +and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, +that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor. + +Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, +dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, +stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane +things? He is the _shosei_ (student), to whom the earth is too small and +the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe +and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of +wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for +knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods +are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of +Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national +honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of +Bushido. + +Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said +that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people +responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it +has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly +translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different +degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion +could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an +appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master. +The word “Loyalty” revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted +to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued +“students’ strike” in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction +with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the +Director,—“Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought +to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is +not manly to push a falling man.” The scientific incapacity of the +professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into +insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By +arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great +magnitude can be accomplished. + +One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the +missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history—“What do we care for +heathen records?” some say—and consequently estrange their religion +from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed +to for centuries past. Mocking a nation’s history!—as though the career +of any people—even of the lowest African savages possessing no +record—were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by +the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be +deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races +themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and +white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race +forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the +past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new +religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an “old, old story,” which, if +presented in intelligible words,—that is to say, if expressed in the +vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people—will find easy +lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality. +Christianity in its American or English form—with more of Anglo-Saxon +freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder—is a poor scion +to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot +the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel +on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible—in Hawaii, +where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in +amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal +race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan—nay, it is +a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his +kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following +words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:—“Men +have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering +how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may +have been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of +themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity +with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at +impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be +said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of +religion.”[34] + + [Footnote 34: Jowett, _Sermons on Faith and Doctrine_, II.] + +But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little +doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a +power which we must take into account in reckoning + + + THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO, + +whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, +that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at +work to threaten it. + +Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the +Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats +itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did +with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay +of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application +to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that +helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages +are as surely working for the decline of Bushido. + +One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan +is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and +was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan +no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother +institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift +for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it +under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little +room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its +infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are +being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and +Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the +Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted +to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet +we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow +journalism. + +Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of +Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, “the decay of the ceremonial +code—or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life—among +the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities +of latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate +sensibilities.” The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can +tolerate no form or shape of trust—and Bushido was a trust organized +by those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, +fixing the grades and value of moral qualities—is alone powerful enough +to engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are +antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely +criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, +cannot admit “purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an +exclusive class.”[35] Add to this the progress of popular instruction, +of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,—then we can +easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai’s sword nor the +sharpest shafts shot from Bushido’s boldest bows can aught avail. The +state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same—shall we +call it the _Ehrenstaat_ or, after the manner of Carlyle, the +Heroarchy?—is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and +gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The +words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may +aptly be repeated of the samurai, that “the medium in which their ardent +deeds took shape is forever gone.” + + [Footnote 35: _Norman Conquest_, Vol. V, p. 482.] + +Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into +the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away +as “the captains and the kings depart.” + +If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues—be +it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome—can never make on earth a +“continuing city.” Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in +man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly +virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to +fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that +Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but +Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, +with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to +emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. +Callings nobler and broader than a warrior’s claim our attention to-day. +With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better +knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of +Benevolence—dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?—will expand +into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than +subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more +than citizens, being men. + +Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the +wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world +confirms the prophecy that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” A nation +that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank +of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain +indeed! + +When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not +only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an +honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry +dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says +that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of +France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally +abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of +Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of +swords, rang out the old, “the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence +of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise,” it rang +in the new age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators.” + +It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of +Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work +of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does +ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, +burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, +without a master’s hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis +Napoleon beat the Prussians with his _Mitrailleuse_, or the Spaniards +with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the +old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite +saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of +implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do +not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does +not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea +and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and +beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of +our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly +visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show +a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial +virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, “but ours on +trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come,” +and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate +one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to +widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life. + +It has been predicted—and predictions have been corroborated by the +events of the last half century—that the moral system of Feudal Japan, +like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new +ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. +Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must +not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is +not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from +other birds. “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It does not come +rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing +across the seas, however broad. “God has granted,” says the Koran, “to +every people a prophet in its own tongue.” The seeds of the Kingdom, as +vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido. +Now its days are closing—sad to say, before its full fruition—and we +turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of +strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to +take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and +Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The +only other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with +Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with +which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like “a dimly burning wick” +which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame. +Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets—notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos +and Habakkuk—Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of +rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, +which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, +will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its +capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, +self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in +some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing +phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, +the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene. + +Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)—or will the +future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and +Hellenism?—will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals +will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which +side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it +can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is +willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total +extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It +is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and +vitality are still felt through many channels of life—in the philosophy +of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world. +Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his +spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal +discipline of Zeno at work. + +Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will +not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor +may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their +ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it +will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich +life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its +very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a +far-off unseen hill, “the wayside gaze beyond;”—then in the beautiful +language of the Quaker poet, + + “The traveler owns the grateful sense + Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, + And, pausing, takes with forehead bare + The benediction of the air.” + + + 明治三十八年六月二十二日印 + 明治三十八年六月二十五日訂正增補第十版發行 + 明治三十八年九月二十日第十一版發行 + 明治四十年二月二十日第十二版發行 + 明治四十一年三月二十五日第十三版發行 + + 英文武士道 + 正價金壹圓 + + 著作權登錄濟 + + 著作者 新渡戶稻造 + 東京市小石川區小日向臺町一丁目七十五番地 + + 發行者 櫻井彥一郎 + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目三番地 + + 印刷者 青木弘 + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目十二番地 + + 印刷所 株式會社 秀英舍第一工場 + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目十二番地 + + 發行所 丁未出版社 + 東京市麴町區五番町十六番地 + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12096 *** diff --git a/12096-h/12096-h.htm b/12096-h/12096-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3e0fafb --- /dev/null +++ b/12096-h/12096-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,3562 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bushido, + by Inazo Nitobé, A.M., Ph.D.. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + P {margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em;} + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5 {text-align: center; background-color: white;} + h2 { + font-size: large; + font-family: sans-serif; + } + HR {width: 33%; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;} + BODY{margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + + a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} + .smcap { font-variant: small-caps; } + .center { text-align:center; } + .poetry { + display: inline-block; + text-align: left; + font-size: 90%; + padding-left: 3em; + } + .x-ebookmaker .poetry { + display: block; + margin-left: 2.5em; + } + .stanza { margin: 3% auto; } + .stanza div.i0 { text-indent: -3em; } + .stanza div.i1 { text-indent: -2.5em; } + .stanza div.i2 { text-indent: -2em; } + .stanza div.i3 { text-indent: -1.5em; } + .stanza div.i4 { text-indent: -1em; } + .stanza div.i5 { text-indent: -0.5em; } + .stanza div.i6 { text-indent: 0; } + .stanza div.i7 { text-indent: 0.5em; } + .stanza div.i8 { text-indent: 1em; } + .stanza div.i10 { text-indent: 2em; } + .stanza div.i15 { text-indent: 4.5em; } + .stanza div.i20 { text-indent: 7em; } + .stanza div.i27 { text-indent: 8em; } + + </style> + </head> + +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12096 ***</div> + + +<div class="center"> +<img src="images/illus1.jpg" style="width: 70%;" alt="" /> +</div> + +<h1>BUSHIDO<br /> +<span style="font-size: smaller;">THE SOUL OF JAPAN</span></h1> + +<div class="center" style="font-size: small;">BY</div> +<div class="center"><b>INAZO NITOBÉ, A.M., Ph.D.</b></div> + +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 5%;">Author’s Edition, Revised and Enlarged</div> +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 5%;">13th EDITION</div> +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 5%;">1908</div> +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 5%;">DECEMBER, 1904</div> + +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 10%;">TO MY BELOVED UNCLE<br /> +TOKITOSHI OTA<br /> +WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST<br /> +AND<br /> +TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI<br /> +I DEDICATE<br /> +THIS LITTLE BOOK</div> + +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 10%;"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="i27">—“That way</div> + <div class="i0">Over the mountain, which who stands upon,</div> + <div class="i0">Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road;</div> + <div class="i0">While if he views it from the waste itself,</div> + <div class="i0">Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,</div> + <div class="i0">Not vague, mistakable! What’s a break or two</div> + <div class="i0">Seen from the unbroken desert either side?</div> + <div class="i0">And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)</div> + <div class="i0">What if the breaks themselves should prove at last</div> + <div class="i0">The most consummate of contrivances</div> + <div class="i0">To train a man’s eye, teach him what is faith?”</div> + <div class="i8">—<span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span>,</div> + <div class="i20"><i>Bishop Blougram’s Apology</i>.</div> + </div> +</div></div> + + <p>“There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have + from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a + predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of + mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of + honor.”<br /> + <span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 10em;">—Hallam,</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 15em;"><i>Europe in the Middle Ages</i>.</span></p> + +<p>“Chivalry is itself the poetry of life.”<br /> +<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 10em;">—Schlegel,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;"><i>Philosophy of History</i>.</span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PREFACE1"></a>PREFACE</h2> + +<p>About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof +of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our +conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of +religion. “Do you mean to say,” asked the venerable professor, “that you +have no religious instruction in your schools?” On my replying in the +negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I +shall not easily forget, he repeated “No religion! How do you impart +moral education?” The question stunned me at the time. I could give no +ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, +were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the +different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find +that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils.</p> + +<p>The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries +put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs +prevail in Japan.</p> + +<p>In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my +wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and +Bushido,<a name="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a> the +moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1">[1]</a> +Pronounced <i>Boó-shee-doh’</i>. In putting Japanese words and +names into English, Hepburn’s rule is followed, that the vowels should +be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in English.</div> + +<p>Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put +down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given +in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught +and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force.</p> + +<p>Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest +Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging +to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over +them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while +these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I +have often thought,—“Had I their gift of language, I would present the +cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!” But one who speaks in a borrowed +tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible.</p> + +<p>All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I +have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, +believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the +comprehension of foreign readers.</p> + +<p>Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious +workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity +itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and +with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the +teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the +religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as +well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God +hath made a testament which maybe called “old” with every people and +nation,—Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my +theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public.</p> + +<p>In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend +Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the +characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this +book.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 50%;">INAZO NITOBE.</p> + +<p><i>Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PREFACE2"></a>PREFACE<br /> +TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION</h2> + +<p>Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, +this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has +passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth +appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be +issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of +Messrs. George H. Putnam’s Sons, of New York.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, <i>Bushido</i> has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev +of Khandesh, into German by Fräulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian +by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life +in Lemberg,—although this Polish edition has been censured by the +Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into +French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian +officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for +the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian +public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been +published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger +students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also +owe much for his aid in other ways.</p> + +<p>I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found +sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the +subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly +flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that +President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and +distributing several dozens of copies among his friends.</p> + +<p>In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have +largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, +as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on +Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot +of Japanese ethics—Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather +to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular +virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot +draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge +upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are +touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and +discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger +than it is.</p> + +<p>This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt +I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful +suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement.</p> + +<div style="margin-left: 70%;">I.N.</div> + +<div><i><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kyoto,</span><br /> +Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905.</i></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<p><a href="#PREFACE1">Preface</a></p> + +<p><a href="#PREFACE2">Preface to the Tenth and Revised Edition</a></p> + +<p><a href="#BUSHIDO">Bushido as an Ethical System</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SOURCES">Sources of Bushido</a></p> + +<p><a href="#RECTITUDE">Rectitude or Justice</a></p> + +<p><a href="#COURAGE">Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing</a></p> + +<p><a href="#BENEVOLENCE">Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress</a></p> + +<p><a href="#POLITENESS">Politeness</a></p> + +<p><a href="#VERACITY">Veracity or Truthfulness</a></p> + +<p><a href="#HONOR">Honor</a></p> + +<p><a href="#DUTY">The Duty of Loyalty</a></p> + +<p><a href="#EDUCATION">Education and Training of a Samurai</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SELF-CONTROL">Self-Control</a></p> + +<p><a href="#INSTITUTIONS">The Institutions of Suicide and Redress</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SWORD">The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai</a></p> + +<p><a href="#TRAINING">The Training and Position of Woman</a></p> + +<p><a href="#INFLUENCE">The Influence of Bushido</a></p> + +<p><a href="#ALIVE">Is Bushido Still Alive?</a></p> + +<p><a href="#FUTURE">The Future of Bushido</a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BUSHIDO"></a>BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM.</h2> + +<p>Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its +emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique +virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living +object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape +or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware +that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society +which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as +those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed +their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of +feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother +institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the +language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the +neglected bier of its European prototype.</p> + +<p>It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so +erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that +chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either +among the nations of antiquity or among the modern +Orientals.<a name="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a> Such +ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good +Doctor’s work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking +at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the +time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx, +writing his “Capital,” called the attention of his readers to the +peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of +feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would +likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study +of chivalry in the Japan of the present.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2">[2]</a> +<i>History Philosophically Illustrated</i>, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol. +II, p. 2.</div> + +<p>Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between +European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of +this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, +<i>firstly</i>, the origin and sources of our chivalry; <i>secondly</i>, its +character and teaching; <i>thirdly</i>, its influence among the masses; and, +<i>fourthly</i>, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these +several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I +should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national +history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most +likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative +Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt +with as corollaries.</p> + +<p>The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the +original, more expressive than Horsemanship. <i>Bu-shi-do</i> means literally +Military-Knight-Ways—the ways which fighting nobles should observe in +their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the “Precepts +of Knighthood,” the <i>noblesse oblige</i> of the warrior class. Having thus +given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the +word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable +for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, +engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must +wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a +national <i>timbre</i> so expressive of race characteristics that the best of +translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice +and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German “<i>Gemüth</i>” +signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words +verbally so closely allied as the English <i>gentleman</i> and the French +<i>gentilhomme</i>?</p> + +<p>Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were +required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it +consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from +the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a +code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful +sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets +of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however +able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an +organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, +fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English +Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to +compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in +the seventeenth century Military Statutes (<i>Buké Hatto</i>) were +promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with +marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but +meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time +and place and say, “Here is its fountain head.” Only as it attains +consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be +identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many +threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the +political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman +Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the +ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in +England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period +previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in +Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned.</p> + +<p>Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, +the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These +were known as <i>samurai</i>, meaning literally, like the old English <i>cniht</i> +(knecht, knight), guards or attendants—resembling in character the +<i>soldurii</i> whom Cæsar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the +<i>comitati</i>, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his +time; or, to take a still later parallel, the <i>milites medii</i> that one +reads about in the history of Mediæval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word +<i>Bu-ké</i> or <i>Bu-shi</i> (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. +They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough +breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally +recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and +the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went +on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only “a rude race, +all masculine, with brutish strength,” to borrow Emerson’s phrase, +surviving to form families and the ranks of the <i>samurai</i>. Coming to +profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great +responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of +behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and +belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among +themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of +honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some +resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors.</p> + +<p>Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive +sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and +civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire +of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, “to leave behind him the name of a +fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one.” +And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which +moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even +so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions +endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom’s is the basis on which the +greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to +discover that <i>Bushido</i> does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting +in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, +brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, “We know from what +failings our virtue +springs.”<a name="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a> +“Sneaks” and “cowards” are epithets of +the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life +with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and +its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher +authority and more rational sources for its own justification, +satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, +without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal +of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with +concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with +spiritual data. “Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a +perfect Christian knight,” says Lamartine. In Japan there were several</p> + +<h2><a name="SOURCES"></a>SOURCES OF BUSHIDO,</h2> + +<p>of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust +in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in +sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with +death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil +master the utmost of his art, told him, “Beyond this my instruction must +give way to Zen teaching.” “Zen” is the Japanese equivalent for the +Dhyâna, which “represents human effort to reach through meditation zones +of thought beyond the range of verbal +expression.”<a name="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a> Its method is +contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be +convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, +of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this +Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, +and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself +above mundane things and awakes, “to a new Heaven and a new Earth.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3">[3]</a> +Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace loving +men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the fervor of a +worshiper of the strenuous life. “When I tell you,” he says in the +<i>Crown of Wild Olive</i>, “that war is the foundation of all the arts, I +mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and +faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very +dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. * * * I found in +brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength +of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace, +taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by +peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace.”</div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4">[4]</a> +Lafcadio Hearn, <i>Exotics and Retrospectives</i>, p. 84.</div> + +<p>What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such +loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such +filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by +the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant +character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of +“original sin.” On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and +God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which +divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto +shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, +and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part of +its furnishing. The presence of this article is easy to explain: it +typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, +reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in +front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its +shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic +injunction, “Know Thyself.” But self-knowledge does not imply, either in +the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, +not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral +kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the +Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his +eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter +veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman +conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so +much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its +nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its +ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial +family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more +than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain—it is the +sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the +Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a <i>Rechtsstaat</i>, or even the +Patron of a <i>Culturstaat</i>—he is the bodily representative of Heaven on +earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. +Boutmy<a name="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5">[5]</a> says +is true of English royalty—that it “is not only the +image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity,” as I +believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in +Japan.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5">[5]</a> +<i>The English People</i>, p. 188.</div> + +<p>The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the +emotional life of our race—Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp +very truly says: “In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell +whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven +or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation +itself.”<a name="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a> A similar +confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. I +said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect on +account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of national +instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a systematic +philosophy or a rational theology. This religion—or, is it not more +correct to say, the race emotions which this religion +expressed?—thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and +love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for +Shintoism, unlike the Mediæval Christian Church, prescribed to its +votaries scarcely any <i>credenda</i>, furnishing them at the same time with +<i>agenda</i> of a straightforward and simple type.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6">[6]</a> +“<i>Feudal and Modern Japan</i>” Vol. I, p. 183.</div> + +<p>As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the +most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral +relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), +father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between +friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had +recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, +benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts +was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling +class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the +requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius +exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often +quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic +natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the +existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under +censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment +in the heart of the samurai.</p> + +<p>The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books +for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere +acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in +no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an +intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant +of <i>Analects</i>. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling +sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be +boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little +smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more +so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge +becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the +learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was +considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to +ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike +spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, +that the cosmic process was unmoral.</p> + +<p>Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in +itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who +stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient +machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, +knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in +life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the +Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, “To +know and to act are one and the same.”</p> + +<p>I beg leave for a moment’s digression while I am on this subject, +inasmuch as some of the noblest types of <i>bushi</i> were strongly +influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily +recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making +allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, “Seek +ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things +shall be added unto you,” conveys a thought that may be found on almost +any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese +disciple<a name="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7">[7]</a> of his says—“The lord +of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, +becomes his mind (<i>Kokoro</i>); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever +luminous:” and again, “The spiritual light of our essential being is +pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up +in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called +conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of +heaven.” How very much do these words sound like some passages from +Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think +that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto +religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming’s +precepts. He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to +extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, +not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature +of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not +farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of +things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors +charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and +its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity +of temper cannot be gainsaid.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7">[7]</a>Miwa Shissai.</div> + +<p>Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which <i>Bushido</i> +imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few +and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct +of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of +our nation’s history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our +warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of +commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the +highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands +of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. +An acute French <i>savant</i>, M. de la Mazelière, thus sums up his +impressions of the sixteenth century:—“Toward the middle of the +sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in +society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to +barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,—these +formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in +whom Taine praises ‘the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden +resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to +suffer.’ In Japan as in Italy ‘the rude manners of the Middle Ages made +of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.’ And this +is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the +principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one +finds there between minds (<i>esprits</i>) as well as between temperaments. +While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of +energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character +as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of +civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to +Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak +of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its +mountains.”</p> + +<p>To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazelière +writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with</p> + +<h2><a name="RECTITUDE"></a>RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE,</h2> + +<p>the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more +loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The +conception of Rectitude may be erroneous—it may be narrow. A well-known +bushi defines it as a power of resolution;—“Rectitude is the power of +deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, +without wavering;—to die when it is right to die, to strike when to +strike is right.” Another speaks of it in the following terms: +”Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without +bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor +feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of +a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as +nothing.” Mencius calls Benevolence man’s mind, and Rectitude or +Righteousness his path. “How lamentable,” he exclaims, “is it to neglect +the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it +again! When men’s fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them +again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it.” Have we +not here “as in a glass darkly” a parable propounded three hundred years +later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself <i>the +Way</i> of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray +from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and +narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise.</p> + +<p>Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace +brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it +dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet +<i>Gishi</i> (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that +signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls—of whom +so much is made in our popular education—are known in common parlance +as the Forty-seven <i>Gishi</i>.</p> + +<p>In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and +downright falsehood for <i>ruse de guerre</i>, this manly virtue, frank and +honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly +praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to Valor, another martial virtue. +But before proceeding to speak of Valor, let me linger a little while on +what I may term a derivation from Rectitude, which, at first deviating +slightly from its original, became more and more removed from it, until +its meaning was perverted in the popular acceptance. I speak of <i>Gi-ri</i>, +literally the Right Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense +of duty which public opinion expected an incumbent to fulfil. In its +original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,—hence, +we speak of the <i>Giri</i> we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to +society at large, and so forth. In these instances <i>Giri</i> is duty; for +what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. +Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative?</p> + +<p><i>Giri</i> primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology +was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, +though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be some +other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated this +authority in <i>Giri</i>. Very rightly did they formulate this +authority—<i>Giri</i>—since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, +recourse must be had to man’s intellect and his reason must be quickened +to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of +any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous, Right +Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. <i>Giri</i> thus understood is a +severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards +perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it +is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should +be <i>the</i> law. I deem it a product of the conditions of an artificial +society—of a society in which accident of birth and unmerited favour +instituted class distinctions, in which the family was the social unit, +in which seniority of age was of more account than superiority of +talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb before +arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, <i>Giri</i> +in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain +this and sanction that,—as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, +sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why +a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father’s +dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, <i>Giri</i> has, in my +opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into +cowardly fear of censure. I might say of <i>Giri</i> what Scott wrote of +patriotism, that “as it is the fairest, so it is often the most +suspicious, mask of other feelings.” Carried beyond or below Right +Reason, <i>Giri</i> became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings +every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily have been turned +into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of</p> + +<h2><a name="COURAGE"></a>COURAGE, THE SPIRIT OF DARING<br /> +AND BEARING,</h2> + +<p>to the consideration of which we shall now return. Courage was scarcely +deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in +the cause of Righteousness. In his “Analects” Confucius defines Courage +by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. “Perceiving +what is right,” he says, “and doing it not, argues lack of courage.” Put +this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, “Courage is doing +what is right.” To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one’s self, +to rush into the jaws of death—these are too often identified with +Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct—what +Shakespeare calls, “valor misbegot”—is unjustly applauded; but not so +in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, +was called a “dog’s death.” “To rush into the thick of battle and to be +slain in it,” says a Prince of Mito, “is easy enough, and the merest +churl is equal to the task; but,” he continues, “it is true courage to +live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die,” +and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines +courage as “the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he +should not fear.” A distinction which is made in the West between moral +and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai +youth has not heard of “Great Valor” and the “Valor of a Villein?”</p> + +<p>Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of +soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be +trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular +virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits +were repeated almost before boys left their mother’s breast. Does a +little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: +“What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your +arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit +<i>harakiri</i>?” We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little +boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little +page, “Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow +bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms +to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a +samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger.” +Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though +stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early +imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness +sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called +forth all the pluck that was in them. “Bears hurl their cubs down the +gorge,” they said. Samurai’s sons were let down the steep valleys of +hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of +food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for +inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter +strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the +sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to +their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they +frequently—once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of +learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without +sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny +places—to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be +haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when +decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the +ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the +darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the +trunkless head.</p> + +<p>Does this ultra-Spartan system of “drilling the nerves” strike the +modern pedagogist with horror and doubt—doubt whether the tendency +would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the +heart? Let us see what other concepts Bushido had of Valor.</p> + +<p>The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure—calm presence +of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical +manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave +man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the +equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the +midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake +him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the +menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, +for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain +in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing +or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of +what we call a capacious mind (<i>yoyū</i>), which, for from being pressed or +crowded, has always room for something more.</p> + +<p>It passes current among us as a piece of authentic history, that as Ōta +Dokan, the great builder of the castle of Tokyo, was pierced through +with a spear, his assassin, knowing the poetical predilection of his +victim, accompanied his thrust with this couplet—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Ah! how in moments like these</div> +<div class="i1">Our heart doth grudge the light of life;”</div> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>whereupon the expiring hero, not one whit daunted by the mortal wound in +his side, added the lines—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Had not in hours of peace,</div> +<div class="i1">It learned to lightly look on life.”</div> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>There is even a sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which +are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in +old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to +exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not +solely a matter of brute force; it was, as well, an intellectual +engagement.</p> + +<p>Of such character was the battle fought on the bank of the Koromo River, +late in the eleventh century. The eastern army routed, its leader, +Sadato, took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and +called aloud—“It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the +enemy,” Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted +an impromptu verse—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth” (<i>koromo</i>).</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when the defeated warrior, +undismayed, completed the couplet—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Since age has worn its threads by use.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Yoshiie, whose bow had all the while been bent, suddenly unstrung it and +turned away, leaving his prospective victim to do as he pleased. When +asked the reason of his strange behavior, he replied that he could not +bear to put to shame one who had kept his presence of mind while hotly +pursued by his enemy.</p> + +<p>The sorrow which overtook Antony and Octavius at the death of Brutus, +has been the general experience of brave men. Kenshin, who fought for +fourteen years with Shingen, when he heard of the latter’s death, wept +aloud at the loss of “the best of enemies.” It was this same Kenshin who +had set a noble example for all time, in his treatment of Shingen, +whose provinces lay in a mountainous region quite away from the sea, and +who had consequently depended upon the Hōjō provinces of the Tokaido for +salt. The Hōjō prince wishing to weaken him, although not openly at war +with him, had cut off from Shingen all traffic in this important +article. Kenshin, hearing of his enemy’s dilemma and able to obtain his +salt from the coast of his own dominions, wrote Shingen that in his +opinion the Hōjō lord had committed a very mean act, and that although +he (Kenshin) was at war with him (Shingen) he had ordered his subjects +to furnish him with plenty of salt—adding, “I do not fight with salt, +but with the sword,” affording more than a parallel to the words of +Camillus, “We Romans do not fight with gold, but with iron.” Nietzsche +spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, “You are to be proud of your +enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success also.” Indeed +valor and honor alike required that we should own as enemies in war only +such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. When valor attains this +height, it becomes akin to</p> + +<h2><a name="BENEVOLENCE"></a>BENEVOLENCE, THE FEELING OF<br /> +DISTRESS,</h2> + +<p>love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, which were +ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes +of the human soul. Benevolence was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold +sense;—princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; +princely as particularly befitting a princely profession. We needed no +Shakespeare to feel—though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we +needed him to express it—that mercy became a monarch better than his +crown, that it was above his sceptered sway. How often both Confucius +and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist +in benevolence. Confucius would say, “Let but a prince cultivate virtue, +people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will +bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right +uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth an outcome.” Again, “Never has +there been a case of a sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not +loving righteousness,” Mencius follows close at his heels and says, +“Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power in +a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a whole +empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue.” Also,—”It +is impossible that any one should become ruler of the people to whom +they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts.” Both defined this +indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, +“Benevolence—Benevolence is Man.” Under the régime of feudalism, which +could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we +owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter +surrender of “life and limb” on the part of the governed would have left +nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural +consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called “oriental +despotism,”—as though there were no despots of occidental history!</p> + +<p>Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a +mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote +that “Kings are the first servants of the State,” jurists thought +rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. +Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan, +Yozan of Yonézawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that +feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although +unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher +sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father +to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not +usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal +government—paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular +government (Uncle Sam’s, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and +a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey +reluctantly, while in the other they do so with “that proud submission, +that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, +even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted +freedom.”<a name="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a> The old +saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the “king +of devils, because of his subjects’ often insurrections against, and +depositions of, their princes,” and which made the French monarch the +“king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and impositions,” but +which gave the title of “the king of men” to the sovereign of Spain +“because of his subjects’ willing obedience.” But enough!—</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8">[8]</a> +Burke, <i>French Revolution</i>.</div> + +<p>Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which +it is impossible to harmonize. Pobyedonostseff has clearly set before us +the contrast in the foundations of English and other European +communities; namely that these were organized on the basis of common +interest, while that was distinguished by a strongly developed +independent personality. What this Russian statesman says of the +personal dependence of individuals on some social alliance and in the +end of ends of the State, among the continental nations of Europe and +particularly among Slavonic peoples, is doubly true of the Japanese. +Hence not only is a free exercise of monarchical power not felt as +heavily by us as in Europe, but it is generally moderated by parental +consideration for the feelings of the people. “Absolutism,” says +Bismarck, “primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty, +devotion to duty, energy and inward humility.” If I may be allowed to +make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of +the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of “Kingship, by the +grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to +the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can +release the monarch.”</p> + +<p>We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright +Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the +gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned +against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with +justice and rectitude. Masamuné expressed it well in his oft-quoted +aphorism—“Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; +Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness.”</p> + +<p>Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is +universally true that “The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the +daring.” “<i>Bushi no +nasaké</i>”—the tenderness of a warrior—had a sound +which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy +of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other +being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, +but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not +remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with +power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual +or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual, +since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the +recipient.</p> + +<p>Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to +turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius +taught concerning the power of Love. “Benevolence,” he says, “brings +under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: +they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to +extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots.” He also +says that “the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore +a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in +distress.” Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his +ethical philosophy on Sympathy.</p> + +<p>It is indeed striking how closely the code of knightly honor of one +country coincides with that of others; in other words, how the much +abused oriental ideas of morals find their counterparts in the noblest +maxims of European literature. If the well-known lines,</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">Hae tibi erunt artes—pacisque imponere morem,</div> +<div class="i0">Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos,</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>were shown a Japanese gentleman, he might readily accuse the Mantuan +bard of plagiarizing from the literature of his own country.</p> + +<p>Benevolence to the weak, the downtrodden or the vanquished, was ever extolled as +peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art must be +familiar with the representation of a priest riding backwards on a cow. +The rider was once a warrior who in his day made his name a by-word of +terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-ura, (1184 A.D.), which was +one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy and in +single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms. Now the +etiquette of war required that on such occasions no blood should be +spilt, unless the weaker party proved to be a man of rank or ability +equal to that of the stronger. The grim combatant would have the name of +the man under him; but he refusing to make it known, his helmet was +ruthlessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and +beardless, made the astonished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth +to his feet, in paternal tones he bade the stripling go: “Off, young +prince, to thy mother’s side! The sword of Kumagaye shall never be +tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o’er yon pass before +thy enemies come in sight!” The young warrior refused to go and begged +Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above the +hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time +before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; +there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who this +self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden arms; the +strong hand of the warrior quivers; again he begs his victim to flee for +his life. Finding all his entreaties vain and hearing the approaching +steps of his comrades, he exclaims: “If thou art overtaken, thou mayest +fall at a more ignoble hand than mine. O, thou Infinite! receive his +soul!” In an instant the sword flashes in the air, and when it falls it +is red with adolescent blood. When the war is ended, we find our soldier +returning in triumph, but little cares he now for honor or fame; he +renounces his warlike career, shaves his head, dons a priestly garb, +devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never turning his back +to the West, where lies the Paradise whence salvation comes and whither +the sun hastes daily for his rest.</p> + +<p>Critics may point out flaws in this story, which is casuistically +vulnerable. Let it be: all the same it shows that Tenderness, Pity and +Love, were traits which adorned the most sanguinary exploits of the +samurai. It was an old maxim among them that “It becometh not the fowler +to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom.” This in a large +measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered peculiarly +Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us. For decades before +we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had +familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe. In the +principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the +custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of +trumpets or the beat of drums,—“those clamorous harbingers of blood and +death”—stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and +tender melodies on +the <i>biwa</i>,<a name="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9">[9]</a> soothing our fiery spirits, drawing +our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage. Polybius +tells us of the Constitution of Arcadia, which required all youths +under thirty to practice music, in order that this gentle art might +alleviate the rigors of that inclement region. It is to its influence +that he attributes the absence of cruelty in that part of the Arcadian +mountains.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9">[9]</a> +A musical instrument, resembling the guitar.</div> + +<p>Nor was Satsuma the only place in Japan where gentleness was inculcated +among the warrior class. A Prince of Shirakawa jots down his random +thoughts, and among them is the following: “Though they come stealing to +your bedside in the silent watches of the night, drive not away, but +rather cherish these—the fragrance of flowers, the sound of distant +bells, the insect humming of a frosty night.” And again, “Though they +may wound your feelings, these three you have only to forgive, the +breeze that scatters your flowers, the cloud that hides your moon, and +the man who tries to pick quarrels with you.”</p> + +<p>It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler +emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged. Our poetry has +therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness. A well-known +anecdote of a rustic samurai illustrates a case in point. When he was +told to learn versification, and “The Warbler’s +Notes”<a name="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10">[10]</a> was given him +for the subject of his first attempt, his fiery spirit rebelled and he +flung at the feet of his master this uncouth production, which ran</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10">[10]</a> +The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the nightingale of Japan.</div> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“The brave warrior keeps apart</div> +<div class="i1">The ear that might listen</div> +<div class="i1">To the warbler’s song.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the +youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to +the sweet notes of the <i>uguisu</i>, and he wrote</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Stands the warrior, mailed and strong,</div> +<div class="i1">To hear the uguisu’s song,</div> +<div class="i1">Warbled sweet the trees among.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>We admire and enjoy the heroic incident in Körner’s short life, when, as +he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous “Farewell to +Life.” Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our +warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to +the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was +either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might +be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an +ode,—and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the +breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers.</p> + +<p>What Christianity has done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the +midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in +Japan. The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for +the sufferings of others. Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect +for others’ feelings, are at the root of</p> + +<h2><a name="POLITENESS"></a>POLITENESS,</h2> + +<p>that courtesy and urbanity of manners which has been noticed by every +foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait. Politeness is a poor virtue, +if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it +should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the +feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of +things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter +express no plutocratic distinctions, but were originally distinctions +for actual merit.</p> + +<p>In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love. We may +reverently say, politeness “suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, +vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, +seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of +evil.” Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six +elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, +inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of social intercourse?</p> + +<p>While thus extolling Politeness, far be it from me to put it in the +front rank of virtues. If we analyze it, we shall find it correlated +with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone? +While—or rather because—it was exalted as peculiar to the profession +of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there +came into existence its counterfeits. Confucius himself has repeatedly +taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as +sounds are of music.</p> + +<p>When propriety was elevated to the <i>sine qua non</i> of social intercourse, +it was only to be expected that an elaborate system of etiquette should +come into vogue to train youth in correct social behavior. How one must +bow in accosting others, how he must walk and sit, were taught and +learned with utmost care. Table manners grew to be a science. Tea +serving and drinking were raised to a ceremony. A man of education is, +of course, expected to be master of all these. Very fitly does Mr. +Veblen, in his interesting +book,<a name="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a> +call decorum “a product and an exponent of the leisure-class life.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11">[11]</a><i>Theory + of the Leisure Class</i>, N.Y. 1899, p. 46.</div> + +<p>I have heard slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate +discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much +of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. +I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, +but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to +ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my +mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the +contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for +the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether +trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most +appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything +to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both +the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as +the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain +definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a +novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed +is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the +most economical use of force,—hence, according to Spencer’s dictum, the +most graceful.</p> + +<p>The spiritual significance of social decorum,—or, I might say, to +borrow from the vocabulary of the “Philosophy of Clothes,” the +spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward +garments,—is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us +in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our +ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave +rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book. +It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, +that I wish to emphasize.</p> + +<p>I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so +much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into +existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was +put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the +Ogasawara, in the following terms: “The end of all etiquette is to so +cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the +roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person.” It means, in other +words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the +parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such +harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of +spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word +<i>biensèance</i><a name="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12">[12]</a> +comes thus to contain!</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12">[12]</a> +Etymologically <i>well-seatedness</i>.</div> + +<p>If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it +follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful +deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine +manners, therefore, mean power in repose. When the barbarian Gauls, +during the sack of Rome, burst into the assembled Senate and dared pull +the beards of the venerable Fathers, we think the old gentlemen were to +blame, inasmuch as they lacked dignity and strength of manners. Is lofty +spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not?—All +roads lead to Rome!</p> + +<p>As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then +become spiritual culture, I may take <i>Cha-no-yu</i>, the tea ceremony. +Tea-sipping as a fine art! Why should it not be? In the children drawing +pictures on the sand, or in the savage carving on a rock, was the +promise of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. How much more is the drinking +of a beverage, which began with the transcendental contemplation of a +Hindoo anchorite, entitled to develop into a handmaid of Religion and +Morality? That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure +and quietness of demeanor, which are the first essentials of <i>Cha-no-yu</i> +are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right +feeling. The scrupulous cleanliness of the little room, shut off from +sight and sound of the madding crowd, is in itself conducive to direct +one’s thoughts from the world. The bare interior does not engross one’s +attention like the innumerable pictures and bric-a-brac of a Western +parlor; the presence of +<i>kakemono</i><a name="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13">[13]</a> +calls our attention more to grace +of design than to beauty of color. The utmost refinement of taste is the +object aimed at; whereas anything like display is banished with +religious horror. The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative +recluse, in a time when wars and the rumors of wars were incessant, is +well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. +Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company +assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their +swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, +there to find peace and friendship.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13">[13]</a> +Hanging scrolls, which may be either paintings or +ideograms, used for decorative purposes.</div> + +<p><i>Cha-no-yu</i> is more than a ceremony—it is a fine art; it is poetry, +with articulate gestures for rhythm: it is a <i>modus operandi</i> of soul +discipline. Its greatest value lies in this last phase. Not infrequently +the other phases preponderated in the mind of its votaries, but that +does not prove that its essence was not of a spiritual nature.</p> + +<p>Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart +grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, +springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and +actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever +a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should +weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Such +didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, +expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, +as one missionary lady of twenty years’ residence once said to me, +“awfully funny.” You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over +you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly +his hat is off—well, that is perfectly natural, but the “awfully funny” +performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down +and he stands in the glaring sun also. How foolish!—Yes, exactly so, +provided the motive were less than this: “You are in the sun; I +sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it +were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot +shade you, I will share your discomforts.” Little acts of this kind, +equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities. +They are the “bodying forth” of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of +others.</p> + +<p>Another “awfully funny” custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; +but many superficial writers on Japan have dismissed it by simply +attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every +foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in +making proper reply upon the occasion. In America, when you make a gift, +you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander +it. The underlying idea with you is, “This is a nice gift: if it were +not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to +give you anything but what is nice.” In contrast to this, our logic +runs: “You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you. You +will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my +good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token. +It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for +you.” Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate +idea is one and the same. Neither is “awfully funny.” The American +speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the +spirit which prompts the gift.</p> + +<p>It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety +shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to +take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass +judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or +to observe rules of propriety about eating? A Chinese sage answers, “If +you take a case where the eating is all-important, and the observing the +rules of propriety is of little importance, and compare them together, +why merely say that the eating is of the more importance?” “Metal is +heavier than feathers,” but does that saying have reference to a single +clasp of metal and a wagon-load of feathers? Take a piece of wood a foot +thick and raise it above the pinnacle of a temple, none would call it +taller than the temple. To the question, “Which is the more important, +to tell the truth or to be polite?” the Japanese are said to give an +answer diametrically opposite to what the American will say,—but I +forbear any comment until I come to speak of</p> + +<h2><a name="VERACITY"></a>VERACITY OR TRUTHFULNESS,</h2> + +<p>without which Politeness is a farce and a show. “Propriety carried +beyond right bounds,” says Masamuné, “becomes a lie.” An ancient poet +has outdone Polonius in the advice he gives: “To thyself be faithful: if +in thy heart thou strayest not from truth, without prayer of thine the +Gods will keep thee whole.” The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Tsu-tsu +gives expression in the <i>Doctrine of the Mean</i>, attributes to it +transcendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine. +“Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity +there would be nothing.” He then dwells with eloquence on its +far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes +without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose +without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a +combination of “Word” and “Perfect,” one is tempted to draw a parallel +between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of <i>Logos</i>—to such height +does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight.</p> + +<p>Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly. The bushi held that +his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than +that of the tradesman and peasant. <i>Bushi no ichi-gon</i>—the word of a +samurai or in exact German equivalent <i>ein Ritterwort</i>—was sufficient +guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such +weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a +written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity. +Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for +<i>ni-gon</i>, a double tongue.</p> + +<p>The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of +Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher +not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to +their honor. I am well aware that they did swear by different deities or +upon their swords; but never has swearing degenerated into wanton form +and irreverent interjection. To emphasize our words a practice of +literally sealing with blood was sometimes resorted to. For the +explanation of such a practice, I need only refer my readers to Goethe’s +Faust.</p> + +<p>A recent American writer is responsible for this statement, that if you +ask an ordinary Japanese which is better, to tell a falsehood or be +impolite, he will not hesitate to answer “to tell a falsehood!” Dr. +Peery<a name="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14">[14]</a> is partly +right and partly wrong; right in that an ordinary +Japanese, even a samurai, may answer in the way ascribed to him, but +wrong in attributing too much weight to the term he translates +“falsehood.” This word (in Japanese <i>uso</i>) is employed to denote +anything which is not a truth (<i>makoto</i>) or fact (<i>honto</i>). Lowell tells +us that Wordsworth could not distinguish between truth and fact, and an +ordinary Japanese is in this respect as good as Wordsworth. Ask a +Japanese, or even an American of any refinement, to tell you whether he +dislikes you or whether he is sick at his stomach, and he will not +hesitate long to tell falsehoods and answer, “I like you much,” or, “I +am quite well, thank you.” To sacrifice truth merely for the sake of +politeness was regarded as an “empty form” (<i>kyo-rei</i>) and “deception by +sweet words,” and was never justified.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14">[14]</a> +Peery, <i>The Gist of Japan</i>, p. 86.</div> + +<p>I own I am speaking now of the Bushido idea of veracity; but it may not +be amiss to devote a few words to our commercial integrity, of which I +have heard much complaint in foreign books and journals. A loose +business morality has indeed been the worst blot on our national +reputation; but before abusing it or hastily condemning the whole race +for it, let us calmly study it and we shall be rewarded with consolation +for the future.</p> + +<p>Of all the great occupations of life, none was farther removed from the +profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the +category of vocations,—the knight, the tiller of the soil, the +mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and +could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the +counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social +arrangement. Montesquieu has made it clear that the debarring of the +nobility from mercantile pursuits was an admirable social policy, in +that it prevented wealth from accumulating in the hands of the powerful. +The separation of power and riches kept the distribution of the latter +more nearly equable. Professor Dill, the author of “Roman Society in the +Last Century of the Western Empire,” has brought afresh to our mind that +one cause of the decadence of the Roman Empire, was the permission given +to the nobility to engage in trade, and the consequent monopoly of +wealth and power by a minority of the senatorial families.</p> + +<p>Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of +development which it would have attained under freer conditions. The +obloquy attached to the calling naturally brought within its pale such +as cared little for social repute. “Call one a thief and he will steal:” +put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it, +for it is natural that “the normal conscience,” as Hugh Black says, +“rises to the demands made on it, and easily falls to the limit of the +standard expected from it.” It is unnecessary to add that no business, +commercial or otherwise, can be transacted without a code of morals. Our +merchants of the feudal period had one among themselves, without which +they could never have developed, as they did, such fundamental +mercantile institutions as the guild, the bank, the bourse, insurance, +checks, bills of exchange, etc.; but in their relations with people +outside their vocation, the tradesmen lived too true to the reputation +of their order.</p> + +<p>This being the case, when the country was opened to foreign trade, only +the most adventurous and unscrupulous rushed to the ports, while the +respectable business houses declined for some time the repeated requests +of the authorities to establish branch houses. Was Bushido powerless to +stay the current of commercial dishonor? Let us see.</p> + +<p>Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a +few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, +feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai’s fiefs were taken +and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to +invest them in mercantile transactions. Now you may ask, “Why could they +not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations +and so reform the old abuses?” Those who had eyes to see could not weep +enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with +the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably +failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through +sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival. When +we know that eighty per cent. of the business houses fail in so +industrial a country as America, is it any wonder that scarcely one +among a hundred samurai who went into trade could succeed in his new +vocation? It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes +were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; +but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth +were not the ways of honor. In what respects, then, were they different?</p> + +<p>Of the three incentives to Veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz: the +industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was +altogether lacking in Bushido. As to the second, it could develop little +in a political community under a feudal system. It is in its +philosophical, and as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that Honesty +attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues. With all my sincere +regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I +ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that “Honesty is the best +policy,” that it <i>pays</i> to be honest. Is not this virtue, then, its own +reward? If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, +I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies!</p> + +<p>If Bushido rejects a doctrine of <i>quid pro quo</i> rewards, the shrewder +tradesman will readily accept it. Lecky has very truly remarked that +Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as +Nietzsche puts it, “Honesty is the youngest of virtues”—in other +words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry. Without +this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most +cultivated mind could adopt and nourish. Such minds were general among +the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian +foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive. Industries advancing, +Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice. Just +think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the +professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of “a lamentable +lack of reliability with regard to German shipments <i>inter alia</i>, +apparent both as to quality and quantity;” now-a-days we hear +comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade. In +twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays. Already +our merchants are finding that out. For the rest I recommend the reader +to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this +point.<a name="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15">[15]</a> It is +interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were +the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the +form of promissory notes. It was quite a usual thing to insert such +clauses as these: “In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I +shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;” or, “In case I +fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool,” and the like.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15">[15]</a> +Knapp, <i>Feudal and Modern Japan</i>, Vol. I, Ch. IV. Ransome, +<i>Japan in Transition</i>, Ch. VIII.</div> + +<p>Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive +higher than courage. In the absence of any positive commandment against +bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply +denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable. As a matter of +fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and +its German etymology so identified with</p> + +<h2><a name="HONOR"></a>HONOR,</h2> + +<p>that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration +of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood.</p> + +<p>The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity +and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to +value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word +ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used +freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as <i>na</i> (name) +<i>men-moku</i> (countenance), <i>guai-bun</i> (outside hearing), reminding us +respectively of the biblical use of “name,” of the evolution of the term +“personality” from the Greek mask, and of “fame.” A good name—one’s +reputation, the immortal part of one’s self, what remains being +bestial—assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its +integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (<i>Ren-chi-shin</i>) was +one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. “You will be +laughed at,” “It will disgrace you,” “Are you not ashamed?” were the +last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. +Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the +child’s heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its +mother’s womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being +closely bound up with strong family consciousness. “In losing the +solidarity of families,” says Balzac, “society has lost the fundamental +force which Montesquieu named Honor.” Indeed, the sense of shame seems +to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our +race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in +consequence of tasting “the fruit of that forbidden tree” was, to my +mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the +awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in +pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and +tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her +dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience +clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial +ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will +efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who +refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his +youth; “because,” he said, “dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which +time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge.”</p> + +<p>Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, +what Carlyle has latterly expressed,—namely, that “Shame is the soil of +all Virtue, of good manners and good morals.”</p> + +<p>The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks such +eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it nevertheless +hung like Damocles’ sword over the head of every samurai and often +assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated +which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the +slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took +offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary +strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a +well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea +jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple +and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed +on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior +with a beast—I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe. +Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; (1) that they +were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made +of the samurai’s profession of honor; and (3) that a very strong sense +of shame was developed among them. It is plainly unfair to take an +abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of +the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and +extravagance—inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania +there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium +tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai +about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine +virtue?</p> + +<p>The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined to +run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and patience. +To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as “short-tempered.” +The popular adage said: “To bear what you think you cannot bear is +really to bear.” The great Iyéyasu left to posterity a few maxims, +among which are the following:—“The life of man is like going a long +distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not. * * * * +Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. * * * +Forbearance is the basis of length of days.” He proved in his life what +he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths +of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he +attributed, “I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;” to +Hidéyoshi, “I will force her to sing for me;” and +to Iyéyasu, “I will +wait till she opens her lips.”</p> + +<p>Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In +one place he writes to this effect: “Though you denude yourself and +insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your +outrage.” Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy +a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath.</p> + +<p>To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could +reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, +for instance, this saying of Ogawa: “When others speak all manner of +evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect +that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties.” Take +another of Kumazawa:—“When others blame thee, blame them not; when +others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion +and Desire part.” Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon +whose overhanging brows “shame is ashamed to sit;”—“The Way is the way +of Heaven and Earth: Man’s place is to follow it: therefore make it the +object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with +equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love +others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy +partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou +comest not short of thine own mark.” Some of those sayings remind us of +Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality +natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings +remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts.</p> + +<p>It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of +magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing +clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few +enlightened minds being aware that it “from no condition rises,” but +that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than +for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in +Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, “’Tis in every man’s +mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly +honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men +confer is not good honor. Those whom Châo the Great ennobles, he can +make mean again.”</p> + +<p>For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, +as we shall see later, while Honor—too often nothing higher than vain +glory or worldly approbation—was prized as the <i>summum bonum</i> of +earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal +toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he +crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it +until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother +refused to see her sons again unless they could “return home,” as the +expression is, “caparisoned in brocade.” To shun shame or win a name, +samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals +of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows +with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyéyasu, in +spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at +the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept +so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the +resources at his command. “Take comfort, Sire,” said he, “at thought of +the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there +will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself.” The boy fixed his +indignant gaze upon the man and said—“How foolishly you talk! Can ever +my fourteenth year come round again?”</p> + +<p>Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained +therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered +dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down.</p> + +<p>Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to +sacrifice, was</p> + +<h2><a name="DUTY"></a>THE DUTY OF LOYALTY,</h2> + +<p>which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other +virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, +with other classes of people, but this virtue—homage and fealty to a +superior—is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity +is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,—a +gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the +code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance.</p> + +<p>In spite of Hegel’s criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, +being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a +bond established on totally unjust +principles,<a name="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16">[16]</a> a great compatriot of +his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue. +Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the <i>Treue</i> he boasts of +was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but +because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people +where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where “everybody is as +good as anybody else,” and, as the Irishman added, “better too,” such +exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed +“excellent within certain bounds,” but preposterous as encouraged among +us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the +Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the +truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary +beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we +conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception +is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we +carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. +Griffis<a name="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a> was +quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made +obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was +given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I +will relate of one “who could endure to follow a fall’n lord” and who +thus, as Shakespeare assures, “earned a place i’ the story.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16">[16]</a> +<i>Philosophy of History</i> (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV, +Sec. II, Ch. I.</div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17">[17]</a> +<i>Religions of Japan</i>.</div> + +<p>The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizané, +who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the +capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent +upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son—not yet +grown—reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept +by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizané. When orders are dispatched +to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a +certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He +ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the +boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children +born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protégé. His +despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is +announced—a comely boy of the same age as his master’s son, escorted by +a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between +infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In +the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his +life,—the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. +Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom +comes the suggestion.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is the scape-goat!—The rest of the narrative may be briefly +told.—On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to +identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the +false head? The poor Genzo’s hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to +strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination +defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him, +goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone, +pronounces it genuine.—That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother +we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for +his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the +wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of +Michizané’s bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced +her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family’s +benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but +his son could serve the cause of the grandsire’s lord. As one acquainted +with the exile’s family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task +of identifying the boy’s head. Now the day’s—yea, the life’s—hard work +is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his +wife, saying: “Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service +to his lord!”</p> + +<p>“What an atrocious story!” I hear my readers exclaim,—“Parents +deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of +another man’s.” But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is +a story of vicarious death—as significant as, and not more revolting +than, the story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases +it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of +a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or +heard by an outward or an inward ear;—but I abstain from preaching.</p> + +<p>The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for +father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief +the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest +of the family and of the members thereof is intact,—one and +inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection—natural, +instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural +love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? “For if ye love +them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the +same?”</p> + +<p>In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart +struggle of Shigemori concerning his father’s rebellious conduct. “If I +be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my +sovereign must go amiss.” Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying +with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may +be released from this world where it is hard for purity and +righteousness to dwell.</p> + +<p>Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and +affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself +contains an adequate rendering of <i>ko</i>, our conception of filial piety, +and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of +Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the +king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the +samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty.</p> + +<p>Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived +the state as antedating the individual—the latter being born into the +former as part and parcel thereof—he must live and die for it or for +the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will +remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the +city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he +makes them (the laws, or the state) say:—“Since you were begotten and +nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our +offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!” These are words +which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing +has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the +laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty +is an ethical outcome of this political theory.</p> + +<p>I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer’s view according to which +political obedience—Loyalty—is accredited with only a transitional +function.<a name="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18">[18]</a> +It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue +thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe <i>that</i> +day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem +says, “tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss.” We may +remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the +English, “the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity +which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has,” as Monsieur +Boutmy recently said, “only passed more or less into their profound +loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their +extraordinary attachment to the dynasty.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18">[18]</a> +<i>Principles of Ethics</i>, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.</div> + +<p>Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to +loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is +realized—will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence +disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to +another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a +ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch +who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a +very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer, +made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the +claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with +treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and +Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of +Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of the +Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, “serve two +masters without holding to the one or despising the other,” “rendering +unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and unto God the things that +are God’s.” Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to +concede one iota of loyalty to his <i>dæmon</i>, obey with equal fidelity +and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His +conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the +day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the +dictates of their conscience!</p> + +<p>Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord +or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said:</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot.</div> +<div class="i1">My life thou shalt command, but not my shame.</div> +<div class="i1">The one my duty owes; but my fair name,</div> +<div class="i1">Despite of death, that lives upon my grave,</div> +<div class="i1">To dark dishonor’s use, thou shalt not have.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak +or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the +Precepts. Such a one was despised as <i>nei-shin</i>, a cringeling, who +makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as <i>chô-shin</i>, a favorite who +steals his master’s affections by means of servile compliance; these two +species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago +describes,—the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his +own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master’s ass; +the other trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart +attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal +path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him +of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master +deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual +course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and +conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with +the shedding of his own blood.</p> + +<p>Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its +ideal being set upon honor, the whole</p> + +<h2><a name="EDUCATION"></a>EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF<br /> +A SAMURAI,</h2> + +<p>were conducted accordingly.</p> + +<p>The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up +character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, +intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part æsthetic +accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a +man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai +training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the +word <i>Chi</i>, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom +in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate +place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be +<i>Chi</i>, <i>Jin</i>, <i>Yu</i>, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A +samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of +his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his +profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; +he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish +courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed “’tis not the creed +that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed.” +Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual +training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth +that he strove after,—literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and +philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for +the exposition of some military or political problem.</p> + +<p>From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the +curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted +mainly of the following,—fencing, archery, <i>jiujutsu</i> or <i>yawara</i>, +horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics, +literature and history. Of these, <i>jiujutsu</i> and caligraphy may require +a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing, +probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of +pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was +accepted as indicative of one’s personal character. <i>Jiujutsu</i> may be +briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose +of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not +depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in +that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such +part of the enemy’s body as will make him numb and incapable of +resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for +action for the time being.</p> + +<p>A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education +and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of +instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in +part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific +precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was +unfavorable to fostering numerical notions.</p> + +<p>Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius +that “ambition, the soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than +gain which darkens him.” Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear +and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in +hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrère of La Mancha. He disdains +money itself,—the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably +filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an +age is “that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death.” +Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as +their lavish use is panegyrized. “Less than all things,” says a current +precept, “men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is +hindered.” Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of +economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of +the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of +numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the +distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left +to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by +a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well +enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of +raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift +was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for +the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to +manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, +sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans.</p> + +<p>We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial +agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby +showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money +itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of +the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. +These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something +low—low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations.</p> + +<p>Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself +could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is +the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men +have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is +making its way in our time and generation!</p> + +<p>The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the +study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and +deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind +of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, +decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with +information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies +that Bacon gives,—for delight, ornament, and ability,—Bushido had +decided preference for the last, where their use was “in judgment and +the disposition of business.” Whether it was for the disposition of +public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a +practical end in view that education was conducted. “Learning without +thought,” said Confucius, “is labor lost: thought without learning is +perilous.”</p> + +<p>When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is +chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his +vocation partakes of a sacred character. “It is the parent who has borne +me: it is the teacher who makes me man.” With this idea, therefore, the +esteem in which one’s preceptor was held was very high. A man to evoke +such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed +with superior personality without lacking erudition. He was a father to +the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring. “Thy father and thy +mother”—so runs our maxim—“are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and +thy lord are like the sun and moon.”</p> + +<p>The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue +among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be +rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it +of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not +because it was valueless but because it was invaluable. Here the +non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than +modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for +services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas +the best service done in education,—namely, in soul development (and +this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or +measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, +is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their +teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were +not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients +as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, +too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg. They were +grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity. They were +an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were +thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines,</p> + +<h2><a name="SELF-CONTROL"></a>SELF-CONTROL,</h2> + +<p>which was universally required of samurai.</p> + +<p>The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance +without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring +us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of +our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and +eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I +say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can +ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some +of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer +hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any +race under the sky.</p> + +<p>I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than +others—yes, doubly more—since the very attempt to restrain natural +promptings entails suffering. Imagine boys—and girls too—brought up +not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for +the relief of their feelings,—and there is a physiological problem +whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive.</p> + +<p>It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his +face. “He shows no sign of joy or anger,” was a phrase used in +describing a strong character. The most natural affections were kept +under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his +dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,—no, not in the presence of +other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth +in the remark of a witty youth when he said, “American husbands kiss +their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat +theirs in public and kiss them in private.”</p> + +<p>Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by +passion of any kind. I remember when, during the late war with China, a +regiment left a certain town, a large concourse of people flocked to the +station to bid farewell to the general and his army. On this occasion +an American resident resorted to the place, expecting to witness loud +demonstrations, as the nation itself was highly excited and there were +fathers, mothers, and sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The +American was strangely disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the +train began to move, the hats of thousands of people were silently taken +off and their heads bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of +handkerchiefs, no word uttered, but deep silence in which only an +attentive ear could catch a few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I +know of a father who spent whole nights listening to the breathing of a +sick child, standing behind the door that he might not be caught in such +an act of parental weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last +moments, refrained from sending for her son, that he might not be +disturbed in his studies. Our history and everyday life are replete with +examples of heroic matrons who can well bear comparison with some of the +most touching pages of Plutarch. Among our peasantry an Ian Maclaren +would be sure to find many a Marget Howe.</p> + +<p>It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for the +absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of Japan. +When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is +to quietly suppress any indication of it. In rare instances is the +tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of +sincerity and fervor. It is putting a premium upon a breach of the third +commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experience. It is +truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most +secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. “Dost +thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time +for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone +in quietness and secrecy,”—writes a young samurai in his diary.</p> + +<p>To give in so many articulate words one’s inmost thoughts and +feelings—notably the religious—is taken among us as an unmistakable +sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. “Only a +pomegranate is he”—so runs a popular saying—“who, when he gapes his +mouth, displays the contents of his heart.”</p> + +<p>It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant our +emotions are moved we try to guard our lips in order to hide them. +Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defined it, “the art of +concealing thought.”</p> + +<p>Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will +invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At first +you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you will get +a few broken commonplaces—“Human life has sorrow;” “They who meet must +part;” “He that is born must die;” “It is foolish to count the years of +a child that is gone, but a woman’s heart will indulge in follies;” and +the like. So the noble words of a noble Hohenzollern—“Lerne zu leiden +ohne Klagen”—had found many responsive minds among us, long before they +were uttered.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the frailties +of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better +reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter +with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when +disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of sorrow +or rage.</p> + +<p>The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they find +their safety-valve in poetical aphorism. A poet of the tenth century +writes, “In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by sorrow, +tells its bitter grief in verse.” A mother who tries to console her +broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase +after the dragon-fly, hums,</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“How far to-day in chase, I wonder,</div> +<div class="i1">Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant +justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a +foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding +hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a +measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an +appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and +dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question.</p> + +<p>It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference +to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as +it goes. The next question is,—Why are our nerves less tightly strung? +It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be +our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the +Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read <i>Sartor +Resartus</i> as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was +our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to +recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the +explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in +self-control, none can be correct.</p> + +<p>Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress +the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into +distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or +hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart +and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive +excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of +self-restraint is to keep our mind <i>level</i>—as our expression is—or, to +borrow a Greek term, attain the state of <i>euthymia</i>, which Democritus +called the highest good.</p> + +<p>The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of +the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely,</p> + +<h2><a name="INSTITUTIONS"></a>THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE<br /> +AND REDRESS,</h2> + +<p>of which (the former known as <i>hara-kiri</i> and the latter as +<i>kataki-uchi</i>) many foreign writers have treated more or less fully.</p> + +<p>To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only +to <i>seppuku</i> or <i>kappuku</i>, popularly known as <i>hara-kiri</i>—which means +self-immolation by disembowelment. “Ripping the abdomen? How +absurd!”—so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may +sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to +students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus’ mouth—“Thy +(Cæsar’s) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper +entrails.” Listen to a modern English poet, who in his <i>Light of Asia</i>, +speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:—none blames him for +bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, +look at Guercino’s painting of Cato’s death, in the Palazzo Rossa in +Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, +will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this +mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most +touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars +our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, +of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a +sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else—the sign which +Constantine beheld would not conquer the world!</p> + +<p>Not for extraneous associations only does <i>seppuku</i> lose in our mind any +taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body +to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of +the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph’s “bowels +yearning upon his brother,” or David prayed the Lord not to forget his +bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of +the “sounding” or the “troubling” of bowels, they all and each endorsed +the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was +enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and +kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term +<i>hara</i> was more comprehensive than the Greek <i>phren</i> or <i>thumos</i>> and +the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell +somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the +peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by +one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul +is located in the pineal gland, still insist in using the term <i>ventre</i> +in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless +physiologically significant. Similarly <i>entrailles</i> stands in their +language for affection and compassion. Nor is such belief mere +superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the +heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese +knew better than Romeo “in what vile part of this anatomy one’s name did +lodge.” Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, +denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are +strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental +physiology once admitted, the syllogism of <i>seppuku</i> is easy to +construct. “I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares +with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean.”</p> + +<p>I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral +justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was +ample excuse with many for taking one’s own life. How many acquiesced in +the sentiment expressed by Garth,</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“When honor’s lost, ’tis a relief to die;</div> +<div class="i1">Death’s but a sure retreat from infamy,”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>and have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death when honor +was involved, was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many +complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure +from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to +be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are +honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive +admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius +and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly +existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the +philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his +pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the +state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities +of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even +offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his +whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical +compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of +the judges was compulsory: it said, “Thou shalt die,—and that by thy +own hand.” If suicide meant no more than dying by one’s own hand, +Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with +the crime; Plato, who was averse to it, would not call his master a +suicide.</p> + +<p>Now my readers will understand that <i>seppuku</i> was not a mere suicidal +process. It was an institution, legal and ceremonial. An invention of +the middle ages, it was a process by which warriors could expiate their +crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their +friends, or prove their sincerity. When enforced as a legal punishment, +it was practiced with due ceremony. It was a refinement of +self-destruction, and none could perform it without the utmost coolness +of temper and composure of demeanor, and for these reasons it was +particularly befitting the profession of bushi.</p> + +<p>Antiquarian curiosity, if nothing else, would tempt me to give here a +description of this obsolete ceremonial; but seeing that such a +description was made by a far abler writer, whose book is not much read +now-a-days, I am tempted to make a somewhat lengthy quotation. Mitford, +in his “Tales of Old Japan,” after giving a translation of a treatise on +<i>seppuku</i> from a rare Japanese manuscript, goes on to describe an +instance of such an execution of which he was an eye-witness:—</p> + +<p>“We (seven foreign representatives) were invited to follow the Japanese +witness into the <i>hondo</i> or main hall of the temple, where the ceremony +was to be performed. It was an imposing scene. A large hall with a high +roof supported by dark pillars of wood. From the ceiling hung a +profusion of those huge gilt lamps and ornaments peculiar to Buddhist +temples. In front of the high altar, where the floor, covered with +beautiful white mats, is raised some three or four inches from the +ground, was laid a rug of scarlet felt. Tall candles placed at regular +intervals gave out a dim mysterious light, just sufficient to let all +the proceedings be seen. The seven Japanese took their places on the +left of the raised floor, the seven foreigners on the right. No other +person was present.</p> + +<p>“After the interval of a few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki +Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, +walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar +hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied +by a <i>kaishaku</i> and three officers, who wore the <i>jimbaori</i> or war +surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word <i>kaishaku</i> it should be +observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. +The office is that of a gentleman: in many cases it is performed by a +kinsman or friend of the condemned, and the relation between them is +rather that of principal and second than that of victim and executioner. +In this instance the <i>kaishaku</i> was a pupil of Taki Zenzaburo, and was +selected by friends of the latter from among their own number for his +skill in swordsmanship.</p> + +<p>“With the <i>kaishaku</i> on his left hand, Taki Zenzaburo advanced slowly +towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then +drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps +even with more deference; in each case the salutation was ceremoniously +returned. Slowly and with great dignity the condemned man mounted on to +the raised floor, prostrated himself before the high altar twice, and +seated<a name="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19">[19]</a> +himself on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, +the <i>kaishaku</i> crouching on his left hand side. One of the three +attendant officers then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used +in the temple for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the +<i>wakizashi</i>, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a +half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor’s. This he +handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it +reverently, raising it to his head with both hands, and placed it in +front of himself.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19">[19]</a> +Seated himself—that is, in the Japanese fashion, his +knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his heels. In +this position, which is one of respect, he remained until his death.</div> + +<p>“After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which +betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a +man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in +his face or manner, spoke as follows:—</p> + +<p>‘I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners +at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel +myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing +the act.’</p> + +<p>“Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down +to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to +custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from +falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling +forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand he took the dirk that lay +before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a +moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then +stabbing himself deeply below the waist in the left-hand side, he drew +the dirk slowly across to his right side, and turning it in the wound, +gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he +never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned +forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first +time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the +<i>kaishaku</i>, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching +his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in +the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with +one blow the head had been severed from the body.</p> + +<p>“A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood +throbbing out of the inert head before us, which but a moment before had +been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible.</p> + +<p>“The <i>kaishaku</i> made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of paper +which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; +and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the +execution.</p> + +<p>“The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and +crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called to us to +witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been +faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the +temple.”</p> + +<p>I might multiply any number of descriptions of <i>seppuku</i> from literature +or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will +suffice.</p> + +<p>Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen +years of age, made an effort to kill Iyéyasu in order to avenge their +father’s wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made +prisoners. The old general admired the pluck of the youths who dared an +attempt on his life and ordered that they should be allowed to die an +honorable death. Their little brother Hachimaro, a mere infant of eight +summers, was condemned to a similar fate, as the sentence was pronounced +on all the male members of the family, and the three were taken to a +monastery where it was to be executed. A physician who was present on +the occasion has left us a diary from which the following scene is +translated. “When they were all seated in a row for final despatch, +Sakon turned to the youngest and said—‘Go thou first, for I wish to be +sure that thou doest it aright.’ Upon the little one’s replying that, as +he had never seen <i>seppuku</i> performed, he would like to see his brothers +do it and then he could follow them, the older brothers smiled between +their tears:—‘Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of +being our father’s child.’ When they had placed him between them, Sakon +thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and +asked—‘Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don’t push the dagger +too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees +well composed.’ Naiki did likewise and said to the boy—‘Keep thy eyes +open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels +anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy +effort to cut across.’ The child looked from one to the other, and when +both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the +example set him on either hand.”</p> + +<p>The glorification of <i>seppuku</i> offered, naturally enough, no small +temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely +incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, +hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and +dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent +gates. Life was cheap—cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of +honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the +<i>agio</i>, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser +metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of +Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all +victims of self-destruction!</p> + +<p>And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike +cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and was +pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself +hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with +use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted—did not the noblest of the +Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like +circumstances?—deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude +approaching a Christian martyr’s, cheered himself with an impromptu +verse:</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Come! evermore come,</div> +<div class="i3">Ye dread sorrows and pains!</div> +<div class="i1">And heap on my burden’d back;</div> +<div class="i3">That I not one test may lack</div> +<div class="i1">Of what strength in me remains!”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>This, then, was the Bushido teaching—Bear and face all calamities and +adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as +Mencius<a name="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20">[20]</a> +taught, “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it +first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with +toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; +and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his +mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.” True honor +lies in fulfilling Heaven’s decree and no death incurred in so doing is +ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly +indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne’s, <i>Religio Medici</i>, +there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in +our Precepts. Let me quote it: “It is a brave act of valor to contemn +death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest +valor to dare to live.” A renowned priest of the seventeenth century +satirically observed—“Talk as he may, a samurai who ne’er has died is +apt in decisive moments to flee or hide.” Again—“Him who once has died +in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of +Tametomo can pierce.” How near we come to the portals of the temple whose +Builder taught “he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it!” +These are but a few of the numerous examples which tend to confirm the +moral identity of the human species, notwithstanding an attempt so +assiduously made to render the distinction between Christian and Pagan +as great as possible.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20">[20]</a> +I use Dr. Legge’s translation verbatim.</div> + +<p>We have thus seen that the Bushido institution of suicide was neither +so irrational nor barbarous as its abuse strikes us at first sight. We +will now see whether its sister institution of Redress—or call it +Revenge, if you will—has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose +of this question in a few words, since a similar institution, or call it +custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all +peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the +continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain +recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? +Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and +only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time +which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, and only the +vigilant vengeance of the victim’s people preserves social order. “What +is the most beautiful thing on earth?” said Osiris to Horus. The reply +was, “To avenge a parent’s wrongs,”—to which a Japanese would have +added “and a master’s.”</p> + +<p>In revenge there is something which satisfies one’s sense of justice. +The avenger reasons:—“My good father did not deserve death. He who +killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not +tolerate a deed like this: Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the +will of my father; it is the will of Heaven that the evil-doer cease +from his work. He must perish by my hand; because he shed my father’s +blood, I, who am his flesh and blood, must shed the murderer’s. The same +Heaven shall not shelter him and me.” The ratiocination is simple and +childish (though we know Hamlet did not reason much more deeply), +nevertheless it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice +“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Our sense of revenge is as +exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation +are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone.</p> + +<p>In Judaism, which believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, +which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; +but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a +kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be +judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven +Ronins was condemned to death;—he had no court of higher instance to +appeal to; his faithful retainers addressed themselves to Vengeance, the +only Supreme Court existing; they in their turn were condemned by common +law,—but the popular instinct passed a different judgment and hence +their memory is still kept as green and fragrant as are their graves at +Sengakuji to this day.</p> + +<p>Though Lao-tse taught to recompense injury with kindness, the voice of +Confucius was very much louder, which counselled that injury must be +recompensed with justice;—and yet revenge was justified only when it +was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One’s own +wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne +and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal’s +oath to avenge his country’s wrongs, but he scorns James Hamilton for +wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife’s grave, as an +eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray.</p> + +<p>Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their <i>raison +d’être</i> at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of +romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the +murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family +vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale +of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the +injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society +will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is +no need of <i>kataki-uchi</i>. If this had meant that “hunger of the heart +which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of +the victim,” as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs +in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it.</p> + +<p>As to <i>seppuku</i>, though it too has no existence <i>de jure</i>, we still hear +of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as +long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of +self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with +fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have +to concede to <i>seppuku</i> an aristocratic position among them. He +maintains that “when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at +the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it +may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by +madness, or by morbid +excitement.”<a name="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21">[21]</a> +But a normal <i>seppuku</i> does not +savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost <i>sang froid</i> being +necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which +Dr. Strahan<a name="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22">[22]</a> divides +suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the +Irrational or True, <i>seppuku</i> is the best example of the former type.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21">[21]</a> +Morselli, <i>Suicide</i>, p. 314.</div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22">[22]</a> +<i>Suicide and Insanity</i>.</div> + +<p>From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of +Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in +social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called</p> + +<h2><a name="SWORD"></a>THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE<br /> +SAMURAI,</h2> + +<p>and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed +that “The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell,” he only echoed a +Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It +was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was +apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a +<i>go</i>-board<a name="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23">[23]</a> +and initiated into the rights of the military profession +by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk +with which he had been playing. After this first ceremony of <i>adoptio +per arma</i>, he was no more to be seen outside his father’s gates without +this badge of his status, even if it was usually substituted for +every-day wear by a gilded wooden dirk. Not many years pass before he +wears constantly the genuine steel, though blunt, and then the sham arms +are thrown aside and with enjoyment keener than his newly acquired +blades, he marches out to try their edge on wood and stone. When he +reaches man’s estate at the age of fifteen, being given independence of +action, he can now pride himself upon the possession of arms sharp +enough for any work. The very possession of the dangerous instrument +imparts to him a feeling and an air of self-respect and responsibility. +“He beareth not his sword in vain.” What he carries in his belt is a +symbol of what he carries in his mind and heart—Loyalty and Honor. The +two swords, the longer and the shorter—called respectively <i>daito</i> and +<i>shoto</i> or <i>katana</i> and <i>wakizashi</i>—never leave his side. When at home, +they grace the most conspicuous place in study or parlor; by night they +guard his pillow within easy reach of his hand. Constant companions, +they are beloved, and proper names of endearment given them. Being +venerated, they are well-nigh worshiped. The Father of History has +recorded as a curious piece of information that the Scythians sacrificed +to an iron scimitar. Many a temple and many a family in Japan hoards a +sword as an object of adoration. Even the commonest dirk has due respect +paid to it. Any insult to it is tantamount to personal affront. Woe to +him who carelessly steps over a weapon lying on the floor!</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23">[23]</a> +The game of <i>go</i> is sometimes called Japanese checkers, +but is much more intricate than the English game. The <i>go-</i>board +contains 361 squares and is supposed to represent a battle-field—the +object of the game being to occupy as much space as possible.</div> + +<p>So precious an object cannot long escape the notice and the skill of +artists nor the vanity of its owner, especially in times of peace, when +it is worn with no more use than a crosier by a bishop or a sceptre by a +king. Shark-skin and finest silk for hilt, silver and gold for guard, +lacquer of varied hues for scabbard, robbed the deadliest weapon of half +its terror; but these appurtenances are playthings compared with the +blade itself.</p> + +<p>The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his +workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and +purification, or, as the phrase was, “he committed his soul and spirit +into the forging and tempering of the steel.” Every swing of the sledge, +every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a +religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of +his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as +a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there +is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface +the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate +texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which +histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting +exquisite grace with utmost strength;—all these thrill us with mixed +feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror. Harmless were its +mission, if it only remained a thing of beauty and joy! But, ever within +reach of the hand, it presented no small temptation for abuse. Too often +did the blade flash forth from its peaceful sheath. The abuse sometimes +went so far as to try the acquired steel on some harmless creature’s +neck.</p> + +<p>The question that concerns us most is, however,—Did Bushido justify +the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As +it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its +misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on +undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use +it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count +Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our +history, when assassinations, suicides, and other sanguinary practices +were the order of the day. Endowed as he once was with almost +dictatorial powers, repeatedly marked out as an object for +assassination, he never tarnished his sword with blood. In relating some +of his reminiscences to a friend he says, in a quaint, plebeian way +peculiar to him:—“I have a great dislike for killing people and so I +haven’t killed one single man. I have released those whose heads should +have been chopped off. A friend said to me one day, ‘You don’t kill +enough. Don’t you eat pepper and egg-plants?’ Well, some people are no +better! But you see that fellow was slain himself. My escape may be due +to my dislike of killing. I had the hilt of my sword so tightly fastened +to the scabbard that it was hard to draw the blade. I made up my mind +that though they cut me, I will not cut. Yes, yes! some people are truly +like fleas and mosquitoes and they bite—but what does their biting +amount to? It itches a little, that’s all; it won’t endanger life.” +These are the words of one whose Bushido training was tried in the fiery +furnace of adversity and triumph. The popular apothegm—“To be beaten is +to conquer,” meaning true conquest consists in not opposing a riotous +foe; and “The best won victory is that obtained without shedding of +blood,” and others of similar import—will show that after all the +ultimate ideal of knighthood was Peace.</p> + +<p>It was a great pity that this high ideal was left exclusively to priests +and moralists to preach, while the samurai went on practicing and +extolling martial traits. In this they went so far as to tinge the +ideals of womanhood with Amazonian character. Here we may profitably +devote a few paragraphs to the subject of</p> + +<h2><a name="TRAINING"></a>THE TRAINING AND POSITION OF<br /> +WOMAN.</h2> + +<p>The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of +paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the +comprehension of men’s “arithmetical understanding.” The Chinese +ideogram denoting “the mysterious,” “the unknowable,” consists of two +parts, one meaning “young” and the other “woman,” because the physical +charms and delicate thoughts of the fair sex are above the coarse mental +calibre of our sex to explain.</p> + +<p>In the Bushido ideal of woman, however, there is little mystery and only +a seeming paradox. I have said that it was Amazonian, but that is only +half the truth. Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman +holding a broom—certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively +against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more +harmless uses for which the besom was first invented—the idea involved +being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the +English wife (weaver) and daughter (<i>duhitar</i>, milkmaid). Without +confining the sphere of woman’s activity to <i>Küche, Kirche, Kinder</i>, as +the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood +was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions—Domesticity and +Amazonian traits—are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, +as we shall see.</p> + +<p>Bushido being a teaching primarily intended for the masculine sex, the +virtues it prized in woman were naturally far from being distinctly +feminine. Winckelmann remarks that “the supreme beauty of Greek art is +rather male than female,” and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral +conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised +those women most “who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their +sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the +bravest of men.”<a name="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24">[24] +</a> Young girls therefore, were trained to repress +their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate +weapons,—especially the long-handled sword called <i>nagi-nata</i>, so as to +be able to hold their own against unexpected odds. Yet the primary +motive for exercises of this martial character was not for use in the +field; it was twofold—personal and domestic. Woman owning no suzerain +of her own, formed her own bodyguard. With her weapon she guarded her +personal sanctity with as much zeal as her husband did his master’s. The +domestic utility of her warlike training was in the education of her +sons, as we shall see later.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24">[24]</a> +Lecky, <i>History of European Morals</i> II, p. 383.</div> + +<p>Fencing and similar exercises, if rarely of practical use, were a +wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But +these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could +be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood, +were presented with dirks (<i>kai-ken</i>, pocket poniards), which might be +directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their +own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them +severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of +self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and +Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a +Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her +father’s dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a +disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to +perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in +anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must +know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever +the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty +with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of +the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an +abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our +bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among +us.<a name="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25">[25]</a> +On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the +samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner, +seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery, +says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to +write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction. +When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves +her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these +verses;—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“For fear lest clouds may dim her light,</div> +<div class="i1">Should she but graze this nether sphere,</div> +<div class="i1">The young moon poised above the height</div> +<div class="i1">Doth hastily betake to flight.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25">[25]</a> +For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing see +Finck’s <i>Lotos Time in Japan</i>, pp. 286-297.</div> + +<p>It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was +our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the +gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and +literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our +literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women +played an important role in the history of Japanese <i>belles lettres</i>. +Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of <i>geisha</i>) +only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale +the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the +technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate +object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of +sound is attainable without the player’s heart being in harmony with +herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in +the training of youths—that accomplishments were ever kept subservient +to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and +brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I +sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in +London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in +his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of +business for them.</p> + +<p>The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social +ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social +parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,—in other words, as a +part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided +their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women +of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly +intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost +sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and +integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and +day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to +their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her +father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from +earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of +independence, but of dependent service. Man’s helpmeet, if her presence +is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she +retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth +becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but, +when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties, +disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal +wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, +in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon +pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take +her husband’s place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon +her own devoted head.</p> + +<p>The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before +taking her own life, needs no comment:—“Oft have I heard that no +accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that +all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common +bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to +our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two +short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow +followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being +loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be +the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving +partner. I have heard that Kō-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China, +lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave +as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt +farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope +or joy—why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I +not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime +tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good +master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as +deep as the sea and as high as the hills.”</p> + +<p>Woman’s surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and +family, was as willing and honorable as the man’s self-surrender to the +good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no +life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well +as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than +was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was +recognized as <i>Naijo</i>, “the inner help.” In the ascending scale of +service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might +annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I +know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of +Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of +each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator. +Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service—the serving of a cause +higher than one’s own self, even at the sacrifice of one’s +individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that +Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission—as far as that +is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth.</p> + +<p>My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish +surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced +with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by +Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The +point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so +thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was +required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its +Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the +view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman’s rights, who +exclaimed, “May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against +ancient customs!” Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female +status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the +loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which +are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part +of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can +the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the +true course for their historical development to take? These are grave +questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime +let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen +was really so bad as to justify a revolt.</p> + +<p>We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to “God and +the ladies,”—the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we +are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that +gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker +vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot +contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences, +while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is +feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily +low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M. +Guizot’s theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer’s? In reply I might +aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to +the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the +military nobles, the <i>daimio</i>, and the court nobles, the <i>kugé</i>—these +higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were +masses of the common people—mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants—whose +life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as +the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have +been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the +industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This +is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she +experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the +lower the social class—as, for instance, among small artisans—the more +equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility, +too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked, +chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex +into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally +effeminate. Thus Spencer’s dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As +to Guizot’s, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will +remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration, +so that his generalization applies to the <i>daimio</i> and the <i>kugé</i>.</p> + +<p>I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words +give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do +not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man’s equal; but until +we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will +always be misunderstandings upon this subject.</p> + +<p>When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves, +<i>e.g.</i>, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble +ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American +Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had +no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what +Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal +rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the +only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it +would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in +pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in +comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it +enough, to compare woman’s status to man’s as the value of silver is +compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a +method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important +kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In +view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil +its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its +relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from +economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a +standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of +woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very +little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this +double measurement;—as a social-political unit not much, while as wife +and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among +so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly +venerated? Was it not because they were <i>matrona</i>, mothers? Not as +fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So +with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the +government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers +and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted +to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were +primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the +education of their children.</p> + +<p>I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among +half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression +for one’s wife is “my rustic wife” and the like, she is despised and +held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as “my foolish +father,” “my swinish son,” “my awkward self,” etc., are in current use, +is not the answer clear enough?</p> + +<p>To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further +than the so-called Christian. “Man and woman shall be one flesh.” The +individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband +and wife are two persons;—hence when they disagree, their separate +<i>rights</i> are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their +vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and—nonsensical +blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband +or wife speaks to a third party of his other half—better or worse—as +being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of +one’s self as “my bright self,” “my lovely disposition,” and so forth? +We think praising one’s own wife or one’s own husband is praising a part +of one’s own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad +taste among us,—and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have +diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one’s consort +was a usage most in vogue among the samurai.</p> + +<p>The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe +of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the +Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of +the numerical insufficiency of +women<a name="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26">[26]</a> +(who, now increasing, are, I am +afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the +respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief +standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main +water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was +located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul +and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the +early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader’s +notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as +lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion +presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being +founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, +though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions +which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me +the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, +which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment +doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,—a +separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in +Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I +might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and +Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties +as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26">[26]</a> +I refer to those days when girls were imported from +England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.</div> + +<p>It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in +the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military +class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of</p> + +<h2><a name="INFLUENCE"></a>THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO</h2> + +<p>on the nation at large.</p> + +<p>We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which +rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more +elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its +rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually +casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first +enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from +amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, +and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are +no less contagious than vices. “There needs but one wise man in a +company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion,” says Emerson. No +social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral +influence.</p> + +<p>Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely +has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of +the squires and <i>gentlemen</i>? Very truly does M. Taine say, “These three +syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English +society.” Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement +and fling back the question—“When Adam delved and Eve span, where then +was the gentleman?” All the more pity that a gentleman was not present +in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for +his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more +tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful +experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor, +treason and rebellion.</p> + +<p>What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of +the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed +through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the +populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their +example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these +were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the +commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of +virtues for their own sake.</p> + +<p>In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a +small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says—“In English +Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to +Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman).” Write in place of +Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the +main features of the literary history of Japan.</p> + +<p>The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction—the +theatres, the story-teller’s booths, the preacher’s dais, the musical +recitations, the novels—have taken for their chief theme the stories of +the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire +of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsuné and his faithful retainer +Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with +gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its +embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The +clerks and the shop-boys, after their day’s work is over and the +<i>amado</i><a name="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27">[27]</a> +of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story +of Nobunaga and Hidéyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes +their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to +the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is +taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of +ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and +virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour +with greedy ear the romance of the samurai.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27">[27]</a> +Outside shutters.</div> + +<p>The samurai grew to be the <i>beau ideal</i> of the whole race. “As among +flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord,” so sang +the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class +itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity, +no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus +from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly +the work of Knighthood.</p> + +<p>Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, “Aristocracy and +Evolution,” has eloquently told us that “social evolution, in so far as +it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of +the intentions of great men;” further, that historical progress is +produced by a struggle “not among the community generally, to live, but +a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct, +to employ, the majority in the best way.” Whatever may be said about the +soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the +part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our +Empire.</p> + +<p>How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in +the development of a certain order of men, known as <i>otoko-daté</i>, the +natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of +them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen +and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of +hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that +samurai did to daimio, the willing service of “limb and life, of body, +chattels and earthly honor.” Backed by a vast multitude of rash and +impetuous working-men, those born “bosses” formed a formidable check to +the rampancy of the two-sworded order.</p> + +<p>In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where +it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral +standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at +first as the glory of the élite, became in time an aspiration and +inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not +attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet <i>Yamato Damashii</i>, +the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the <i>Volksgeist</i> of the +Island Realm. If religion is no more than “Morality touched by +emotion,” as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better +entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoöri has put the mute +utterance of the nation into words when he sings:—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Isles of blest Japan!</div> +<div class="i3">Should your Yamato spirit</div> +<div class="i1">Strangers seek to scan,</div> +<div class="i3">Say—scenting morn’s sun-lit air,</div> +<div class="i1">Blows the cherry wild and fair!”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Yes, the +<i>sakura</i><a name="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28">[28]</a> +has for ages been the favorite of our people and +the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition +which the poet uses, the words the <i>wild cherry flower scenting the +morning sun</i>.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28">[28]</a> +<i>Cerasus pseudo-cerasus</i>, Lindley.</div> + +<p>The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild—in the sense +of natural—growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental +qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its +essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But +its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and +grace of its beauty appeal to <i>our</i> æsthetic sense as no other flower +can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, +which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are +hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she +clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop +untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy +odors—all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no +dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at +the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light +fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its +showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is +volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious +ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is +something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the +<i>sakura</i> quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to +illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more +serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of +beauteous day.</p> + +<p>When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his +heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that +the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the +whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a +time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs +and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily +tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one +is the sakura the flower of the nation.</p> + +<p>Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the +wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, +is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so +frailly mortal?</p> + +<h2><a name="ALIVE"></a>IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE?</h2> + +<p>Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already +wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline?</p> + +<p>It were a sad thing if a nation’s soul could die so fast. That were a +poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The +aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national +character, is as tenacious as the “irreducible elements of species, of +the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the +carnivorous animal.” In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations +and brilliant generalizations, +M. LeBon<a name="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29">[29]</a> +says, “The discoveries due +to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or +defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: +they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for +centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities.” +These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over, +provided there were qualities and defects of character which <i>constitute +the exclusive patrimony</i> of each people. Schematizing theories of this +sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and +they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In +studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon +European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that +no one quality of character was its <i>exclusive</i> patrimony. It is true +the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is +this aggregate which Emerson names a “compound result into which every +great force enters as an ingredient.” But, instead of making it, as +LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord +philosopher calls it “an element which unites the most forcible persons +of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; +and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack +the Masonic sign.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29">[29]</a> +<i>The Psychology of Peoples</i>, p. 33.</div> + +<p>The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in +particular, cannot be said to form “an irreducible element of species,” +but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. +Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the +last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it +transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely +widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has +calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, +“each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty +millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D.” The merest peasant +that grubs the soil, “bowed by the weight of centuries,” has in his +veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as “to the +ox.”</p> + +<p>An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the +nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when +Yoshida Shôin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote +on the eve of his execution the following stanza;—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Full well I knew this course must end in death;</div> +<div class="i1">It was Yamato spirit urged me on</div> +<div class="i1">To dare whate’er betide.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor +force of our country.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ransome says that “there are three distinct Japans in existence +side by side to-day,—the old, which has not wholly died out; the new, +hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now +through its most critical throes.” While this is very true in most +respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete +institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions, +requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old +Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove +the formative force of the new era.</p> + +<p>The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the +hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, +were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of +Knighthood. Some +writers<a name="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30">[30]</a> +have lately tried to prove that the +Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making +of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this +honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it +will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of +preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they +have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian +missionaries are doing great things for Japan—in the domain of +education, and especially of moral education:—only, the mysterious +though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in +divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet +Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the +character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged +us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern +Japan—of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the +reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:—and you +will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought +and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and +observation of the Far +East,<a name="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31">[31]</a> +that only the respect in which Japan +differed from other oriental despotisms lay in “the ruling influence +among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious +codes of honor that man has ever devised,” he touched the main spring +which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is +destined to be.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30">[30]</a> +Speer; <i>Missions and Politics in Asia</i>, Lecture IV, pp. +189-190; Dennis: <i>Christian Missions and Social Progress</i>, Vol. I, p. +32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.</div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31">[31]</a> +<i>The Far East</i>, p. 375.</div> + +<p>The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a +work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one +were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When +we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the +latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study +Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the +development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much +less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of +oriental institutions and peoples has written:—“We are told every day +how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those +islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan, +but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of +organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful. +She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before +imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence,” continues +Mr. Townsend, “unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea +of China. Where is the European apostle,” asks our author, “or +philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made +Japan?”<a name="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32">[32]</a> +Mr. Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought +about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he +had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation +would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than +Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as +an inferior power,—that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or +industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of +transformation.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32">[32]</a> +Meredith Townsend, <i>Asia and Europe</i>, N.Y., 1900, 28.</div> + +<p>The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read. +A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most +eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the +working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The +universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly +ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance, +fortitude and bravery that “the little Jap” possesses, were sufficiently +proved in the China-Japanese +war.<a name="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33">[33]</a> +“Is there any nation more loyal +and patriotic?” is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer, +“There is not,” we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33">[33]</a> +Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and Yamada +on <i>Heroic Japan</i>, and Diosy on <i>The New Far East</i>.</div> + +<p>On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and +defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of +abstruse philosophy—while some of our young men have already gained +international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved +anything in philosophical lines—is traceable to the neglect of +metaphysical training under Bushido’s regimen of education. Our sense of +honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; +and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, +that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor.</p> + +<p>Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, +dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, +stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane +things? He is the <i>shosei</i> (student), to whom the earth is too small and +the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe +and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of +wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for +knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods +are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of +Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national +honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of +Bushido.</p> + +<p>Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said +that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people +responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it +has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly +translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different +degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion +could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an +appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master. +The word “Loyalty” revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted +to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued +“students’ strike” in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction +with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the +Director,—“Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought +to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is not +manly to push a falling man.” The scientific incapacity of the +professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into +insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By +arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great +magnitude can be accomplished.</p> + +<p>One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the +missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history—“What do we care for +heathen records?” some say—and consequently estrange their religion +from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed +to for centuries past. Mocking a nation’s history!—as though the career +of any people—even of the lowest African savages possessing no +record—were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by +the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be +deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races +themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and +white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race +forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the +past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new +religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an “old, old story,” which, if +presented in intelligible words,—that is to say, if expressed in the +vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people—will find easy +lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality. +Christianity in its American or English form—with more of Anglo-Saxon +freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder—is a poor scion +to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot +the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel +on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible—in Hawaii, +where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in +amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal +race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan—nay, it is +a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his +kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following +words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:—“Men +have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering +how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may have +been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of +themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity +with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at +impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be +said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of +religion.”<a name="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34">[34]</a></p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34">[34]</a> +Jowett, <i>Sermons on Faith and Doctrine</i>, II.</div> + +<p>But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little +doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a +power which we must take into account in reckoning</p> + +<h2><a name="FUTURE"></a>THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO,</h2> + +<p>whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, +that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at +work to threaten it.</p> + +<p>Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the +Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats +itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did +with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay +of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application +to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that +helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages +are as surely working for the decline of Bushido.</p> + +<p>One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan +is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and +was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan +no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother +institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift +for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it +under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little +room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its +infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are +being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and +Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the +Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted +to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet +we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow +journalism.</p> + +<p>Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of +Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, “the decay of the ceremonial +code—or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life—among +the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities of +latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate +sensibilities.” The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can +tolerate no form or shape of trust—and Bushido was a trust organized by +those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, fixing +the grades and value of moral qualities—is alone powerful enough to +engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are +antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely +criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, +cannot admit “purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an +exclusive class.”<a name="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35">[35]</a> +Add to this the progress of popular instruction, +of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,—then we can +easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai’s sword nor the +sharpest shafts shot from Bushido’s boldest bows can aught avail. The +state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same—shall we +call it the <i>Ehrenstaat</i> or, after the manner of Carlyle, the +Heroarchy?—is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and +gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The +words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may +aptly be repeated of the samurai, that “the medium in which their +ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35">[35]</a> +<i>Norman Conquest</i>, Vol. V, p. 482.</div> + +<p>Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into +the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away +as “the captains and the kings depart.”</p> + +<p>If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues—be +it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome—can never make on earth a +“continuing city.” Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in +man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly +virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to +fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that +Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but +Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, +with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to +emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. +Callings nobler and broader than a warrior’s claim our attention to-day. +With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better +knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of +Benevolence—dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?—will expand +into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than +subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more +than citizens, being men.</p> + +<p>Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the +wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world +confirms the prophecy that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” A nation +that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank +of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain +indeed!</p> + +<p>When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not +only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an +honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry +dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says +that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of +France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally +abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of +Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of +swords, rang out the old, “the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence +of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise,” it rang +in the new age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators.”</p> + +<p>It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of +Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work +of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does +ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, +burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, +without a master’s hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis +Napoleon beat the Prussians with his <i>Mitrailleuse</i>, or the Spaniards +with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the +old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite +saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of +implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do +not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does +not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea +and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and +beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of +our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly +visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show +a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial +virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, “but ours on +trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come,” +and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate +one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to +widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life.</p> + +<p>It has been predicted—and predictions have been corroborated by the +events of the last half century—that the moral system of Feudal Japan, +like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new +ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. +Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must +not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is +not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from +other birds. “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It does not come +rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing +across the seas, however broad. “God has granted,” says the Koran, “to +every people a prophet in its own tongue.” The seeds of the Kingdom, as +vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido. +Now its days are closing—sad to say, before its full fruition—and we +turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of +strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to +take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and +Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The only +other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with +Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with +which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like “a dimly burning wick” +which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame. +Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets—notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos +and Habakkuk—Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of +rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, +which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, +will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its +capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, +self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in +some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing +phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, +the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene.</p> + +<p>Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)—or will the +future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and +Hellenism?—will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals +will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which +side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it +can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is +willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total +extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It +is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and +vitality are still felt through many channels of life—in the philosophy +of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world. +Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his +spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal +discipline of Zeno at work.</p> + +<p>Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will +not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor +may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their +ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it +will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich +life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its +very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a +far-off unseen hill, “the wayside gaze beyond;”—then in the beautiful +language of the Quaker poet,</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="i0">“The traveler owns the grateful sense</div> + <div class="i1">Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,</div> + <div class="i1">And, pausing, takes with forehead bare</div> + <div class="i1">The benediction of the air.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 10%;"> +<img src="images/illus.jpg" style="width: 70%;" alt="scroll" /> +</div> + +<div style="margin-left: 4em; margin: 2em;" xml:lang="ja" lang="ja"> + 明治三十八年六月二十二日印<br /> + 明治三十八年六月二十五日訂正增補第十版發行<br /> + 明治三十八年九月二十日第十一版發行<br /> + 明治四十年二月二十日第十二版發行<br /> + 明治四十一年三月二十五日第十三版發行<br /> +<br /> + 英文武士道<br /> + 正價金壹圓<br /> +<br /> + 著作權登錄濟<br /> +<br /> + 著作者 新渡戶稻造<br /> + 東京市小石川區小日向臺町一丁目七十五番地<br /> +<br /> + 發行者 櫻井彥一郎<br /> + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目三番地<br /> +<br /> + 印刷者 青木弘<br /> + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目十二番地<br /> +<br /> + 印刷所 株式會社 秀英舍第一工場<br /> + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目十二番地<br /> +<br /> + 發行所 丁未出版社<br /> + 東京市麴町區五番町十六番地 +</div> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12096 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/12096-h/images/illus.jpg b/12096-h/images/illus.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..42bed4b --- /dev/null +++ b/12096-h/images/illus.jpg diff --git a/12096-h/images/illus1.jpg b/12096-h/images/illus1.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5eb17f7 --- /dev/null +++ b/12096-h/images/illus1.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f8eaa5a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #12096 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12096) diff --git a/old/12096-0.txt b/old/12096-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..04e4db5 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/12096-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3764 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobé + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Bushido, the Soul of Japan + +Author: Inazo Nitobé + +Release Date: April 21, 2004 [eBook #12096] +[Most recently updated: September 30, 2022] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + + + + + BUSHIDO + THE SOUL OF JAPAN + + BY + INAZO NITOBÉ, A.M., Ph.D. + + Author’s Edition, Revised and Enlarged + + 13th EDITION + 1908 + + + DECEMBER, 1904 + + + TO MY BELOVED UNCLE + TOKITOSHI OTA + WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST + AND + TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI + I DEDICATE + THIS LITTLE BOOK + + + —“That way + Over the mountain, which who stands upon, + Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road; + While if he views it from the waste itself, + Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow, + Not vague, mistakable! What’s a break or two + Seen from the unbroken desert either side? + And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) + What if the breaks themselves should prove at last + The most consummate of contrivances + To train a man’s eye, teach him what is faith?” + —ROBERT BROWNING, + _Bishop Blougram’s Apology_. + + + “There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have + from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a + predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of + mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of + honor.” + —HALLAM, + _Europe in the Middle Ages_. + + + “Chivalry is itself the poetry of life.” + + —SCHLEGEL, + _Philosophy of History_. + + + + + PREFACE + + +About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof +of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our +conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of +religion. “Do you mean to say,” asked the venerable professor, “that you +have no religious instruction in your schools?” On my replying in the +negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I +shall not easily forget, he repeated “No religion! How do you impart +moral education?” The question stunned me at the time. I could give no +ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, +were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the +different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find +that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils. + +The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries +put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs +prevail in Japan. + +In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my +wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and Bushido,[1] the +moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume. + + [Footnote 1: Pronounced _Boó-shee-doh’_. In putting Japanese words + and names into English, Hepburn’s rule is followed, that the vowels + should be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in + English.] + +Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put +down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given +in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught +and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force. + +Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest +Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging +to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over +them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while +these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I +have often thought,—“Had I their gift of language, I would present the +cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!” But one who speaks in a borrowed +tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible. + +All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I +have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, +believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the +comprehension of foreign readers. + +Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious +workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity +itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and +with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the +teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the +religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as +well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God +hath made a testament which maybe called “old” with every people and +nation,—Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my +theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public. + +In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend +Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the +characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this +book. + + INAZO NITOBE. + +_Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899._ + + + + + PREFACE + + TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION + + +Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, +this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has +passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth +appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be +issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of +Messrs. George H. Putnam’s Sons, of New York. + +In the meantime, _Bushido_ has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev +of Khandesh, into German by Fräulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian +by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life +in Lemberg,—although this Polish edition has been censured by the +Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into +French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian +officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for +the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian +public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been +published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger +students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also +owe much for his aid in other ways. + +I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found +sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the +subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly +flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that +President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and +distributing several dozens of copies among his friends. + +In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have +largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, +as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on +Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot +of Japanese ethics—Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather +to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular +virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot +draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge +upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are +touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and +discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger +than it is. + +This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt +I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful +suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement. + + I. N. + + _Kyoto, +Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905._ + + + + + CONTENTS + + + Bushido as an Ethical System + + Sources of Bushido + + Rectitude or Justice + + Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing + + Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress + + Politeness + + Veracity or Truthfulness + + Honor + + The Duty of Loyalty + + Education and Training of a Samurai + + Self-Control + + The Institutions of Suicide and Redress + + The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai + + The Training and Position of Woman + + The Influence of Bushido + + Is Bushido Still Alive? + + The Future of Bushido + + + + + BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM. + + +Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its +emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique +virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living +object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape +or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware +that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society +which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as +those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed +their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of +feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother +institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the +language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the +neglected bier of its European prototype. + +It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so +erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that +chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either +among the nations of antiquity or among the modern Orientals.[2] Such +ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good +Doctor’s work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking +at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the +time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx, +writing his “Capital,” called the attention of his readers to the +peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of +feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would +likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study +of chivalry in the Japan of the present. + + [Footnote 2: _History Philosophically Illustrated_, (3rd Ed. 1853), + Vol. II, p. 2.] + +Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between +European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of +this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, +_firstly_, the origin and sources of our chivalry; _secondly_, its +character and teaching; _thirdly_, its influence among the masses; and, +_fourthly_, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these +several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I +should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national +history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most +likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative +Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt +with as corollaries. + +The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the +original, more expressive than Horsemanship. _Bu-shi-do_ means literally +Military-Knight-Ways—the ways which fighting nobles should observe in +their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the “Precepts +of Knighthood,” the _noblesse oblige_ of the warrior class. Having thus +given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the +word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable +for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, +engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must +wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a +national _timbre_ so expressive of race characteristics that the best of +translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice +and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German “_Gemüth_” +signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words +verbally so closely allied as the English _gentleman_ and the French +_gentilhomme_? + +Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were +required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it +consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from +the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a +code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful +sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets +of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however +able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an +organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, +fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English +Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to +compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in +the seventeenth century Military Statutes (_Buké Hatto_) were +promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with +marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but +meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time +and place and say, “Here is its fountain head.” Only as it attains +consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be +identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many +threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the +political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman +Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the +ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in +England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period +previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in +Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned. + +Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, +the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These +were known as _samurai_, meaning literally, like the old English _cniht_ +(knecht, knight), guards or attendants—resembling in character the +_soldurii_ whom Cæsar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the +_comitati_, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his +time; or, to take a still later parallel, the _milites medii_ that one +reads about in the history of Mediæval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word +_Bu-ké_ or _Bu-shi_ (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. +They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough +breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally +recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and +the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went +on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only “a rude race, +all masculine, with brutish strength,” to borrow Emerson’s phrase, +surviving to form families and the ranks of the _samurai_. Coming to +profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great +responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of +behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and +belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among +themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of +honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some +resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors. + +Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive +sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and +civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire +of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, “to leave behind him the name of a +fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one.” +And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which +moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even +so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions +endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom’s is the basis on which the +greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to +discover that _Bushido_ does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting +in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, +brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, “We know from what +failings our virtue springs.”[3] “Sneaks” and “cowards” are epithets of +the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life +with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and +its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher +authority and more rational sources for its own justification, +satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, +without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal +of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with +concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with +spiritual data. “Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a +perfect Christian knight,” says Lamartine. In Japan there were several + + + SOURCES OF BUSHIDO, + +of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust +in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in +sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with +death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil +master the utmost of his art, told him, “Beyond this my instruction must +give way to Zen teaching.” “Zen” is the Japanese equivalent for the +Dhyâna, which “represents human effort to reach through meditation zones +of thought beyond the range of verbal expression.”[4] Its method is +contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be +convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, +of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this +Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, +and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself +above mundane things and awakes, “to a new Heaven and a new Earth.” + + [Footnote 3: Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace + loving men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the + fervor of a worshiper of the strenuous life. “When I tell you,” he + says in the _Crown of Wild Olive_, “that war is the foundation of + all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high + virtues and faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover + this, and very dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable + fact. * * * I found in brief, that all great nations learned their + truth of word and strength of thought in war; that they were + nourished in war and wasted by peace, taught by war and deceived by + peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace; in a word, that they + were born in war and expired in peace.”] + + [Footnote 4: Lafcadio Hearn, _Exotics and Retrospectives_, p. 84.] + +What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such +loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such +filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by +the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant +character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of +“original sin.” On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and +God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which +divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto +shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, +and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part +of its furnishing. The presence of this article is easy to explain: it +typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, +reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in +front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its +shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic +injunction, “Know Thyself.” But self-knowledge does not imply, either in +the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, +not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral +kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the +Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his +eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter +veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman +conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so +much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its +nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its +ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial +family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more +than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain—it is the +sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the +Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a _Rechtsstaat_, or even the +Patron of a _Culturstaat_—he is the bodily representative of Heaven on +earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. +Boutmy[5] says is true of English royalty—that it “is not only the +image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity,” as I +believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in +Japan. + + [Footnote 5: _The English People_, p. 188.] + +The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the +emotional life of our race—Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp +very truly says: “In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell +whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven +or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself.”[6] A similar +confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. +I said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect +on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of +national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a +systematic philosophy or a rational theology. This religion—or, is +it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion +expressed?—thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and +love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for +Shintoism, unlike the Mediæval Christian Church, prescribed to its +votaries scarcely any _credenda_, furnishing them at the same time with +_agenda_ of a straightforward and simple type. + + [Footnote 6: “_Feudal and Modern Japan_” Vol. I, p. 183.] + +As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the +most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral +relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), +father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between +friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had +recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, +benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts +was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling +class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the +requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius +exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often +quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic +natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the +existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under +censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment +in the heart of the samurai. + +The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books +for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere +acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in +no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an +intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant +of _Analects_. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling +sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be +boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little +smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more +so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge +becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the +learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was +considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to +ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike +spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, +that the cosmic process was unmoral. + +Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in +itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who +stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient +machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, +knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in +life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the +Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, “To +know and to act are one and the same.” + +I beg leave for a moment’s digression while I am on this subject, +inasmuch as some of the noblest types of _bushi_ were strongly +influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily +recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making +allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, “Seek +ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things +shall be added unto you,” conveys a thought that may be found on almost +any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese disciple[7] of his says—“The lord +of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, +becomes his mind (_Kokoro_); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever +luminous:” and again, “The spiritual light of our essential being is +pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up +in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called +conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of +heaven.” How very much do these words sound like some passages from +Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think +that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto +religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming’s +precepts. He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to +extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, +not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature +of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not +farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of +things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors +charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and +its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity +of temper cannot be gainsaid. + + [Footnote 7: Miwa Shissai.] + +Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which _Bushido_ +imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few +and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct +of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of +our nation’s history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our +warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of +commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the +highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands +of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. +An acute French _savant_, M. de la Mazelière, thus sums up his +impressions of the sixteenth century:—“Toward the middle of the +sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in +society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to +barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,—these +formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in +whom Taine praises ‘the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden +resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to +suffer.’ In Japan as in Italy ‘the rude manners of the Middle Ages made +of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.’ And this +is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the +principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one +finds there between minds (_esprits_) as well as between temperaments. +While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of +energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character +as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of +civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to +Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak +of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its +mountains.” + +To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazelière +writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with + + + RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE, + +the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more +loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The +conception of Rectitude may be erroneous—it may be narrow. A well-known +bushi defines it as a power of resolution;—“Rectitude is the power of +deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, +without wavering;—to die when it is right to die, to strike when to +strike is right.” Another speaks of it in the following terms: +“Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without +bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor +feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of +a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as +nothing.” Mencius calls Benevolence man’s mind, and Rectitude or +Righteousness his path. “How lamentable,” he exclaims, “is it to neglect +the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it +again! When men’s fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them +again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it.” Have we +not here “as in a glass darkly” a parable propounded three hundred years +later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself _the +Way_ of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray +from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and +narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise. + +Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace +brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it +dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet +_Gishi_ (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that +signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls—of whom +so much is made in our popular education—are known in common parlance +as the Forty-seven _Gishi_. + +In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and +downright falsehood for _ruse de guerre_, this manly virtue, frank and +honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly +praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to Valor, another martial virtue. +But before proceeding to speak of Valor, let me linger a little while on +what I may term a derivation from Rectitude, which, at first deviating +slightly from its original, became more and more removed from it, until +its meaning was perverted in the popular acceptance. I speak of _Gi-ri_, +literally the Right Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense +of duty which public opinion expected an incumbent to fulfil. In its +original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,—hence, +we speak of the _Giri_ we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to +society at large, and so forth. In these instances _Giri_ is duty; for +what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. +Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative? + +_Giri_ primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology +was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, +though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be some +other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated this +authority in _Giri_. Very rightly did they formulate this +authority—_Giri_—since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, +recourse must be had to man’s intellect and his reason must be quickened +to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of +any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous, Right +Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. _Giri_ thus understood is a +severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards +perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it +is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should +be _the_ law. I deem it a product of the conditions of an artificial +society—of a society in which accident of birth and unmerited favour +instituted class distinctions, in which the family was the social unit, +in which seniority of age was of more account than superiority of +talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb before +arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, _Giri_ +in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain +this and sanction that,—as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, +sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why +a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father’s +dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, _Giri_ has, in my +opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into +cowardly fear of censure. I might say of _Giri_ what Scott wrote of +patriotism, that “as it is the fairest, so it is often the most +suspicious, mask of other feelings.” Carried beyond or below Right +Reason, _Giri_ became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings +every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily have been turned +into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of + + + COURAGE, THE SPIRIT OF DARING + AND BEARING, + +to the consideration of which we shall now return. Courage was scarcely +deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in +the cause of Righteousness. In his “Analects” Confucius defines Courage +by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. “Perceiving +what is right,” he says, “and doing it not, argues lack of courage.” Put +this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, “Courage is doing +what is right.” To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one’s self, +to rush into the jaws of death—these are too often identified with +Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct—what +Shakespeare calls, “valor misbegot”—is unjustly applauded; but not so +in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, +was called a “dog’s death.” “To rush into the thick of battle and to be +slain in it,” says a Prince of Mito, “is easy enough, and the merest +churl is equal to the task; but,” he continues, “it is true courage to +live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die,” +and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines +courage as “the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he +should not fear.” A distinction which is made in the West between moral +and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai +youth has not heard of “Great Valor” and the “Valor of a Villein?” + +Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of +soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be +trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular +virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits +were repeated almost before boys left their mother’s breast. Does a +little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: +“What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your +arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit +_harakiri_?” We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little +boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little +page, “Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow +bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms +to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a +samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger.” +Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though +stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early +imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness +sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called +forth all the pluck that was in them. “Bears hurl their cubs down the +gorge,” they said. Samurai’s sons were let down the steep valleys of +hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of +food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for +inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter +strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the +sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to +their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they +frequently—once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of +learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without +sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny +places—to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be +haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when +decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the +ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the +darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the +trunkless head. + +Does this ultra-Spartan system of “drilling the nerves” strike the +modern pedagogist with horror and doubt—doubt whether the tendency +would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the +heart? Let us see what other concepts Bushido had of Valor. + +The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure—calm presence +of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical +manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave +man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the +equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the +midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake +him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the +menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, +for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain +in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing +or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of +what we call a capacious mind (_yoyū_), which, for from being pressed or +crowded, has always room for something more. + +It passes current among us as a piece of authentic history, that as Ōta +Dokan, the great builder of the castle of Tokyo, was pierced through +with a spear, his assassin, knowing the poetical predilection of his +victim, accompanied his thrust with this couplet— + + “Ah! how in moments like these + Our heart doth grudge the light of life;” + +whereupon the expiring hero, not one whit daunted by the mortal wound in +his side, added the lines— + + “Had not in hours of peace, + It learned to lightly look on life.” + +There is even a sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which +are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in +old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to +exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not +solely a matter of brute force; it was, as well, an intellectual +engagement. + +Of such character was the battle fought on the bank of the Koromo River, +late in the eleventh century. The eastern army routed, its leader, +Sadato, took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and +called aloud—“It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the +enemy,” Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted +an impromptu verse— + + “Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth” (_koromo_). + +Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when the defeated warrior, +undismayed, completed the couplet— + + “Since age has worn its threads by use.” + +Yoshiie, whose bow had all the while been bent, suddenly unstrung it and +turned away, leaving his prospective victim to do as he pleased. When +asked the reason of his strange behavior, he replied that he could not +bear to put to shame one who had kept his presence of mind while hotly +pursued by his enemy. + +The sorrow which overtook Antony and Octavius at the death of Brutus, +has been the general experience of brave men. Kenshin, who fought for +fourteen years with Shingen, when he heard of the latter’s death, wept +aloud at the loss of “the best of enemies.” It was this same Kenshin who +had set a noble example for all time, in his treatment of Shingen, +whose provinces lay in a mountainous region quite away from the sea, and +who had consequently depended upon the Hōjō provinces of the Tokaido for +salt. The Hōjō prince wishing to weaken him, although not openly at war +with him, had cut off from Shingen all traffic in this important +article. Kenshin, hearing of his enemy’s dilemma and able to obtain his +salt from the coast of his own dominions, wrote Shingen that in his +opinion the Hōjō lord had committed a very mean act, and that although +he (Kenshin) was at war with him (Shingen) he had ordered his subjects +to furnish him with plenty of salt—adding, “I do not fight with salt, +but with the sword,” affording more than a parallel to the words of +Camillus, “We Romans do not fight with gold, but with iron.” Nietzsche +spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, “You are to be proud of your +enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success also.” Indeed +valor and honor alike required that we should own as enemies in war only +such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. When valor attains this +height, it becomes akin to + + + BENEVOLENCE, THE FEELING OF + DISTRESS, + +love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, which were +ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes +of the human soul. Benevolence was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold +sense;—princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; +princely as particularly befitting a princely profession. We needed no +Shakespeare to feel—though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we +needed him to express it—that mercy became a monarch better than his +crown, that it was above his sceptered sway. How often both Confucius +and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist +in benevolence. Confucius would say, “Let but a prince cultivate virtue, +people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will +bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right +uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth an outcome.” Again, “Never has +there been a case of a sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not +loving righteousness,” Mencius follows close at his heels and says, +“Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power +in a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a +whole empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue.” +Also,—“It is impossible that any one should become ruler of the +people to whom they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts.” +Both defined this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, +“Benevolence—Benevolence is Man.” Under the régime of feudalism, which +could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we +owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter +surrender of “life and limb” on the part of the governed would have left +nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural +consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called “oriental +despotism,”—as though there were no despots of occidental history! + +Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a +mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote +that “Kings are the first servants of the State,” jurists thought +rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. +Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan, +Yozan of Yonézawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that +feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although +unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher +sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father +to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not +usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal +government—paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular +government (Uncle Sam’s, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and +a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey +reluctantly, while in the other they do so with “that proud submission, +that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, +even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted freedom.”[8] The old +saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the “king +of devils, because of his subjects’ often insurrections against, and +depositions of, their princes,” and which made the French monarch the +“king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and impositions,” but +which gave the title of “the king of men” to the sovereign of Spain +“because of his subjects’ willing obedience.” But enough!— + + [Footnote 8: Burke, _French Revolution_.] + +Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which +it is impossible to harmonize. Pobyedonostseff has clearly set before us +the contrast in the foundations of English and other European +communities; namely that these were organized on the basis of common +interest, while that was distinguished by a strongly developed +independent personality. What this Russian statesman says of the +personal dependence of individuals on some social alliance and in the +end of ends of the State, among the continental nations of Europe and +particularly among Slavonic peoples, is doubly true of the Japanese. +Hence not only is a free exercise of monarchical power not felt as +heavily by us as in Europe, but it is generally moderated by parental +consideration for the feelings of the people. “Absolutism,” says +Bismarck, “primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty, +devotion to duty, energy and inward humility.” If I may be allowed to +make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of +the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of “Kingship, by the +grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to +the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can +release the monarch.” + +We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright +Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the +gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned +against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with +justice and rectitude. Masamuné expressed it well in his oft-quoted +aphorism—“Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; +Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness.” + +Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is +universally true that “The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the +daring.” “_Bushi no nasaké_”—the tenderness of a warrior—had a sound +which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy +of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other +being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, +but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not +remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with +power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual +or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual, +since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the +recipient. + +Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to +turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius +taught concerning the power of Love. “Benevolence,” he says, “brings +under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: +they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to +extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots.” He also +says that “the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore +a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in +distress.” Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his +ethical philosophy on Sympathy. + +It is indeed striking how closely the code of knightly honor of one +country coincides with that of others; in other words, how the much +abused oriental ideas of morals find their counterparts in the noblest +maxims of European literature. If the well-known lines, + + Hae tibi erunt artes—pacisque imponere morem, + Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos, + +were shown a Japanese gentleman, he might readily accuse the Mantuan +bard of plagiarizing from the literature of his own country. + +Benevolence to the weak, the downtrodden or the vanquished, was ever +extolled as peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art +must be familiar with the representation of a priest riding backwards +on a cow. The rider was once a warrior who in his day made his name a +by-word of terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-ura, (1184 A.D.), +which was one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy +and in single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms. Now +the etiquette of war required that on such occasions no blood should be +spilt, unless the weaker party proved to be a man of rank or ability +equal to that of the stronger. The grim combatant would have the name +of the man under him; but he refusing to make it known, his helmet +was ruthlessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and +beardless, made the astonished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth +to his feet, in paternal tones he bade the stripling go: “Off, young +prince, to thy mother’s side! The sword of Kumagaye shall never be +tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o’er yon pass before +thy enemies come in sight!” The young warrior refused to go and begged +Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above +the hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time +before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; +there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who +this self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden +arms; the strong hand of the warrior quivers; again he begs his victim +to flee for his life. Finding all his entreaties vain and hearing the +approaching steps of his comrades, he exclaims: “If thou art overtaken, +thou mayest fall at a more ignoble hand than mine. O, thou Infinite! +receive his soul!” In an instant the sword flashes in the air, and +when it falls it is red with adolescent blood. When the war is ended, +we find our soldier returning in triumph, but little cares he now for +honor or fame; he renounces his warlike career, shaves his head, dons a +priestly garb, devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never +turning his back to the West, where lies the Paradise whence salvation +comes and whither the sun hastes daily for his rest. + +Critics may point out flaws in this story, which is casuistically +vulnerable. Let it be: all the same it shows that Tenderness, Pity and +Love, were traits which adorned the most sanguinary exploits of the +samurai. It was an old maxim among them that “It becometh not the fowler +to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom.” This in a large +measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered peculiarly +Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us. For decades before +we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had +familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe. In the +principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the +custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of +trumpets or the beat of drums,—“those clamorous harbingers of blood and +death”—stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and +tender melodies on the _biwa_,[9] soothing our fiery spirits, drawing +our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage. Polybius +tells us of the Constitution of Arcadia, which required all youths +under thirty to practice music, in order that this gentle art might +alleviate the rigors of that inclement region. It is to its influence +that he attributes the absence of cruelty in that part of the Arcadian +mountains. + + [Footnote 9: A musical instrument, resembling the guitar.] + +Nor was Satsuma the only place in Japan where gentleness was inculcated +among the warrior class. A Prince of Shirakawa jots down his random +thoughts, and among them is the following: “Though they come stealing to +your bedside in the silent watches of the night, drive not away, but +rather cherish these—the fragrance of flowers, the sound of distant +bells, the insect humming of a frosty night.” And again, “Though they +may wound your feelings, these three you have only to forgive, the +breeze that scatters your flowers, the cloud that hides your moon, and +the man who tries to pick quarrels with you.” + +It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler +emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged. Our poetry has +therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness. A well-known +anecdote of a rustic samurai illustrates a case in point. When he was +told to learn versification, and “The Warbler’s Notes”[10] was given him +for the subject of his first attempt, his fiery spirit rebelled and he +flung at the feet of his master this uncouth production, which ran + + [Footnote 10: The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the + nightingale of Japan.] + + “The brave warrior keeps apart + The ear that might listen + To the warbler’s song.” + +His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the +youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to +the sweet notes of the _uguisu_, and he wrote + + “Stands the warrior, mailed and strong, + To hear the uguisu’s song, + Warbled sweet the trees among.” + +We admire and enjoy the heroic incident in Körner’s short life, when, as +he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous “Farewell to +Life.” Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our +warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to +the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was +either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might +be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an +ode,—and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the +breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers. + +What Christianity has done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the +midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in +Japan. The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for +the sufferings of others. Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect +for others’ feelings, are at the root of + + + POLITENESS, + +that courtesy and urbanity of manners which has been noticed by every +foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait. Politeness is a poor virtue, +if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it +should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the +feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of +things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter +express no plutocratic distinctions, but were originally distinctions +for actual merit. + +In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love. We may +reverently say, politeness “suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, +vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, +seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of +evil.” Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six +elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, +inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of social intercourse? + +While thus extolling Politeness, far be it from me to put it in the +front rank of virtues. If we analyze it, we shall find it correlated +with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone? +While—or rather because—it was exalted as peculiar to the profession +of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there +came into existence its counterfeits. Confucius himself has repeatedly +taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as +sounds are of music. + +When propriety was elevated to the _sine qua non_ of social intercourse, +it was only to be expected that an elaborate system of etiquette should +come into vogue to train youth in correct social behavior. How one must +bow in accosting others, how he must walk and sit, were taught and +learned with utmost care. Table manners grew to be a science. Tea +serving and drinking were raised to a ceremony. A man of education is, +of course, expected to be master of all these. Very fitly does Mr. +Veblen, in his interesting book,[11] call decorum “a product and an +exponent of the leisure-class life.” + + [Footnote 11: _Theory of the Leisure Class_, N.Y. 1899, p. 46.] + +I have heard slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate +discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much +of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. +I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, +but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to +ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my +mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the +contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for +the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether +trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most +appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything +to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both +the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as +the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain +definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a +novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed +is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the +most economical use of force,—hence, according to Spencer’s dictum, the +most graceful. + +The spiritual significance of social decorum,—or, I might say, to +borrow from the vocabulary of the “Philosophy of Clothes,” the +spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward +garments,—is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us +in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our +ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave +rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book. +It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, +that I wish to emphasize. + +I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so +much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into +existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was +put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the +Ogasawara, in the following terms: “The end of all etiquette is to so +cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the +roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person.” It means, in other +words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the +parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such +harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of +spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word +_biensèance_[12] comes thus to contain! + + [Footnote 12: Etymologically _well-seatedness_.] + +If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it +follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful +deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine +manners, therefore, mean power in repose. When the barbarian Gauls, +during the sack of Rome, burst into the assembled Senate and dared pull +the beards of the venerable Fathers, we think the old gentlemen were to +blame, inasmuch as they lacked dignity and strength of manners. Is lofty +spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not?—All +roads lead to Rome! + +As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then +become spiritual culture, I may take _Cha-no-yu_, the tea ceremony. +Tea-sipping as a fine art! Why should it not be? In the children drawing +pictures on the sand, or in the savage carving on a rock, was the +promise of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. How much more is the drinking +of a beverage, which began with the transcendental contemplation of a +Hindoo anchorite, entitled to develop into a handmaid of Religion and +Morality? That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure +and quietness of demeanor, which are the first essentials of _Cha-no-yu_ +are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right +feeling. The scrupulous cleanliness of the little room, shut off from +sight and sound of the madding crowd, is in itself conducive to direct +one’s thoughts from the world. The bare interior does not engross one’s +attention like the innumerable pictures and bric-a-brac of a Western +parlor; the presence of _kakemono_[13] calls our attention more to grace +of design than to beauty of color. The utmost refinement of taste is the +object aimed at; whereas anything like display is banished with +religious horror. The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative +recluse, in a time when wars and the rumors of wars were incessant, is +well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. +Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company +assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their +swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, +there to find peace and friendship. + + [Footnote 13: Hanging scrolls, which may be either paintings or + ideograms, used for decorative purposes.] + +_Cha-no-yu_ is more than a ceremony—it is a fine art; it is poetry, +with articulate gestures for rhythm: it is a _modus operandi_ of soul +discipline. Its greatest value lies in this last phase. Not infrequently +the other phases preponderated in the mind of its votaries, but that +does not prove that its essence was not of a spiritual nature. + +Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart +grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, +springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and +actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever +a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should +weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Such +didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, +expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, +as one missionary lady of twenty years’ residence once said to me, +“awfully funny.” You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over +you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly +his hat is off—well, that is perfectly natural, but the “awfully funny” +performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down +and he stands in the glaring sun also. How foolish!—Yes, exactly so, +provided the motive were less than this: “You are in the sun; I +sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it +were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot +shade you, I will share your discomforts.” Little acts of this kind, +equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities. +They are the “bodying forth” of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of +others. + +Another “awfully funny” custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; +but many superficial writers on Japan have dismissed it by simply +attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every +foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in +making proper reply upon the occasion. In America, when you make a gift, +you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander +it. The underlying idea with you is, “This is a nice gift: if it were +not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to +give you anything but what is nice.” In contrast to this, our logic +runs: “You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you. You +will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my +good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token. +It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for +you.” Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate +idea is one and the same. Neither is “awfully funny.” The American +speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the +spirit which prompts the gift. + +It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety +shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to +take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass +judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or +to observe rules of propriety about eating? A Chinese sage answers, “If +you take a case where the eating is all-important, and the observing the +rules of propriety is of little importance, and compare them together, +why merely say that the eating is of the more importance?” “Metal is +heavier than feathers,” but does that saying have reference to a single +clasp of metal and a wagon-load of feathers? Take a piece of wood a foot +thick and raise it above the pinnacle of a temple, none would call it +taller than the temple. To the question, “Which is the more important, +to tell the truth or to be polite?” the Japanese are said to give an +answer diametrically opposite to what the American will say,—but I +forbear any comment until I come to speak of + + + VERACITY OR TRUTHFULNESS, + +without which Politeness is a farce and a show. “Propriety carried +beyond right bounds,” says Masamuné, “becomes a lie.” An ancient poet +has outdone Polonius in the advice he gives: “To thyself be faithful: if +in thy heart thou strayest not from truth, without prayer of thine the +Gods will keep thee whole.” The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Tsu-tsu +gives expression in the _Doctrine of the Mean_, attributes to it +transcendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine. +“Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity +there would be nothing.” He then dwells with eloquence on its +far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes +without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose +without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a +combination of “Word” and “Perfect,” one is tempted to draw a parallel +between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of _Logos_—to such height +does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight. + +Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly. The bushi held that +his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than +that of the tradesman and peasant. _Bushi no ichi-gon_—the word of a +samurai or in exact German equivalent _ein Ritterwort_—was sufficient +guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such +weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a +written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity. +Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for +_ni-gon_, a double tongue. + +The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of +Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher +not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to +their honor. I am well aware that they did swear by different deities or +upon their swords; but never has swearing degenerated into wanton form +and irreverent interjection. To emphasize our words a practice of +literally sealing with blood was sometimes resorted to. For the +explanation of such a practice, I need only refer my readers to Goethe’s +Faust. + +A recent American writer is responsible for this statement, that if you +ask an ordinary Japanese which is better, to tell a falsehood or be +impolite, he will not hesitate to answer “to tell a falsehood!” Dr. +Peery[14] is partly right and partly wrong; right in that an ordinary +Japanese, even a samurai, may answer in the way ascribed to him, but +wrong in attributing too much weight to the term he translates +“falsehood.” This word (in Japanese _uso_) is employed to denote +anything which is not a truth (_makoto_) or fact (_honto_). Lowell tells +us that Wordsworth could not distinguish between truth and fact, and an +ordinary Japanese is in this respect as good as Wordsworth. Ask a +Japanese, or even an American of any refinement, to tell you whether he +dislikes you or whether he is sick at his stomach, and he will not +hesitate long to tell falsehoods and answer, “I like you much,” or, “I +am quite well, thank you.” To sacrifice truth merely for the sake of +politeness was regarded as an “empty form” (_kyo-rei_) and “deception by +sweet words,” and was never justified. + + [Footnote 14: Peery, _The Gist of Japan_, p. 86.] + +I own I am speaking now of the Bushido idea of veracity; but it may not +be amiss to devote a few words to our commercial integrity, of which I +have heard much complaint in foreign books and journals. A loose +business morality has indeed been the worst blot on our national +reputation; but before abusing it or hastily condemning the whole race +for it, let us calmly study it and we shall be rewarded with consolation +for the future. + +Of all the great occupations of life, none was farther removed from the +profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the +category of vocations,—the knight, the tiller of the soil, the +mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and +could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the +counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social +arrangement. Montesquieu has made it clear that the debarring of the +nobility from mercantile pursuits was an admirable social policy, in +that it prevented wealth from accumulating in the hands of the powerful. +The separation of power and riches kept the distribution of the latter +more nearly equable. Professor Dill, the author of “Roman Society in the +Last Century of the Western Empire,” has brought afresh to our mind that +one cause of the decadence of the Roman Empire, was the permission given +to the nobility to engage in trade, and the consequent monopoly of +wealth and power by a minority of the senatorial families. + +Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of +development which it would have attained under freer conditions. The +obloquy attached to the calling naturally brought within its pale such +as cared little for social repute. “Call one a thief and he will steal:” +put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it, +for it is natural that “the normal conscience,” as Hugh Black says, +“rises to the demands made on it, and easily falls to the limit of the +standard expected from it.” It is unnecessary to add that no business, +commercial or otherwise, can be transacted without a code of morals. Our +merchants of the feudal period had one among themselves, without which +they could never have developed, as they did, such fundamental +mercantile institutions as the guild, the bank, the bourse, insurance, +checks, bills of exchange, etc.; but in their relations with people +outside their vocation, the tradesmen lived too true to the reputation +of their order. + +This being the case, when the country was opened to foreign trade, only +the most adventurous and unscrupulous rushed to the ports, while the +respectable business houses declined for some time the repeated requests +of the authorities to establish branch houses. Was Bushido powerless to +stay the current of commercial dishonor? Let us see. + +Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a +few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, +feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai’s fiefs were taken +and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to +invest them in mercantile transactions. Now you may ask, “Why could they +not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations +and so reform the old abuses?” Those who had eyes to see could not weep +enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with +the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably +failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through +sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival. When +we know that eighty per cent. of the business houses fail in so +industrial a country as America, is it any wonder that scarcely one +among a hundred samurai who went into trade could succeed in his new +vocation? It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes +were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; +but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth +were not the ways of honor. In what respects, then, were they different? + +Of the three incentives to Veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz: the +industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was +altogether lacking in Bushido. As to the second, it could develop little +in a political community under a feudal system. It is in its +philosophical, and as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that Honesty +attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues. With all my sincere +regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I +ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that “Honesty is the best +policy,” that it _pays_ to be honest. Is not this virtue, then, its own +reward? If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, +I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies! + +If Bushido rejects a doctrine of _quid pro quo_ rewards, the shrewder +tradesman will readily accept it. Lecky has very truly remarked that +Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as +Nietzsche puts it, “Honesty is the youngest of virtues”—in other +words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry. Without +this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most +cultivated mind could adopt and nourish. Such minds were general among +the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian +foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive. Industries advancing, +Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice. Just +think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the +professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of “a lamentable +lack of reliability with regard to German shipments _inter alia_, +apparent both as to quality and quantity;” now-a-days we hear +comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade. In +twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays. Already +our merchants are finding that out. For the rest I recommend the reader +to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this point.[15] It is +interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were +the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the +form of promissory notes. It was quite a usual thing to insert such +clauses as these: “In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I +shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;” or, “In case I +fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool,” and the like. + + [Footnote 15: Knapp, _Feudal and Modern Japan_, Vol. I, Ch. IV. + Ransome, _Japan in Transition_, Ch. VIII.] + +Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive +higher than courage. In the absence of any positive commandment against +bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply +denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable. As a matter of +fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and +its German etymology so identified with + + + HONOR, + +that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration +of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood. + +The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity +and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to +value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word +ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used +freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as _na_ (name) +_men-moku_ (countenance), _guai-bun_ (outside hearing), reminding us +respectively of the biblical use of “name,” of the evolution of the term +“personality” from the Greek mask, and of “fame.” A good name—one’s +reputation, the immortal part of one’s self, what remains being +bestial—assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its +integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (_Ren-chi-shin_) was +one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. “You will be +laughed at,” “It will disgrace you,” “Are you not ashamed?” were the +last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. +Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the +child’s heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its +mother’s womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being +closely bound up with strong family consciousness. “In losing the +solidarity of families,” says Balzac, “society has lost the fundamental +force which Montesquieu named Honor.” Indeed, the sense of shame seems +to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our +race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in +consequence of tasting “the fruit of that forbidden tree” was, to my +mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the +awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in +pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and +tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her +dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience +clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial +ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will +efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who +refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his +youth; “because,” he said, “dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which +time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge.” + +Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, +what Carlyle has latterly expressed,—namely, that “Shame is the soil of +all Virtue, of good manners and good morals.” + +The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks +such eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it +nevertheless hung like Damocles’ sword over the head of every samurai +and often assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were +perpetrated which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. +At the slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart +took offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary +strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a +well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea +jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple +and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which +feed on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble +warrior with a beast—I say, stories like these are too frivolous to +believe. Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; +(1) that they were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses +were really made of the samurai’s profession of honor; and (3) that +a very strong sense of shame was developed among them. It is plainly +unfair to take an abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any +more than to judge of the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of +religious fanaticism and extravagance—inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, +as in religious monomania there is something touchingly noble, as +compared with the delirium tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme +sensitiveness of the samurai about their honor do we not recognize the +substratum of a genuine virtue? + +The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined +to run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and +patience. To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as +“short-tempered.” The popular adage said: “To bear what you think you +cannot bear is really to bear.” The great Iyéyasu left to posterity +a few maxims, among which are the following:—“The life of man is +like going a long distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. +Haste not. * * * * Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine +own short-comings. * * * Forbearance is the basis of length of +days.” He proved in his life what he preached. A literary wit put a +characteristic epigram into the mouths of three well-known personages +in our history: to Nobunaga he attributed, “I will kill her, if the +nightingale sings not in time;” to Hidéyoshi, “I will force her to sing +for me;” and to Iyéyasu, “I will wait till she opens her lips.” + +Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In +one place he writes to this effect: “Though you denude yourself and +insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your +outrage.” Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy +a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath. + +To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could +reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, +for instance, this saying of Ogawa: “When others speak all manner of +evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect +that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties.” Take +another of Kumazawa:—“When others blame thee, blame them not; when +others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion +and Desire part.” Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon +whose overhanging brows “shame is ashamed to sit;”—“The Way is the way +of Heaven and Earth: Man’s place is to follow it: therefore make it the +object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with +equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love +others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy +partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou +comest not short of thine own mark.” Some of those sayings remind us of +Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality +natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings +remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts. + +It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of +magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing +clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few +enlightened minds being aware that it “from no condition rises,” but +that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than +for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in +Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, “’Tis in every man’s +mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly +honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men +confer is not good honor. Those whom Châo the Great ennobles, he can +make mean again.” + +For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, +as we shall see later, while Honor—too often nothing higher than vain +glory or worldly approbation—was prized as the _summum bonum_ of +earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal +toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he +crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it +until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother +refused to see her sons again unless they could “return home,” as the +expression is, “caparisoned in brocade.” To shun shame or win a name, +samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals +of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows +with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyéyasu, in +spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at +the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept +so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the +resources at his command. “Take comfort, Sire,” said he, “at thought of +the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there +will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself.” The boy fixed his +indignant gaze upon the man and said—“How foolishly you talk! Can ever +my fourteenth year come round again?” + +Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained +therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered +dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down. + +Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to +sacrifice, was + + + THE DUTY OF LOYALTY, + +which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other +virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, +with other classes of people, but this virtue—homage and fealty to a +superior—is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity +is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,—a +gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the +code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance. + +In spite of Hegel’s criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, +being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a +bond established on totally unjust principles,[16] a great compatriot of +his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue. +Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the _Treue_ he boasts of +was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but +because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people +where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where “everybody is as +good as anybody else,” and, as the Irishman added, “better too,” such +exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed +“excellent within certain bounds,” but preposterous as encouraged among +us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the +Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the +truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary +beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we +conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception +is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we +carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. Griffis[17] was +quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made +obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was +given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I +will relate of one “who could endure to follow a fall’n lord” and who +thus, as Shakespeare assures, “earned a place i’ the story.” + + [Footnote 16: _Philosophy of History_ (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. + IV, Sec. II, Ch. I.] + + [Footnote 17: _Religions of Japan_.] + +The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizané, +who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the +capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent +upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son—not yet +grown—reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept +by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizané. When orders are dispatched +to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a +certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He +ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the +boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children +born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protégé. His +despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is +announced—a comely boy of the same age as his master’s son, escorted by +a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between +infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In +the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his +life,—the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. +Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom +comes the suggestion. + +Here, then, is the scape-goat!—The rest of the narrative may be briefly +told.—On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to +identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the +false head? The poor Genzo’s hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to +strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination +defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him, +goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone, +pronounces it genuine.—That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother +we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for +his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the +wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of +Michizané’s bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced +her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family’s +benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but +his son could serve the cause of the grandsire’s lord. As one acquainted +with the exile’s family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task +of identifying the boy’s head. Now the day’s—yea, the life’s—hard work +is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his +wife, saying: “Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service +to his lord!” + +“What an atrocious story!” I hear my readers exclaim,—“Parents +deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of +another man’s.” But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is +a story of vicarious death—as significant as, and not more revolting +than, the story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases +it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of +a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or +heard by an outward or an inward ear;—but I abstain from preaching. + +The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for +father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief +the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest +of the family and of the members thereof is intact,—one and +inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection—natural, +instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural +love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? “For if ye love +them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the +same?” + +In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart +struggle of Shigemori concerning his father’s rebellious conduct. “If I +be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my +sovereign must go amiss.” Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying +with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may +be released from this world where it is hard for purity and +righteousness to dwell. + +Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and +affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself +contains an adequate rendering of _ko_, our conception of filial piety, +and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of +Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the +king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the +samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty. + +Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived +the state as antedating the individual—the latter being born into the +former as part and parcel thereof—he must live and die for it or for +the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will +remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the +city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he +makes them (the laws, or the state) say:—“Since you were begotten and +nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our +offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!” These are words +which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing +has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the +laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty +is an ethical outcome of this political theory. + +I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer’s view according to which +political obedience—Loyalty—is accredited with only a transitional +function.[18] It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue +thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe _that_ +day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem +says, “tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss.” We may +remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the +English, “the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity +which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has,” as Monsieur +Boutmy recently said, “only passed more or less into their profound +loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their +extraordinary attachment to the dynasty.” + + [Footnote 18: _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.] + +Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to +loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is +realized—will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence +disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to +another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of +a ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the +monarch who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years +ago a very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of +Spencer, made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal +to uphold the claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged +Christians with treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to +their Lord and Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without +the wit of Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of +the Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, “serve two +masters without holding to the one or despising the other,” “rendering +unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and unto God the things that are +God’s.” Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to +concede one iota of loyalty to his _dæmon_, obey with equal fidelity +and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His +conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the +day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the +dictates of their conscience! + +Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord +or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said: + + “Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot. + My life thou shalt command, but not my shame. + The one my duty owes; but my fair name, + Despite of death, that lives upon my grave, + To dark dishonor’s use, thou shalt not have.” + +A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak +or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the +Precepts. Such a one was despised as _nei-shin_, a cringeling, who +makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as _chô-shin_, a favorite who +steals his master’s affections by means of servile compliance; these two +species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago +describes,—the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his +own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master’s ass; +the other trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart +attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal +path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him +of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master +deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual +course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and +conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with +the shedding of his own blood. + +Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its +ideal being set upon honor, the whole + + + EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF + A SAMURAI, + +were conducted accordingly. + +The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up +character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, +intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part æsthetic +accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a +man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai +training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the +word _Chi_, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom +in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate +place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be +_Chi_, _Jin_, _Yu_, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A +samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of +his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his +profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; +he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish +courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed “’tis not the creed +that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed.” +Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual +training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth +that he strove after,—literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and +philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for +the exposition of some military or political problem. + +From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the +curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted +mainly of the following,—fencing, archery, _jiujutsu_ or _yawara_, +horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics, +literature and history. Of these, _jiujutsu_ and caligraphy may require +a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing, +probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of +pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was +accepted as indicative of one’s personal character. _Jiujutsu_ may be +briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose +of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not +depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in +that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such +part of the enemy’s body as will make him numb and incapable of +resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for +action for the time being. + +A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education +and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of +instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in +part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific +precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was +unfavorable to fostering numerical notions. + +Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius +that “ambition, the soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than +gain which darkens him.” Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear +and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in +hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrère of La Mancha. He disdains +money itself,—the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably +filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an +age is “that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death.” +Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as +their lavish use is panegyrized. “Less than all things,” says a current +precept, “men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is +hindered.” Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of +economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of +the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of +numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the +distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left +to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by +a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well +enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of +raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift +was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for +the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to +manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, +sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans. + +We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial +agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby +showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money +itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of +the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. +These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something +low—low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations. + +Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself +could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is +the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men +have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is +making its way in our time and generation! + +The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the +study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and +deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind +of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, +decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with +information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies +that Bacon gives,—for delight, ornament, and ability,—Bushido had +decided preference for the last, where their use was “in judgment and +the disposition of business.” Whether it was for the disposition of +public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a +practical end in view that education was conducted. “Learning without +thought,” said Confucius, “is labor lost: thought without learning is +perilous.” + +When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is +chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his +vocation partakes of a sacred character. “It is the parent who has borne +me: it is the teacher who makes me man.” With this idea, therefore, the +esteem in which one’s preceptor was held was very high. A man to evoke +such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed +with superior personality without lacking erudition. He was a father to +the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring. “Thy father and thy +mother”—so runs our maxim—“are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and +thy lord are like the sun and moon.” + +The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue +among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be +rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it +of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not +because it was valueless but because it was invaluable. Here the +non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than +modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for +services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas +the best service done in education,—namely, in soul development (and +this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or +measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, +is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their +teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were +not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients +as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, +too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg. They were +grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity. They were +an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were +thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines, + + + SELF-CONTROL, + +which was universally required of samurai. + +The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance +without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring +us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of +our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and +eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I +say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can +ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some +of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer +hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any +race under the sky. + +I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than +others—yes, doubly more—since the very attempt to restrain natural +promptings entails suffering. Imagine boys—and girls too—brought up +not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for +the relief of their feelings,—and there is a physiological problem +whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive. + +It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his +face. “He shows no sign of joy or anger,” was a phrase used in +describing a strong character. The most natural affections were kept +under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his +dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,—no, not in the presence of +other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth +in the remark of a witty youth when he said, “American husbands kiss +their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat +theirs in public and kiss them in private.” + +Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by +passion of any kind. I remember when, during the late war with China, a +regiment left a certain town, a large concourse of people flocked to the +station to bid farewell to the general and his army. On this occasion +an American resident resorted to the place, expecting to witness loud +demonstrations, as the nation itself was highly excited and there were +fathers, mothers, and sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The +American was strangely disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the +train began to move, the hats of thousands of people were silently taken +off and their heads bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of +handkerchiefs, no word uttered, but deep silence in which only an +attentive ear could catch a few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I +know of a father who spent whole nights listening to the breathing of a +sick child, standing behind the door that he might not be caught in such +an act of parental weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last +moments, refrained from sending for her son, that he might not be +disturbed in his studies. Our history and everyday life are replete with +examples of heroic matrons who can well bear comparison with some of the +most touching pages of Plutarch. Among our peasantry an Ian Maclaren +would be sure to find many a Marget Howe. + +It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for the +absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of Japan. +When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is +to quietly suppress any indication of it. In rare instances is the +tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of +sincerity and fervor. It is putting a premium upon a breach of the third +commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experience. It is +truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most +secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. “Dost +thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time +for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone +in quietness and secrecy,”—writes a young samurai in his diary. + +To give in so many articulate words one’s inmost thoughts and +feelings—notably the religious—is taken among us as an unmistakable +sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. “Only a +pomegranate is he”—so runs a popular saying—“who, when he gapes his +mouth, displays the contents of his heart.” + +It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant our +emotions are moved we try to guard our lips in order to hide them. +Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defined it, “the art of +concealing thought.” + +Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will +invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At first +you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you will get +a few broken commonplaces—“Human life has sorrow;” “They who meet must +part;” “He that is born must die;” “It is foolish to count the years of +a child that is gone, but a woman’s heart will indulge in follies;” and +the like. So the noble words of a noble Hohenzollern—“Lerne zu leiden +ohne Klagen”—had found many responsive minds among us, long before they +were uttered. + +Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the frailties +of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better +reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter +with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when +disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of sorrow +or rage. + +The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they find +their safety-valve in poetical aphorism. A poet of the tenth century +writes, “In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by sorrow, +tells its bitter grief in verse.” A mother who tries to console her +broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase +after the dragon-fly, hums, + + “How far to-day in chase, I wonder, + Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!” + +I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant +justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a +foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding +hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a +measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an +appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and +dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question. + +It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference +to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as +it goes. The next question is,—Why are our nerves less tightly strung? +It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be +our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the +Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read _Sartor +Resartus_ as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was +our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to +recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the +explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in +self-control, none can be correct. + +Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress +the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into +distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or +hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart +and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive +excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of +self-restraint is to keep our mind _level_—as our expression is—or, to +borrow a Greek term, attain the state of _euthymia_, which Democritus +called the highest good. + +The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of +the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely, + + + THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE + AND REDRESS, + +of which (the former known as _hara-kiri_ and the latter as +_kataki-uchi_) many foreign writers have treated more or less fully. + +To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only +to _seppuku_ or _kappuku_, popularly known as _hara-kiri_—which means +self-immolation by disembowelment. “Ripping the abdomen? How +absurd!”—so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may +sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to +students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus’ mouth—“Thy +(Cæsar’s) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper +entrails.” Listen to a modern English poet, who in his _Light of Asia_, +speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:—none blames him for +bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, +look at Guercino’s painting of Cato’s death, in the Palazzo Rossa in +Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, +will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this +mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most +touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars +our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, +of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a +sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else—the sign which +Constantine beheld would not conquer the world! + +Not for extraneous associations only does _seppuku_ lose in our mind any +taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body +to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of +the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph’s “bowels +yearning upon his brother,” or David prayed the Lord not to forget his +bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of +the “sounding” or the “troubling” of bowels, they all and each endorsed +the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was +enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and +kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term +_hara_ was more comprehensive than the Greek _phren_ or _thumos_ and +the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell +somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the +peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by +one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul +is located in the pineal gland, still insist in using the term _ventre_ +in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless +physiologically significant. Similarly _entrailles_ stands in their +language for affection and compassion. Nor is such belief mere +superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the +heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese +knew better than Romeo “in what vile part of this anatomy one’s name did +lodge.” Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, +denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are +strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental +physiology once admitted, the syllogism of _seppuku_ is easy to +construct. “I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares +with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean.” + +I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral +justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was +ample excuse with many for taking one’s own life. How many acquiesced in +the sentiment expressed by Garth, + + “When honor’s lost, ’tis a relief to die; + Death’s but a sure retreat from infamy,” + +and have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death when honor +was involved, was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many +complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure +from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to +be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are +honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive +admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius +and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly +existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the +philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his +pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the +state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities +of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even +offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his +whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical +compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of +the judges was compulsory: it said, “Thou shalt die,—and that by thy +own hand.” If suicide meant no more than dying by one’s own hand, +Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with +the crime; Plato, who was averse to it, would not call his master a +suicide. + +Now my readers will understand that _seppuku_ was not a mere suicidal +process. It was an institution, legal and ceremonial. An invention of +the middle ages, it was a process by which warriors could expiate their +crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their +friends, or prove their sincerity. When enforced as a legal punishment, +it was practiced with due ceremony. It was a refinement of +self-destruction, and none could perform it without the utmost coolness +of temper and composure of demeanor, and for these reasons it was +particularly befitting the profession of bushi. + +Antiquarian curiosity, if nothing else, would tempt me to give here a +description of this obsolete ceremonial; but seeing that such a +description was made by a far abler writer, whose book is not much read +now-a-days, I am tempted to make a somewhat lengthy quotation. Mitford, +in his “Tales of Old Japan,” after giving a translation of a treatise on +_seppuku_ from a rare Japanese manuscript, goes on to describe an +instance of such an execution of which he was an eye-witness:— + +“We (seven foreign representatives) were invited to follow the Japanese +witness into the _hondo_ or main hall of the temple, where the ceremony +was to be performed. It was an imposing scene. A large hall with a high +roof supported by dark pillars of wood. From the ceiling hung a +profusion of those huge gilt lamps and ornaments peculiar to Buddhist +temples. In front of the high altar, where the floor, covered with +beautiful white mats, is raised some three or four inches from the +ground, was laid a rug of scarlet felt. Tall candles placed at regular +intervals gave out a dim mysterious light, just sufficient to let all +the proceedings be seen. The seven Japanese took their places on the +left of the raised floor, the seven foreigners on the right. No other +person was present. + +“After the interval of a few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki +Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, +walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar +hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied +by a _kaishaku_ and three officers, who wore the _jimbaori_ or war +surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word _kaishaku_ it should be +observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. +The office is that of a gentleman: in many cases it is performed by a +kinsman or friend of the condemned, and the relation between them is +rather that of principal and second than that of victim and executioner. +In this instance the _kaishaku_ was a pupil of Taki Zenzaburo, and was +selected by friends of the latter from among their own number for his +skill in swordsmanship. + +“With the _kaishaku_ on his left hand, Taki Zenzaburo advanced slowly +towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then +drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps +even with more deference; in each case the salutation was ceremoniously +returned. Slowly and with great dignity the condemned man mounted on to +the raised floor, prostrated himself before the high altar twice, and +seated[19] himself on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, +the _kaishaku_ crouching on his left hand side. One of the three +attendant officers then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used +in the temple for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the +_wakizashi_, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a +half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor’s. This he +handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it +reverently, raising it to his head with both hands, and placed it in +front of himself. + + [Footnote 19: Seated himself—that is, in the Japanese fashion, his + knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his + heels. In this position, which is one of respect, he remained until + his death.] + +“After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which +betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a +man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in +his face or manner, spoke as follows:— + +‘I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners +at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel +myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing +the act.’ + +“Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down +to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to +custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from +falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling +forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand he took the dirk that lay +before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a +moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then +stabbing himself deeply below the waist in the left-hand side, he drew +the dirk slowly across to his right side, and turning it in the wound, +gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he +never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned +forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first +time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the +_kaishaku_, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching +his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in +the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with +one blow the head had been severed from the body. + +“A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood +throbbing out of the inert head before us, which but a moment before had +been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible. + +“The _kaishaku_ made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of paper +which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; +and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the +execution. + +“The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and +crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called to us to +witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been +faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the +temple.” + +I might multiply any number of descriptions of _seppuku_ from literature +or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will +suffice. + +Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen +years of age, made an effort to kill Iyéyasu in order to avenge their +father’s wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made +prisoners. The old general admired the pluck of the youths who dared an +attempt on his life and ordered that they should be allowed to die an +honorable death. Their little brother Hachimaro, a mere infant of eight +summers, was condemned to a similar fate, as the sentence was pronounced +on all the male members of the family, and the three were taken to a +monastery where it was to be executed. A physician who was present on +the occasion has left us a diary from which the following scene is +translated. “When they were all seated in a row for final despatch, +Sakon turned to the youngest and said—‘Go thou first, for I wish to be +sure that thou doest it aright.’ Upon the little one’s replying that, as +he had never seen _seppuku_ performed, he would like to see his brothers +do it and then he could follow them, the older brothers smiled between +their tears:—‘Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of +being our father’s child.’ When they had placed him between them, Sakon +thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and +asked—‘Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don’t push the dagger +too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees +well composed.’ Naiki did likewise and said to the boy—‘Keep thy eyes +open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels +anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy +effort to cut across.’ The child looked from one to the other, and when +both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the +example set him on either hand.” + +The glorification of _seppuku_ offered, naturally enough, no small +temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely +incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, +hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and +dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent +gates. Life was cheap—cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of +honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the +_agio_, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser +metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of +Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all +victims of self-destruction! + +And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike +cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and +was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself +hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with use, +his bow broken and arrows exhausted—did not the noblest of the Romans +fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like circumstances?—deemed +it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude approaching a Christian +martyr’s, cheered himself with an impromptu verse: + + “Come! evermore come, + Ye dread sorrows and pains! + And heap on my burden’d back; + That I not one test may lack + Of what strength in me remains!” + +This, then, was the Bushido teaching—Bear and face all calamities and +adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as Mencius[20] +taught, “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, +it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and +bones with toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to +extreme poverty; and it confounds his undertakings. In all these +ways it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his +incompetencies.” True honor lies in fulfilling Heaven’s decree and no +death incurred in so doing is ignominious, whereas death to avoid what +Heaven has in store is cowardly indeed! In that quaint book of Sir +Thomas Browne’s, _Religio Medici_, there is an exact English equivalent +for what is repeatedly taught in our Precepts. Let me quote it: “It is +a brave act of valor to contemn death, but where life is more terrible +than death, it is then the truest valor to dare to live.” A renowned +priest of the seventeenth century satirically observed—“Talk as he +may, a samurai who ne’er has died is apt in decisive moments to flee +or hide.” Again—“Him who once has died in the bottom of his breast, no +spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of Tametomo can pierce.” How near +we come to the portals of the temple whose Builder taught “he that +loseth his life for my sake shall find it!” These are but a few of the +numerous examples which tend to confirm the moral identity of the human +species, notwithstanding an attempt so assiduously made to render the +distinction between Christian and Pagan as great as possible. + + [Footnote 20: I use Dr. Legge’s translation verbatim.] + +We have thus seen that the Bushido institution of suicide was neither +so irrational nor barbarous as its abuse strikes us at first sight. We +will now see whether its sister institution of Redress—or call it +Revenge, if you will—has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose +of this question in a few words, since a similar institution, or call it +custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all +peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the +continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain +recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? +Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and +only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time +which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, and only the +vigilant vengeance of the victim’s people preserves social order. “What +is the most beautiful thing on earth?” said Osiris to Horus. The reply +was, “To avenge a parent’s wrongs,”—to which a Japanese would have +added “and a master’s.” + +In revenge there is something which satisfies one’s sense of justice. +The avenger reasons:—“My good father did not deserve death. He who +killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not +tolerate a deed like this: Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the +will of my father; it is the will of Heaven that the evil-doer cease +from his work. He must perish by my hand; because he shed my father’s +blood, I, who am his flesh and blood, must shed the murderer’s. The same +Heaven shall not shelter him and me.” The ratiocination is simple and +childish (though we know Hamlet did not reason much more deeply), +nevertheless it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice +“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Our sense of revenge is as +exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation +are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone. + +In Judaism, which believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, +which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; +but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a +kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be +judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven +Ronins was condemned to death;—he had no court of higher instance to +appeal to; his faithful retainers addressed themselves to Vengeance, the +only Supreme Court existing; they in their turn were condemned by common +law,—but the popular instinct passed a different judgment and hence +their memory is still kept as green and fragrant as are their graves at +Sengakuji to this day. + +Though Lao-tse taught to recompense injury with kindness, the voice of +Confucius was very much louder, which counselled that injury must be +recompensed with justice;—and yet revenge was justified only when it +was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One’s own +wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne +and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal’s +oath to avenge his country’s wrongs, but he scorns James Hamilton for +wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife’s grave, as an +eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray. + +Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their _raison +d’être_ at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of +romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the +murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family +vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale +of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the +injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society +will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is +no need of _kataki-uchi_. If this had meant that “hunger of the heart +which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of +the victim,” as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs +in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it. + +As to _seppuku_, though it too has no existence _de jure_, we still hear +of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as +long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of +self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with +fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have +to concede to _seppuku_ an aristocratic position among them. He +maintains that “when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at +the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it +may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by +madness, or by morbid excitement.”[21] But a normal _seppuku_ does not +savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost _sang froid_ being +necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which +Dr. Strahan[22] divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the +Irrational or True, _seppuku_ is the best example of the former type. + + [Footnote 21: Morselli, _Suicide_, p. 314.] + + [Footnote 22: _Suicide and Insanity_.] + +From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of +Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in +social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called + + + THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE + SAMURAI, + +and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed +that “The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell,” he only echoed a +Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It +was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was +apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a +_go_-board[23] and initiated into the rights of the military profession +by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk +with which he had been playing. After this first ceremony of _adoptio +per arma_, he was no more to be seen outside his father’s gates without +this badge of his status, even if it was usually substituted for +every-day wear by a gilded wooden dirk. Not many years pass before he +wears constantly the genuine steel, though blunt, and then the sham arms +are thrown aside and with enjoyment keener than his newly acquired +blades, he marches out to try their edge on wood and stone. When he +reaches man’s estate at the age of fifteen, being given independence of +action, he can now pride himself upon the possession of arms sharp +enough for any work. The very possession of the dangerous instrument +imparts to him a feeling and an air of self-respect and responsibility. +“He beareth not his sword in vain.” What he carries in his belt is a +symbol of what he carries in his mind and heart—Loyalty and Honor. The +two swords, the longer and the shorter—called respectively _daito_ and +_shoto_ or _katana_ and _wakizashi_—never leave his side. When at home, +they grace the most conspicuous place in study or parlor; by night they +guard his pillow within easy reach of his hand. Constant companions, +they are beloved, and proper names of endearment given them. Being +venerated, they are well-nigh worshiped. The Father of History has +recorded as a curious piece of information that the Scythians sacrificed +to an iron scimitar. Many a temple and many a family in Japan hoards a +sword as an object of adoration. Even the commonest dirk has due respect +paid to it. Any insult to it is tantamount to personal affront. Woe to +him who carelessly steps over a weapon lying on the floor! + + [Footnote 23: The game of _go_ is sometimes called Japanese + checkers, but is much more intricate than the English game. The + _go-_board contains 361 squares and is supposed to represent a + battle-field—the object of the game being to occupy as much space + as possible.] + +So precious an object cannot long escape the notice and the skill of +artists nor the vanity of its owner, especially in times of peace, when +it is worn with no more use than a crosier by a bishop or a sceptre by a +king. Shark-skin and finest silk for hilt, silver and gold for guard, +lacquer of varied hues for scabbard, robbed the deadliest weapon of half +its terror; but these appurtenances are playthings compared with the +blade itself. + +The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his +workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and +purification, or, as the phrase was, “he committed his soul and spirit +into the forging and tempering of the steel.” Every swing of the sledge, +every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a +religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of +his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as +a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there +is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface +the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate +texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which +histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting +exquisite grace with utmost strength;—all these thrill us with mixed +feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror. Harmless were its +mission, if it only remained a thing of beauty and joy! But, ever within +reach of the hand, it presented no small temptation for abuse. Too often +did the blade flash forth from its peaceful sheath. The abuse sometimes +went so far as to try the acquired steel on some harmless creature’s +neck. + +The question that concerns us most is, however,—Did Bushido justify +the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As +it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its +misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on +undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use +it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count +Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our +history, when assassinations, suicides, and other sanguinary practices +were the order of the day. Endowed as he once was with almost +dictatorial powers, repeatedly marked out as an object for +assassination, he never tarnished his sword with blood. In relating some +of his reminiscences to a friend he says, in a quaint, plebeian way +peculiar to him:—“I have a great dislike for killing people and so I +haven’t killed one single man. I have released those whose heads should +have been chopped off. A friend said to me one day, ‘You don’t kill +enough. Don’t you eat pepper and egg-plants?’ Well, some people are no +better! But you see that fellow was slain himself. My escape may be due +to my dislike of killing. I had the hilt of my sword so tightly fastened +to the scabbard that it was hard to draw the blade. I made up my mind +that though they cut me, I will not cut. Yes, yes! some people are truly +like fleas and mosquitoes and they bite—but what does their biting +amount to? It itches a little, that’s all; it won’t endanger life.” +These are the words of one whose Bushido training was tried in the fiery +furnace of adversity and triumph. The popular apothegm—“To be beaten is +to conquer,” meaning true conquest consists in not opposing a riotous +foe; and “The best won victory is that obtained without shedding of +blood,” and others of similar import—will show that after all the +ultimate ideal of knighthood was Peace. + +It was a great pity that this high ideal was left exclusively to priests +and moralists to preach, while the samurai went on practicing and +extolling martial traits. In this they went so far as to tinge the +ideals of womanhood with Amazonian character. Here we may profitably +devote a few paragraphs to the subject of + + + THE TRAINING AND POSITION OF + WOMAN. + +The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of +paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the +comprehension of men’s “arithmetical understanding.” The Chinese +ideogram denoting “the mysterious,” “the unknowable,” consists of two +parts, one meaning “young” and the other “woman,” because the physical +charms and delicate thoughts of the fair sex are above the coarse mental +calibre of our sex to explain. + +In the Bushido ideal of woman, however, there is little mystery and only +a seeming paradox. I have said that it was Amazonian, but that is only +half the truth. Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman +holding a broom—certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively +against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more +harmless uses for which the besom was first invented—the idea involved +being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the +English wife (weaver) and daughter (_duhitar_, milkmaid). Without +confining the sphere of woman’s activity to _Küche, Kirche, Kinder_, as +the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood +was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions—Domesticity and +Amazonian traits—are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, +as we shall see. + +Bushido being a teaching primarily intended for the masculine sex, the +virtues it prized in woman were naturally far from being distinctly +feminine. Winckelmann remarks that “the supreme beauty of Greek art is +rather male than female,” and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral +conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised +those women most “who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their +sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the +bravest of men.”[24] Young girls therefore, were trained to repress +their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate +weapons,—especially the long-handled sword called _nagi-nata_, so as to +be able to hold their own against unexpected odds. Yet the primary +motive for exercises of this martial character was not for use in the +field; it was twofold—personal and domestic. Woman owning no suzerain +of her own, formed her own bodyguard. With her weapon she guarded her +personal sanctity with as much zeal as her husband did his master’s. The +domestic utility of her warlike training was in the education of her +sons, as we shall see later. + + [Footnote 24: Lecky, _History of European Morals_ II, p. 383.] + +Fencing and similar exercises, if rarely of practical use, were a +wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But +these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could +be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood, +were presented with dirks (_kai-ken_, pocket poniards), which might be +directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their +own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them +severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of +self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and +Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a +Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her +father’s dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a +disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to +perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in +anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must +know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever +the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty +with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of +the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an +abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our +bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among +us.[25] On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the +samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner, +seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery, +says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to +write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction. +When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves +her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these +verses;— + + “For fear lest clouds may dim her light, + Should she but graze this nether sphere, + The young moon poised above the height + Doth hastily betake to flight.” + + [Footnote 25: For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing + see Finck’s _Lotos Time in Japan_, pp. 286-297.] + +It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was +our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the +gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and +literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our +literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women +played an important role in the history of Japanese _belles lettres_. +Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of _geisha_) +only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale +the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the +technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate +object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of +sound is attainable without the player’s heart being in harmony with +herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in +the training of youths—that accomplishments were ever kept subservient +to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and +brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I +sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in +London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in +his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of +business for them. + +The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social +ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social +parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,—in other words, as a +part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided +their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women +of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly +intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost +sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and +integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and +day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to +their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her +father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from +earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of +independence, but of dependent service. Man’s helpmeet, if her presence +is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she +retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth +becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but, +when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties, +disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal +wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, +in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon +pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take +her husband’s place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon +her own devoted head. + +The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before +taking her own life, needs no comment:—“Oft have I heard that no +accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that +all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common +bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to +our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two +short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow +followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being +loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be +the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving +partner. I have heard that Kō-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China, +lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave +as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt +farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope +or joy—why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I +not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime +tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good +master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as +deep as the sea and as high as the hills.” + +Woman’s surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and +family, was as willing and honorable as the man’s self-surrender to the +good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no +life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well +as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than +was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was +recognized as _Naijo_, “the inner help.” In the ascending scale of +service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might +annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I +know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of +Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of +each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator. +Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service—the serving of a cause +higher than one’s own self, even at the sacrifice of one’s +individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that +Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission—as far as that +is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth. + +My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish +surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced +with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by +Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The +point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so +thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was +required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its +Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the +view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman’s rights, who +exclaimed, “May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against +ancient customs!” Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female +status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the +loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which +are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part +of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can +the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the +true course for their historical development to take? These are grave +questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime +let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen +was really so bad as to justify a revolt. + +We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to “God and +the ladies,”—the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we +are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that +gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker +vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot +contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences, +while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is +feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily +low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M. +Guizot’s theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer’s? In reply I might +aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to +the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the +military nobles, the _daimio_, and the court nobles, the _kugé_—these +higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were +masses of the common people—mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants—whose +life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as +the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have +been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the +industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This +is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she +experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the +lower the social class—as, for instance, among small artisans—the more +equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility, +too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked, +chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex +into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally +effeminate. Thus Spencer’s dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As +to Guizot’s, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will +remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration, +so that his generalization applies to the _daimio_ and the _kugé_. + +I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words +give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do +not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man’s equal; but until +we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will +always be misunderstandings upon this subject. + +When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves, +_e.g._, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble +ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American +Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had +no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what +Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal +rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the +only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it +would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in +pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in +comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it +enough, to compare woman’s status to man’s as the value of silver is +compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a +method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important +kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In +view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil +its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its +relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from +economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a +standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of +woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very +little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this +double measurement;—as a social-political unit not much, while as wife +and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among +so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly +venerated? Was it not because they were _matrona_, mothers? Not as +fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So +with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the +government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers +and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted +to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were +primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the +education of their children. + +I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among +half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression +for one’s wife is “my rustic wife” and the like, she is despised and +held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as “my foolish +father,” “my swinish son,” “my awkward self,” etc., are in current use, +is not the answer clear enough? + +To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further +than the so-called Christian. “Man and woman shall be one flesh.” The +individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband +and wife are two persons;—hence when they disagree, their separate +_rights_ are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their +vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and—nonsensical +blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband +or wife speaks to a third party of his other half—better or worse—as +being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of +one’s self as “my bright self,” “my lovely disposition,” and so forth? +We think praising one’s own wife or one’s own husband is praising a part +of one’s own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad +taste among us,—and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have +diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one’s consort +was a usage most in vogue among the samurai. + +The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe +of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the +Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of +the numerical insufficiency of women[26] (who, now increasing, are, I am +afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the +respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief +standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main +water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was +located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul +and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the +early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader’s +notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as +lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion +presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being +founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, +though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions +which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me +the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, +which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment +doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,—a +separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in +Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I +might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and +Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties +as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan. + + [Footnote 26: I refer to those days when girls were imported from + England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.] + +It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in +the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military +class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of + + + THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO + +on the nation at large. + +We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which +rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more +elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its +rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually +casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first +enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from +amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, +and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are +no less contagious than vices. “There needs but one wise man in a +company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion,” says Emerson. No +social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral +influence. + +Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely +has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of +the squires and _gentlemen_? Very truly does M. Taine say, “These three +syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English +society.” Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement +and fling back the question—“When Adam delved and Eve span, where then +was the gentleman?” All the more pity that a gentleman was not present +in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for +his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more +tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful +experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor, +treason and rebellion. + +What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of +the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed +through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the +populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their +example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these +were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the +commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of +virtues for their own sake. + +In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a +small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says—“In English +Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to +Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman).” Write in place of +Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the +main features of the literary history of Japan. + +The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction—the +theatres, the story-teller’s booths, the preacher’s dais, the musical +recitations, the novels—have taken for their chief theme the stories of +the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire +of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsuné and his faithful retainer +Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with +gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its +embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The +clerks and the shop-boys, after their day’s work is over and the +_amado_[27] of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story +of Nobunaga and Hidéyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes +their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to +the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is +taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of +ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and +virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour +with greedy ear the romance of the samurai. + + [Footnote 27: Outside shutters.] + +The samurai grew to be the _beau ideal_ of the whole race. “As among +flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord,” so sang +the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class +itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity, +no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus +from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly +the work of Knighthood. + +Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, “Aristocracy and +Evolution,” has eloquently told us that “social evolution, in so far as +it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of +the intentions of great men;” further, that historical progress is +produced by a struggle “not among the community generally, to live, but +a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct, +to employ, the majority in the best way.” Whatever may be said about the +soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the +part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our +Empire. + +How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in +the development of a certain order of men, known as _otoko-daté_, the +natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of +them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen +and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of +hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that +samurai did to daimio, the willing service of “limb and life, of body, +chattels and earthly honor.” Backed by a vast multitude of rash and +impetuous working-men, those born “bosses” formed a formidable check to +the rampancy of the two-sworded order. + +In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where +it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral +standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at +first as the glory of the élite, became in time an aspiration and +inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not +attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet _Yamato Damashii_, +the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the _Volksgeist_ of the +Island Realm. If religion is no more than “Morality touched by +emotion,” as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better +entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoöri has put the mute +utterance of the nation into words when he sings:— + + “Isles of blest Japan! + Should your Yamato spirit + Strangers seek to scan, + Say—scenting morn’s sun-lit air, + Blows the cherry wild and fair!” + +Yes, the _sakura_[28] has for ages been the favorite of our people and +the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition +which the poet uses, the words the _wild cherry flower scenting the +morning sun_. + + [Footnote 28: _Cerasus pseudo-cerasus_, Lindley.] + +The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild—in the sense +of natural—growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental +qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its +essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But +its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and +grace of its beauty appeal to _our_ æsthetic sense as no other flower +can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, +which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are +hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she +clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop +untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy +odors—all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no +dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at +the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light +fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its +showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is +volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious +ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is +something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the +_sakura_ quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to +illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more +serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of +beauteous day. + +When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his +heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that +the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the +whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a +time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs +and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily +tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one +is the sakura the flower of the nation. + +Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the +wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, +is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so +frailly mortal? + + + IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE? + +Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already +wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline? + +It were a sad thing if a nation’s soul could die so fast. That were a +poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The +aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national +character, is as tenacious as the “irreducible elements of species, of +the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the +carnivorous animal.” In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations +and brilliant generalizations, M. LeBon[29] says, “The discoveries due +to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or +defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: +they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for +centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities.” +These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over, +provided there were qualities and defects of character which _constitute +the exclusive patrimony_ of each people. Schematizing theories of this +sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and +they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In +studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon +European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that +no one quality of character was its _exclusive_ patrimony. It is true +the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is +this aggregate which Emerson names a “compound result into which every +great force enters as an ingredient.” But, instead of making it, as +LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord +philosopher calls it “an element which unites the most forcible persons +of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; +and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack +the Masonic sign.” + + [Footnote 29: _The Psychology of Peoples_, p. 33.] + +The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in +particular, cannot be said to form “an irreducible element of species,” +but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. +Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the +last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it +transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely +widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has +calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, +“each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty +millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D.” The merest peasant +that grubs the soil, “bowed by the weight of centuries,” has in his +veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as “to the +ox.” + +An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the +nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when +Yoshida Shôin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote +on the eve of his execution the following stanza;— + + “Full well I knew this course must end in death; + It was Yamato spirit urged me on + To dare whate’er betide.” + +Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor +force of our country. + +Mr. Ransome says that “there are three distinct Japans in existence +side by side to-day,—the old, which has not wholly died out; the new, +hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now +through its most critical throes.” While this is very true in most +respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete +institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions, +requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old +Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove +the formative force of the new era. + +The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the +hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, +were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of +Knighthood. Some writers[30] have lately tried to prove that the +Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making +of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this +honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it +will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of +preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they +have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian +missionaries are doing great things for Japan—in the domain of +education, and especially of moral education:—only, the mysterious +though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in +divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet +Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the +character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged +us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern +Japan—of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the +reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:—and you +will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought +and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and +observation of the Far East,[31] that only the respect in which Japan +differed from other oriental despotisms lay in “the ruling influence +among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious +codes of honor that man has ever devised,” he touched the main spring +which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is +destined to be. + + [Footnote 30: Speer; _Missions and Politics in Asia_, Lecture IV, + pp. 189-190; Dennis: _Christian Missions and Social Progress_, Vol. + I, p. 32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.] + + [Footnote 31: _The Far East_, p. 375.] + +The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a +work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one +were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When +we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the +latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study +Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the +development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much +less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of +oriental institutions and peoples has written:—“We are told every day +how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those +islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan, +but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of +organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful. +She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before +imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence,” continues +Mr. Townsend, “unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea +of China. Where is the European apostle,” asks our author, “or +philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made Japan?”[32] Mr. +Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought +about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he +had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation +would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than +Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as +an inferior power,—that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or +industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of +transformation. + + [Footnote 32: Meredith Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, N.Y., 1900, 28.] + +The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read. +A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most +eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the +working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The +universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly +ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance, +fortitude and bravery that “the little Jap” possesses, were sufficiently +proved in the China-Japanese war.[33] “Is there any nation more loyal +and patriotic?” is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer, +“There is not,” we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood. + + [Footnote 33: Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and + Yamada on _Heroic Japan_, and Diosy on _The New Far East_.] + +On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and +defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of +abstruse philosophy—while some of our young men have already gained +international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved +anything in philosophical lines—is traceable to the neglect of +metaphysical training under Bushido’s regimen of education. Our sense of +honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; +and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, +that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor. + +Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, +dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, +stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane +things? He is the _shosei_ (student), to whom the earth is too small and +the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe +and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of +wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for +knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods +are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of +Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national +honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of +Bushido. + +Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said +that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people +responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it +has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly +translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different +degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion +could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an +appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master. +The word “Loyalty” revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted +to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued +“students’ strike” in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction +with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the +Director,—“Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought +to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is +not manly to push a falling man.” The scientific incapacity of the +professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into +insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By +arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great +magnitude can be accomplished. + +One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the +missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history—“What do we care for +heathen records?” some say—and consequently estrange their religion +from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed +to for centuries past. Mocking a nation’s history!—as though the career +of any people—even of the lowest African savages possessing no +record—were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by +the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be +deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races +themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and +white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race +forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the +past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new +religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an “old, old story,” which, if +presented in intelligible words,—that is to say, if expressed in the +vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people—will find easy +lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality. +Christianity in its American or English form—with more of Anglo-Saxon +freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder—is a poor scion +to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot +the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel +on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible—in Hawaii, +where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in +amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal +race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan—nay, it is +a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his +kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following +words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:—“Men +have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering +how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may +have been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of +themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity +with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at +impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be +said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of +religion.”[34] + + [Footnote 34: Jowett, _Sermons on Faith and Doctrine_, II.] + +But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little +doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a +power which we must take into account in reckoning + + + THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO, + +whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, +that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at +work to threaten it. + +Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the +Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats +itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did +with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay +of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application +to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that +helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages +are as surely working for the decline of Bushido. + +One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan +is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and +was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan +no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother +institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift +for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it +under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little +room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its +infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are +being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and +Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the +Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted +to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet +we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow +journalism. + +Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of +Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, “the decay of the ceremonial +code—or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life—among +the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities +of latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate +sensibilities.” The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can +tolerate no form or shape of trust—and Bushido was a trust organized +by those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, +fixing the grades and value of moral qualities—is alone powerful enough +to engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are +antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely +criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, +cannot admit “purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an +exclusive class.”[35] Add to this the progress of popular instruction, +of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,—then we can +easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai’s sword nor the +sharpest shafts shot from Bushido’s boldest bows can aught avail. The +state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same—shall we +call it the _Ehrenstaat_ or, after the manner of Carlyle, the +Heroarchy?—is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and +gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The +words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may +aptly be repeated of the samurai, that “the medium in which their ardent +deeds took shape is forever gone.” + + [Footnote 35: _Norman Conquest_, Vol. V, p. 482.] + +Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into +the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away +as “the captains and the kings depart.” + +If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues—be +it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome—can never make on earth a +“continuing city.” Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in +man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly +virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to +fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that +Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but +Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, +with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to +emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. +Callings nobler and broader than a warrior’s claim our attention to-day. +With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better +knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of +Benevolence—dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?—will expand +into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than +subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more +than citizens, being men. + +Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the +wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world +confirms the prophecy that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” A nation +that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank +of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain +indeed! + +When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not +only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an +honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry +dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says +that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of +France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally +abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of +Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of +swords, rang out the old, “the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence +of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise,” it rang +in the new age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators.” + +It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of +Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work +of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does +ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, +burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, +without a master’s hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis +Napoleon beat the Prussians with his _Mitrailleuse_, or the Spaniards +with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the +old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite +saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of +implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do +not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does +not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea +and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and +beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of +our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly +visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show +a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial +virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, “but ours on +trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come,” +and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate +one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to +widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life. + +It has been predicted—and predictions have been corroborated by the +events of the last half century—that the moral system of Feudal Japan, +like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new +ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. +Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must +not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is +not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from +other birds. “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It does not come +rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing +across the seas, however broad. “God has granted,” says the Koran, “to +every people a prophet in its own tongue.” The seeds of the Kingdom, as +vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido. +Now its days are closing—sad to say, before its full fruition—and we +turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of +strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to +take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and +Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The +only other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with +Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with +which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like “a dimly burning wick” +which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame. +Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets—notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos +and Habakkuk—Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of +rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, +which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, +will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its +capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, +self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in +some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing +phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, +the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene. + +Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)—or will the +future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and +Hellenism?—will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals +will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which +side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it +can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is +willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total +extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It +is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and +vitality are still felt through many channels of life—in the philosophy +of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world. +Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his +spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal +discipline of Zeno at work. + +Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will +not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor +may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their +ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it +will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich +life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its +very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a +far-off unseen hill, “the wayside gaze beyond;”—then in the beautiful +language of the Quaker poet, + + “The traveler owns the grateful sense + Of sweetness near, he knows not whence, + And, pausing, takes with forehead bare + The benediction of the air.” + + + 明治三十八年六月二十二日印 + 明治三十八年六月二十五日訂正增補第十版發行 + 明治三十八年九月二十日第十一版發行 + 明治四十年二月二十日第十二版發行 + 明治四十一年三月二十五日第十三版發行 + + 英文武士道 + 正價金壹圓 + + 著作權登錄濟 + + 著作者 新渡戶稻造 + 東京市小石川區小日向臺町一丁目七十五番地 + + 發行者 櫻井彥一郎 + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目三番地 + + 印刷者 青木弘 + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目十二番地 + + 印刷所 株式會社 秀英舍第一工場 + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目十二番地 + + 發行所 丁未出版社 + 東京市麴町區五番町十六番地 + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Bushido, the Soul of Japan</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Inazo Nitobé</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 21, 2004 [eBook #12096]<br /> +[Most recently updated: September 30, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN ***</div> + + +<div class="center"> +<img src="images/illus1.jpg" style="width: 70%;" alt="" /> +</div> + +<h1>BUSHIDO<br /> +<span style="font-size: smaller;">THE SOUL OF JAPAN</span></h1> + +<div class="center" style="font-size: small;">BY</div> +<div class="center"><b>INAZO NITOBÉ, A.M., Ph.D.</b></div> + +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 5%;">Author’s Edition, Revised and Enlarged</div> +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 5%;">13th EDITION</div> +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 5%;">1908</div> +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 5%;">DECEMBER, 1904</div> + +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 10%;">TO MY BELOVED UNCLE<br /> +TOKITOSHI OTA<br /> +WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST<br /> +AND<br /> +TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI<br /> +I DEDICATE<br /> +THIS LITTLE BOOK</div> + +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 10%;"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="i27">—“That way</div> + <div class="i0">Over the mountain, which who stands upon,</div> + <div class="i0">Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road;</div> + <div class="i0">While if he views it from the waste itself,</div> + <div class="i0">Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,</div> + <div class="i0">Not vague, mistakable! What’s a break or two</div> + <div class="i0">Seen from the unbroken desert either side?</div> + <div class="i0">And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)</div> + <div class="i0">What if the breaks themselves should prove at last</div> + <div class="i0">The most consummate of contrivances</div> + <div class="i0">To train a man’s eye, teach him what is faith?”</div> + <div class="i8">—<span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span>,</div> + <div class="i20"><i>Bishop Blougram’s Apology</i>.</div> + </div> +</div></div> + + <p>“There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have + from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a + predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of + mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of + honor.”<br /> + <span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 10em;">—Hallam,</span><br /> + <span style="margin-left: 15em;"><i>Europe in the Middle Ages</i>.</span></p> + +<p>“Chivalry is itself the poetry of life.”<br /> +<span class="smcap" style="margin-left: 10em;">—Schlegel,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;"><i>Philosophy of History</i>.</span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PREFACE1"></a>PREFACE</h2> + +<p>About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof +of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our +conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of +religion. “Do you mean to say,” asked the venerable professor, “that you +have no religious instruction in your schools?” On my replying in the +negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I +shall not easily forget, he repeated “No religion! How do you impart +moral education?” The question stunned me at the time. I could give no +ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, +were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the +different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find +that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils.</p> + +<p>The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries +put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs +prevail in Japan.</p> + +<p>In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my +wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and +Bushido,<a name="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a> the +moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1">[1]</a> +Pronounced <i>Boó-shee-doh’</i>. In putting Japanese words and +names into English, Hepburn’s rule is followed, that the vowels should +be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in English.</div> + +<p>Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put +down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given +in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught +and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force.</p> + +<p>Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest +Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging +to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over +them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while +these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I +have often thought,—“Had I their gift of language, I would present the +cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!” But one who speaks in a borrowed +tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible.</p> + +<p>All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I +have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, +believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the +comprehension of foreign readers.</p> + +<p>Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious +workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity +itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and +with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the +teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the +religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as +well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God +hath made a testament which maybe called “old” with every people and +nation,—Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my +theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public.</p> + +<p>In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend +Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the +characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this +book.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 50%;">INAZO NITOBE.</p> + +<p><i>Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899.</i></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PREFACE2"></a>PREFACE<br /> +TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION</h2> + +<p>Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, +this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has +passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth +appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be +issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of +Messrs. George H. Putnam’s Sons, of New York.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, <i>Bushido</i> has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev +of Khandesh, into German by Fräulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian +by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life +in Lemberg,—although this Polish edition has been censured by the +Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into +French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian +officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for +the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian +public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been +published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger +students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also +owe much for his aid in other ways.</p> + +<p>I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found +sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the +subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly +flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that +President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and +distributing several dozens of copies among his friends.</p> + +<p>In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have +largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, +as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on +Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot +of Japanese ethics—Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather +to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular +virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot +draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge +upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are +touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and +discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger +than it is.</p> + +<p>This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt +I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful +suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement.</p> + +<div style="margin-left: 70%;">I.N.</div> + +<div><i><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kyoto,</span><br /> +Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905.</i></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<p><a href="#PREFACE1">Preface</a></p> + +<p><a href="#PREFACE2">Preface to the Tenth and Revised Edition</a></p> + +<p><a href="#BUSHIDO">Bushido as an Ethical System</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SOURCES">Sources of Bushido</a></p> + +<p><a href="#RECTITUDE">Rectitude or Justice</a></p> + +<p><a href="#COURAGE">Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing</a></p> + +<p><a href="#BENEVOLENCE">Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress</a></p> + +<p><a href="#POLITENESS">Politeness</a></p> + +<p><a href="#VERACITY">Veracity or Truthfulness</a></p> + +<p><a href="#HONOR">Honor</a></p> + +<p><a href="#DUTY">The Duty of Loyalty</a></p> + +<p><a href="#EDUCATION">Education and Training of a Samurai</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SELF-CONTROL">Self-Control</a></p> + +<p><a href="#INSTITUTIONS">The Institutions of Suicide and Redress</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SWORD">The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai</a></p> + +<p><a href="#TRAINING">The Training and Position of Woman</a></p> + +<p><a href="#INFLUENCE">The Influence of Bushido</a></p> + +<p><a href="#ALIVE">Is Bushido Still Alive?</a></p> + +<p><a href="#FUTURE">The Future of Bushido</a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="BUSHIDO"></a>BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM.</h2> + +<p>Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its +emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique +virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living +object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape +or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware +that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society +which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as +those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed +their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of +feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother +institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the +language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the +neglected bier of its European prototype.</p> + +<p>It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so +erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that +chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either +among the nations of antiquity or among the modern +Orientals.<a name="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a> Such +ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good +Doctor’s work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking +at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the +time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx, +writing his “Capital,” called the attention of his readers to the +peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of +feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would +likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study +of chivalry in the Japan of the present.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2">[2]</a> +<i>History Philosophically Illustrated</i>, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol. +II, p. 2.</div> + +<p>Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between +European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of +this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, +<i>firstly</i>, the origin and sources of our chivalry; <i>secondly</i>, its +character and teaching; <i>thirdly</i>, its influence among the masses; and, +<i>fourthly</i>, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these +several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I +should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national +history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most +likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative +Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt +with as corollaries.</p> + +<p>The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the +original, more expressive than Horsemanship. <i>Bu-shi-do</i> means literally +Military-Knight-Ways—the ways which fighting nobles should observe in +their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the “Precepts +of Knighthood,” the <i>noblesse oblige</i> of the warrior class. Having thus +given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the +word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable +for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, +engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must +wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a +national <i>timbre</i> so expressive of race characteristics that the best of +translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice +and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German “<i>Gemüth</i>” +signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words +verbally so closely allied as the English <i>gentleman</i> and the French +<i>gentilhomme</i>?</p> + +<p>Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were +required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it +consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from +the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a +code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful +sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets +of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however +able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an +organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, +fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English +Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to +compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in +the seventeenth century Military Statutes (<i>Buké Hatto</i>) were +promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with +marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but +meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time +and place and say, “Here is its fountain head.” Only as it attains +consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be +identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many +threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the +political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman +Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the +ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in +England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period +previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in +Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned.</p> + +<p>Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, +the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These +were known as <i>samurai</i>, meaning literally, like the old English <i>cniht</i> +(knecht, knight), guards or attendants—resembling in character the +<i>soldurii</i> whom Cæsar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the +<i>comitati</i>, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his +time; or, to take a still later parallel, the <i>milites medii</i> that one +reads about in the history of Mediæval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word +<i>Bu-ké</i> or <i>Bu-shi</i> (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. +They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough +breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally +recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and +the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went +on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only “a rude race, +all masculine, with brutish strength,” to borrow Emerson’s phrase, +surviving to form families and the ranks of the <i>samurai</i>. Coming to +profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great +responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of +behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and +belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among +themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of +honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some +resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors.</p> + +<p>Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive +sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and +civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire +of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, “to leave behind him the name of a +fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one.” +And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which +moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even +so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions +endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom’s is the basis on which the +greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to +discover that <i>Bushido</i> does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting +in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, +brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, “We know from what +failings our virtue +springs.”<a name="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a> +“Sneaks” and “cowards” are epithets of +the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life +with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and +its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher +authority and more rational sources for its own justification, +satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, +without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal +of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with +concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with +spiritual data. “Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a +perfect Christian knight,” says Lamartine. In Japan there were several</p> + +<h2><a name="SOURCES"></a>SOURCES OF BUSHIDO,</h2> + +<p>of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust +in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in +sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with +death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil +master the utmost of his art, told him, “Beyond this my instruction must +give way to Zen teaching.” “Zen” is the Japanese equivalent for the +Dhyâna, which “represents human effort to reach through meditation zones +of thought beyond the range of verbal +expression.”<a name="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a> Its method is +contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be +convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, +of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this +Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, +and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself +above mundane things and awakes, “to a new Heaven and a new Earth.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3">[3]</a> +Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace loving +men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the fervor of a +worshiper of the strenuous life. “When I tell you,” he says in the +<i>Crown of Wild Olive</i>, “that war is the foundation of all the arts, I +mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and +faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very +dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. * * * I found in +brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength +of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace, +taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by +peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace.”</div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4">[4]</a> +Lafcadio Hearn, <i>Exotics and Retrospectives</i>, p. 84.</div> + +<p>What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such +loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such +filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by +the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant +character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of +“original sin.” On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and +God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which +divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto +shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, +and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part of +its furnishing. The presence of this article is easy to explain: it +typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, +reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in +front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its +shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic +injunction, “Know Thyself.” But self-knowledge does not imply, either in +the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, +not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral +kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the +Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his +eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter +veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman +conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so +much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its +nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its +ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial +family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more +than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain—it is the +sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the +Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a <i>Rechtsstaat</i>, or even the +Patron of a <i>Culturstaat</i>—he is the bodily representative of Heaven on +earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. +Boutmy<a name="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5">[5]</a> says +is true of English royalty—that it “is not only the +image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity,” as I +believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in +Japan.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5">[5]</a> +<i>The English People</i>, p. 188.</div> + +<p>The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the +emotional life of our race—Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp +very truly says: “In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell +whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven +or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation +itself.”<a name="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a> A similar +confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. I +said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect on +account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of national +instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a systematic +philosophy or a rational theology. This religion—or, is it not more +correct to say, the race emotions which this religion +expressed?—thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and +love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for +Shintoism, unlike the Mediæval Christian Church, prescribed to its +votaries scarcely any <i>credenda</i>, furnishing them at the same time with +<i>agenda</i> of a straightforward and simple type.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6">[6]</a> +“<i>Feudal and Modern Japan</i>” Vol. I, p. 183.</div> + +<p>As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the +most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral +relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), +father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between +friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had +recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, +benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts +was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling +class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the +requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius +exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often +quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic +natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the +existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under +censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment +in the heart of the samurai.</p> + +<p>The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books +for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere +acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in +no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an +intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant +of <i>Analects</i>. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling +sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be +boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little +smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more +so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge +becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the +learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was +considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to +ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike +spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, +that the cosmic process was unmoral.</p> + +<p>Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in +itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who +stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient +machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, +knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in +life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the +Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, “To +know and to act are one and the same.”</p> + +<p>I beg leave for a moment’s digression while I am on this subject, +inasmuch as some of the noblest types of <i>bushi</i> were strongly +influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily +recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making +allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, “Seek +ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things +shall be added unto you,” conveys a thought that may be found on almost +any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese +disciple<a name="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7">[7]</a> of his says—“The lord +of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, +becomes his mind (<i>Kokoro</i>); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever +luminous:” and again, “The spiritual light of our essential being is +pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up +in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called +conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of +heaven.” How very much do these words sound like some passages from +Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think +that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto +religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming’s +precepts. He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to +extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, +not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature +of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not +farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of +things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors +charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and +its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity +of temper cannot be gainsaid.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7">[7]</a>Miwa Shissai.</div> + +<p>Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which <i>Bushido</i> +imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few +and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct +of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of +our nation’s history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our +warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of +commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the +highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands +of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. +An acute French <i>savant</i>, M. de la Mazelière, thus sums up his +impressions of the sixteenth century:—“Toward the middle of the +sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in +society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to +barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,—these +formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in +whom Taine praises ‘the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden +resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to +suffer.’ In Japan as in Italy ‘the rude manners of the Middle Ages made +of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.’ And this +is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the +principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one +finds there between minds (<i>esprits</i>) as well as between temperaments. +While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of +energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character +as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of +civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to +Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak +of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its +mountains.”</p> + +<p>To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazelière +writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with</p> + +<h2><a name="RECTITUDE"></a>RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE,</h2> + +<p>the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more +loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The +conception of Rectitude may be erroneous—it may be narrow. A well-known +bushi defines it as a power of resolution;—“Rectitude is the power of +deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, +without wavering;—to die when it is right to die, to strike when to +strike is right.” Another speaks of it in the following terms: +”Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without +bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor +feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of +a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as +nothing.” Mencius calls Benevolence man’s mind, and Rectitude or +Righteousness his path. “How lamentable,” he exclaims, “is it to neglect +the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it +again! When men’s fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them +again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it.” Have we +not here “as in a glass darkly” a parable propounded three hundred years +later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself <i>the +Way</i> of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray +from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and +narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise.</p> + +<p>Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace +brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it +dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet +<i>Gishi</i> (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that +signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls—of whom +so much is made in our popular education—are known in common parlance +as the Forty-seven <i>Gishi</i>.</p> + +<p>In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and +downright falsehood for <i>ruse de guerre</i>, this manly virtue, frank and +honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly +praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to Valor, another martial virtue. +But before proceeding to speak of Valor, let me linger a little while on +what I may term a derivation from Rectitude, which, at first deviating +slightly from its original, became more and more removed from it, until +its meaning was perverted in the popular acceptance. I speak of <i>Gi-ri</i>, +literally the Right Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense +of duty which public opinion expected an incumbent to fulfil. In its +original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,—hence, +we speak of the <i>Giri</i> we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to +society at large, and so forth. In these instances <i>Giri</i> is duty; for +what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. +Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative?</p> + +<p><i>Giri</i> primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology +was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, +though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be some +other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated this +authority in <i>Giri</i>. Very rightly did they formulate this +authority—<i>Giri</i>—since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, +recourse must be had to man’s intellect and his reason must be quickened +to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of +any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous, Right +Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. <i>Giri</i> thus understood is a +severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards +perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it +is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should +be <i>the</i> law. I deem it a product of the conditions of an artificial +society—of a society in which accident of birth and unmerited favour +instituted class distinctions, in which the family was the social unit, +in which seniority of age was of more account than superiority of +talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb before +arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, <i>Giri</i> +in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain +this and sanction that,—as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, +sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why +a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father’s +dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, <i>Giri</i> has, in my +opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into +cowardly fear of censure. I might say of <i>Giri</i> what Scott wrote of +patriotism, that “as it is the fairest, so it is often the most +suspicious, mask of other feelings.” Carried beyond or below Right +Reason, <i>Giri</i> became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings +every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily have been turned +into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of</p> + +<h2><a name="COURAGE"></a>COURAGE, THE SPIRIT OF DARING<br /> +AND BEARING,</h2> + +<p>to the consideration of which we shall now return. Courage was scarcely +deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in +the cause of Righteousness. In his “Analects” Confucius defines Courage +by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. “Perceiving +what is right,” he says, “and doing it not, argues lack of courage.” Put +this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, “Courage is doing +what is right.” To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one’s self, +to rush into the jaws of death—these are too often identified with +Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct—what +Shakespeare calls, “valor misbegot”—is unjustly applauded; but not so +in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, +was called a “dog’s death.” “To rush into the thick of battle and to be +slain in it,” says a Prince of Mito, “is easy enough, and the merest +churl is equal to the task; but,” he continues, “it is true courage to +live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die,” +and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines +courage as “the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he +should not fear.” A distinction which is made in the West between moral +and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai +youth has not heard of “Great Valor” and the “Valor of a Villein?”</p> + +<p>Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of +soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be +trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular +virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits +were repeated almost before boys left their mother’s breast. Does a +little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: +“What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your +arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit +<i>harakiri</i>?” We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little +boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little +page, “Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow +bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms +to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a +samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger.” +Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though +stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early +imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness +sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called +forth all the pluck that was in them. “Bears hurl their cubs down the +gorge,” they said. Samurai’s sons were let down the steep valleys of +hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of +food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for +inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter +strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the +sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to +their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they +frequently—once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of +learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without +sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny +places—to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be +haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when +decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the +ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the +darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the +trunkless head.</p> + +<p>Does this ultra-Spartan system of “drilling the nerves” strike the +modern pedagogist with horror and doubt—doubt whether the tendency +would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the +heart? Let us see what other concepts Bushido had of Valor.</p> + +<p>The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure—calm presence +of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical +manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave +man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the +equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the +midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake +him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the +menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, +for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain +in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing +or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of +what we call a capacious mind (<i>yoyū</i>), which, for from being pressed or +crowded, has always room for something more.</p> + +<p>It passes current among us as a piece of authentic history, that as Ōta +Dokan, the great builder of the castle of Tokyo, was pierced through +with a spear, his assassin, knowing the poetical predilection of his +victim, accompanied his thrust with this couplet—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Ah! how in moments like these</div> +<div class="i1">Our heart doth grudge the light of life;”</div> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>whereupon the expiring hero, not one whit daunted by the mortal wound in +his side, added the lines—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Had not in hours of peace,</div> +<div class="i1">It learned to lightly look on life.”</div> +</div></div> +</div> + +<p>There is even a sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which +are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in +old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to +exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not +solely a matter of brute force; it was, as well, an intellectual +engagement.</p> + +<p>Of such character was the battle fought on the bank of the Koromo River, +late in the eleventh century. The eastern army routed, its leader, +Sadato, took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and +called aloud—“It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the +enemy,” Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted +an impromptu verse—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth” (<i>koromo</i>).</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when the defeated warrior, +undismayed, completed the couplet—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Since age has worn its threads by use.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Yoshiie, whose bow had all the while been bent, suddenly unstrung it and +turned away, leaving his prospective victim to do as he pleased. When +asked the reason of his strange behavior, he replied that he could not +bear to put to shame one who had kept his presence of mind while hotly +pursued by his enemy.</p> + +<p>The sorrow which overtook Antony and Octavius at the death of Brutus, +has been the general experience of brave men. Kenshin, who fought for +fourteen years with Shingen, when he heard of the latter’s death, wept +aloud at the loss of “the best of enemies.” It was this same Kenshin who +had set a noble example for all time, in his treatment of Shingen, +whose provinces lay in a mountainous region quite away from the sea, and +who had consequently depended upon the Hōjō provinces of the Tokaido for +salt. The Hōjō prince wishing to weaken him, although not openly at war +with him, had cut off from Shingen all traffic in this important +article. Kenshin, hearing of his enemy’s dilemma and able to obtain his +salt from the coast of his own dominions, wrote Shingen that in his +opinion the Hōjō lord had committed a very mean act, and that although +he (Kenshin) was at war with him (Shingen) he had ordered his subjects +to furnish him with plenty of salt—adding, “I do not fight with salt, +but with the sword,” affording more than a parallel to the words of +Camillus, “We Romans do not fight with gold, but with iron.” Nietzsche +spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, “You are to be proud of your +enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success also.” Indeed +valor and honor alike required that we should own as enemies in war only +such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. When valor attains this +height, it becomes akin to</p> + +<h2><a name="BENEVOLENCE"></a>BENEVOLENCE, THE FEELING OF<br /> +DISTRESS,</h2> + +<p>love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, which were +ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes +of the human soul. Benevolence was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold +sense;—princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; +princely as particularly befitting a princely profession. We needed no +Shakespeare to feel—though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we +needed him to express it—that mercy became a monarch better than his +crown, that it was above his sceptered sway. How often both Confucius +and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist +in benevolence. Confucius would say, “Let but a prince cultivate virtue, +people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will +bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right +uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth an outcome.” Again, “Never has +there been a case of a sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not +loving righteousness,” Mencius follows close at his heels and says, +“Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power in +a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a whole +empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue.” Also,—”It +is impossible that any one should become ruler of the people to whom +they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts.” Both defined this +indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, +“Benevolence—Benevolence is Man.” Under the régime of feudalism, which +could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we +owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter +surrender of “life and limb” on the part of the governed would have left +nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural +consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called “oriental +despotism,”—as though there were no despots of occidental history!</p> + +<p>Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a +mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote +that “Kings are the first servants of the State,” jurists thought +rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. +Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan, +Yozan of Yonézawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that +feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although +unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher +sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father +to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not +usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal +government—paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular +government (Uncle Sam’s, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and +a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey +reluctantly, while in the other they do so with “that proud submission, +that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, +even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted +freedom.”<a name="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a> The old +saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the “king +of devils, because of his subjects’ often insurrections against, and +depositions of, their princes,” and which made the French monarch the +“king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and impositions,” but +which gave the title of “the king of men” to the sovereign of Spain +“because of his subjects’ willing obedience.” But enough!—</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8">[8]</a> +Burke, <i>French Revolution</i>.</div> + +<p>Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which +it is impossible to harmonize. Pobyedonostseff has clearly set before us +the contrast in the foundations of English and other European +communities; namely that these were organized on the basis of common +interest, while that was distinguished by a strongly developed +independent personality. What this Russian statesman says of the +personal dependence of individuals on some social alliance and in the +end of ends of the State, among the continental nations of Europe and +particularly among Slavonic peoples, is doubly true of the Japanese. +Hence not only is a free exercise of monarchical power not felt as +heavily by us as in Europe, but it is generally moderated by parental +consideration for the feelings of the people. “Absolutism,” says +Bismarck, “primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty, +devotion to duty, energy and inward humility.” If I may be allowed to +make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of +the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of “Kingship, by the +grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to +the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can +release the monarch.”</p> + +<p>We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright +Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the +gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned +against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with +justice and rectitude. Masamuné expressed it well in his oft-quoted +aphorism—“Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; +Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness.”</p> + +<p>Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is +universally true that “The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the +daring.” “<i>Bushi no +nasaké</i>”—the tenderness of a warrior—had a sound +which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy +of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other +being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, +but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not +remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with +power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual +or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual, +since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the +recipient.</p> + +<p>Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to +turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius +taught concerning the power of Love. “Benevolence,” he says, “brings +under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: +they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to +extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots.” He also +says that “the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore +a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in +distress.” Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his +ethical philosophy on Sympathy.</p> + +<p>It is indeed striking how closely the code of knightly honor of one +country coincides with that of others; in other words, how the much +abused oriental ideas of morals find their counterparts in the noblest +maxims of European literature. If the well-known lines,</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">Hae tibi erunt artes—pacisque imponere morem,</div> +<div class="i0">Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos,</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>were shown a Japanese gentleman, he might readily accuse the Mantuan +bard of plagiarizing from the literature of his own country.</p> + +<p>Benevolence to the weak, the downtrodden or the vanquished, was ever extolled as +peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art must be +familiar with the representation of a priest riding backwards on a cow. +The rider was once a warrior who in his day made his name a by-word of +terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-ura, (1184 A.D.), which was +one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy and in +single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms. Now the +etiquette of war required that on such occasions no blood should be +spilt, unless the weaker party proved to be a man of rank or ability +equal to that of the stronger. The grim combatant would have the name of +the man under him; but he refusing to make it known, his helmet was +ruthlessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and +beardless, made the astonished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth +to his feet, in paternal tones he bade the stripling go: “Off, young +prince, to thy mother’s side! The sword of Kumagaye shall never be +tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o’er yon pass before +thy enemies come in sight!” The young warrior refused to go and begged +Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above the +hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time +before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; +there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who this +self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden arms; the +strong hand of the warrior quivers; again he begs his victim to flee for +his life. Finding all his entreaties vain and hearing the approaching +steps of his comrades, he exclaims: “If thou art overtaken, thou mayest +fall at a more ignoble hand than mine. O, thou Infinite! receive his +soul!” In an instant the sword flashes in the air, and when it falls it +is red with adolescent blood. When the war is ended, we find our soldier +returning in triumph, but little cares he now for honor or fame; he +renounces his warlike career, shaves his head, dons a priestly garb, +devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never turning his back +to the West, where lies the Paradise whence salvation comes and whither +the sun hastes daily for his rest.</p> + +<p>Critics may point out flaws in this story, which is casuistically +vulnerable. Let it be: all the same it shows that Tenderness, Pity and +Love, were traits which adorned the most sanguinary exploits of the +samurai. It was an old maxim among them that “It becometh not the fowler +to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom.” This in a large +measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered peculiarly +Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us. For decades before +we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had +familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe. In the +principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the +custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of +trumpets or the beat of drums,—“those clamorous harbingers of blood and +death”—stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and +tender melodies on +the <i>biwa</i>,<a name="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9">[9]</a> soothing our fiery spirits, drawing +our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage. Polybius +tells us of the Constitution of Arcadia, which required all youths +under thirty to practice music, in order that this gentle art might +alleviate the rigors of that inclement region. It is to its influence +that he attributes the absence of cruelty in that part of the Arcadian +mountains.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9">[9]</a> +A musical instrument, resembling the guitar.</div> + +<p>Nor was Satsuma the only place in Japan where gentleness was inculcated +among the warrior class. A Prince of Shirakawa jots down his random +thoughts, and among them is the following: “Though they come stealing to +your bedside in the silent watches of the night, drive not away, but +rather cherish these—the fragrance of flowers, the sound of distant +bells, the insect humming of a frosty night.” And again, “Though they +may wound your feelings, these three you have only to forgive, the +breeze that scatters your flowers, the cloud that hides your moon, and +the man who tries to pick quarrels with you.”</p> + +<p>It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler +emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged. Our poetry has +therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness. A well-known +anecdote of a rustic samurai illustrates a case in point. When he was +told to learn versification, and “The Warbler’s +Notes”<a name="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10">[10]</a> was given him +for the subject of his first attempt, his fiery spirit rebelled and he +flung at the feet of his master this uncouth production, which ran</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10">[10]</a> +The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the nightingale of Japan.</div> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“The brave warrior keeps apart</div> +<div class="i1">The ear that might listen</div> +<div class="i1">To the warbler’s song.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the +youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to +the sweet notes of the <i>uguisu</i>, and he wrote</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Stands the warrior, mailed and strong,</div> +<div class="i1">To hear the uguisu’s song,</div> +<div class="i1">Warbled sweet the trees among.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>We admire and enjoy the heroic incident in Körner’s short life, when, as +he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous “Farewell to +Life.” Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our +warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to +the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was +either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might +be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an +ode,—and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the +breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers.</p> + +<p>What Christianity has done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the +midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in +Japan. The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for +the sufferings of others. Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect +for others’ feelings, are at the root of</p> + +<h2><a name="POLITENESS"></a>POLITENESS,</h2> + +<p>that courtesy and urbanity of manners which has been noticed by every +foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait. Politeness is a poor virtue, +if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it +should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the +feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of +things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter +express no plutocratic distinctions, but were originally distinctions +for actual merit.</p> + +<p>In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love. We may +reverently say, politeness “suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, +vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, +seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of +evil.” Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six +elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, +inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of social intercourse?</p> + +<p>While thus extolling Politeness, far be it from me to put it in the +front rank of virtues. If we analyze it, we shall find it correlated +with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone? +While—or rather because—it was exalted as peculiar to the profession +of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there +came into existence its counterfeits. Confucius himself has repeatedly +taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as +sounds are of music.</p> + +<p>When propriety was elevated to the <i>sine qua non</i> of social intercourse, +it was only to be expected that an elaborate system of etiquette should +come into vogue to train youth in correct social behavior. How one must +bow in accosting others, how he must walk and sit, were taught and +learned with utmost care. Table manners grew to be a science. Tea +serving and drinking were raised to a ceremony. A man of education is, +of course, expected to be master of all these. Very fitly does Mr. +Veblen, in his interesting +book,<a name="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a> +call decorum “a product and an exponent of the leisure-class life.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11">[11]</a><i>Theory + of the Leisure Class</i>, N.Y. 1899, p. 46.</div> + +<p>I have heard slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate +discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much +of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. +I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, +but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to +ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my +mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the +contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for +the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether +trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most +appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything +to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both +the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as +the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain +definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a +novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed +is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the +most economical use of force,—hence, according to Spencer’s dictum, the +most graceful.</p> + +<p>The spiritual significance of social decorum,—or, I might say, to +borrow from the vocabulary of the “Philosophy of Clothes,” the +spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward +garments,—is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us +in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our +ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave +rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book. +It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, +that I wish to emphasize.</p> + +<p>I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so +much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into +existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was +put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the +Ogasawara, in the following terms: “The end of all etiquette is to so +cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the +roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person.” It means, in other +words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the +parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such +harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of +spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word +<i>biensèance</i><a name="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12">[12]</a> +comes thus to contain!</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12">[12]</a> +Etymologically <i>well-seatedness</i>.</div> + +<p>If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it +follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful +deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine +manners, therefore, mean power in repose. When the barbarian Gauls, +during the sack of Rome, burst into the assembled Senate and dared pull +the beards of the venerable Fathers, we think the old gentlemen were to +blame, inasmuch as they lacked dignity and strength of manners. Is lofty +spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not?—All +roads lead to Rome!</p> + +<p>As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then +become spiritual culture, I may take <i>Cha-no-yu</i>, the tea ceremony. +Tea-sipping as a fine art! Why should it not be? In the children drawing +pictures on the sand, or in the savage carving on a rock, was the +promise of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. How much more is the drinking +of a beverage, which began with the transcendental contemplation of a +Hindoo anchorite, entitled to develop into a handmaid of Religion and +Morality? That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure +and quietness of demeanor, which are the first essentials of <i>Cha-no-yu</i> +are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right +feeling. The scrupulous cleanliness of the little room, shut off from +sight and sound of the madding crowd, is in itself conducive to direct +one’s thoughts from the world. The bare interior does not engross one’s +attention like the innumerable pictures and bric-a-brac of a Western +parlor; the presence of +<i>kakemono</i><a name="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13">[13]</a> +calls our attention more to grace +of design than to beauty of color. The utmost refinement of taste is the +object aimed at; whereas anything like display is banished with +religious horror. The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative +recluse, in a time when wars and the rumors of wars were incessant, is +well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. +Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company +assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their +swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, +there to find peace and friendship.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13">[13]</a> +Hanging scrolls, which may be either paintings or +ideograms, used for decorative purposes.</div> + +<p><i>Cha-no-yu</i> is more than a ceremony—it is a fine art; it is poetry, +with articulate gestures for rhythm: it is a <i>modus operandi</i> of soul +discipline. Its greatest value lies in this last phase. Not infrequently +the other phases preponderated in the mind of its votaries, but that +does not prove that its essence was not of a spiritual nature.</p> + +<p>Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart +grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, +springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and +actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever +a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should +weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Such +didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, +expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, +as one missionary lady of twenty years’ residence once said to me, +“awfully funny.” You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over +you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly +his hat is off—well, that is perfectly natural, but the “awfully funny” +performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down +and he stands in the glaring sun also. How foolish!—Yes, exactly so, +provided the motive were less than this: “You are in the sun; I +sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it +were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot +shade you, I will share your discomforts.” Little acts of this kind, +equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities. +They are the “bodying forth” of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of +others.</p> + +<p>Another “awfully funny” custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; +but many superficial writers on Japan have dismissed it by simply +attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every +foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in +making proper reply upon the occasion. In America, when you make a gift, +you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander +it. The underlying idea with you is, “This is a nice gift: if it were +not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to +give you anything but what is nice.” In contrast to this, our logic +runs: “You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you. You +will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my +good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token. +It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for +you.” Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate +idea is one and the same. Neither is “awfully funny.” The American +speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the +spirit which prompts the gift.</p> + +<p>It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety +shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to +take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass +judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or +to observe rules of propriety about eating? A Chinese sage answers, “If +you take a case where the eating is all-important, and the observing the +rules of propriety is of little importance, and compare them together, +why merely say that the eating is of the more importance?” “Metal is +heavier than feathers,” but does that saying have reference to a single +clasp of metal and a wagon-load of feathers? Take a piece of wood a foot +thick and raise it above the pinnacle of a temple, none would call it +taller than the temple. To the question, “Which is the more important, +to tell the truth or to be polite?” the Japanese are said to give an +answer diametrically opposite to what the American will say,—but I +forbear any comment until I come to speak of</p> + +<h2><a name="VERACITY"></a>VERACITY OR TRUTHFULNESS,</h2> + +<p>without which Politeness is a farce and a show. “Propriety carried +beyond right bounds,” says Masamuné, “becomes a lie.” An ancient poet +has outdone Polonius in the advice he gives: “To thyself be faithful: if +in thy heart thou strayest not from truth, without prayer of thine the +Gods will keep thee whole.” The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Tsu-tsu +gives expression in the <i>Doctrine of the Mean</i>, attributes to it +transcendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine. +“Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity +there would be nothing.” He then dwells with eloquence on its +far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes +without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose +without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a +combination of “Word” and “Perfect,” one is tempted to draw a parallel +between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of <i>Logos</i>—to such height +does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight.</p> + +<p>Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly. The bushi held that +his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than +that of the tradesman and peasant. <i>Bushi no ichi-gon</i>—the word of a +samurai or in exact German equivalent <i>ein Ritterwort</i>—was sufficient +guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such +weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a +written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity. +Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for +<i>ni-gon</i>, a double tongue.</p> + +<p>The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of +Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher +not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to +their honor. I am well aware that they did swear by different deities or +upon their swords; but never has swearing degenerated into wanton form +and irreverent interjection. To emphasize our words a practice of +literally sealing with blood was sometimes resorted to. For the +explanation of such a practice, I need only refer my readers to Goethe’s +Faust.</p> + +<p>A recent American writer is responsible for this statement, that if you +ask an ordinary Japanese which is better, to tell a falsehood or be +impolite, he will not hesitate to answer “to tell a falsehood!” Dr. +Peery<a name="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14">[14]</a> is partly +right and partly wrong; right in that an ordinary +Japanese, even a samurai, may answer in the way ascribed to him, but +wrong in attributing too much weight to the term he translates +“falsehood.” This word (in Japanese <i>uso</i>) is employed to denote +anything which is not a truth (<i>makoto</i>) or fact (<i>honto</i>). Lowell tells +us that Wordsworth could not distinguish between truth and fact, and an +ordinary Japanese is in this respect as good as Wordsworth. Ask a +Japanese, or even an American of any refinement, to tell you whether he +dislikes you or whether he is sick at his stomach, and he will not +hesitate long to tell falsehoods and answer, “I like you much,” or, “I +am quite well, thank you.” To sacrifice truth merely for the sake of +politeness was regarded as an “empty form” (<i>kyo-rei</i>) and “deception by +sweet words,” and was never justified.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14">[14]</a> +Peery, <i>The Gist of Japan</i>, p. 86.</div> + +<p>I own I am speaking now of the Bushido idea of veracity; but it may not +be amiss to devote a few words to our commercial integrity, of which I +have heard much complaint in foreign books and journals. A loose +business morality has indeed been the worst blot on our national +reputation; but before abusing it or hastily condemning the whole race +for it, let us calmly study it and we shall be rewarded with consolation +for the future.</p> + +<p>Of all the great occupations of life, none was farther removed from the +profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the +category of vocations,—the knight, the tiller of the soil, the +mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and +could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the +counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social +arrangement. Montesquieu has made it clear that the debarring of the +nobility from mercantile pursuits was an admirable social policy, in +that it prevented wealth from accumulating in the hands of the powerful. +The separation of power and riches kept the distribution of the latter +more nearly equable. Professor Dill, the author of “Roman Society in the +Last Century of the Western Empire,” has brought afresh to our mind that +one cause of the decadence of the Roman Empire, was the permission given +to the nobility to engage in trade, and the consequent monopoly of +wealth and power by a minority of the senatorial families.</p> + +<p>Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of +development which it would have attained under freer conditions. The +obloquy attached to the calling naturally brought within its pale such +as cared little for social repute. “Call one a thief and he will steal:” +put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it, +for it is natural that “the normal conscience,” as Hugh Black says, +“rises to the demands made on it, and easily falls to the limit of the +standard expected from it.” It is unnecessary to add that no business, +commercial or otherwise, can be transacted without a code of morals. Our +merchants of the feudal period had one among themselves, without which +they could never have developed, as they did, such fundamental +mercantile institutions as the guild, the bank, the bourse, insurance, +checks, bills of exchange, etc.; but in their relations with people +outside their vocation, the tradesmen lived too true to the reputation +of their order.</p> + +<p>This being the case, when the country was opened to foreign trade, only +the most adventurous and unscrupulous rushed to the ports, while the +respectable business houses declined for some time the repeated requests +of the authorities to establish branch houses. Was Bushido powerless to +stay the current of commercial dishonor? Let us see.</p> + +<p>Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a +few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, +feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai’s fiefs were taken +and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to +invest them in mercantile transactions. Now you may ask, “Why could they +not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations +and so reform the old abuses?” Those who had eyes to see could not weep +enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with +the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably +failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through +sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival. When +we know that eighty per cent. of the business houses fail in so +industrial a country as America, is it any wonder that scarcely one +among a hundred samurai who went into trade could succeed in his new +vocation? It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes +were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; +but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth +were not the ways of honor. In what respects, then, were they different?</p> + +<p>Of the three incentives to Veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz: the +industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was +altogether lacking in Bushido. As to the second, it could develop little +in a political community under a feudal system. It is in its +philosophical, and as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that Honesty +attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues. With all my sincere +regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I +ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that “Honesty is the best +policy,” that it <i>pays</i> to be honest. Is not this virtue, then, its own +reward? If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, +I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies!</p> + +<p>If Bushido rejects a doctrine of <i>quid pro quo</i> rewards, the shrewder +tradesman will readily accept it. Lecky has very truly remarked that +Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as +Nietzsche puts it, “Honesty is the youngest of virtues”—in other +words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry. Without +this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most +cultivated mind could adopt and nourish. Such minds were general among +the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian +foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive. Industries advancing, +Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice. Just +think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the +professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of “a lamentable +lack of reliability with regard to German shipments <i>inter alia</i>, +apparent both as to quality and quantity;” now-a-days we hear +comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade. In +twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays. Already +our merchants are finding that out. For the rest I recommend the reader +to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this +point.<a name="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15">[15]</a> It is +interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were +the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the +form of promissory notes. It was quite a usual thing to insert such +clauses as these: “In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I +shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;” or, “In case I +fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool,” and the like.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15">[15]</a> +Knapp, <i>Feudal and Modern Japan</i>, Vol. I, Ch. IV. Ransome, +<i>Japan in Transition</i>, Ch. VIII.</div> + +<p>Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive +higher than courage. In the absence of any positive commandment against +bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply +denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable. As a matter of +fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and +its German etymology so identified with</p> + +<h2><a name="HONOR"></a>HONOR,</h2> + +<p>that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration +of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood.</p> + +<p>The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity +and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to +value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word +ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used +freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as <i>na</i> (name) +<i>men-moku</i> (countenance), <i>guai-bun</i> (outside hearing), reminding us +respectively of the biblical use of “name,” of the evolution of the term +“personality” from the Greek mask, and of “fame.” A good name—one’s +reputation, the immortal part of one’s self, what remains being +bestial—assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its +integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (<i>Ren-chi-shin</i>) was +one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. “You will be +laughed at,” “It will disgrace you,” “Are you not ashamed?” were the +last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. +Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the +child’s heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its +mother’s womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being +closely bound up with strong family consciousness. “In losing the +solidarity of families,” says Balzac, “society has lost the fundamental +force which Montesquieu named Honor.” Indeed, the sense of shame seems +to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our +race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in +consequence of tasting “the fruit of that forbidden tree” was, to my +mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the +awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in +pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and +tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her +dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience +clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial +ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will +efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who +refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his +youth; “because,” he said, “dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which +time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge.”</p> + +<p>Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, +what Carlyle has latterly expressed,—namely, that “Shame is the soil of +all Virtue, of good manners and good morals.”</p> + +<p>The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks such +eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it nevertheless +hung like Damocles’ sword over the head of every samurai and often +assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated +which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the +slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took +offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary +strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a +well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea +jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple +and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed +on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior +with a beast—I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe. +Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; (1) that they +were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made +of the samurai’s profession of honor; and (3) that a very strong sense +of shame was developed among them. It is plainly unfair to take an +abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of +the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and +extravagance—inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania +there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium +tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai +about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine +virtue?</p> + +<p>The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined to +run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and patience. +To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as “short-tempered.” +The popular adage said: “To bear what you think you cannot bear is +really to bear.” The great Iyéyasu left to posterity a few maxims, +among which are the following:—“The life of man is like going a long +distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not. * * * * +Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. * * * +Forbearance is the basis of length of days.” He proved in his life what +he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths +of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he +attributed, “I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;” to +Hidéyoshi, “I will force her to sing for me;” and +to Iyéyasu, “I will +wait till she opens her lips.”</p> + +<p>Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In +one place he writes to this effect: “Though you denude yourself and +insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your +outrage.” Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy +a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath.</p> + +<p>To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could +reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, +for instance, this saying of Ogawa: “When others speak all manner of +evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect +that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties.” Take +another of Kumazawa:—“When others blame thee, blame them not; when +others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion +and Desire part.” Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon +whose overhanging brows “shame is ashamed to sit;”—“The Way is the way +of Heaven and Earth: Man’s place is to follow it: therefore make it the +object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with +equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love +others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy +partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou +comest not short of thine own mark.” Some of those sayings remind us of +Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality +natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings +remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts.</p> + +<p>It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of +magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing +clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few +enlightened minds being aware that it “from no condition rises,” but +that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than +for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in +Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, “’Tis in every man’s +mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly +honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men +confer is not good honor. Those whom Châo the Great ennobles, he can +make mean again.”</p> + +<p>For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, +as we shall see later, while Honor—too often nothing higher than vain +glory or worldly approbation—was prized as the <i>summum bonum</i> of +earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal +toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he +crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it +until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother +refused to see her sons again unless they could “return home,” as the +expression is, “caparisoned in brocade.” To shun shame or win a name, +samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals +of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows +with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyéyasu, in +spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at +the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept +so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the +resources at his command. “Take comfort, Sire,” said he, “at thought of +the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there +will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself.” The boy fixed his +indignant gaze upon the man and said—“How foolishly you talk! Can ever +my fourteenth year come round again?”</p> + +<p>Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained +therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered +dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down.</p> + +<p>Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to +sacrifice, was</p> + +<h2><a name="DUTY"></a>THE DUTY OF LOYALTY,</h2> + +<p>which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other +virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, +with other classes of people, but this virtue—homage and fealty to a +superior—is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity +is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,—a +gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the +code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance.</p> + +<p>In spite of Hegel’s criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, +being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a +bond established on totally unjust +principles,<a name="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16">[16]</a> a great compatriot of +his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue. +Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the <i>Treue</i> he boasts of +was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but +because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people +where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where “everybody is as +good as anybody else,” and, as the Irishman added, “better too,” such +exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed +“excellent within certain bounds,” but preposterous as encouraged among +us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the +Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the +truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary +beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we +conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception +is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we +carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. +Griffis<a name="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a> was +quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made +obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was +given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I +will relate of one “who could endure to follow a fall’n lord” and who +thus, as Shakespeare assures, “earned a place i’ the story.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16">[16]</a> +<i>Philosophy of History</i> (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV, +Sec. II, Ch. I.</div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17">[17]</a> +<i>Religions of Japan</i>.</div> + +<p>The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizané, +who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the +capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent +upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son—not yet +grown—reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept +by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizané. When orders are dispatched +to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a +certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He +ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the +boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children +born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protégé. His +despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is +announced—a comely boy of the same age as his master’s son, escorted by +a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between +infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In +the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his +life,—the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. +Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom +comes the suggestion.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is the scape-goat!—The rest of the narrative may be briefly +told.—On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to +identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the +false head? The poor Genzo’s hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to +strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination +defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him, +goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone, +pronounces it genuine.—That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother +we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for +his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the +wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of +Michizané’s bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced +her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family’s +benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but +his son could serve the cause of the grandsire’s lord. As one acquainted +with the exile’s family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task +of identifying the boy’s head. Now the day’s—yea, the life’s—hard work +is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his +wife, saying: “Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service +to his lord!”</p> + +<p>“What an atrocious story!” I hear my readers exclaim,—“Parents +deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of +another man’s.” But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is +a story of vicarious death—as significant as, and not more revolting +than, the story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases +it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of +a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or +heard by an outward or an inward ear;—but I abstain from preaching.</p> + +<p>The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for +father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief +the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest +of the family and of the members thereof is intact,—one and +inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection—natural, +instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural +love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? “For if ye love +them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the +same?”</p> + +<p>In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart +struggle of Shigemori concerning his father’s rebellious conduct. “If I +be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my +sovereign must go amiss.” Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying +with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may +be released from this world where it is hard for purity and +righteousness to dwell.</p> + +<p>Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and +affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself +contains an adequate rendering of <i>ko</i>, our conception of filial piety, +and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of +Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the +king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the +samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty.</p> + +<p>Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived +the state as antedating the individual—the latter being born into the +former as part and parcel thereof—he must live and die for it or for +the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will +remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the +city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he +makes them (the laws, or the state) say:—“Since you were begotten and +nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our +offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!” These are words +which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing +has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the +laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty +is an ethical outcome of this political theory.</p> + +<p>I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer’s view according to which +political obedience—Loyalty—is accredited with only a transitional +function.<a name="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18">[18]</a> +It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue +thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe <i>that</i> +day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem +says, “tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss.” We may +remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the +English, “the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity +which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has,” as Monsieur +Boutmy recently said, “only passed more or less into their profound +loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their +extraordinary attachment to the dynasty.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18">[18]</a> +<i>Principles of Ethics</i>, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.</div> + +<p>Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to +loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is +realized—will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence +disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to +another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a +ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch +who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a +very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer, +made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the +claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with +treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and +Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of +Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of the +Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, “serve two +masters without holding to the one or despising the other,” “rendering +unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and unto God the things that +are God’s.” Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to +concede one iota of loyalty to his <i>dæmon</i>, obey with equal fidelity +and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His +conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the +day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the +dictates of their conscience!</p> + +<p>Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord +or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said:</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot.</div> +<div class="i1">My life thou shalt command, but not my shame.</div> +<div class="i1">The one my duty owes; but my fair name,</div> +<div class="i1">Despite of death, that lives upon my grave,</div> +<div class="i1">To dark dishonor’s use, thou shalt not have.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak +or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the +Precepts. Such a one was despised as <i>nei-shin</i>, a cringeling, who +makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as <i>chô-shin</i>, a favorite who +steals his master’s affections by means of servile compliance; these two +species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago +describes,—the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his +own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master’s ass; +the other trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart +attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal +path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him +of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master +deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual +course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and +conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with +the shedding of his own blood.</p> + +<p>Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its +ideal being set upon honor, the whole</p> + +<h2><a name="EDUCATION"></a>EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF<br /> +A SAMURAI,</h2> + +<p>were conducted accordingly.</p> + +<p>The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up +character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, +intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part æsthetic +accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a +man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai +training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the +word <i>Chi</i>, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom +in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate +place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be +<i>Chi</i>, <i>Jin</i>, <i>Yu</i>, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A +samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of +his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his +profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; +he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish +courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed “’tis not the creed +that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed.” +Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual +training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth +that he strove after,—literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and +philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for +the exposition of some military or political problem.</p> + +<p>From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the +curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted +mainly of the following,—fencing, archery, <i>jiujutsu</i> or <i>yawara</i>, +horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics, +literature and history. Of these, <i>jiujutsu</i> and caligraphy may require +a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing, +probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of +pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was +accepted as indicative of one’s personal character. <i>Jiujutsu</i> may be +briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose +of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not +depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in +that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such +part of the enemy’s body as will make him numb and incapable of +resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for +action for the time being.</p> + +<p>A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education +and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of +instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in +part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific +precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was +unfavorable to fostering numerical notions.</p> + +<p>Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius +that “ambition, the soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than +gain which darkens him.” Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear +and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in +hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrère of La Mancha. He disdains +money itself,—the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably +filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an +age is “that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death.” +Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as +their lavish use is panegyrized. “Less than all things,” says a current +precept, “men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is +hindered.” Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of +economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of +the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of +numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the +distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left +to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by +a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well +enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of +raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift +was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for +the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to +manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, +sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans.</p> + +<p>We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial +agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby +showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money +itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of +the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. +These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something +low—low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations.</p> + +<p>Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself +could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is +the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men +have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is +making its way in our time and generation!</p> + +<p>The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the +study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and +deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind +of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, +decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with +information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies +that Bacon gives,—for delight, ornament, and ability,—Bushido had +decided preference for the last, where their use was “in judgment and +the disposition of business.” Whether it was for the disposition of +public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a +practical end in view that education was conducted. “Learning without +thought,” said Confucius, “is labor lost: thought without learning is +perilous.”</p> + +<p>When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is +chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his +vocation partakes of a sacred character. “It is the parent who has borne +me: it is the teacher who makes me man.” With this idea, therefore, the +esteem in which one’s preceptor was held was very high. A man to evoke +such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed +with superior personality without lacking erudition. He was a father to +the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring. “Thy father and thy +mother”—so runs our maxim—“are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and +thy lord are like the sun and moon.”</p> + +<p>The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue +among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be +rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it +of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not +because it was valueless but because it was invaluable. Here the +non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than +modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for +services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas +the best service done in education,—namely, in soul development (and +this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or +measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, +is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their +teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were +not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients +as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, +too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg. They were +grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity. They were +an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were +thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines,</p> + +<h2><a name="SELF-CONTROL"></a>SELF-CONTROL,</h2> + +<p>which was universally required of samurai.</p> + +<p>The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance +without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring +us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of +our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and +eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I +say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can +ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some +of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer +hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any +race under the sky.</p> + +<p>I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than +others—yes, doubly more—since the very attempt to restrain natural +promptings entails suffering. Imagine boys—and girls too—brought up +not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for +the relief of their feelings,—and there is a physiological problem +whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive.</p> + +<p>It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his +face. “He shows no sign of joy or anger,” was a phrase used in +describing a strong character. The most natural affections were kept +under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his +dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,—no, not in the presence of +other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth +in the remark of a witty youth when he said, “American husbands kiss +their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat +theirs in public and kiss them in private.”</p> + +<p>Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by +passion of any kind. I remember when, during the late war with China, a +regiment left a certain town, a large concourse of people flocked to the +station to bid farewell to the general and his army. On this occasion +an American resident resorted to the place, expecting to witness loud +demonstrations, as the nation itself was highly excited and there were +fathers, mothers, and sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The +American was strangely disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the +train began to move, the hats of thousands of people were silently taken +off and their heads bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of +handkerchiefs, no word uttered, but deep silence in which only an +attentive ear could catch a few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I +know of a father who spent whole nights listening to the breathing of a +sick child, standing behind the door that he might not be caught in such +an act of parental weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last +moments, refrained from sending for her son, that he might not be +disturbed in his studies. Our history and everyday life are replete with +examples of heroic matrons who can well bear comparison with some of the +most touching pages of Plutarch. Among our peasantry an Ian Maclaren +would be sure to find many a Marget Howe.</p> + +<p>It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for the +absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of Japan. +When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is +to quietly suppress any indication of it. In rare instances is the +tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of +sincerity and fervor. It is putting a premium upon a breach of the third +commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experience. It is +truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most +secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. “Dost +thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time +for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone +in quietness and secrecy,”—writes a young samurai in his diary.</p> + +<p>To give in so many articulate words one’s inmost thoughts and +feelings—notably the religious—is taken among us as an unmistakable +sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. “Only a +pomegranate is he”—so runs a popular saying—“who, when he gapes his +mouth, displays the contents of his heart.”</p> + +<p>It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant our +emotions are moved we try to guard our lips in order to hide them. +Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defined it, “the art of +concealing thought.”</p> + +<p>Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will +invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At first +you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you will get +a few broken commonplaces—“Human life has sorrow;” “They who meet must +part;” “He that is born must die;” “It is foolish to count the years of +a child that is gone, but a woman’s heart will indulge in follies;” and +the like. So the noble words of a noble Hohenzollern—“Lerne zu leiden +ohne Klagen”—had found many responsive minds among us, long before they +were uttered.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the frailties +of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better +reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter +with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when +disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of sorrow +or rage.</p> + +<p>The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they find +their safety-valve in poetical aphorism. A poet of the tenth century +writes, “In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by sorrow, +tells its bitter grief in verse.” A mother who tries to console her +broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase +after the dragon-fly, hums,</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“How far to-day in chase, I wonder,</div> +<div class="i1">Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant +justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a +foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding +hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a +measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an +appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and +dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question.</p> + +<p>It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference +to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as +it goes. The next question is,—Why are our nerves less tightly strung? +It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be +our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the +Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read <i>Sartor +Resartus</i> as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was +our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to +recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the +explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in +self-control, none can be correct.</p> + +<p>Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress +the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into +distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or +hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart +and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive +excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of +self-restraint is to keep our mind <i>level</i>—as our expression is—or, to +borrow a Greek term, attain the state of <i>euthymia</i>, which Democritus +called the highest good.</p> + +<p>The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of +the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely,</p> + +<h2><a name="INSTITUTIONS"></a>THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE<br /> +AND REDRESS,</h2> + +<p>of which (the former known as <i>hara-kiri</i> and the latter as +<i>kataki-uchi</i>) many foreign writers have treated more or less fully.</p> + +<p>To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only +to <i>seppuku</i> or <i>kappuku</i>, popularly known as <i>hara-kiri</i>—which means +self-immolation by disembowelment. “Ripping the abdomen? How +absurd!”—so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may +sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to +students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus’ mouth—“Thy +(Cæsar’s) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper +entrails.” Listen to a modern English poet, who in his <i>Light of Asia</i>, +speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:—none blames him for +bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, +look at Guercino’s painting of Cato’s death, in the Palazzo Rossa in +Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, +will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this +mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most +touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars +our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, +of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a +sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else—the sign which +Constantine beheld would not conquer the world!</p> + +<p>Not for extraneous associations only does <i>seppuku</i> lose in our mind any +taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body +to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of +the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph’s “bowels +yearning upon his brother,” or David prayed the Lord not to forget his +bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of +the “sounding” or the “troubling” of bowels, they all and each endorsed +the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was +enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and +kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term +<i>hara</i> was more comprehensive than the Greek <i>phren</i> or <i>thumos</i>> and +the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell +somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the +peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by +one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul +is located in the pineal gland, still insist in using the term <i>ventre</i> +in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless +physiologically significant. Similarly <i>entrailles</i> stands in their +language for affection and compassion. Nor is such belief mere +superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the +heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese +knew better than Romeo “in what vile part of this anatomy one’s name did +lodge.” Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, +denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are +strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental +physiology once admitted, the syllogism of <i>seppuku</i> is easy to +construct. “I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares +with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean.”</p> + +<p>I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral +justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was +ample excuse with many for taking one’s own life. How many acquiesced in +the sentiment expressed by Garth,</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“When honor’s lost, ’tis a relief to die;</div> +<div class="i1">Death’s but a sure retreat from infamy,”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>and have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death when honor +was involved, was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many +complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure +from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to +be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are +honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive +admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius +and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly +existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the +philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his +pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the +state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities +of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even +offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his +whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical +compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of +the judges was compulsory: it said, “Thou shalt die,—and that by thy +own hand.” If suicide meant no more than dying by one’s own hand, +Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with +the crime; Plato, who was averse to it, would not call his master a +suicide.</p> + +<p>Now my readers will understand that <i>seppuku</i> was not a mere suicidal +process. It was an institution, legal and ceremonial. An invention of +the middle ages, it was a process by which warriors could expiate their +crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their +friends, or prove their sincerity. When enforced as a legal punishment, +it was practiced with due ceremony. It was a refinement of +self-destruction, and none could perform it without the utmost coolness +of temper and composure of demeanor, and for these reasons it was +particularly befitting the profession of bushi.</p> + +<p>Antiquarian curiosity, if nothing else, would tempt me to give here a +description of this obsolete ceremonial; but seeing that such a +description was made by a far abler writer, whose book is not much read +now-a-days, I am tempted to make a somewhat lengthy quotation. Mitford, +in his “Tales of Old Japan,” after giving a translation of a treatise on +<i>seppuku</i> from a rare Japanese manuscript, goes on to describe an +instance of such an execution of which he was an eye-witness:—</p> + +<p>“We (seven foreign representatives) were invited to follow the Japanese +witness into the <i>hondo</i> or main hall of the temple, where the ceremony +was to be performed. It was an imposing scene. A large hall with a high +roof supported by dark pillars of wood. From the ceiling hung a +profusion of those huge gilt lamps and ornaments peculiar to Buddhist +temples. In front of the high altar, where the floor, covered with +beautiful white mats, is raised some three or four inches from the +ground, was laid a rug of scarlet felt. Tall candles placed at regular +intervals gave out a dim mysterious light, just sufficient to let all +the proceedings be seen. The seven Japanese took their places on the +left of the raised floor, the seven foreigners on the right. No other +person was present.</p> + +<p>“After the interval of a few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki +Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, +walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar +hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied +by a <i>kaishaku</i> and three officers, who wore the <i>jimbaori</i> or war +surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word <i>kaishaku</i> it should be +observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. +The office is that of a gentleman: in many cases it is performed by a +kinsman or friend of the condemned, and the relation between them is +rather that of principal and second than that of victim and executioner. +In this instance the <i>kaishaku</i> was a pupil of Taki Zenzaburo, and was +selected by friends of the latter from among their own number for his +skill in swordsmanship.</p> + +<p>“With the <i>kaishaku</i> on his left hand, Taki Zenzaburo advanced slowly +towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then +drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps +even with more deference; in each case the salutation was ceremoniously +returned. Slowly and with great dignity the condemned man mounted on to +the raised floor, prostrated himself before the high altar twice, and +seated<a name="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19">[19]</a> +himself on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, +the <i>kaishaku</i> crouching on his left hand side. One of the three +attendant officers then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used +in the temple for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the +<i>wakizashi</i>, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a +half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor’s. This he +handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it +reverently, raising it to his head with both hands, and placed it in +front of himself.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19">[19]</a> +Seated himself—that is, in the Japanese fashion, his +knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his heels. In +this position, which is one of respect, he remained until his death.</div> + +<p>“After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which +betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a +man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in +his face or manner, spoke as follows:—</p> + +<p>‘I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners +at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel +myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing +the act.’</p> + +<p>“Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down +to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to +custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from +falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling +forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand he took the dirk that lay +before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a +moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then +stabbing himself deeply below the waist in the left-hand side, he drew +the dirk slowly across to his right side, and turning it in the wound, +gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he +never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned +forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first +time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the +<i>kaishaku</i>, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching +his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in +the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with +one blow the head had been severed from the body.</p> + +<p>“A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood +throbbing out of the inert head before us, which but a moment before had +been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible.</p> + +<p>“The <i>kaishaku</i> made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of paper +which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; +and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the +execution.</p> + +<p>“The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and +crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called to us to +witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been +faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the +temple.”</p> + +<p>I might multiply any number of descriptions of <i>seppuku</i> from literature +or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will +suffice.</p> + +<p>Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen +years of age, made an effort to kill Iyéyasu in order to avenge their +father’s wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made +prisoners. The old general admired the pluck of the youths who dared an +attempt on his life and ordered that they should be allowed to die an +honorable death. Their little brother Hachimaro, a mere infant of eight +summers, was condemned to a similar fate, as the sentence was pronounced +on all the male members of the family, and the three were taken to a +monastery where it was to be executed. A physician who was present on +the occasion has left us a diary from which the following scene is +translated. “When they were all seated in a row for final despatch, +Sakon turned to the youngest and said—‘Go thou first, for I wish to be +sure that thou doest it aright.’ Upon the little one’s replying that, as +he had never seen <i>seppuku</i> performed, he would like to see his brothers +do it and then he could follow them, the older brothers smiled between +their tears:—‘Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of +being our father’s child.’ When they had placed him between them, Sakon +thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and +asked—‘Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don’t push the dagger +too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees +well composed.’ Naiki did likewise and said to the boy—‘Keep thy eyes +open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels +anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy +effort to cut across.’ The child looked from one to the other, and when +both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the +example set him on either hand.”</p> + +<p>The glorification of <i>seppuku</i> offered, naturally enough, no small +temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely +incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, +hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and +dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent +gates. Life was cheap—cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of +honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the +<i>agio</i>, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser +metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of +Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all +victims of self-destruction!</p> + +<p>And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike +cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and was +pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself +hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with +use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted—did not the noblest of the +Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like +circumstances?—deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude +approaching a Christian martyr’s, cheered himself with an impromptu +verse:</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Come! evermore come,</div> +<div class="i3">Ye dread sorrows and pains!</div> +<div class="i1">And heap on my burden’d back;</div> +<div class="i3">That I not one test may lack</div> +<div class="i1">Of what strength in me remains!”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>This, then, was the Bushido teaching—Bear and face all calamities and +adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as +Mencius<a name="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20">[20]</a> +taught, “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it +first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with +toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; +and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his +mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.” True honor +lies in fulfilling Heaven’s decree and no death incurred in so doing is +ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly +indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne’s, <i>Religio Medici</i>, +there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in +our Precepts. Let me quote it: “It is a brave act of valor to contemn +death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest +valor to dare to live.” A renowned priest of the seventeenth century +satirically observed—“Talk as he may, a samurai who ne’er has died is +apt in decisive moments to flee or hide.” Again—“Him who once has died +in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of +Tametomo can pierce.” How near we come to the portals of the temple whose +Builder taught “he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it!” +These are but a few of the numerous examples which tend to confirm the +moral identity of the human species, notwithstanding an attempt so +assiduously made to render the distinction between Christian and Pagan +as great as possible.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20">[20]</a> +I use Dr. Legge’s translation verbatim.</div> + +<p>We have thus seen that the Bushido institution of suicide was neither +so irrational nor barbarous as its abuse strikes us at first sight. We +will now see whether its sister institution of Redress—or call it +Revenge, if you will—has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose +of this question in a few words, since a similar institution, or call it +custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all +peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the +continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain +recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? +Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and +only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time +which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, and only the +vigilant vengeance of the victim’s people preserves social order. “What +is the most beautiful thing on earth?” said Osiris to Horus. The reply +was, “To avenge a parent’s wrongs,”—to which a Japanese would have +added “and a master’s.”</p> + +<p>In revenge there is something which satisfies one’s sense of justice. +The avenger reasons:—“My good father did not deserve death. He who +killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not +tolerate a deed like this: Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the +will of my father; it is the will of Heaven that the evil-doer cease +from his work. He must perish by my hand; because he shed my father’s +blood, I, who am his flesh and blood, must shed the murderer’s. The same +Heaven shall not shelter him and me.” The ratiocination is simple and +childish (though we know Hamlet did not reason much more deeply), +nevertheless it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice +“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Our sense of revenge is as +exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation +are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone.</p> + +<p>In Judaism, which believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, +which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; +but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a +kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be +judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven +Ronins was condemned to death;—he had no court of higher instance to +appeal to; his faithful retainers addressed themselves to Vengeance, the +only Supreme Court existing; they in their turn were condemned by common +law,—but the popular instinct passed a different judgment and hence +their memory is still kept as green and fragrant as are their graves at +Sengakuji to this day.</p> + +<p>Though Lao-tse taught to recompense injury with kindness, the voice of +Confucius was very much louder, which counselled that injury must be +recompensed with justice;—and yet revenge was justified only when it +was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One’s own +wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne +and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal’s +oath to avenge his country’s wrongs, but he scorns James Hamilton for +wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife’s grave, as an +eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray.</p> + +<p>Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their <i>raison +d’être</i> at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of +romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the +murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family +vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale +of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the +injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society +will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is +no need of <i>kataki-uchi</i>. If this had meant that “hunger of the heart +which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of +the victim,” as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs +in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it.</p> + +<p>As to <i>seppuku</i>, though it too has no existence <i>de jure</i>, we still hear +of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as +long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of +self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with +fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have +to concede to <i>seppuku</i> an aristocratic position among them. He +maintains that “when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at +the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it +may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by +madness, or by morbid +excitement.”<a name="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21">[21]</a> +But a normal <i>seppuku</i> does not +savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost <i>sang froid</i> being +necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which +Dr. Strahan<a name="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22">[22]</a> divides +suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the +Irrational or True, <i>seppuku</i> is the best example of the former type.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21">[21]</a> +Morselli, <i>Suicide</i>, p. 314.</div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22">[22]</a> +<i>Suicide and Insanity</i>.</div> + +<p>From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of +Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in +social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called</p> + +<h2><a name="SWORD"></a>THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE<br /> +SAMURAI,</h2> + +<p>and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed +that “The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell,” he only echoed a +Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It +was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was +apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a +<i>go</i>-board<a name="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23">[23]</a> +and initiated into the rights of the military profession +by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk +with which he had been playing. After this first ceremony of <i>adoptio +per arma</i>, he was no more to be seen outside his father’s gates without +this badge of his status, even if it was usually substituted for +every-day wear by a gilded wooden dirk. Not many years pass before he +wears constantly the genuine steel, though blunt, and then the sham arms +are thrown aside and with enjoyment keener than his newly acquired +blades, he marches out to try their edge on wood and stone. When he +reaches man’s estate at the age of fifteen, being given independence of +action, he can now pride himself upon the possession of arms sharp +enough for any work. The very possession of the dangerous instrument +imparts to him a feeling and an air of self-respect and responsibility. +“He beareth not his sword in vain.” What he carries in his belt is a +symbol of what he carries in his mind and heart—Loyalty and Honor. The +two swords, the longer and the shorter—called respectively <i>daito</i> and +<i>shoto</i> or <i>katana</i> and <i>wakizashi</i>—never leave his side. When at home, +they grace the most conspicuous place in study or parlor; by night they +guard his pillow within easy reach of his hand. Constant companions, +they are beloved, and proper names of endearment given them. Being +venerated, they are well-nigh worshiped. The Father of History has +recorded as a curious piece of information that the Scythians sacrificed +to an iron scimitar. Many a temple and many a family in Japan hoards a +sword as an object of adoration. Even the commonest dirk has due respect +paid to it. Any insult to it is tantamount to personal affront. Woe to +him who carelessly steps over a weapon lying on the floor!</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23">[23]</a> +The game of <i>go</i> is sometimes called Japanese checkers, +but is much more intricate than the English game. The <i>go-</i>board +contains 361 squares and is supposed to represent a battle-field—the +object of the game being to occupy as much space as possible.</div> + +<p>So precious an object cannot long escape the notice and the skill of +artists nor the vanity of its owner, especially in times of peace, when +it is worn with no more use than a crosier by a bishop or a sceptre by a +king. Shark-skin and finest silk for hilt, silver and gold for guard, +lacquer of varied hues for scabbard, robbed the deadliest weapon of half +its terror; but these appurtenances are playthings compared with the +blade itself.</p> + +<p>The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his +workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and +purification, or, as the phrase was, “he committed his soul and spirit +into the forging and tempering of the steel.” Every swing of the sledge, +every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a +religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of +his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as +a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there +is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface +the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate +texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which +histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting +exquisite grace with utmost strength;—all these thrill us with mixed +feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror. Harmless were its +mission, if it only remained a thing of beauty and joy! But, ever within +reach of the hand, it presented no small temptation for abuse. Too often +did the blade flash forth from its peaceful sheath. The abuse sometimes +went so far as to try the acquired steel on some harmless creature’s +neck.</p> + +<p>The question that concerns us most is, however,—Did Bushido justify +the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As +it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its +misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on +undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use +it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count +Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our +history, when assassinations, suicides, and other sanguinary practices +were the order of the day. Endowed as he once was with almost +dictatorial powers, repeatedly marked out as an object for +assassination, he never tarnished his sword with blood. In relating some +of his reminiscences to a friend he says, in a quaint, plebeian way +peculiar to him:—“I have a great dislike for killing people and so I +haven’t killed one single man. I have released those whose heads should +have been chopped off. A friend said to me one day, ‘You don’t kill +enough. Don’t you eat pepper and egg-plants?’ Well, some people are no +better! But you see that fellow was slain himself. My escape may be due +to my dislike of killing. I had the hilt of my sword so tightly fastened +to the scabbard that it was hard to draw the blade. I made up my mind +that though they cut me, I will not cut. Yes, yes! some people are truly +like fleas and mosquitoes and they bite—but what does their biting +amount to? It itches a little, that’s all; it won’t endanger life.” +These are the words of one whose Bushido training was tried in the fiery +furnace of adversity and triumph. The popular apothegm—“To be beaten is +to conquer,” meaning true conquest consists in not opposing a riotous +foe; and “The best won victory is that obtained without shedding of +blood,” and others of similar import—will show that after all the +ultimate ideal of knighthood was Peace.</p> + +<p>It was a great pity that this high ideal was left exclusively to priests +and moralists to preach, while the samurai went on practicing and +extolling martial traits. In this they went so far as to tinge the +ideals of womanhood with Amazonian character. Here we may profitably +devote a few paragraphs to the subject of</p> + +<h2><a name="TRAINING"></a>THE TRAINING AND POSITION OF<br /> +WOMAN.</h2> + +<p>The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of +paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the +comprehension of men’s “arithmetical understanding.” The Chinese +ideogram denoting “the mysterious,” “the unknowable,” consists of two +parts, one meaning “young” and the other “woman,” because the physical +charms and delicate thoughts of the fair sex are above the coarse mental +calibre of our sex to explain.</p> + +<p>In the Bushido ideal of woman, however, there is little mystery and only +a seeming paradox. I have said that it was Amazonian, but that is only +half the truth. Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman +holding a broom—certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively +against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more +harmless uses for which the besom was first invented—the idea involved +being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the +English wife (weaver) and daughter (<i>duhitar</i>, milkmaid). Without +confining the sphere of woman’s activity to <i>Küche, Kirche, Kinder</i>, as +the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood +was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions—Domesticity and +Amazonian traits—are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, +as we shall see.</p> + +<p>Bushido being a teaching primarily intended for the masculine sex, the +virtues it prized in woman were naturally far from being distinctly +feminine. Winckelmann remarks that “the supreme beauty of Greek art is +rather male than female,” and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral +conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised +those women most “who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their +sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the +bravest of men.”<a name="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24">[24] +</a> Young girls therefore, were trained to repress +their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate +weapons,—especially the long-handled sword called <i>nagi-nata</i>, so as to +be able to hold their own against unexpected odds. Yet the primary +motive for exercises of this martial character was not for use in the +field; it was twofold—personal and domestic. Woman owning no suzerain +of her own, formed her own bodyguard. With her weapon she guarded her +personal sanctity with as much zeal as her husband did his master’s. The +domestic utility of her warlike training was in the education of her +sons, as we shall see later.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24">[24]</a> +Lecky, <i>History of European Morals</i> II, p. 383.</div> + +<p>Fencing and similar exercises, if rarely of practical use, were a +wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But +these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could +be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood, +were presented with dirks (<i>kai-ken</i>, pocket poniards), which might be +directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their +own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them +severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of +self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and +Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a +Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her +father’s dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a +disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to +perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in +anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must +know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever +the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty +with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of +the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an +abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our +bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among +us.<a name="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25">[25]</a> +On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the +samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner, +seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery, +says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to +write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction. +When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves +her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these +verses;—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“For fear lest clouds may dim her light,</div> +<div class="i1">Should she but graze this nether sphere,</div> +<div class="i1">The young moon poised above the height</div> +<div class="i1">Doth hastily betake to flight.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25">[25]</a> +For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing see +Finck’s <i>Lotos Time in Japan</i>, pp. 286-297.</div> + +<p>It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was +our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the +gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and +literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our +literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women +played an important role in the history of Japanese <i>belles lettres</i>. +Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of <i>geisha</i>) +only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale +the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the +technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate +object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of +sound is attainable without the player’s heart being in harmony with +herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in +the training of youths—that accomplishments were ever kept subservient +to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and +brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I +sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in +London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in +his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of +business for them.</p> + +<p>The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social +ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social +parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,—in other words, as a +part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided +their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women +of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly +intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost +sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and +integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and +day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to +their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her +father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from +earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of +independence, but of dependent service. Man’s helpmeet, if her presence +is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she +retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth +becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but, +when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties, +disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal +wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, +in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon +pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take +her husband’s place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon +her own devoted head.</p> + +<p>The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before +taking her own life, needs no comment:—“Oft have I heard that no +accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that +all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common +bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to +our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two +short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow +followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being +loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be +the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving +partner. I have heard that Kō-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China, +lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave +as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt +farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope +or joy—why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I +not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime +tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good +master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as +deep as the sea and as high as the hills.”</p> + +<p>Woman’s surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and +family, was as willing and honorable as the man’s self-surrender to the +good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no +life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well +as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than +was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was +recognized as <i>Naijo</i>, “the inner help.” In the ascending scale of +service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might +annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I +know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of +Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of +each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator. +Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service—the serving of a cause +higher than one’s own self, even at the sacrifice of one’s +individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that +Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission—as far as that +is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth.</p> + +<p>My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish +surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced +with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by +Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The +point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so +thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was +required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its +Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the +view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman’s rights, who +exclaimed, “May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against +ancient customs!” Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female +status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the +loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which +are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part +of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can +the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the +true course for their historical development to take? These are grave +questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime +let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen +was really so bad as to justify a revolt.</p> + +<p>We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to “God and +the ladies,”—the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we +are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that +gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker +vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot +contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences, +while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is +feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily +low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M. +Guizot’s theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer’s? In reply I might +aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to +the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the +military nobles, the <i>daimio</i>, and the court nobles, the <i>kugé</i>—these +higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were +masses of the common people—mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants—whose +life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as +the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have +been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the +industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This +is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she +experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the +lower the social class—as, for instance, among small artisans—the more +equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility, +too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked, +chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex +into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally +effeminate. Thus Spencer’s dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As +to Guizot’s, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will +remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration, +so that his generalization applies to the <i>daimio</i> and the <i>kugé</i>.</p> + +<p>I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words +give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do +not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man’s equal; but until +we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will +always be misunderstandings upon this subject.</p> + +<p>When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves, +<i>e.g.</i>, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble +ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American +Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had +no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what +Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal +rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the +only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it +would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in +pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in +comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it +enough, to compare woman’s status to man’s as the value of silver is +compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a +method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important +kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In +view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil +its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its +relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from +economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a +standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of +woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very +little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this +double measurement;—as a social-political unit not much, while as wife +and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among +so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly +venerated? Was it not because they were <i>matrona</i>, mothers? Not as +fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So +with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the +government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers +and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted +to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were +primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the +education of their children.</p> + +<p>I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among +half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression +for one’s wife is “my rustic wife” and the like, she is despised and +held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as “my foolish +father,” “my swinish son,” “my awkward self,” etc., are in current use, +is not the answer clear enough?</p> + +<p>To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further +than the so-called Christian. “Man and woman shall be one flesh.” The +individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband +and wife are two persons;—hence when they disagree, their separate +<i>rights</i> are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their +vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and—nonsensical +blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband +or wife speaks to a third party of his other half—better or worse—as +being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of +one’s self as “my bright self,” “my lovely disposition,” and so forth? +We think praising one’s own wife or one’s own husband is praising a part +of one’s own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad +taste among us,—and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have +diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one’s consort +was a usage most in vogue among the samurai.</p> + +<p>The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe +of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the +Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of +the numerical insufficiency of +women<a name="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26">[26]</a> +(who, now increasing, are, I am +afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the +respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief +standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main +water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was +located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul +and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the +early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader’s +notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as +lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion +presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being +founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, +though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions +which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me +the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, +which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment +doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,—a +separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in +Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I +might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and +Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties +as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26">[26]</a> +I refer to those days when girls were imported from +England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.</div> + +<p>It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in +the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military +class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of</p> + +<h2><a name="INFLUENCE"></a>THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO</h2> + +<p>on the nation at large.</p> + +<p>We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which +rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more +elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its +rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually +casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first +enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from +amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, +and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are +no less contagious than vices. “There needs but one wise man in a +company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion,” says Emerson. No +social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral +influence.</p> + +<p>Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely +has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of +the squires and <i>gentlemen</i>? Very truly does M. Taine say, “These three +syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English +society.” Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement +and fling back the question—“When Adam delved and Eve span, where then +was the gentleman?” All the more pity that a gentleman was not present +in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for +his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more +tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful +experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor, +treason and rebellion.</p> + +<p>What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of +the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed +through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the +populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their +example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these +were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the +commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of +virtues for their own sake.</p> + +<p>In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a +small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says—“In English +Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to +Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman).” Write in place of +Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the +main features of the literary history of Japan.</p> + +<p>The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction—the +theatres, the story-teller’s booths, the preacher’s dais, the musical +recitations, the novels—have taken for their chief theme the stories of +the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire +of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsuné and his faithful retainer +Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with +gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its +embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The +clerks and the shop-boys, after their day’s work is over and the +<i>amado</i><a name="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27">[27]</a> +of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story +of Nobunaga and Hidéyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes +their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to +the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is +taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of +ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and +virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour +with greedy ear the romance of the samurai.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27">[27]</a> +Outside shutters.</div> + +<p>The samurai grew to be the <i>beau ideal</i> of the whole race. “As among +flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord,” so sang +the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class +itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity, +no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus +from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly +the work of Knighthood.</p> + +<p>Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, “Aristocracy and +Evolution,” has eloquently told us that “social evolution, in so far as +it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of +the intentions of great men;” further, that historical progress is +produced by a struggle “not among the community generally, to live, but +a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct, +to employ, the majority in the best way.” Whatever may be said about the +soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the +part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our +Empire.</p> + +<p>How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in +the development of a certain order of men, known as <i>otoko-daté</i>, the +natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of +them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen +and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of +hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that +samurai did to daimio, the willing service of “limb and life, of body, +chattels and earthly honor.” Backed by a vast multitude of rash and +impetuous working-men, those born “bosses” formed a formidable check to +the rampancy of the two-sworded order.</p> + +<p>In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where +it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral +standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at +first as the glory of the élite, became in time an aspiration and +inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not +attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet <i>Yamato Damashii</i>, +the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the <i>Volksgeist</i> of the +Island Realm. If religion is no more than “Morality touched by +emotion,” as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better +entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoöri has put the mute +utterance of the nation into words when he sings:—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Isles of blest Japan!</div> +<div class="i3">Should your Yamato spirit</div> +<div class="i1">Strangers seek to scan,</div> +<div class="i3">Say—scenting morn’s sun-lit air,</div> +<div class="i1">Blows the cherry wild and fair!”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Yes, the +<i>sakura</i><a name="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28">[28]</a> +has for ages been the favorite of our people and +the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition +which the poet uses, the words the <i>wild cherry flower scenting the +morning sun</i>.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28">[28]</a> +<i>Cerasus pseudo-cerasus</i>, Lindley.</div> + +<p>The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild—in the sense +of natural—growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental +qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its +essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But +its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and +grace of its beauty appeal to <i>our</i> æsthetic sense as no other flower +can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, +which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are +hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she +clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop +untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy +odors—all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no +dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at +the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light +fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its +showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is +volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious +ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is +something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the +<i>sakura</i> quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to +illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more +serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of +beauteous day.</p> + +<p>When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his +heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that +the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the +whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a +time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs +and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily +tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one +is the sakura the flower of the nation.</p> + +<p>Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the +wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, +is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so +frailly mortal?</p> + +<h2><a name="ALIVE"></a>IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE?</h2> + +<p>Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already +wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline?</p> + +<p>It were a sad thing if a nation’s soul could die so fast. That were a +poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The +aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national +character, is as tenacious as the “irreducible elements of species, of +the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the +carnivorous animal.” In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations +and brilliant generalizations, +M. LeBon<a name="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29">[29]</a> +says, “The discoveries due +to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or +defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: +they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for +centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities.” +These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over, +provided there were qualities and defects of character which <i>constitute +the exclusive patrimony</i> of each people. Schematizing theories of this +sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and +they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In +studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon +European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that +no one quality of character was its <i>exclusive</i> patrimony. It is true +the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is +this aggregate which Emerson names a “compound result into which every +great force enters as an ingredient.” But, instead of making it, as +LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord +philosopher calls it “an element which unites the most forcible persons +of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; +and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack +the Masonic sign.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29">[29]</a> +<i>The Psychology of Peoples</i>, p. 33.</div> + +<p>The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in +particular, cannot be said to form “an irreducible element of species,” +but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. +Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the +last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it +transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely +widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has +calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, +“each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty +millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D.” The merest peasant +that grubs the soil, “bowed by the weight of centuries,” has in his +veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as “to the +ox.”</p> + +<p>An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the +nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when +Yoshida Shôin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote +on the eve of his execution the following stanza;—</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"><div class="stanza"> +<div class="i0">“Full well I knew this course must end in death;</div> +<div class="i1">It was Yamato spirit urged me on</div> +<div class="i1">To dare whate’er betide.”</div> +</div></div></div> + +<p>Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor +force of our country.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ransome says that “there are three distinct Japans in existence +side by side to-day,—the old, which has not wholly died out; the new, +hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now +through its most critical throes.” While this is very true in most +respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete +institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions, +requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old +Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove +the formative force of the new era.</p> + +<p>The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the +hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, +were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of +Knighthood. Some +writers<a name="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30">[30]</a> +have lately tried to prove that the +Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making +of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this +honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it +will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of +preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they +have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian +missionaries are doing great things for Japan—in the domain of +education, and especially of moral education:—only, the mysterious +though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in +divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet +Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the +character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged +us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern +Japan—of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the +reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:—and you +will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought +and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and +observation of the Far +East,<a name="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31">[31]</a> +that only the respect in which Japan +differed from other oriental despotisms lay in “the ruling influence +among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious +codes of honor that man has ever devised,” he touched the main spring +which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is +destined to be.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30">[30]</a> +Speer; <i>Missions and Politics in Asia</i>, Lecture IV, pp. +189-190; Dennis: <i>Christian Missions and Social Progress</i>, Vol. I, p. +32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.</div> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31">[31]</a> +<i>The Far East</i>, p. 375.</div> + +<p>The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a +work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one +were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When +we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the +latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study +Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the +development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much +less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of +oriental institutions and peoples has written:—“We are told every day +how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those +islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan, +but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of +organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful. +She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before +imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence,” continues +Mr. Townsend, “unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea +of China. Where is the European apostle,” asks our author, “or +philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made +Japan?”<a name="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32">[32]</a> +Mr. Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought +about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he +had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation +would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than +Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as +an inferior power,—that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or +industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of +transformation.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32">[32]</a> +Meredith Townsend, <i>Asia and Europe</i>, N.Y., 1900, 28.</div> + +<p>The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read. +A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most +eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the +working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The +universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly +ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance, +fortitude and bravery that “the little Jap” possesses, were sufficiently +proved in the China-Japanese +war.<a name="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33">[33]</a> +“Is there any nation more loyal +and patriotic?” is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer, +“There is not,” we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood.</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33">[33]</a> +Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and Yamada +on <i>Heroic Japan</i>, and Diosy on <i>The New Far East</i>.</div> + +<p>On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and +defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of +abstruse philosophy—while some of our young men have already gained +international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved +anything in philosophical lines—is traceable to the neglect of +metaphysical training under Bushido’s regimen of education. Our sense of +honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; +and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, +that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor.</p> + +<p>Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, +dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, +stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane +things? He is the <i>shosei</i> (student), to whom the earth is too small and +the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe +and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of +wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for +knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods +are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of +Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national +honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of +Bushido.</p> + +<p>Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said +that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people +responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it +has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly +translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different +degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion +could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an +appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master. +The word “Loyalty” revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted +to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued +“students’ strike” in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction +with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the +Director,—“Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought +to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is not +manly to push a falling man.” The scientific incapacity of the +professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into +insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By +arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great +magnitude can be accomplished.</p> + +<p>One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the +missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history—“What do we care for +heathen records?” some say—and consequently estrange their religion +from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed +to for centuries past. Mocking a nation’s history!—as though the career +of any people—even of the lowest African savages possessing no +record—were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by +the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be +deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races +themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and +white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race +forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the +past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new +religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an “old, old story,” which, if +presented in intelligible words,—that is to say, if expressed in the +vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people—will find easy +lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality. +Christianity in its American or English form—with more of Anglo-Saxon +freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder—is a poor scion +to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot +the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel +on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible—in Hawaii, +where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in +amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal +race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan—nay, it is +a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his +kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following +words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:—“Men +have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering +how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may have +been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of +themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity +with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at +impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be +said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of +religion.”<a name="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34">[34]</a></p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34">[34]</a> +Jowett, <i>Sermons on Faith and Doctrine</i>, II.</div> + +<p>But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little +doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a +power which we must take into account in reckoning</p> + +<h2><a name="FUTURE"></a>THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO,</h2> + +<p>whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, +that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at +work to threaten it.</p> + +<p>Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the +Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats +itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did +with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay +of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application +to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that +helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages +are as surely working for the decline of Bushido.</p> + +<p>One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan +is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and +was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan +no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother +institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift +for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it +under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little +room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its +infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are +being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and +Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the +Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted +to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet +we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow +journalism.</p> + +<p>Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of +Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, “the decay of the ceremonial +code—or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life—among +the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities of +latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate +sensibilities.” The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can +tolerate no form or shape of trust—and Bushido was a trust organized by +those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, fixing +the grades and value of moral qualities—is alone powerful enough to +engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are +antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely +criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, +cannot admit “purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an +exclusive class.”<a name="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35">[35]</a> +Add to this the progress of popular instruction, +of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,—then we can +easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai’s sword nor the +sharpest shafts shot from Bushido’s boldest bows can aught avail. The +state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same—shall we +call it the <i>Ehrenstaat</i> or, after the manner of Carlyle, the +Heroarchy?—is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and +gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The +words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may +aptly be repeated of the samurai, that “the medium in which their +ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.”</p> + +<div class="note"><a name="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35">[35]</a> +<i>Norman Conquest</i>, Vol. V, p. 482.</div> + +<p>Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into +the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away +as “the captains and the kings depart.”</p> + +<p>If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues—be +it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome—can never make on earth a +“continuing city.” Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in +man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly +virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to +fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that +Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but +Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, +with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to +emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. +Callings nobler and broader than a warrior’s claim our attention to-day. +With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better +knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of +Benevolence—dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?—will expand +into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than +subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more +than citizens, being men.</p> + +<p>Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the +wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world +confirms the prophecy that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” A nation +that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank +of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain +indeed!</p> + +<p>When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not +only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an +honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry +dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says +that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of +France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally +abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of +Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of +swords, rang out the old, “the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence +of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise,” it rang +in the new age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators.”</p> + +<p>It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of +Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work +of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does +ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, +burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, +without a master’s hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis +Napoleon beat the Prussians with his <i>Mitrailleuse</i>, or the Spaniards +with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the +old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite +saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of +implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do +not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does +not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea +and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and +beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of +our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly +visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show +a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial +virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, “but ours on +trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come,” +and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate +one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to +widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life.</p> + +<p>It has been predicted—and predictions have been corroborated by the +events of the last half century—that the moral system of Feudal Japan, +like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new +ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. +Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must +not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is +not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from +other birds. “The Kingdom of God is within you.” It does not come +rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing +across the seas, however broad. “God has granted,” says the Koran, “to +every people a prophet in its own tongue.” The seeds of the Kingdom, as +vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido. +Now its days are closing—sad to say, before its full fruition—and we +turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of +strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to +take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and +Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The only +other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with +Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with +which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like “a dimly burning wick” +which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame. +Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets—notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos +and Habakkuk—Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of +rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, +which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, +will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its +capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, +self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in +some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing +phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, +the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene.</p> + +<p>Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)—or will the +future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and +Hellenism?—will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals +will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which +side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it +can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is +willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total +extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It +is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and +vitality are still felt through many channels of life—in the philosophy +of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world. +Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his +spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal +discipline of Zeno at work.</p> + +<p>Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will +not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor +may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their +ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it +will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich +life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its +very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a +far-off unseen hill, “the wayside gaze beyond;”—then in the beautiful +language of the Quaker poet,</p> + +<div class="center"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="i0">“The traveler owns the grateful sense</div> + <div class="i1">Of sweetness near, he knows not whence,</div> + <div class="i1">And, pausing, takes with forehead bare</div> + <div class="i1">The benediction of the air.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="center" style="margin-top: 10%;"> +<img src="images/illus.jpg" style="width: 70%;" alt="scroll" /> +</div> + +<div style="margin-left: 4em; margin: 2em;" xml:lang="ja" lang="ja"> + 明治三十八年六月二十二日印<br /> + 明治三十八年六月二十五日訂正增補第十版發行<br /> + 明治三十八年九月二十日第十一版發行<br /> + 明治四十年二月二十日第十二版發行<br /> + 明治四十一年三月二十五日第十三版發行<br /> +<br /> + 英文武士道<br /> + 正價金壹圓<br /> +<br /> + 著作權登錄濟<br /> +<br /> + 著作者 新渡戶稻造<br /> + 東京市小石川區小日向臺町一丁目七十五番地<br /> +<br /> + 發行者 櫻井彥一郎<br /> + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目三番地<br /> +<br /> + 印刷者 青木弘<br /> + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目十二番地<br /> +<br /> + 印刷所 株式會社 秀英舍第一工場<br /> + 東京市牛込區市ヶ谷加賀町一丁目十二番地<br /> +<br /> + 發行所 丁未出版社<br /> + 東京市麴町區五番町十六番地 +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Bushido, the Soul of Japan + +Author: Inazo Nitobé + +Release Date: April 21, 2004 [EBook #12096] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + + + + + + +BUSHIDO +THE SOUL OF JAPAN + + +BY +INAZO NITOBÉ, A.M., Ph.D. + + +Author's Edition, Revised and Enlarged +13th EDITION +1908 + + +DECEMBER, 1904 + + +TO MY BELOVED UNCLE +TOKITOSHI OTA +WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST +AND +TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI +I DEDICATE +THIS LITTLE BOOK + + + --"That way + Over the mountain, which who stands upon, + Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road; + While if he views it from the waste itself, + Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow, + Not vague, mistakable! What's a break or two + Seen from the unbroken desert either side? + And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) + What if the breaks themselves should prove at last + The most consummate of contrivances + To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?" + + --ROBERT BROWNING, + + _Bishop Blougram's Apology_. + + + "There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have + from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a + predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of + mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of + honor." + + --HALLAM, + + _Europe in the Middle Ages_. + + + "Chivalry is itself the poetry of life." + + --SCHLEGEL, + + _Philosophy of History_. + + + +PREFACE + + +About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof +of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our +conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of +religion. "Do you mean to say," asked the venerable professor, "that you +have no religious instruction in your schools?" On my replying in the +negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I +shall not easily forget, he repeated "No religion! How do you impart +moral education?" The question stunned me at the time. I could give no +ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, +were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the +different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find +that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils. + +The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries +put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs +prevail in Japan. + +In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my +wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and Bushido,[1] the +moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume. + +[Footnote 1: Pronounced _Boó-shee-doh'_. In putting Japanese words and +names into English, Hepburn's rule is followed, that the vowels should +be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in English.] + +Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put +down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given +in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught +and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force. + +Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest +Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging +to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over +them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while +these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I +have often thought,--"Had I their gift of language, I would present the +cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!" But one who speaks in a borrowed +tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible. + +All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I +have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, +believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the +comprehension of foreign readers. + +Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious +workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity +itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and +with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the +teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the +religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as +well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God +hath made a testament which maybe called "old" with every people and +nation,--Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my +theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public. + +In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend +Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the +characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this +book. + +INAZO NITOBE. + +Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899. + + + + +PREFACE + + +TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION + +Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, +this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has +passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth +appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be +issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of +Messrs. George H. Putnam's Sons, of New York. + +In the meantime, _Bushido_ has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev +of Khandesh, into German by Fräulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian +by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life +in Lemberg,--although this Polish edition has been censured by the +Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into +French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian +officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for +the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian +public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been +published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger +students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also +owe much for his aid in other ways. + +I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found +sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the +subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly +flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that +President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and +distributing several dozens of copies among his friends. + +In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have +largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, +as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on +Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot +of Japanese ethics--Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather +to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular +virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot +draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge +upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are +touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and +discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger +than it is. + +This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt +I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful +suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement. + +I.N. + +Kyoto, +Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Bushido as an Ethical System + +Sources of Bushido + +Rectitude or Justice + +Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing + +Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress + +Politeness + +Veracity or Truthfulness + +Honor + +The Duty of Loyalty + +Education and Training of a Samurai + +Self-Control + +The Institutions of Suicide and Redress + +The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai + +The Training and Position of Woman + +The Influence of Bushido + +Is Bushido Still Alive? + +The Future of Bushido + + + + +BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM. + + +Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its +emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique +virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living +object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape +or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware +that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society +which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as +those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed +their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of +feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother +institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the +language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the +neglected bier of its European prototype. + +It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so +erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that +chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either +among the nations of antiquity or among the modern Orientals.[2] Such +ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good +Doctor's work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking +at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the +time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx, +writing his "Capital," called the attention of his readers to the +peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of +feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would +likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study +of chivalry in the Japan of the present. + +[Footnote 2: _History Philosophically Illustrated_, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol. +II, p. 2.] + +Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between +European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of +this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, +_firstly_, the origin and sources of our chivalry; _secondly_, its +character and teaching; _thirdly_, its influence among the masses; and, +_fourthly_, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these +several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I +should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national +history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most +likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative +Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt +with as corollaries. + +The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the +original, more expressive than Horsemanship. _Bu-shi-do_ means literally +Military-Knight-Ways--the ways which fighting nobles should observe in +their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the "Precepts +of Knighthood," the _noblesse oblige_ of the warrior class. Having thus +given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the +word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable +for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, +engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must +wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a +national _timbre_ so expressive of race characteristics that the best of +translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice +and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German "_Gemüth_" +signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words +verbally so closely allied as the English _gentleman_ and the French +_gentilhomme_? + +Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were +required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it +consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from +the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a +code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful +sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets +of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however +able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an +organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, +fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English +Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to +compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in +the seventeenth century Military Statutes (_Buké Hatto_) were +promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with +marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but +meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time +and place and say, "Here is its fountain head." Only as it attains +consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be +identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many +threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the +political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman +Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the +ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in +England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period +previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in +Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned. + +Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, +the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These +were known as _samurai_, meaning literally, like the old English _cniht_ +(knecht, knight), guards or attendants--resembling in character the +_soldurii_ whom Caesar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the +_comitati_, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his +time; or, to take a still later parallel, the _milites medii_ that one +reads about in the history of Mediaeval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word +_Bu-ké_ or _Bu-shi_ (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. +They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough +breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally +recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and +the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went +on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only "a rude race, +all masculine, with brutish strength," to borrow Emerson's phrase, +surviving to form families and the ranks of the _samurai_. Coming to +profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great +responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of +behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and +belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among +themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of +honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some +resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors. + +Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive +sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and +civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire +of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, "to leave behind him the name of a +fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one." +And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which +moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even +so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions +endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom's is the basis on which the +greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to +discover that _Bushido_ does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting +in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, +brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, "We know from what +failings our virtue springs."[3] "Sneaks" and "cowards" are epithets of +the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life +with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and +its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher +authority and more rational sources for its own justification, +satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, +without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal +of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with +concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with +spiritual data. "Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a +perfect Christian knight," says Lamartine. In Japan there were several + + + +SOURCES OF BUSHIDO, + +of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust +in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in +sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with +death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil +master the utmost of his art, told him, "Beyond this my instruction must +give way to Zen teaching." "Zen" is the Japanese equivalent for the +Dhyâna, which "represents human effort to reach through meditation zones +of thought beyond the range of verbal expression."[4] Its method is +contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be +convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, +of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this +Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, +and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself +above mundane things and awakes, "to a new Heaven and a new Earth." + +[Footnote 3: Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace loving +men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the fervor of a +worshiper of the strenuous life. "When I tell you," he says in the +_Crown of Wild Olive_, "that war is the foundation of all the arts, I +mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and +faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very +dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. * * * I found in +brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength +of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace, +taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by +peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."] + +[Footnote 4: Lafcadio Hearn, _Exotics and Retrospectives_, p. 84.] + +What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such +loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such +filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by +the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant +character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of +"original sin." On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and +God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which +divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto +shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, +and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part +of its furnishing. The presence of this article, is easy to explain: it +typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, +reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in +front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its +shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic +injunction, "Know Thyself." But self-knowledge does not imply, either in +the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, +not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral +kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the +Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his +eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter +veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman +conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so +much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its +nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its +ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial +family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more +than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain--it is the +sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the +Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a _Rechtsstaat_, or even the +Patron of a _Culturstaat_--he is the bodily representative of Heaven on +earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. +Boutmy[5] says is true of English royalty--that it "is not only the +image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity," as I +believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in +Japan. + +[Footnote 5: _The English People_, p. 188.] + +The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the +emotional life of our race--Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp +very truly says: "In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell +whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven +or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself."[6] A similar +confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. +I said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect +on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of +national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a +systematic philosophy or a rational theology. This religion--or, is +it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion +expressed?--thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and +love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for +Shintoism, unlike the Mediaeval Christian Church, prescribed to its +votaries scarcely any _credenda_, furnishing them at the same time with +_agenda_ of a straightforward and simple type. + +[Footnote 6: "_Feudal and Modern Japan_" Vol. I, p. 183.] + +As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the +most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral +relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), +father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between +friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had +recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, +benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts +was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling +class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the +requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius +exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often +quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic +natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the +existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under +censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment +in the heart of the samurai. + +The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books +for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere +acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in +no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an +intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant +of _Analects_. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling +sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be +boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little +smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more +so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge +becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the +learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was +considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to +ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike +spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, +that the cosmic process was unmoral. + +Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in +itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who +stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient +machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, +knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in +life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the +Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, "To +know and to act are one and the same." + +I beg leave for a moment's digression while I am on this subject, +inasmuch as some of the noblest types of _bushi_ were strongly +influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily +recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making +allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, "Seek +ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things +shall be added unto you," conveys a thought that may be found on almost +any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese disciple[7] of his says--"The lord +of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, +becomes his mind (_Kokoro_); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever +luminous:" and again, "The spiritual light of our essential being is +pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up +in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called +conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of +heaven." How very much do these words sound like some passages from +Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think +that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto +religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming's +precepts. He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to +extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, +not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature +of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not +farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of +things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors +charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and +its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity +of temper cannot be gainsaid. + +[Footnote 7: Miwa Shissai.] + +Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which _Bushido_ +imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few +and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct +of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of +our nation's history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our +warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of +commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the +highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands +of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. +An acute French _savant_, M. de la Mazelière, thus sums up his +impressions of the sixteenth century:--"Toward the middle of the +sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in +society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to +barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,--these +formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in +whom Taine praises 'the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden +resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to +suffer.' In Japan as in Italy 'the rude manners of the Middle Ages made +of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.' And this +is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the +principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one +finds there between minds (_esprits_) as well as between temperaments. +While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of +energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character +as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of +civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to +Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak +of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its +mountains." + +To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazelière +writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with + + + +RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE, + +the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more +loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The +conception of Rectitude may be erroneous--it may be narrow. A well-known +bushi defines it as a power of resolution;--"Rectitude is the power of +deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, +without wavering;--to die when it is right to die, to strike when to +strike is right." Another speaks of it in the following terms: +"Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without +bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor +feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of +a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as +nothing." Mencius calls Benevolence man's mind, and Rectitude or +Righteousness his path. "How lamentable," he exclaims, "is it to neglect +the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it +again! When men's fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them +again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it." Have we +not here "as in a glass darkly" a parable propounded three hundred years +later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself _the +Way_ of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray +from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and +narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise. + +Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace +brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it +dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet +_Gishi_ (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that +signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls--of whom +so much is made in our popular education--are known in common parlance +as the Forty-seven _Gishi_. + +In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and +downright falsehood for _ruse de guerre_, this manly virtue, frank and +honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly +praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to Valor, another martial virtue. +But before proceeding to speak of Valor, let me linger a little while on +what I may term a derivation from Rectitude, which, at first deviating +slightly from its original, became more and more removed from it, until +its meaning was perverted in the popular acceptance. I speak of _Gi-ri_, +literally the Right Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense +of duty which public opinion expected an incumbent to fulfil. In its +original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,--hence, +we speak of the _Giri_ we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to +society at large, and so forth. In these instances _Giri_ is duty; for +what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. +Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative? + +_Giri_ primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology +was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, +though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be some +other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated this +authority in _Giri_. Very rightly did they formulate this +authority--_Giri_--since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, +recourse must be had to man's intellect and his reason must be quickened +to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of +any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous, Right +Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. _Giri_ thus understood is a +severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards +perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it +is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should +be _the_ law. I deem it a product of the conditions of an artificial +society--of a society in which accident of birth and unmerited favour +instituted class distinctions, in which the family was the social unit, +in which seniority of age was of more account than superiority of +talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb before +arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, _Giri_ +in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain +this and sanction that,--as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, +sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why +a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father's +dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, _Giri_ has, in my +opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into +cowardly fear of censure. I might say of _Giri_ what Scott wrote of +patriotism, that "as it is the fairest, so it is often the most +suspicious, mask of other feelings." Carried beyond or below Right +Reason, _Giri_ became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings +every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily have been turned +into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of + + + +COURAGE, THE SPIRIT OF DARING +AND BEARING, + +to the consideration of which we shall now return. Courage was scarcely +deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in +the cause of Righteousness. In his "Analects" Confucius defines Courage +by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. "Perceiving +what is right," he says, "and doing it not, argues lack of courage." Put +this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, "Courage is doing +what is right." To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one's self, +to rush into the jaws of death--these are too often identified with +Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct--what +Shakespeare calls, "valor misbegot"--is unjustly applauded; but not so +in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, +was called a "dog's death." "To rush into the thick of battle and to be +slain in it," says a Prince of Mito, "is easy enough, and the merest +churl is equal to the task; but," he continues, "it is true courage to +live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die," +and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines +courage as "the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he +should not fear." A distinction which is made in the West between moral +and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai +youth has not heard of "Great Valor" and the "Valor of a Villein?" + +Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of +soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be +trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular +virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits +were repeated almost before boys left their mother's breast. Does a +little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: +"What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your +arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit +_harakiri_?" We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little +boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little +page, "Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow +bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms +to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a +samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger." +Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though +stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early +imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness +sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called +forth all the pluck that was in them. "Bears hurl their cubs down the +gorge," they said. Samurai's sons were let down the steep valleys of +hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of +food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for +inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter +strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the +sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to +their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they +frequently--once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of +learning,--came together in small groups and passed the night without +sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny +places--to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be +haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when +decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the +ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the +darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the +trunkless head. + +Does this ultra-Spartan system of "drilling the nerves" strike the +modern pedagogist with horror and doubt--doubt whether the tendency +would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the +heart? Let us see what other concepts Bushido had of Valor. + +The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure--calm presence +of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical +manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave +man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the +equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the +midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake +him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the +menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, +for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain +in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing +or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature--of +what we call a capacious mind (_yoyu_), which, for from being pressed or +crowded, has always room for something more. + +It passes current among us as a piece of authentic history, that as Ota +Dokan, the great builder of the castle of Tokyo, was pierced through +with a spear, his assassin, knowing the poetical predilection of his +victim, accompanied his thrust with this couplet-- + + "Ah! how in moments like these + Our heart doth grudge the light of life;" + +whereupon the expiring hero, not one whit daunted by the mortal wound in +his side, added the lines-- + + "Had not in hours of peace, + It learned to lightly look on life." + +There is even a sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which +are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in +old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to +exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not +solely a matter of brute force; it was, as, well, an intellectual +engagement. + +Of such character was the battle fought on the bank of the Koromo River, +late in the eleventh century. The eastern army routed, its leader, +Sadato, took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and +called aloud--"It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the +enemy," Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted +an impromptu verse-- + + "Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth" (_koromo_). + +Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when the defeated warrior, +undismayed, completed the couplet-- + + "Since age has worn its threads by use." + +Yoshiie, whose bow had all the while been bent, suddenly unstrung it and +turned away, leaving his prospective victim to do as he pleased. When +asked the reason of his strange behavior, he replied that he could not +bear to put to shame one who had kept his presence of mind while hotly +pursued by his enemy. + +The sorrow which overtook Antony and Octavius at the death of Brutus, +has been the general experience of brave men. Kenshin, who fought for +fourteen years with Shingen, when he heard of the latter's death, wept +aloud at the loss of "the best of enemies." It was this same Kenshin who +had set a noble example for all time, in his treatment of Shingen, +whose provinces lay in a mountainous region quite away from the sea, and +who had consequently depended upon the Hojo provinces of the Tokaido for +salt. The Hojo prince wishing to weaken him, although not openly at war +with him, had cut off from Shingen all traffic in this important +article. Kenshin, hearing of his enemy's dilemma and able to obtain his +salt from the coast of his own dominions, wrote Shingen that in his +opinion the Hojo lord had committed a very mean act, and that although +he (Kenshin) was at war with him (Shingen) he had ordered his subjects +to furnish him with plenty of salt--adding, "I do not fight with salt, +but with the sword," affording more than a parallel to the words of +Camillus, "We Romans do not fight with gold, but with iron." Nietzsche +spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, "You are to be proud of your +enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success also." Indeed +valor and honor alike required that we should own as enemies in war only +such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. When valor attains this +height, it becomes akin to + + + +BENEVOLENCE, THE FEELING OF +DISTRESS, + +love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, which were +ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes +of the human soul. Benevolence was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold +sense;--princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; +princely as particularly befitting a princely profession. We needed no +Shakespeare to feel--though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we +needed him to express it--that mercy became a monarch better than his +crown, that it was above his sceptered sway. How often both Confucius +and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist +in benevolence. Confucius would say, "Let but a prince cultivate virtue, +people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will +bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right +uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth an outcome." Again, "Never has +there been a case of a sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not +loving righteousness," Mencius follows close at his heels and says, +"Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power +in a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a +whole empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue." +Also,--"It is impossible that any one should become ruler of the +people to whom they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts." +Both defined this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, +"Benevolence--Benevolence is Man." Under the régime of feudalism, which +could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we +owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter +surrender of "life and limb" on the part of the governed would have left +nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural +consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called "oriental +despotism,"--as though there were no despots of occidental history! + +Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a +mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote +that "Kings are the first servants of the State," jurists thought +rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. +Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan, +Yozan of Yonézawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that +feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although +unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher +sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father +to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not +usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal +government--paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular +government (Uncle Sam's, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and +a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey +reluctantly, while in the other they do so with "that proud submission, +that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, +even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted freedom."[8] The old +saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the "king +of devils, because of his subjects' often insurrections against, and +depositions of, their princes," and which made the French monarch the +"king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and Impositions," but +which gave the title of "the king of men" to the sovereign of Spain +"because of his subjects' willing obedience." But enough!-- + +[Footnote 8: Burke, _French Revolution_.] + +Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which +it is impossible to harmonize. Pobyedonostseff has clearly set before us +the contrast in the foundations of English and other European +communities; namely that these were organized on the basis of common +interest, while that was distinguished by a strongly developed +independent personality. What this Russian statesman says of the +personal dependence of individuals on some social alliance and in the +end of ends of the State, among the continental nations of Europe and +particularly among Slavonic peoples, is doubly true of the Japanese. +Hence not only is a free exercise of monarchical power not felt as +heavily by us as in Europe, but it is generally moderated by parental +consideration for the feelings of the people. "Absolutism," says +Bismarck, "primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty, +devotion to duty, energy and inward humility." If I may be allowed to +make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of +the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of "Kingship, by the +grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to +the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can +release the monarch." + +We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright +Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the +gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned +against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with +justice and rectitude. Masamuné expressed it well in his oft-quoted +aphorism--"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; +Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness." + +Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is +universally true that "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the +daring." "_Bushi no nasaké_"--the tenderness of a warrior--had a sound +which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy +of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other +being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, +but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not +remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with +power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual +or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual, +since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the +recipient. + +Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to +turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius +taught concerning the power of Love. "Benevolence," he says, "brings +under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: +they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to +extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots." He also +says that "the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore +a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in +distress." Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his +ethical philosophy on Sympathy. + +It is indeed striking how closely the code of knightly honor of one +country coincides with that of others; in other words, how the much +abused oriental ideas of morals find their counterparts in the noblest +maxims of European literature. If the well-known lines, + + Hae tibi erunt artes--pacisque imponere morem, + Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos, + +were shown a Japanese gentleman, he might readily accuse the Mantuan +bard of plagiarizing from the literature of his own country. Benevolence +to the weak, the downtrodden or the vanquished, was ever extolled as +peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art must be +familiar with the representation of a priest riding backwards on a cow. +The rider was once a warrior who in his day made his name a by-word of +terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-ura, (1184 A.D.), which was +one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy and in +single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms. Now the +etiquette of war required that on such occasions no blood should be +spilt, unless the weaker party proved to be a man of rank or ability +equal to that of the stronger. The grim combatant would have the name of +the man under him; but he refusing to make it known, his helmet was +ruthlessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and +beardless, made the astonished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth +to his feet, in paternal tones he bade the stripling go: "Off, young +prince, to thy mother's side! The sword of Kumagaye shall never be +tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o'er yon pass before +thy enemies come in sight!" The young warrior refused to go and begged +Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above the +hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time +before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; +there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who this +self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden arms; the +strong hand of the warrior quivers; again he begs his victim to flee for +his life. Finding all his entreaties vain and hearing the approaching +steps of his comrades, he exclaims: "If thou art overtaken, thou mayest +fall at a more ignoble hand than mine. O, thou Infinite! receive his +soul!" In an instant the sword flashes in the air, and when it falls it +is red with adolescent blood. When the war is ended, we find our soldier +returning in triumph, but little cares he now for honor or fame; he +renounces his warlike career, shaves his head, dons a priestly garb, +devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never turning his back +to the West, where lies the Paradise whence salvation comes and whither +the sun hastes daily for his rest. + +Critics may point out flaws in this story, which is casuistically +vulnerable. Let it be: all the same it shows that Tenderness, Pity and +Love, were traits which adorned the most sanguinary exploits of the +samurai. It was an old maxim among them that "It becometh not the fowler +to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom." This in a large +measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered peculiarly +Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us. For decades before +we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had +familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe. In the +principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the +custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of +trumpets or the beat of drums,--"those clamorous harbingers of blood and +death"--stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and +tender melodies on the _biwa_,[9] soothing our fiery spirits, drawing +our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage. Polybius +tells us of the Constitution of Arcadia, which required all youths +under thirty to practice music, in order that this gentle art might +alleviate the rigors of that inclement region. It is to its influence +that he attributes the absence of cruelty in that part of the Arcadian +mountains. + +[Footnote 9: A musical instrument, resembling the guitar.] + +Nor was Satsuma the only place in Japan where gentleness was inculcated +among the warrior class. A Prince of Shirakawa jots down his random +thoughts, and among them is the following: "Though they come stealing to +your bedside in the silent watches of the night, drive not away, but +rather cherish these--the fragrance of flowers, the sound of distant +bells, the insect humming of a frosty night." And again, "Though they +may wound your feelings, these three you have only to forgive, the +breeze that scatters your flowers, the cloud that hides your moon, and +the man who tries to pick quarrels with you." + +It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler +emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged. Our poetry has +therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness. A well-known +anecdote of a rustic samurai illustrates a case in point. When he was +told to learn versification, and "The Warbler's Notes"[10] was given him +for the subject of his first attempt, his fiery spirit rebelled and he +_flung_ at the feet of his master this uncouth production, which ran + +[Footnote 10: The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the nightingale of +Japan.] + + "The brave warrior keeps apart + The ear that might listen + To the warbler's song." + +His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the +youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to +the sweet notes of the _uguisu_, and he wrote + + "Stands the warrior, mailed and strong, + To hear the uguisu's song, + Warbled sweet the trees among." + +We admire and enjoy the heroic incident in Körner's short life, when, as +he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous "Farewell to +Life." Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our +warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to +the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was +either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might +be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an +ode,--and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the +breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers. + +What Christianity has done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the +midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in +Japan. The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for +the sufferings of others. Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect +for others' feelings, are at the root of + + + +POLITENESS, + +that courtesy and urbanity of manners which has been noticed by every +foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait. Politeness is a poor virtue, +if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it +should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the +feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of +things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter +express no plutocratic distinctions, but were originally distinctions +for actual merit. + +In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love. We may +reverently say, politeness "suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, +vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, +seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of +evil." Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six +elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, +inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of social intercourse? + +While thus extolling Politeness, far be it from me to put it in the +front rank of virtues. If we analyze it, we shall find it correlated +with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone? +While--or rather because--it was exalted as peculiar to the profession +of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there +came into existence its counterfeits. Confucius himself has repeatedly +taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as +sounds are of music. + +When propriety was elevated to the _sine qua non_ of social intercourse, +it was only to be expected that an elaborate system of etiquette should +come into vogue to train youth in correct social behavior. How one must +bow in accosting others, how he must walk and sit, were taught and +learned with utmost care. Table manners grew to be a science. Tea +serving and drinking were raised to a ceremony. A man of education is, +of course, expected to be master of all these. Very fitly does Mr. +Veblen, in his interesting book,[11] call decorum "a product and an +exponent of the leisure-class life." + +[Footnote 11: _Theory of the Leisure Class_, N.Y. 1899, p. 46.] + +I have heard slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate +discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much +of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. +I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, +but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to +ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my +mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the +contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for +the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether +trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most +appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything +to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both +the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as +the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain +definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a +novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed +is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the +most economical use of force,--hence, according to Spencer's dictum, the +most graceful. + +The spiritual significance of social decorum,--or, I might say, to +borrow from the vocabulary of the "Philosophy of Clothes," the +spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward +garments,--is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us +in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our +ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave +rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book. +It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, +that I wish to emphasize. + +I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so +much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into +existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was +put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the +Ogasawara, in the following terms: "The end of all etiquette is to so +cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the +roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person." It means, in other +words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the +parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such +harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of +spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word +_biensèance_[12] comes thus to contain! + +[Footnote 12: Etymologically _well-seatedness_.] + +If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it +follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful +deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine +manners, therefore, mean power in repose. When the barbarian Gauls, +during the sack of Rome, burst into the assembled Senate and dared pull +the beards of the venerable Fathers, we think the old gentlemen were to +blame, inasmuch as they lacked dignity and strength of manners. Is lofty +spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not?--All +roads lead to Rome! + +As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then +become spiritual culture, I may take _Cha-no-yu_, the tea ceremony. +Tea-sipping as a fine art! Why should it not be? In the children drawing +pictures on the sand, or in the savage carving on a rock, was the +promise of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. How much more is the drinking +of a beverage, which began with the transcendental contemplation of a +Hindoo anchorite, entitled to develop into a handmaid of Religion and +Morality? That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure +and quietness of demeanor, which are the first essentials of _Cha-no-yu_ +are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right +feeling. The scrupulous cleanliness of the little room, shut off from +sight and sound of the madding crowd, is in itself conducive to direct +one's thoughts from the world. The bare interior does not engross one's +attention like the innumerable pictures and bric-a-brac of a Western +parlor; the presence of _kakemono_[13] calls our attention more to grace +of design than to beauty of color. The utmost refinement of taste is the +object aimed at; whereas anything like display is banished with +religious horror. The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative +recluse, in a time when wars and the rumors of wars were incessant, is +well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. +Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company +assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their +swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, +there to find peace and friendship. + +[Footnote 13: Hanging scrolls, which may be either paintings or +ideograms, used for decorative purposes.] + +_Cha-no-yu_ is more than a ceremony--it is a fine art; it is poetry, +with articulate gestures for rhythm: it is a _modus operandi_ of soul +discipline. Its greatest value lies in this last phase. Not infrequently +the other phases preponderated in the mind of its votaries, but that +does not prove that its essence was not of a spiritual nature. + +Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart +grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, +springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and +actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever +a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should +weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Such +didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, +expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, +as one missionary lady of twenty years' residence once said to me, +"awfully funny." You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over +you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly +his hat is off--well, that is perfectly natural, but the "awfully funny" +performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down +and he stands in the glaring sun also. How foolish!--Yes, exactly so, +provided the motive were less than this: "You are in the sun; I +sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it +were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot +shade you, I will share your discomforts." Little acts of this kind, +equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities. +They are the "bodying forth" of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of +others. + +Another "awfully funny" custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; +but many superficial writers on Japan, have dismissed it by simply +attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every +foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in +making proper reply upon the occasion. In America, when you make a gift, +you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander +it. The underlying idea with you is, "This is a nice gift: if it were +not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to +give you anything but what is nice." In contrast to this, our logic +runs: "You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you. You +will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my +good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token. +It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for +you." Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate +idea is one and the same. Neither is "awfully funny." The American +speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the +spirit which prompts the gift. + +It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety +shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to +take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass +judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or +to observe rules of propriety about eating? A Chinese sage answers, "If +you take a case where the eating is all-important, and the observing the +rules of propriety is of little importance, and compare them together, +why merely say that the eating is of the more importance?" "Metal is +heavier than feathers," but does that saying have reference to a single +clasp of metal and a wagon-load of feathers? Take a piece of wood a foot +thick and raise it above the pinnacle of a temple, none would call it +taller than the temple. To the question, "Which is the more important, +to tell the truth or to be polite?" the Japanese are said to give an +answer diametrically opposite to what the American will say,--but I +forbear any comment until I come to speak of + + + +VERACITY OR TRUTHFULNESS, + +without which Politeness is a farce and a show. "Propriety carried +beyond right bounds," says Masamuné, "becomes a lie." An ancient poet +has outdone Polonius in the advice he gives: "To thyself be faithful: if +in thy heart thou strayest not from truth, without prayer of thine the +Gods will keep thee whole." The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Tsu-tsu +gives expression in the _Doctrine of the Mean_, attributes to it +transcendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine. +"Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity +there would be nothing." He then dwells with eloquence on its +far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes +without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose +without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a +combination of "Word" and "Perfect," one is tempted to draw a parallel +between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of _Logos_--to such height +does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight. + +Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly. The bushi held that +his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than +that of the tradesman and peasant. _Bushi no ichi-gon_--the word of a +samurai or in exact German equivalent _ein Ritterwort_--was sufficient +guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such +weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a +written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity. +Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for +_ni-gon_, a double tongue. + +The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of +Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher +not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to +their honor. I am well aware that they did swear by different deities or +upon their swords; but never has swearing degenerated into wanton form +and irreverent interjection. To emphasize our words a practice of +literally sealing with blood was sometimes resorted to. For the +explanation of such a practice, I need only refer my readers to Goethe's +Faust. + +A recent American writer is responsible for this statement, that if you +ask an ordinary Japanese which is better, to tell a falsehood or be +impolite, he will not hesitate to answer "to tell a falsehood!" Dr. +Peery[14] is partly right and partly wrong; right in that an ordinary +Japanese, even a samurai, may answer in the way ascribed to him, but +wrong in attributing too much weight to the term he translates +"falsehood." This word (in Japanese _uso_) is employed to denote +anything which is not a truth (_makoto_) or fact (_honto_). Lowell tells +us that Wordsworth could not distinguish between truth and fact, and an +ordinary Japanese is in this respect as good as Wordsworth. Ask a +Japanese, or even an American of any refinement, to tell you whether he +dislikes you or whether he is sick at his stomach, and he will not +hesitate long to tell falsehoods and answer, "I like you much," or, "I +am quite well, thank you." To sacrifice truth merely for the sake of +politeness was regarded as an "empty form" (_kyo-rei_) and "deception by +sweet words," and was never justified. + +[Footnote 14: Peery, _The Gist of Japan_, p. 86.] + +I own I am speaking now of the Bushido idea of veracity; but it may not +be amiss to devote a few words to our commercial integrity, of which I +have heard much complaint in foreign books and journals. A loose +business morality has indeed been the worst blot on our national +reputation; but before abusing it or hastily condemning the whole race +for it, let us calmly study it and we shall be rewarded with consolation +for the future. + +Of all the great occupations of life, none was farther removed from the +profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the +category of vocations,--the knight, the tiller of the soil, the +mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and +could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the +counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social +arrangement. Montesquieu has made it clear that the debarring of the +nobility from mercantile pursuits was an admirable social policy, in +that it prevented wealth from accumulating in the hands of the powerful. +The separation of power and riches kept the distribution of the latter +more nearly equable. Professor Dill, the author of "Roman Society in the +Last Century of the Western Empire," has brought afresh to our mind that +one cause of the decadence of the Roman Empire, was the permission given +to the nobility to engage in trade, and the consequent monopoly of +wealth and power by a minority of the senatorial families. + +Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of +development which it would have attained under freer conditions. The +obloquy attached to the calling naturally brought within its pale such +as cared little for social repute. "Call one a thief and he will steal:" +put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it, +for it is natural that "the normal conscience," as Hugh Black says, +"rises to the demands made on it, and easily falls to the limit of the +standard expected from it." It is unnecessary to add that no business, +commercial or otherwise, can be transacted without a code of morals. Our +merchants of the feudal period had one among themselves, without which +they could never have developed, as they did, such fundamental +mercantile institutions as the guild, the bank, the bourse, insurance, +checks, bills of exchange, etc.; but in their relations with people +outside their vocation, the tradesmen lived too true to the reputation +of their order. + +This being the case, when the country was opened to foreign trade, only +the most adventurous and unscrupulous rushed to the ports, while the +respectable business houses declined for some time the repeated requests +of the authorities to establish branch houses. Was Bushido powerless to +stay the current of commercial dishonor? Let us see. + +Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a +few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, +feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai's fiefs were taken +and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to +invest them in mercantile transactions. Now you may ask, "Why could they +not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations +and so reform the old abuses?" Those who had eyes to see could not weep +enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with +the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably +failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through +sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival. When +we know that eighty per cent. of the business houses fail in so +industrial a country as America, is it any wonder that scarcely one +among a hundred samurai who went into trade could succeed in his new +vocation? It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes +were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; +but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth +were not the ways of honor. In what respects, then, were they different? + +Of the three incentives to Veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz: the +industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was +altogether lacking in Bushido. As to the second, it could develop little +in a political community under a feudal system. It is in its +philosophical, and as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that Honesty +attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues. With all my sincere +regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I +ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that "Honesty is the best +policy," that it _pays_ to be honest. Is not this virtue, then, its own +reward? If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, +I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies! + +If Bushido rejects a doctrine of _quid pro quo_ rewards, the shrewder +tradesman will readily accept it. Lecky has very truly remarked that +Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as +Nietzsche puts it, "Honesty is the youngest of virtues"--in other +words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry. Without +this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most +cultivated mind could adopt and nourish. Such minds were general among +the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian +foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive. Industries advancing, +Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice. Just +think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the +professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of "a lamentable +lack of reliability with regard to German shipments _inter alia_, +apparent both as to quality and quantity;" now-a-days we hear +comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade. In +twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays. Already +our merchants are finding that out. For the rest I recommend the reader +to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this point.[15] It is +interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were +the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the +form of promissory notes. It was quite a usual thing to insert such +clauses as these: "In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I +shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;" or, "In case I +fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool," and the like. + +[Footnote 15: Knapp, _Feudal and Modern Japan_, Vol. I, Ch. IV. Ransome, +_Japan in Transition_, Ch. VIII.] + +Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive +higher than courage. In the absence of any positive commandment against +bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply +denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable. As a matter of +fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and +its German etymology so identified with + + + +HONOR, + +that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration +of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood. + +The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity +and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to +value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word +ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used +freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as _na_ (name) +_men-moku_ (countenance), _guai-bun_ (outside hearing), reminding us +respectively of the biblical use of "name," of the evolution of the term +"personality" from the Greek mask, and of "fame." A good name--one's +reputation, the immortal part of one's self, what remains being +bestial--assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its +integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (_Ren-chi-shin_) was +one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. "You will be +laughed at," "It will disgrace you," "Are you not ashamed?" were the +last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. +Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the +child's heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its +mother's womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being +closely bound up with strong family consciousness. "In losing the +solidarity of families," says Balzac, "society has lost the fundamental +force which Montesquieu named Honor." Indeed, the sense of shame seems +to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our +race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in +consequence of tasting "the fruit of that forbidden tree" was, to my +mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the +awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in +pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and +tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her +dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience +clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial +ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will +efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who +refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his +youth; "because," he said, "dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which +time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge." + +Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, +what Carlyle has latterly expressed,--namely, that "Shame is the soil of +all Virtue, of good manners and good morals." + +The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks such +eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it nevertheless +hung like Damocles' sword over the head of every samurai and often +assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated +which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the +slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took +offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary +strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a +well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea +jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple +and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed +on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior +with a beast--I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe. +Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; (1) that they +were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made +of the samurai's profession of honor; and (3) that a very strong sense +of shame was developed among them. It is plainly unfair to take an +abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of +the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and +extravagance--inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania +there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium +tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai +about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine +virtue? + +The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined to +run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and patience. +To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as "short-tempered." +The popular adage said: "To bear what you think you cannot bear is +really to bear." The great Iyéyasu left to posterity a few maxims, +among which are the following:--"The life of man is like going a long +distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not. * * * * +Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. * * * +Forbearance is the basis of length of days." He proved in his life what +he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths +of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he +attributed, "I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;" to +Hidéyoshi, "I will force her to sing for me;" and to Iyéyasu, "I will +wait till she opens her lips." + +Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In +one place he writes to this effect: "Though you denude yourself and +insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your +outrage." Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy +a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath. + +To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could +reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, +for instance, this saying of Ogawa: "When others speak all manner of +evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect +that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties." Take +another of Kumazawa:--"When others blame thee, blame them not; when +others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion +and Desire part." Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon +whose overhanging brows "shame is ashamed to sit;"--"The Way is the way +of Heaven and Earth: Man's place is to follow it: therefore make it the +object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with +equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love +others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy +partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou +comest not short of thine own mark." Some of those sayings remind us of +Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality +natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings +remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts. + +It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of +magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing +clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few +enlightened minds being aware that it "from no condition rises," but +that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than +for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in +Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, "'Tis in every man's +mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly +honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men +confer is not good honor. Those whom Châo the Great ennobles, he can +make mean again." + +For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, +as we shall see later, while Honor--too often nothing higher than vain +glory or worldly approbation--was prized as the _summum bonum_ of +earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal +toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he +crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it +until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother +refused to see her sons again unless they could "return home," as the +expression is, "caparisoned in brocade." To shun shame or win a name, +samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals +of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows +with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyéyasu, in +spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at +the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept +so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the +resources at his command. "Take comfort, Sire," said he, "at thought of +the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there +will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself." The boy fixed his +indignant gaze upon the man and said--"How foolishly you talk! Can ever +my fourteenth year come round again?" + +Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained +therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered +dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down. + +Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to +sacrifice, was + + + +THE DUTY OF LOYALTY, + +which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other +virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, +with other classes of people, but this virtue--homage and fealty to a +superior--is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity +is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,--a +gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the +code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance. + +In spite of Hegel's criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, +being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a +bond established on totally unjust principles,[16] a great compatriot of +his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue. +Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the _Treue_ he boasts of +was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but +because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people +where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where "everybody is as +good as anybody else," and, as the Irishman added, "better too," such +exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed +"excellent within certain bounds," but preposterous as encouraged among +us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the +Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the +truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary +beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we +conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception +is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we +carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. Griffis[17] was +quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made +obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was +given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I +will relate of one "who could endure to follow a fall'n lord" and who +thus, as Shakespeare assures, "earned a place i' the story." + +[Footnote 16: _Philosophy of History_ (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV, +Sec. II, Ch. I.] + +[Footnote 17: _Religions of Japan_.] + +The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizané, +who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the +capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent +upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son--not yet +grown--reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept +by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizané. When orders are dispatched +to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a +certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He +ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the +boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children +born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protégé. His +despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is +announced--a comely boy of the same age as his master's son, escorted by +a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between +infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In +the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his +life,--the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. +Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom +comes the suggestion. + +Here, then, is the scape-goat!--The rest of the narrative may be briefly +told.--On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to +identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the +false head? The poor Genzo's hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to +strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination +defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him, +goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone, +pronounces it genuine.--That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother +we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for +his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the +wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of +Michizané's bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced +her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family's +benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but +his son could serve the cause of the grandsire's lord. As one acquainted +with the exile's family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task +of identifying the boy's head. Now the day's--yea, the life's--hard work +is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his +wife, saying: "Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service +to his lord!" + +"What an atrocious story!" I hear my readers exclaim,--"Parents +deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of +another man's." But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is +a story of vicarious death--as significant as, and not more revolting +than, the story of Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases +it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of +a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or +heard by an outward or an inward ear;--but I abstain from preaching. + +The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for +father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief +the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest +of the family and of the members thereof is intact,--one and +inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection--natural, +instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural +love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? "For if ye love +them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the +same?" + +In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart +struggle of Shigemori concerning his father's rebellious conduct. "If I +be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my +sovereign must go amiss." Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying +with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may +be released from this world where it is hard for purity and +righteousness to dwell. + +Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and +affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself +contains an adequate rendering of _ko_, our conception of filial piety, +and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of +Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the +king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the +samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty. + +Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived +the state as antedating the individual--the latter being born into the +former as part and parcel thereof--he must live and die for it or for +the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will +remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the +city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he +makes them (the laws, or the state) say:--"Since you were begotten and +nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our +offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!" These are words +which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing +has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the +laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty +is an ethical outcome of this political theory. + +I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer's view according to which +political obedience--Loyalty--is accredited with only a transitional +function.[18] It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue +thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe _that_ +day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem +says, "tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss." We may +remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the +English, "the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity +which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has," as Monsieur +Boutmy recently said, "only passed more or less into their profound +loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their +extraordinary attachment to the dynasty." + +[Footnote 18: _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.] + +Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to +loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is +realized--will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence +disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to +another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a +ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch +who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a +very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer, +made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the +claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with +treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and +Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of +Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of the +Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, "serve two +masters without holding to the one or despising the other," "rendering +unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that +are God's." Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to +concede one iota of loyalty to his _daemon_, obey with equal fidelity +and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His +conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the +day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the +dictates of their conscience! + +Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord +or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said: + + "Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot. + My life thou shalt command, but not my shame. + The one my duty owes; but my fair name, + Despite of death, that lives upon my grave, + To dark dishonor's use, thou shalt not have." + +A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak +or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the +Precepts. Such a one was despised as _nei-shin_, a cringeling, who +makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as _chô-shin_, a favorite who +steals his master's affections by means of servile compliance; these two +species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago +describes,--the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his +own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master's ass; +the other trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart +attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal +path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him +of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master +deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual +course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and +conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with +the shedding of his own blood. + +Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its +ideal being set upon honor, the whole + + + +EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF +A SAMURAI, + +were conducted accordingly. + +The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up +character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, +intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part aesthetic +accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a +man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai +training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the +word _Chi_, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom +in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate +place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be +_Chi_, _Jin_, _Yu_, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A +samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of +his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his +profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; +he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish +courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed "'tis not the creed +that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed." +Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual +training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth +that he strove after,--literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and +philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for +the exposition of some military or political problem. + +From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the +curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted +mainly of the following,--fencing, archery, _jiujutsu_ or _yawara_, +horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics, +literature and history. Of these, _jiujutsu_ and caligraphy may require +a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing, +probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of +pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was +accepted as indicative of one's personal character. _Jiujutsu_ may be +briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose +of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not +depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in +that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such +part of the enemy's body as will make him numb and incapable of +resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for +action for the time being. + +A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education +and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of +instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in +part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific +precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was +unfavorable to fostering numerical notions. + +Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius +that "ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than +gain which darkens him." Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear +and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in +hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrère of La Mancha. He disdains +money itself,--the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably +filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an +age is "that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death." +Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as +their lavish use is panegyrized. "Less than all things," says a current +precept, "men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is +hindered." Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of +economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of +the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of +numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the +distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left +to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by +a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well +enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of +raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift +was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for +the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to +manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, +sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans. + +We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial +agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby +showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money +itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of +the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. +These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something +low--low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations. + +Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself +could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is +the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men +have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is +making its way in our time and generation! + +The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the +study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and +deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind +of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, +decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with +information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies +that Bacon gives,--for delight, ornament, and ability,--Bushido had +decided preference for the last, where their use was "in judgment and +the disposition of business." Whether it was for the disposition of +public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a +practical end in view that education was conducted. "Learning without +thought," said Confucius, "is labor lost: thought without learning is +perilous." + +When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is +chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his +vocation partakes of a sacred character. "It is the parent who has borne +me: it is the teacher who makes me man." With this idea, therefore, the +esteem in which one's preceptor was held was very high. A man to evoke +such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed +with superior personality without lacking erudition. He was a father to +the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring. "Thy father and thy +mother"--so runs our maxim--"are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and +thy lord are like the sun and moon." + +The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue +among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be +rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it +of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not +because it was valueless but because it was invaluable. Here the +non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than +modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for +services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas +the best service done in education,--namely, in soul development (and +this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or +measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, +is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their +teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were +not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients +as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, +too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg. They were +grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity. They were +an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were +thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines, + + + +SELF-CONTROL, + +which was universally required of samurai. + +The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance +without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring +us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of +our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and +eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I +say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can +ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some +of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer +hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any +race under the sky. + +I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than +others--yes, doubly more--since the very attempt to restrain natural +promptings entails suffering. Imagine boys--and girls too--brought up +not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for +the relief of their feelings,--and there is a physiological problem +whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive. + +It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his +face. "He shows no sign of joy or anger," was a phrase used in +describing a strong character. The most natural affections were kept +under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his +dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,--no, not in the presence of +other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth +in the remark of a witty youth when he said, "American husbands kiss +their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat +theirs in public and kiss them in private." + +Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by +passion of any kind. I remember when, during the late war with China, a +regiment left a certain town, a large concourse of people flocked to the +station to bid farewell to the general and his army. On this occasion +an American resident resorted to the place, expecting to witness loud +demonstrations, as the nation itself was highly excited and there were +fathers, mothers, and sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The +American was strangely disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the +train began to move, the hats of thousands of people were silently taken +off and their heads bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of +handkerchiefs, no word uttered, but deep silence in which only an +attentive ear could catch a few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I +know of a father who spent whole nights listening to the breathing of a +sick child, standing behind the door that he might not be caught in such +an act of parental weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last +moments, refrained from sending for her son, that he might not be +disturbed in his studies. Our history and everyday life are replete with +examples of heroic matrons who can well bear comparison with some of the +most touching pages of Plutarch. Among our peasantry an Ian Maclaren +would be sure to find many a Marget Howe. + +It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for the +absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of Japan. +When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is +to quietly suppress any indication of it. In rare instances is the +tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of +sincerity and fervor. It is putting a premium upon a breach of the third +commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experience. It is +truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most +secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. "Dost +thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time +for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone +in quietness and secrecy,"--writes a young samurai in his diary. + +To give in so many articulate words one's inmost thoughts and +feelings--notably the religious--is taken among us as an unmistakable +sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. "Only a +pomegranate is he"--so runs a popular saying--"who, when he gapes his +mouth, displays the contents of his heart." + +It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant our +emotions are moved we try to guard our lips in order to hide them. +Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defined it, "the art of +concealing thought." + +Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will +invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At first +you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you will get +a few broken commonplaces--"Human life has sorrow;" "They who meet must +part;" "He that is born must die;" "It is foolish to count the years of +a child that is gone, but a woman's heart will indulge in follies;" and +the like. So the noble words of a noble Hohenzollern--"Lerne zu leiden +ohne Klagen"--had found many responsive minds among us, long before they +were uttered. + +Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the frailties +of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better +reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter +with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when +disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of sorrow +or rage. + +The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they find +their safety-valve in poetical aphorism. A poet of the tenth century +writes, "In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by sorrow, +tells its bitter grief in verse." A mother who tries to console her +broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase +after the dragon-fly, hums, + + "How far to-day in chase, I wonder, + Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!" + +I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant +justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a +foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding +hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a +measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an +appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and +dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question. + +It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference +to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as +it goes. The next question is,--Why are our nerves less tightly strung? +It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be +our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the +Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read _Sartor +Resartus_ as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was +our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to +recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the +explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in +self-control, none can be correct. + +Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress +the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into +distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or +hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart +and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive +excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of +self-restraint is to keep our mind _level_--as our expression is--or, to +borrow a Greek term, attain the state of _euthymia_, which Democritus +called the highest good. + +The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of +the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely, + + + +THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE +AND REDRESS, + +of which (the former known as _hara-kiri_ and the latter as +_kataki-uchi_) many foreign writers have treated more or less fully. + +To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only +to _seppuku_ or _kappuku_, popularly known as _hara-kiri_--which means +self-immolation by disembowelment. "Ripping the abdomen? How +absurd!"--so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may +sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to +students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus' mouth--"Thy +(Caesar's) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper +entrails." Listen to a modern English poet, who in his _Light of Asia_, +speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:--none blames him for +bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, +look at Guercino's painting of Cato's death, in the Palazzo Rossa in +Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, +will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this +mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most +touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars +our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, +of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a +sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else--the sign which +Constantine beheld would not conquer the world! + +Not for extraneous associations only does _seppuku_ lose in our mind any +taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body +to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of +the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph's "bowels +yearning upon his brother," or David prayed the Lord not to forget his +bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of +the "sounding" or the "troubling" of bowels, they all and each endorsed +the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was +enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and +kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term +_hara_ was more comprehensive than the Greek _phren_ or _thumos_ and +the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell +somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the +peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by +one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul +is located in the pineal gland, still insist in using the term _ventre_ +in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless +physiologically significant. Similarly _entrailles_ stands in their +language for affection and compassion. Nor is such belief mere +superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the +heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese +knew better than Romeo "in what vile part of this anatomy one's name did +lodge." Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, +denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are +strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental +physiology once admitted, the syllogism of _seppuku_ is easy to +construct. "I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares +with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean." + +I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral +justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was +ample excuse with many for taking one's own life. How many acquiesced in +the sentiment expressed by Garth, + + "When honor's lost, 'tis a relief to die; + Death's but a sure retreat from infamy," + +and have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death when honor +was involved, was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many +complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure +from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to +be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are +honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive +admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius +and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly +existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the +philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his +pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the +state--which he knew was morally mistaken--in spite of the possibilities +of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even +offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his +whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical +compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of +the judges was compulsory: it said, "Thou shalt die,--and that by thy +own hand." If suicide meant no more than dying by one's own hand, +Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with +the crime; Plato, who was averse to it, would not call his master a +suicide. + +Now my readers will understand that _seppuku_ was not a mere suicidal +process. It was an institution, legal and ceremonial. An invention of +the middle ages, it was a process by which warriors could expiate their +crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their +friends, or prove their sincerity. When enforced as a legal punishment, +it was practiced with due ceremony. It was a refinement of +self-destruction, and none could perform it without the utmost coolness +of temper and composure of demeanor, and for these reasons it was +particularly befitting the profession of bushi. + +Antiquarian curiosity, if nothing else, would tempt me to give here a +description of this obsolete ceremonial; but seeing that such a +description was made by a far abler writer, whose book is not much read +now-a-days, I am tempted to make a somewhat lengthy quotation. Mitford, +in his "Tales of Old Japan," after giving a translation of a treatise on +_seppuku_ from a rare Japanese manuscript, goes on to describe an +instance of such an execution of which he was an eye-witness:-- + +"We (seven foreign representatives) were invited to follow the Japanese +witness into the _hondo_ or main hall of the temple, where the ceremony +was to be performed. It was an imposing scene. A large hall with a high +roof supported by dark pillars of wood. From the ceiling hung a +profusion of those huge gilt lamps and ornaments peculiar to Buddhist +temples. In front of the high altar, where the floor, covered with +beautiful white mats, is raised some three or four inches from the +ground, was laid a rug of scarlet felt. Tall candles placed at regular +intervals gave out a dim mysterious light, just sufficient to let all +the proceedings be seen. The seven Japanese took their places on the +left of the raised floor, the seven foreigners on the right. No other +person was present. + +"After the interval of a few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki +Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, +walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar +hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied +by a _kaishaku_ and three officers, who wore the _jimbaori_ or war +surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word _kaishaku_ it should be +observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. +The office is that of a gentleman: in many cases it is performed by a +kinsman or friend of the condemned, and the relation between them is +rather that of principal and second than that of victim and executioner. +In this instance the _kaishaku_ was a pupil of Taki Zenzaburo, and was +selected by friends of the latter from among their own number for his +skill in swordsmanship. + +"With the _kaishaku_ on his left hand, Taki Zenzaburo advanced slowly +towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then +drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps +even with more deference; in each case the salutation was ceremoniously +returned. Slowly and with great dignity the condemned man mounted on to +the raised floor, prostrated himself before the high altar twice, and +seated[19] himself on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, +the _kaishaku_ crouching on his left hand side. One of the three +attendant officers then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used +in the temple for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the +_wakizashi_, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a +half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor's. This he +handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it +reverently, raising it to his head with both hands, and placed it in +front of himself. + +[Footnote 19: Seated himself--that is, in the Japanese fashion, his +knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his heels. In +this position, which is one of respect, he remained until his death.] + +"After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which +betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a +man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in +his face or manner, spoke as follows:-- + +'I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners +at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel +myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing +the act.' + +"Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down +to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to +custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from +falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling +forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand he took the dirk that lay +before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a +moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then +stabbing himself deeply below the waist in the left-hand side, he drew +the dirk slowly across to his right side, and turning it in the wound, +gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he +never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned +forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first +time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the +_kaishaku_, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching +his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in +the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with +one blow the head had been severed from the body. + +"A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood +throbbing out of the inert head before us, which but a moment before had +been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible. + +"The _kaishaku_ made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of paper +which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; +and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the +execution. + +"The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and +crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called to us to +witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been +faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the +temple." + +I might multiply any number of descriptions of _seppuku_ from literature +or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will +suffice. + +Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen +years of age, made an effort to kill Iyéyasu in order to avenge their +father's wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made +prisoners. The old general admired the pluck of the youths who dared an +attempt on his life and ordered that they should be allowed to die an +honorable death. Their little brother Hachimaro, a mere infant of eight +summers, was condemned to a similar fate, as the sentence was pronounced +on all the male members of the family, and the three were taken to a +monastery where it was to be executed. A physician who was present on +the occasion has left us a diary from which the following scene is +translated. "When they were all seated in a row for final despatch, +Sakon turned to the youngest and said--'Go thou first, for I wish to be +sure that thou doest it aright.' Upon the little one's replying that, as +he had never seen _seppuku_ performed, he would like to see his brothers +do it and then he could follow them, the older brothers smiled between +their tears:--'Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of +being our father's child.' When they had placed him between them, Sakon +thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and +asked--'Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don't push the dagger +too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees +well composed.' Naiki did likewise and said to the boy--'Keep thy eyes +open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels +anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy +effort to cut across.' The child looked from one to the other, and when +both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the +example set him on either hand." + +The glorification of _seppuku_ offered, naturally enough, no small +temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely +incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, +hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and +dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent +gates. Life was cheap--cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of +honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the +_agio_, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser +metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of +Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all +victims of self-destruction! + +And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike +cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and +was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself +hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with use, +his bow broken and arrows exhausted--did not the noblest of the Romans +fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like circumstances?--deemed +it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude approaching a Christian +martyr's, cheered himself with an impromptu verse: + + "Come! evermore come, + Ye dread sorrows and pains! + And heap on my burden'd back; + That I not one test may lack + Of what strength in me remains!" + +This, then, was the Bushido teaching--Bear and face all calamities and +adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as Mencius[20] +taught, "When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it +first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with +toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; +and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his +mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies." True honor +lies in fulfilling Heaven's decree and no death incurred in so doing is +ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly +indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne's, _Religio Medici_ +there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in +our Precepts. Let me quote it: "It is a brave act of valor to contemn +death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest +valor to dare to live." A renowned priest of the seventeenth century +satirically observed--"Talk as he may, a samurai who ne'er has died is +apt in decisive moments to flee or hide." Again--Him who once has died +in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of +Tametomo can pierce. How near we come to the portals of the temple whose +Builder taught "he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it!" +These are but a few of the numerous examples which tend to confirm the +moral identity of the human species, notwithstanding an attempt so +assiduously made to render the distinction between Christian and Pagan +as great as possible. + +[Footnote 20: I use Dr. Legge's translation verbatim.] + +We have thus seen that the Bushido institution of suicide was neither +so irrational nor barbarous as its abuse strikes us at first sight. We +will now see whether its sister institution of Redress--or call it +Revenge, if you will--has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose +of this question in a few words, since a similar institution, or call it +custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all +peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the +continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain +recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? +Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and +only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time +which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, and only the +vigilant vengeance of the victim's people preserves social order. "What +is the most beautiful thing on earth?" said Osiris to Horus. The reply +was, "To avenge a parent's wrongs,"--to which a Japanese would have +added "and a master's." + +In revenge there is something which satisfies one's sense of justice. +The avenger reasons:--"My good father did not deserve death. He who +killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not +tolerate a deed like this: Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the +will of my father; it is the will of Heaven that the evil-doer cease +from his work. He must perish by my hand; because he shed my father's +blood, I, who am his flesh and blood, must shed the murderer's. The same +Heaven shall not shelter him and me." The ratiocination is simple and +childish (though we know Hamlet did not reason much more deeply), +nevertheless it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice +"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Our sense of revenge is as +exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation +are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone. + +In Judaism, which believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, +which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; +but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a +kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be +judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven +Ronins was condemned to death;--he had no court of higher instance to +appeal to; his faithful retainers addressed themselves to Vengeance, the +only Supreme Court existing; they in their turn were condemned by common +law,--but the popular instinct passed a different judgment and hence +their memory is still kept as green and fragrant as are their graves at +Sengakuji to this day. + +Though Lao-tse taught to recompense injury with kindness, the voice of +Confucius was very much louder, which counselled that injury must be +recompensed with justice;--and yet revenge was justified only when it +was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One's own +wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne +and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal's +oath to avenge his country's wrongs, but he scorns James Hamilton for +wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife's grave, as an +eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray. + +Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their _raison +d'être_ at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of +romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the +murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family +vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale +of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the +injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society +will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is +no need of _kataki-uchi_. If this had meant that "hunger of the heart +which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of +the victim," as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs +in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it. + +As to _seppuku_, though it too has no existence _de jure_, we still hear +of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as +long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of +self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with +fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have +to concede to _seppuku_ an aristocratic position among them. He +maintains that "when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at +the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it +may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by +madness, or by morbid excitement."[21] But a normal _seppuku_ does not +savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost _sang froid_ being +necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which +Dr. Strahan[22] divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the +Irrational or True, _seppuku_ is the best example of the former type. + +[Footnote 21: Morselli, _Suicide_, p. 314.] + +[Footnote 22: _Suicide and Insanity_.] + +From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of +Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in +social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called + + + +THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE +SAMURAI, + +and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed +that "The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell," he only echoed a +Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It +was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was +apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a +_go_-board[23] and initiated into the rights of the military profession +by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk +with which he had been playing. After this first ceremony of _adoptio +per arma_, he was no more to be seen outside his father's gates without +this badge of his status, even if it was usually substituted for +every-day wear by a gilded wooden dirk. Not many years pass before he +wears constantly the genuine steel, though blunt, and then the sham arms +are thrown aside and with enjoyment keener than his newly acquired +blades, he marches out to try their edge on wood and stone. When be +reaches man's estate at the age of fifteen, being given independence of +action, he can now pride himself upon the possession of arms sharp +enough for any work. The very possession of the dangerous instrument +imparts to him a feeling and an air of self-respect and responsibility. +"He beareth not his sword in vain." What he carries in his belt is a +symbol of what he carries in his mind and heart--Loyalty and Honor. The +two swords, the longer and the shorter--called respectively _daito_ and +_shoto_ or _katana_ and _wakizashi_--never leave his side. When at home, +they grace the most conspicuous place in study or parlor; by night they +guard his pillow within easy reach of his hand. Constant companions, +they are beloved, and proper names of endearment given them. Being +venerated, they are well-nigh worshiped. The Father of History has +recorded as a curious piece of information that the Scythians sacrificed +to an iron scimitar. Many a temple and many a family in Japan hoards a +sword as an object of adoration. Even the commonest dirk has due respect +paid to it. Any insult to it is tantamount to personal affront. Woe to +him who carelessly steps over a weapon lying on the floor! + +[Footnote 23: The game of _go_ is sometimes called Japanese checkers, +but is much more intricate than the English game. The _go-_board +contains 361 squares and is supposed to represent a battle-field--the +object of the game being to occupy as much space as possible.] + +So precious an object cannot long escape the notice and the skill of +artists nor the vanity of its owner, especially in times of peace, when +it is worn with no more use than a crosier by a bishop or a sceptre by a +king. Shark-skin and finest silk for hilt, silver and gold for guard, +lacquer of varied hues for scabbard, robbed the deadliest weapon of half +its terror; but these appurtenances are playthings compared with the +blade itself. + +The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his +workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and +purification, or, as the phrase was, "he committed his soul and spirit +into the forging and tempering of the steel." Every swing of the sledge, +every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a +religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of +his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as +a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there +is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface +the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate +texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which +histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting +exquisite grace with utmost strength;--all these thrill us with mixed +feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror. Harmless were its +mission, if it only remained a thing of beauty and joy! But, ever within +reach of the hand, it presented no small temptation for abuse. Too often +did the blade flash forth from its peaceful sheath. The abuse sometimes +went so far as to try the acquired steel on some harmless creature's +neck. + +The question that concerns us most is, however,--Did Bushido justify +the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As +it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its +misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on +undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use +it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count +Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our +history, when assassinations, suicides, and other sanguinary practices +were the order of the day. Endowed as he once was with almost +dictatorial powers, repeatedly marked out as an object for +assassination, he never tarnished his sword with blood. In relating some +of his reminiscences to a friend he says, in a quaint, plebeian way +peculiar to him:--"I have a great dislike for killing people and so I +haven't killed one single man. I have released those whose heads should +have been chopped off. A friend said to me one day, 'You don't kill +enough. Don't you eat pepper and egg-plants?' Well, some people are no +better! But you see that fellow was slain himself. My escape may be due +to my dislike of killing. I had the hilt of my sword so tightly fastened +to the scabbard that it was hard to draw the blade. I made up my mind +that though they cut me, I will not cut. Yes, yes! some people are truly +like fleas and mosquitoes and they bite--but what does their biting +amount to? It itches a little, that's all; it won't endanger life." +These are the words of one whose Bushido training was tried in the fiery +furnace of adversity and triumph. The popular apothegm--"To be beaten is +to conquer," meaning true conquest consists in not opposing a riotous +foe; and "The best won victory is that obtained without shedding of +blood," and others of similar import--will show that after all the +ultimate ideal of knighthood was Peace. + +It was a great pity that this high ideal was left exclusively to priests +and moralists to preach, while the samurai went on practicing and +extolling martial traits. In this they went so far as to tinge the +ideals of womanhood with Amazonian character. Here we may profitably +devote a few paragraphs to the subject of + + + +THE TRAINING AND POSITION OF +WOMAN. + +The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of +paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the +comprehension of men's "arithmetical understanding." The Chinese +ideogram denoting "the mysterious," "the unknowable," consists of two +parts, one meaning "young" and the other "woman," because the physical +charms and delicate thoughts of the fair sex are above the coarse mental +calibre of our sex to explain. + +In the Bushido ideal of woman, however, there is little mystery and only +a seeming paradox. I have said that it was Amazonian, but that is only +half the truth. Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman +holding a broom--certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively +against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more +harmless uses for which the besom was first invented--the idea involved +being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the +English wife (weaver) and daughter (_duhitar_, milkmaid). Without +confining the sphere of woman's activity to _Küche, Kirche, Kinder_, as +the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood +was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions--Domesticity and +Amazonian traits--are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, +as we shall see. + +Bushido being a teaching primarily intended for the masculine sex, the +virtues it prized in woman were naturally far from being distinctly +feminine. Winckelmann remarks that "the supreme beauty of Greek art is +rather male than female," and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral +conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised +those women most "who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their +sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the +bravest of men."[24] Young girls therefore, were trained to repress +their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate +weapons,--especially the long-handled sword called _nagi-nata_, so as to +be able to hold their own against unexpected odds. Yet the primary +motive for exercises of this martial character was not for use in the +field; it was twofold--personal and domestic. Woman owning no suzerain +of her own, formed her own bodyguard. With her weapon she guarded her +personal sanctity with as much zeal as her husband did his master's. The +domestic utility of her warlike training was in the education of her +sons, as we shall see later. + +[Footnote 24: Lecky, _History of European Morals_ II, p. 383.] + +Fencing and similar exercises, if rarely of practical use, were a +wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But +these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could +be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood, +were presented with dirks (_kai-ken_, pocket poniards), which might be +directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their +own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them +severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of +self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and +Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a +Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her +father's dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a +disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to +perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in +anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must +know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever +the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty +with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of +the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an +abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our +bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among +us.[25] On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the +samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner, +seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery, +says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to +write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction. +When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves +her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these +verses;-- + + "For fear lest clouds may dim her light, + Should she but graze this nether sphere, + The young moon poised above the height + Doth hastily betake to flight." + +[Footnote 25: For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing see +Finck's _Lotos Time in Japan_, pp. 286-297.] + +It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was +our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the +gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and +literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our +literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women +played an important role in the history of Japanese _belles lettres_. +Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of _geisha_) +only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale +the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the +technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate +object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of +sound is attainable without the player's heart being in harmony with +herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in +the training of youths--that accomplishments were ever kept subservient +to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and +brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I +sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in +London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in +his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of +business for them. + +The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social +ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social +parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,--in other words, as a +part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided +their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women +of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly +intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost +sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and +integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and +day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to +their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her +father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from +earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of +independence, but of dependent service. Man's helpmeet, if her presence +is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she +retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth +becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but, +when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties, +disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal +wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, +in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon +pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take +her husband's place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon +her own devoted head. + +The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before +taking her own life, needs no comment:--"Oft have I heard that no +accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that +all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common +bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to +our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two +short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow +followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being +loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be +the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving +partner. I have heard that Ko-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China, +lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave +as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt +farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope +or joy--why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I +not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime +tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good +master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as +deep as the sea and as high as the hills." + +Woman's surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and +family, was as willing and honorable as the man's self-surrender to the +good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no +life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well +as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than +was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was +recognized as _Naijo_, "the inner help." In the ascending scale of +service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might +annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I +know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of +Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of +each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator. +Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service--the serving of a cause +higher than one's own self, even at the sacrifice of one's +individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that +Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission--as far as that +is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth. + +My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish +surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced +with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by +Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The +point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so +thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was +required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its +Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the +view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman's rights, who +exclaimed, "May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against +ancient customs!" Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female +status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the +loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which +are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part +of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can +the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the +true course for their historical development to take? These are grave +questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime +let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen +was really so bad as to justify a revolt. + +We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to "God and +the ladies,"--the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we +are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that +gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker +vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot +contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences, +while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is +feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily +low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M. +Guizot's theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer's? In reply I might +aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to +the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the +military nobles, the _daimio_, and the court nobles, the _kugé_--these +higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were +masses of the common people--mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants--whose +life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as +the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have +been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the +industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This +is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she +experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the +lower the social class--as, for instance, among small artisans--the more +equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility, +too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked, +chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex +into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally +effeminate. Thus Spencer's dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As +to Guizot's, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will +remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration, +so that his generalization applies to the _daimio_ and the _kugé_. + +I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words +give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do +not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man's equal; but until +we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will +always be misunderstandings upon this subject. + +When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves, +_e.g._, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble +ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American +Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had +no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what +Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal +rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the +only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it +would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in +pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in +comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it +enough, to compare woman's status to man's as the value of silver is +compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a +method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important +kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In +view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil +its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its +relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from +economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a +standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of +woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very +little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this +double measurement;--as a social-political unit not much, while as wife +and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among +so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly +venerated? Was it not because they were _matrona_, mothers? Not as +fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So +with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the +government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers +and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted +to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were +primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the +education of their children. + +I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among +half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression +for one's wife is "my rustic wife" and the like, she is despised and +held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as "my foolish +father," "my swinish son," "my awkward self," etc., are in current use, +is not the answer clear enough? + +To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further +than the so-called Christian. "Man and woman shall be one flesh." The +individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband +and wife are two persons;--hence when they disagree, their separate +_rights_ are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their +vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and--nonsensical +blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband +or wife speaks to a third party of his other half--better or worse--as +being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of +one's self as "my bright self," "my lovely disposition," and so forth? +We think praising one's own wife or one's own husband is praising a part +of one's own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad +taste among us,--and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have +diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one's consort +was a usage most in vogue among the samurai. + +The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe +of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the +Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of +the numerical insufficiency of women[26] (who, now increasing, are, I am +afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the +respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief +standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main +water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was +located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul +and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the +early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader's +notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as +lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion +presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being +founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, +though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions +which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me +the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, +which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment +doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,--a +separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in +Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I +might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and +Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties +as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan. + +[Footnote 26: I refer to those days when girls were imported from +England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.] + +It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in +the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military +class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of + + + +THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO + +on the nation at large. + +We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which +rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more +elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its +rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually +casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first +enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from +amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, +and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are +no less contagious than vices. "There needs but one wise man in a +company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion," says Emerson. No +social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral +influence. + +Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely +has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of +the squires and _gentlemen_? Very truly does M. Taine say, "These three +syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English +society." Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement +and fling back the question--"When Adam delved and Eve span, where then +was the gentleman?" All the more pity that a gentleman was not present +in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for +his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more +tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful +experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor, +treason and rebellion. + +What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of +the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed +through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the +populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their +example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these +were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the +commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of +virtues for their own sake. + +In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a +small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says--"In English +Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to +Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman)." Write in place of +Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the +main features of the literary history of Japan. + +The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction--the +theatres, the story-teller's booths, the preacher's dais, the musical +recitations, the novels--have taken for their chief theme the stories of +the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire +of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsuné and his faithful retainer +Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with +gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its +embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The +clerks and the shop-boys, after their day's work is over and the +_amado_[27] of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story +of Nobunaga and Hidéyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes +their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to +the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is +taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of +ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and +virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour +with greedy ear the romance of the samurai. + +[Footnote 27: Outside shutters.] + +The samurai grew to be the _beau ideal_ of the whole race. "As among +flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord," so sang +the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class +itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity, +no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus +from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly +the work of Knighthood. + +Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, "Aristocracy and +Evolution," has eloquently told us that "social evolution, in so far as +it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of +the intentions of great men;" further, that historical progress is +produced by a struggle "not among the community generally, to live, but +a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct, +to employ, the majority in the best way." Whatever may be said about the +soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the +part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our +Empire. + +How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in +the development of a certain order of men, known as _otoko-daté_, the +natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of +them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen +and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of +hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that +samurai did to daimio, the willing service of "limb and life, of body, +chattels and earthly honor." Backed by a vast multitude of rash and +impetuous working-men, those born "bosses" formed a formidable check to +the rampancy of the two-sworded order. + +In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where +it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral +standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at +first as the glory of the elite, became in time an aspiration and +inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not +attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet _Yamato Damashii_, +the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the _Volksgeist_ of the +Island Realm. If religion is no more than "Morality touched by +emotion," as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better +entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoori has put the mute +utterance of the nation into words when he sings:-- + + "Isles of blest Japan! + Should your Yamato spirit + Strangers seek to scan, + Say--scenting morn's sun-lit air, + Blows the cherry wild and fair!" + +Yes, the _sakura_[28] has for ages been the favorite of our people and +the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition +which the poet uses, the words the _wild cherry flower scenting the +morning sun_. + +[Footnote 28: _Cerasus pseudo-cerasus_, Lindley.] + +The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild--in the sense +of natural--growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental +qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its +essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But +its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and +grace of its beauty appeal to _our_ aesthetic sense as no other flower +can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, +which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are +hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she +clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop +untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy +odors--all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no +dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at +the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light +fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its +showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is +volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious +ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is +something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the +_sakura_ quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to +illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more +serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of +beauteous day. + +When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his +heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that +the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the +whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a +time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs +and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily +tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one +is the sakura the flower of the nation. + +Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the +wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, +is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so +frailly mortal? + + + +IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE? + +Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already +wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline? + +It were a sad thing if a nation's soul could die so fast. That were a +poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The +aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national +character, is as tenacious as the "irreducible elements of species, of +the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the +carnivorous animal." In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations +and brilliant generalizations, M. LeBon[29] says, "The discoveries due +to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or +defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: +they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for +centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities." +These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over, +provided there were qualities and defects of character which _constitute +the exclusive patrimony_ of each people. Schematizing theories of this +sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and +they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In +studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon +European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that +no one quality of character was its _exclusive_ patrimony. It is true +the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is +this aggregate which Emerson names a "compound result into which every +great force enters as an ingredient." But, instead of making it, as +LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord +philosopher calls it "an element which unites the most forcible persons +of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; +and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack +the Masonic sign." + +[Footnote 29: _The Psychology of Peoples_, p. 33.] + +The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in +particular, cannot be said to form "an irreducible element of species," +but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. +Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the +last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it +transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely +widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has +calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, +"each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty +millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D." The merest peasant +that grubs the soil, "bowed by the weight of centuries," has in his +veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as "to the +ox." + +An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the +nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when +Yoshida Shoin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote +on the eve of his execution the following stanza;-- + + "Full well I knew this course must end in death; + It was Yamato spirit urged me on + To dare whate'er betide." + +Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor +force of our country. + +Mr. Ransome says that "there are three distinct Japans in existence +side by side to-day,--the old, which has not wholly died out; the new, +hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now +through its most critical throes." While this is very true in most +respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete +institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions, +requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old +Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove +the formative force of the new era. + +The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the +hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, +were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of +Knighthood. Some writers[30] have lately tried to prove that the +Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making +of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this +honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it +will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of +preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they +have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian +missionaries are doing great things for Japan--in the domain of +education, and especially of moral education:--only, the mysterious +though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in +divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet +Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the +character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged +us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern +Japan--of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the +reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:--and you +will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought +and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and +observation of the Far East,[31] that only the respect in which Japan +differed from other oriental despotisms lay in "the ruling influence +among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious +codes of honor that man has ever devised," he touched the main spring +which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is +destined to be. + +[Footnote 30: Speer; _Missions and Politics in Asia_, Lecture IV, pp. +189-190; Dennis: _Christian Missions and Social Progress_, Vol. I, p. +32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.] + +[Footnote 31: _The Far East_, p. 375.] + +The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a +work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one +were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When +we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the +latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study +Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the +development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much +less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of +oriental institutions and peoples has written:--"We are told every day +how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those +islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan, +but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of +organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful. +She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before +imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence," continues +Mr. Townsend, "unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea +of China. Where is the European apostle," asks our author, "or +philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made Japan?"[32] Mr. +Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought +about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he +had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation +would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than +Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as +an inferior power,--that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or +industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of +transformation. + +[Footnote 32: Meredith Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, N.Y., 1900, 28.] + +The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read. +A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most +eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the +working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The +universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly +ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance, +fortitude and bravery that "the little Jap" possesses, were sufficiently +proved in the China-Japanese war.[33] "Is there any nation more loyal +and patriotic?" is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer, +"There is not," we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood. + +[Footnote 33: Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and Yamada +on _Heroic Japan_, and Diosy on _The New Far East_.] + +On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and +defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of +abstruse philosophy--while some of our young men have already gained +international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved +anything in philosophical lines--is traceable to the neglect of +metaphysical training under Bushido's regimen of education. Our sense of +honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; +and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, +that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor. + +Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, +dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, +stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane +things? He is the _shosei_ (student), to whom the earth is too small and +the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe +and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of +wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for +knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods +are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of +Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national +honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of +Bushido. + +Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said +that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people +responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it +has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly +translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different +degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion +could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an +appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master. +The word "Loyalty" revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted +to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued +"students' strike" in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction +with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the +Director,--"Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought +to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is +not manly to push a falling man." The scientific incapacity of the +professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into +insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By +arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great +magnitude can be accomplished. + +One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the +missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history--"What do we care for +heathen records?" some say--and consequently estrange their religion +from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed +to for centuries past. Mocking a nation's history!--as though the career +of any people--even of the lowest African savages possessing no +record--were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by +the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be +deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races +themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and +white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race +forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the +past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new +religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an "old, old story," which, if +presented in intelligible words,--that is to say, if expressed in the +vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people--will find easy +lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality. +Christianity in its American or English form--with more of Anglo-Saxon +freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder--is a poor scion +to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot +the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel +on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible--in Hawaii, +where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in +amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal +race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan--nay, it is +a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his +kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following +words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:--"Men +have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering +how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may +have been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of +themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity +with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at +impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be +said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of +religion."[34] + +[Footnote 34: Jowett, _Sermons on Faith and Doctrine_, II.] + +But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little +doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a +power which we must take into account in reckoning + + + +THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO, + +whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, +that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at +work to threaten it. + +Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the +Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats +itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did +with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay +of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application +to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that +helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages +are as surely working for the decline of Bushido. + +One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan +is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and +was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan +no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother +institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift +for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it +under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little +room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its +infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are +being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and +Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the +Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted +to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet +we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow +journalism. + +Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of +Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, "the decay of the ceremonial +code--or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life--among +the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities +of latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate +sensibilities." The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can +tolerate no form or shape of trust--and Bushido was a trust organized +by those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, +fixing the grades and value of moral qualities--is alone powerful enough +to engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are +antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely +criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, +cannot admit "purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an +exclusive class."[35] Add to this the progress of popular instruction, +of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,--then we can +easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai's sword nor the +sharpest shafts shot from Bushido's boldest bows can aught avail. The +state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same--shall we +call it the _Ehrenstaat_ or, after the manner of Carlyle, the +Heroarchy?--is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and +gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The +words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may +aptly be repeated of the samurai, that "the medium in which their ardent +deeds took shape is forever gone." + +[Footnote 35: _Norman Conquest_, Vol. V, p. 482.] + +Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into +the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away +as "the captains and the kings depart." + +If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues--be +it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome--can never make on earth a +"continuing city." Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in +man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly +virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to +fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that +Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but +Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, +with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to +emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. +Callings nobler and broader than a warrior's claim our attention to-day. +With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better +knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of +Benevolence--dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?--will expand +into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than +subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more +than citizens, being men. + +Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the +wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world +confirms the prophecy that "the meek shall inherit the earth." A nation +that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank +of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain +indeed! + +When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not +only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an +honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry +dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says +that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of +France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally +abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of +Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of +swords, rang out the old, "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence +of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," it rang +in the new age of "sophisters, economists, and calculators." + +It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of +Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work +of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does +ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, +burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, +without a master's hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis +Napoleon beat the Prussians with his _Mitrailleuse_, or the Spaniards +with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the +old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite +saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of +implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do +not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does +not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea +and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and +beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of +our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly +visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show +a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial +virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, "but ours on +trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come," +and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate +one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to +widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life. + +It has been predicted--and predictions have been corroborated by the +events of the last half century--that the moral system of Feudal Japan, +like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new +ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. +Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must +not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is +not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from +other birds. "The Kingdom of God is within you." It does not come +rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing +across the seas, however broad. "God has granted," says the Koran, "to +every people a prophet in its own tongue." The seeds of the Kingdom, as +vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido. +Now its days are closing--sad to say, before its full fruition--and we +turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of +strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to +take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and +Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The +only other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with +Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with +which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like "a dimly burning wick" +which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame. +Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets--notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos +and Habakkuk--Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of +rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, +which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, +will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its +capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, +self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in +some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing +phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, +the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene. + +Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)--or will the +future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and +Hellenism?--will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals +will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which +side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it +can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is +willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total +extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It +is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and +vitality are still felt through many channels of life--in the philosophy +of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world. +Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his +spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal +discipline of Zeno at work. + +Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will +not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor +may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their +ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it +will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich +life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its +very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a +far-off unseen hill, "the wayside gaze beyond;"--then in the beautiful +language of the Quaker poet, + + "The traveler owns the grateful sense + Of sweetness near he knows not whence, + And, pausing, takes with forehead bare + The benediction of the air." + +[Illustration] + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobé + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + +***** This file should be named 12096-0.txt or 12096-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/9/12096/ + +Produced by Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Bushido, the Soul of Japan + +Author: Inazo Nitob + +Release Date: April 21, 2004 [EBook #12096] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + + + + + + +BUSHIDO +THE SOUL OF JAPAN + + +BY +INAZO NITOB, A.M., Ph.D. + + +Author's Edition, Revised and Enlarged +13th EDITION +1908 + + +DECEMBER, 1904 + + +TO MY BELOVED UNCLE +TOKITOSHI OTA +WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST +AND +TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI +I DEDICATE +THIS LITTLE BOOK + + + --"That way + Over the mountain, which who stands upon, + Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road; + While if he views it from the waste itself, + Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow, + Not vague, mistakable! What's a break or two + Seen from the unbroken desert either side? + And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) + What if the breaks themselves should prove at last + The most consummate of contrivances + To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?" + + --ROBERT BROWNING, + + _Bishop Blougram's Apology_. + + + "There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have + from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a + predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind. + These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of honor." + + --HALLAM, + + _Europe in the Middle Ages_. + + + "Chivalry is itself the poetry of life." + + --SCHLEGEL, + + _Philosophy of History_. + + + +[Transcriber's Note: [=O] represents O with macron, + [=o] represents o with macron, + [=u] represents u with macron] + + + +PREFACE + + +About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof +of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our +conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of +religion. "Do you mean to say," asked the venerable professor, "that you +have no religious instruction in your schools?" On my replying in the +negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I +shall not easily forget, he repeated "No religion! How do you impart +moral education?" The question stunned me at the time. I could give no +ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, +were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the +different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find +that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils. + +The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries +put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs +prevail in Japan. + +In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my +wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and Bushido,[1] the +moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume. + +[Footnote 1: Pronounced _Bo-shee-doh'_. In putting Japanese words and +names into English, Hepburn's rule is followed, that the vowels should +be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in English.] + +Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put +down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given +in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught +and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force. + +Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest +Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging +to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over +them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while +these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I +have often thought,--"Had I their gift of language, I would present the +cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!" But one who speaks in a borrowed +tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible. + +All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I +have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, +believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the +comprehension of foreign readers. + +Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious +workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity +itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and +with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the +teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the +religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as +well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God +hath made a testament which maybe called "old" with every people and +nation,--Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my +theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public. + +In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend +Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the +characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this +book. + +INAZO NITOBE. + +Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899. + + + + +PREFACE + + +TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION + +Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, +this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has +passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth +appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be +issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of +Messrs. George H. Putnam's Sons, of New York. + +In the meantime, _Bushido_ has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev +of Khandesh, into German by Frulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian +by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life +in Lemberg,--although this Polish edition has been censured by the +Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into +French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian +officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for +the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian +public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been +published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger +students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also +owe much for his aid in other ways. + +I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found +sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the +subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly +flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that +President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and +distributing several dozens of copies among his friends. + +In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have +largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, +as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on +Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot +of Japanese ethics--Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather +to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular +virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot +draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge +upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are +touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and +discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger +than it is. + +This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt +I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful +suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement. + +I.N. + +Kyoto, +Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Bushido as an Ethical System + +Sources of Bushido + +Rectitude or Justice + +Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing + +Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress + +Politeness + +Veracity or Truthfulness + +Honor + +The Duty of Loyalty + +Education and Training of a Samurai + +Self-Control + +The Institutions of Suicide and Redress + +The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai + +The Training and Position of Woman + +The Influence of Bushido + +Is Bushido Still Alive? + +The Future of Bushido + + + + +BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM. + + +Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its +emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique +virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living +object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape +or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware +that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society +which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as +those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed +their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of +feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother +institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the +language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the +neglected bier of its European prototype. + +It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so +erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that +chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either +among the nations of antiquity or among the modern Orientals.[2] Such +ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good +Doctor's work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking +at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the +time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx, +writing his "Capital," called the attention of his readers to the +peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of +feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would +likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study +of chivalry in the Japan of the present. + +[Footnote 2: _History Philosophically Illustrated_, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol. +II, p. 2.] + +Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between +European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of +this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, +_firstly_, the origin and sources of our chivalry; _secondly_, its +character and teaching; _thirdly_, its influence among the masses; and, +_fourthly_, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these +several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I +should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national +history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most +likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative +Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt +with as corollaries. + +The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the +original, more expressive than Horsemanship. _Bu-shi-do_ means literally +Military-Knight-Ways--the ways which fighting nobles should observe in +their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the "Precepts +of Knighthood," the _noblesse oblige_ of the warrior class. Having thus +given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the +word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable +for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, +engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must +wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a +national _timbre_ so expressive of race characteristics that the best of +translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice +and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German "_Gemth_" +signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words +verbally so closely allied as the English _gentleman_ and the French +_gentilhomme_? + +Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were +required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it +consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from +the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a +code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful +sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets +of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however +able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an +organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, +fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English +Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to +compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in +the seventeenth century Military Statutes (_Buk Hatto_) were +promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with +marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but +meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time +and place and say, "Here is its fountain head." Only as it attains +consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be +identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many +threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the +political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman +Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the +ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in +England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period +previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in +Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned. + +Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, +the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These +were known as _samurai_, meaning literally, like the old English _cniht_ +(knecht, knight), guards or attendants--resembling in character the +_soldurii_ whom Caesar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the +_comitati_, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his +time; or, to take a still later parallel, the _milites medii_ that one +reads about in the history of Mediaeval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word +_Bu-k_ or _Bu-shi_ (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. +They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough +breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally +recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and +the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went +on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only "a rude race, +all masculine, with brutish strength," to borrow Emerson's phrase, +surviving to form families and the ranks of the _samurai_. Coming to +profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great +responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of +behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and +belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among +themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of +honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some +resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors. + +Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive +sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and +civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire +of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, "to leave behind him the name of a +fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one." +And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which +moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even +so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions +endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom's is the basis on which the +greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to +discover that _Bushido_ does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting +in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, +brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, "We know from what +failings our virtue springs."[3] "Sneaks" and "cowards" are epithets of +the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life +with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and +its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher +authority and more rational sources for its own justification, +satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, +without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal +of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with +concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with +spiritual data. "Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a +perfect Christian knight," says Lamartine. In Japan there were several + + + +SOURCES OF BUSHIDO, + +of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust +in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in +sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with +death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil +master the utmost of his art, told him, "Beyond this my instruction must +give way to Zen teaching." "Zen" is the Japanese equivalent for the +Dhyna, which "represents human effort to reach through meditation zones +of thought beyond the range of verbal expression."[4] Its method is +contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be +convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, +of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this +Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, +and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself +above mundane things and awakes, "to a new Heaven and a new Earth." + +[Footnote 3: Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace loving +men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the fervor of a +worshiper of the strenuous life. "When I tell you," he says in the +_Crown of Wild Olive_, "that war is the foundation of all the arts, I +mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and +faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very +dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. * * * I found in +brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength +of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace, +taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by +peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."] + +[Footnote 4: Lafcadio Hearn, _Exotics and Retrospectives_, p. 84.] + +What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such +loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such +filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by +the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant +character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of +"original sin." On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and +God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which +divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto +shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, +and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part +of its furnishing. The presence of this article, is easy to explain: it +typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, +reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in +front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its +shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic +injunction, "Know Thyself." But self-knowledge does not imply, either in +the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, +not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral +kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the +Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his +eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter +veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman +conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so +much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its +nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its +ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial +family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more +than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain--it is the +sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the +Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a _Rechtsstaat_, or even the +Patron of a _Culturstaat_--he is the bodily representative of Heaven on +earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. +Boutmy[5] says is true of English royalty--that it "is not only the +image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity," as I +believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in +Japan. + +[Footnote 5: _The English People_, p. 188.] + +The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the +emotional life of our race--Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp +very truly says: "In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell +whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven +or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself."[6] A similar +confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. +I said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect +on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of +national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a +systematic philosophy or a rational theology. This religion--or, is +it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion +expressed?--thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and +love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for +Shintoism, unlike the Mediaeval Christian Church, prescribed to its +votaries scarcely any _credenda_, furnishing them at the same time with +_agenda_ of a straightforward and simple type. + +[Footnote 6: "_Feudal and Modern Japan_" Vol. I, p. 183.] + +As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the +most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral +relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), +father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between +friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had +recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, +benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts +was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling +class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the +requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius +exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often +quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic +natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the +existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under +censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment +in the heart of the samurai. + +The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books +for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere +acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in +no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an +intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant +of _Analects_. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling +sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be +boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little +smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more +so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge +becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the +learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was +considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to +ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike +spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, +that the cosmic process was unmoral. + +Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in +itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who +stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient +machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, +knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in +life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the +Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, "To +know and to act are one and the same." + +I beg leave for a moment's digression while I am on this subject, +inasmuch as some of the noblest types of _bushi_ were strongly +influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily +recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making +allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, "Seek +ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things +shall be added unto you," conveys a thought that may be found on almost +any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese disciple[7] of his says--"The lord +of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, +becomes his mind (_Kokoro_); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever +luminous:" and again, "The spiritual light of our essential being is +pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up +in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called +conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of +heaven." How very much do these words sound like some passages from +Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think +that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto +religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming's +precepts. He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to +extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, +not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature +of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not +farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of +things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors +charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and +its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity +of temper cannot be gainsaid. + +[Footnote 7: Miwa Shissai.] + +Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which _Bushido_ +imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few +and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct +of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of +our nation's history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our +warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of +commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the +highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands +of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. +An acute French _savant_, M. de la Mazelire, thus sums up his +impressions of the sixteenth century:--"Toward the middle of the +sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in +society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to +barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,--these +formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in +whom Taine praises 'the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden +resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to +suffer.' In Japan as in Italy 'the rude manners of the Middle Ages made +of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.' And this +is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the +principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one +finds there between minds (_esprits_) as well as between temperaments. +While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of +energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character +as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of +civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to +Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak +of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its +mountains." + +To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazelire +writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with + + + +RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE, + +the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more +loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The +conception of Rectitude may be erroneous--it may be narrow. A well-known +bushi defines it as a power of resolution;--"Rectitude is the power of +deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, +without wavering;--to die when it is right to die, to strike when to +strike is right." Another speaks of it in the following terms: +"Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without +bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor +feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of +a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as +nothing." Mencius calls Benevolence man's mind, and Rectitude or +Righteousness his path. "How lamentable," he exclaims, "is it to neglect +the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it +again! When men's fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them +again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it." Have we +not here "as in a glass darkly" a parable propounded three hundred years +later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself _the +Way_ of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray +from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and +narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise. + +Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace +brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it +dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet +_Gishi_ (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that +signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls--of whom +so much is made in our popular education--are known in common parlance +as the Forty-seven _Gishi_. + +In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and +downright falsehood for _ruse de guerre_, this manly virtue, frank and +honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly +praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to Valor, another martial virtue. +But before proceeding to speak of Valor, let me linger a little while on +what I may term a derivation from Rectitude, which, at first deviating +slightly from its original, became more and more removed from it, until +its meaning was perverted in the popular acceptance. I speak of _Gi-ri_, +literally the Right Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense +of duty which public opinion expected an incumbent to fulfil. In its +original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,--hence, +we speak of the _Giri_ we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to +society at large, and so forth. In these instances _Giri_ is duty; for +what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. +Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative? + +_Giri_ primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology +was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, +though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be +some other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated +this authority in _Giri_. Very rightly did they formulate this +authority--_Giri--since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, +recourse must be had to man's intellect and his reason must be quickened +to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of +any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous. Right +Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. _Giri_ thus understood is a +severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards +perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it +is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should +be _the_ law. I deem it a product of the conditions of an artificial +society--of a society in which accident of birth and unmerited favour +instituted class distinctions, in which the family was the social unit, +in which seniority of age was of more account than superiority of +talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb before +arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, _Giri_ +in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain +this and sanction that,--as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, +sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why +a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father's +dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, _Giri_ has, in my +opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into +cowardly fear of censure. I might say of _Giri_ what Scott wrote of +patriotism, that "as it is the fairest, so it is often the most +suspicious, mask of other feelings." Carried beyond or below Right +Reason, _Giri_ became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings +every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily--have been turned +into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of + + + +COURAGE, THE SPIRIT OF DARING +AND BEARING, + +to the consideration of which we shall now return. Courage was scarcely +deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in +the cause of Righteousness. In his "Analects" Confucius defines Courage +by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. "Perceiving +what is right," he says, "and doing it not, argues lack of courage." Put +this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, "Courage is doing +what is right." To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one's self, +to rush into the jaws of death--these are too often identified with +Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct--what +Shakespeare calls, "valor misbegot"--is unjustly applauded; but not so +in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, +was called a "dog's death." "To rush into the thick of battle and to be +slain in it," says a Prince of Mito, "is easy enough, and the merest +churl is equal to the task; but," he continues, "it is true courage to +live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die," +and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines +courage as "the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he +should not fear." A distinction which is made in the West between moral +and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai +youth has not heard of "Great Valor" and the "Valor of a Villein?" + +Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of +soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be +trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular +virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits +were repeated almost before boys left their mother's breast. Does a +little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: +"What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your +arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit +_harakiri_?" We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little +boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little +page, "Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow +bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms +to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a +samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger." +Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though +stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early +imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness +sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called +forth all the pluck that was in them. "Bears hurl their cubs down the +gorge," they said. Samurai's sons were let down the steep valleys of +hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of +food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for +inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter +strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the +sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to +their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they +frequently--once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of +learning,--came together in small groups and passed the night without +sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny +places--to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be +haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when +decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the +ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the +darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the +trunkless head. + +Does this ultra-Spartan system of "drilling the nerves" strike the +modern pedagogist with horror and doubt--doubt whether the tendency +would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the +heart? Let us see what other concepts Bushido had of Valor. + +The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure--calm presence +of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical +manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave +man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the +equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the +midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake +him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the +menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, +for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain +in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing +or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature--of +what we call a capacious mind (_yoy[=u]_), which, for from being pressed +or crowded, has always room for something more. + +It passes current among us as a piece of authentic history, that as +[=O]ta Dokan, the great builder of the castle of Tokyo, was pierced +through with a spear, his assassin, knowing the poetical predilection of +his victim, accompanied his thrust with this couplet-- + + "Ah! how in moments like these + Our heart doth grudge the light of life;" + +whereupon the expiring hero, not one whit daunted by the mortal wound in +his side, added the lines-- + + "Had not in hours of peace, + It learned to lightly look on life." + +There is even a sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which +are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in +old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to +exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not +solely a matter of brute force; it was, as, well, an intellectual +engagement. + +Of such character was the battle fought on the bank of the Koromo River, +late in the eleventh century. The eastern army routed, its leader, +Sadato, took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and +called aloud--"It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the +enemy," Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted +an impromptu verse-- + + "Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth" (_koromo_). + +Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when the defeated warrior, +undismayed, completed the couplet-- + + "Since age has worn its threads by use." + +Yoshiie, whose bow had all the while been bent, suddenly unstrung it and +turned away, leaving his prospective victim to do as he pleased. When +asked the reason of his strange behavior, he replied that he could not +bear to put to shame one who had kept his presence of mind while hotly +pursued by his enemy. + +The sorrow which overtook Antony and Octavius at the death of Brutus, +has been the general experience of brave men. Kenshin, who fought for +fourteen years with Shingen, when he heard of the latter's death, wept +aloud at the loss of "the best of enemies." It was this same Kenshin who +had set a noble example for all time, in his treatment of Shingen, whose +provinces lay in a mountainous region quite away from the sea, and who +had consequently depended upon the H[=o]j[=o] provinces of the Tokaido +for salt. The H[=o]j[=o] prince wishing to weaken him, although not +openly at war with him, had cut off from Shingen all traffic in this +important article. Kenshin, hearing of his enemy's dilemma and able to +obtain his salt from the coast of his own dominions, wrote Shingen that +in his opinion the H[=o]j[=o] lord had committed a very mean act, and +that although he (Kenshin) was at war with him (Shingen) he had ordered +his subjects to furnish him with plenty of salt--adding, "I do not fight +with salt, but with the sword," affording more than a parallel to the +words of Camillus, "We Romans do not fight with gold, but with iron." +Nietzsche spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, "You are to be +proud of your enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success +also." Indeed valor and honor alike required that we should own as +enemies in war only such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. When +valor attains this height, it becomes akin to + + + +BENEVOLENCE, THE FEELING OF +DISTRESS, + +love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, which were +ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes +of the human soul. Benevolence was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold +sense;--princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; +princely as particularly befitting a princely profession. We needed no +Shakespeare to feel--though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we +needed him to express it--that mercy became a monarch better than his +crown, that it was above his sceptered sway. How often both Confucius +and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist +in benevolence. Confucius would say, "Let but a prince cultivate virtue, +people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will +bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right +uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth an outcome." Again, "Never has +there been a case of a sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not +loving righteousness," Mencius follows close at his heels and says, +"Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power +in a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a +whole empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue." +Also,--"It is impossible that any one should become ruler of the +people to whom they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts." +Both defined this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, +"Benevolence--Benevolence is Man." Under the rgime of feudalism, which +could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that +we owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter +surrender of "life and limb" on the part of the governed would have left +nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural +consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called "oriental +despotism,"--as though there were no despots of occidental history! + +Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a +mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote +that "Kings are the first servants of the State," jurists thought +rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. +Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan, +Yozan of Yonzawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that +feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although +unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher +sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father +to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not +usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal +government--paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular +government (Uncle Sam's, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and +a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey +reluctantly, while in the other they do so with "that proud submission, +that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, +even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted freedom."[8] The old +saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the "king +of devils, because of his subjects' often insurrections against, and +depositions of, their princes," and which made the French monarch the +"king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and Impositions," but +which gave the title of "the king of men" to the sovereign of Spain +"because of his subjects' willing obedience." But enough!-- + +[Footnote 8: Burke, _French Revolution_.] + +Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which +it is impossible to harmonize. Pobyedonostseff has clearly set before us +the contrast in the foundations of English and other European +communities; namely that these were organized on the basis of common +interest, while that was distinguished by a strongly developed +independent personality. What this Russian statesman says of the +personal dependence of individuals on some social alliance and in the +end of ends of the State, among the continental nations of Europe and +particularly among Slavonic peoples, is doubly true of the Japanese. +Hence not only is a free exercise of monarchical power not felt as +heavily by us as in Europe, but it is generally moderated by parental +consideration for the feelings of the people. "Absolutism," says +Bismarck, "primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty, +devotion to duty, energy and inward humility." If I may be allowed to +make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of +the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of "Kingship, by the +grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to +the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can +release the monarch." + +We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright +Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the +gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned +against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with +justice and rectitude. Masamun expressed it well in his oft-quoted +aphorism--"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; +Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness." + +Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is +universally true that "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the +daring." "_Bushi no nasak_"--the tenderness of a warrior--had a sound +which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy +of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other +being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, +but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not +remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with +power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual +or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual, +since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the +recipient. + +Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to +turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius +taught concerning the power of Love. "Benevolence," he says, "brings +under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: +they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to +extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots." He also +says that "the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore +a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in +distress." Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his +ethical philosophy on Sympathy. + +It is indeed striking how closely the code of knightly honor of one +country coincides with that of others; in other words, how the much +abused oriental ideas of morals find their counterparts in the noblest +maxims of European literature. If the well-known lines, + + Hae tibi erunt artes--pacisque imponere morem, + Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos, + +were shown a Japanese gentleman, he might readily accuse the Mantuan +bard of plagiarizing from the literature of his own country. Benevolence +to the weak, the downtrodden or the vanquished, was ever extolled as +peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art must be +familiar with the representation of a priest riding backwards on a cow. +The rider was once a warrior who in his day made his name a by-word of +terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-ura, (1184 A.D.), which was +one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy and in +single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms. Now the +etiquette of war required that on such occasions no blood should be +spilt, unless the weaker party proved to be a man of rank or ability +equal to that of the stronger. The grim combatant would have the name of +the man under him; but he refusing to make it known, his helmet was +ruthlessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and +beardless, made the astonished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth +to his feet, in paternal tones he bade the stripling go: "Off, young +prince, to thy mother's side! The sword of Kumagaye shall never be +tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o'er yon pass before +thy enemies come in sight!" The young warrior refused to go and begged +Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above the +hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time +before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; +there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who this +self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden arms; the +strong hand of the warrior quivers; again he begs his victim to flee for +his life. Finding all his entreaties vain and hearing the approaching +steps of his comrades, he exclaims: "If thou art overtaken, thou mayest +fall at a more ignoble hand than mine. O, thou Infinite! receive his +soul!" In an instant the sword flashes in the air, and when it falls it +is red with adolescent blood. When the war is ended, we find our soldier +returning in triumph, but little cares he now for honor or fame; he +renounces his warlike career, shaves his head, dons a priestly garb, +devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never turning his back +to the West, where lies the Paradise whence salvation comes and whither +the sun hastes daily for his rest. + +Critics may point out flaws in this story, which is casuistically +vulnerable. Let it be: all the same it shows that Tenderness, Pity and +Love, were traits which adorned the most sanguinary exploits of the +samurai. It was an old maxim among them that "It becometh not the fowler +to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom." This in a large +measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered peculiarly +Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us. For decades before +we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had +familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe. In the +principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the +custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of +trumpets or the beat of drums,--"those clamorous harbingers of blood and +death"--stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and +tender melodies on the _biwa_,[9] soothing our fiery spirits, drawing +our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage. Polybius +tells us of the Constitution of Arcadia, which required all youths +under thirty to practice music, in order that this gentle art might +alleviate the rigors of that inclement region. It is to its influence +that he attributes the absence of cruelty in that part of the Arcadian +mountains. + +[Footnote 9: A musical instrument, resembling the guitar.] + +Nor was Satsuma the only place in Japan where gentleness was inculcated +among the warrior class. A Prince of Shirakawa jots down his random +thoughts, and among them is the following: "Though they come stealing to +your bedside in the silent watches of the night, drive not away, but +rather cherish these--the fragrance of flowers, the sound of distant +bells, the insect humming of a frosty night." And again, "Though they +may wound your feelings, these three you have only to forgive, the +breeze that scatters your flowers, the cloud that hides your moon, and +the man who tries to pick quarrels with you." + +It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler +emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged. Our poetry has +therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness. A well-known +anecdote of a rustic samurai illustrates a case in point. When he was +told to learn versification, and "The Warbler's Notes"[10] was given him +for the subject of his first attempt, his fiery spirit rebelled and he +_flung_ at the feet of his master this uncouth production, which ran + +[Footnote 10: The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the nightingale of +Japan.] + + "The brave warrior keeps apart + The ear that might listen + To the warbler's song." + +His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the +youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to +the sweet notes of the _uguisu_, and he wrote + + "Stands the warrior, mailed and strong, + To hear the uguisu's song, + Warbled sweet the trees among." + +We admire and enjoy the heroic incident in Krner's short life, when, as +he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous "Farewell to +Life." Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our +warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to +the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was +either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might +be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an +ode,--and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the +breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers. + +What Christianity has done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the +midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in +Japan. The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for +the sufferings of others. Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect +for others' feelings, are at the root of + + + +POLITENESS, + +that courtesy and urbanity of manners which has been noticed by every +foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait. Politeness is a poor virtue, +if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it +should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the +feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of +things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter +express no plutocratic distinctions, but were originally distinctions +for actual merit. + +In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love. We may +reverently say, politeness "suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, +vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, +seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of +evil." Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six +elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, +inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of social intercourse? + +While thus extolling Politeness, far be it from me to put it in the +front rank of virtues. If we analyze it, we shall find it correlated +with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone? +While--or rather because--it was exalted as peculiar to the profession +of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there +came into existence its counterfeits. Confucius himself has repeatedly +taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as +sounds are of music. + +When propriety was elevated to the _sine qua non_ of social intercourse, +it was only to be expected that an elaborate system of etiquette should +come into vogue to train youth in correct social behavior. How one must +bow in accosting others, how he must walk and sit, were taught and +learned with utmost care. Table manners grew to be a science. Tea +serving and drinking were raised to a ceremony. A man of education is, +of course, expected to be master of all these. Very fitly does Mr. +Veblen, in his interesting book,[11] call decorum "a product and an +exponent of the leisure-class life." + +[Footnote 11: _Theory of the Leisure Class_, N.Y. 1899, p. 46.] + +I have heard slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate +discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much +of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. +I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, +but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to +ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my +mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the +contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for +the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether +trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most +appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything +to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both +the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as +the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain +definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a +novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed +is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the +most economical use of force,--hence, according to Spencer's dictum, the +most graceful. + +The spiritual significance of social decorum,--or, I might say, to +borrow from the vocabulary of the "Philosophy of Clothes," the +spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward +garments,--is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us +in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our +ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave +rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book. +It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, +that I wish to emphasize. + +I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so +much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into +existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was +put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the +Ogasawara, in the following terms: "The end of all etiquette is to so +cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the +roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person." It means, in other +words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the +parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such +harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of +spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word +_biensance_[12] comes thus to contain! + +[Footnote 12: Etymologically _well-seatedness_.] + +If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it +follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful +deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine +manners, therefore, mean power in repose. When the barbarian Gauls, +during the sack of Rome, burst into the assembled Senate and dared pull +the beards of the venerable Fathers, we think the old gentlemen were to +blame, inasmuch as they lacked dignity and strength of manners. Is lofty +spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not?--All +roads lead to Rome! + +As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then +become spiritual culture, I may take _Cha-no-yu_, the tea ceremony. +Tea-sipping as a fine art! Why should it not be? In the children drawing +pictures on the sand, or in the savage carving on a rock, was the +promise of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. How much more is the drinking +of a beverage, which began with the transcendental contemplation of a +Hindoo anchorite, entitled to develop into a handmaid of Religion and +Morality? That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure +and quietness of demeanor, which are the first essentials of _Cha-no-yu_ +are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right +feeling. The scrupulous cleanliness of the little room, shut off from +sight and sound of the madding crowd, is in itself conducive to direct +one's thoughts from the world. The bare interior does not engross one's +attention like the innumerable pictures and bric-a-brac of a Western +parlor; the presence of _kakemono_[13] calls our attention more to grace +of design than to beauty of color. The utmost refinement of taste is the +object aimed at; whereas anything like display is banished with +religious horror. The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative +recluse, in a time when wars and the rumors of wars were incessant, is +well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. +Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company +assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their +swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, +there to find peace and friendship. + +[Footnote 13: Hanging scrolls, which may be either paintings or +ideograms, used for decorative purposes.] + +_Cha-no-yu_ is more than a ceremony--it is a fine art; it is poetry, +with articulate gestures for rhythm: it is a _modus operandi_ of soul +discipline. Its greatest value lies in this last phase. Not infrequently +the other phases preponderated in the mind of its votaries, but that +does not prove that its essence was not of a spiritual nature. + +Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart +grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, +springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and +actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever +a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should +weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Such +didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, +expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, +as one missionary lady of twenty years' residence once said to me, +"awfully funny." You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over +you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly +his hat is off--well, that is perfectly natural, but the "awfully funny" +performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down +and he stands in the glaring sun also. How foolish!--Yes, exactly so, +provided the motive were less than this: "You are in the sun; I +sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it +were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot +shade you, I will share your discomforts." Little acts of this kind, +equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities. +They are the "bodying forth" of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of +others. + +Another "awfully funny" custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; +but many superficial writers on Japan, have dismissed it by simply +attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every +foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in +making proper reply upon the occasion. In America, when you make a gift, +you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander +it. The underlying idea with you is, "This is a nice gift: if it were +not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to +give you anything but what is nice." In contrast to this, our logic +runs: "You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you. You +will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my +good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token. +It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for +you." Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate +idea is one and the same. Neither is "awfully funny." The American +speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the +spirit which prompts the gift. + +It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety +shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to +take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass +judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or +to observe rules of propriety about eating? A Chinese sage answers, "If +you take a case where the eating is all-important, and the observing the +rules of propriety is of little importance, and compare them together, +why merely say that the eating is of the more importance?" "Metal is +heavier than feathers," but does that saying have reference to a single +clasp of metal and a wagon-load of feathers? Take a piece of wood a foot +thick and raise it above the pinnacle of a temple, none would call it +taller than the temple. To the question, "Which is the more important, +to tell the truth or to be polite?" the Japanese are said to give an +answer diametrically opposite to what the American will say,--but I +forbear any comment until I come to speak of + + + +VERACITY OR TRUTHFULNESS, + +without which Politeness is a farce and a show. "Propriety carried +beyond right bounds," says Masamun, "becomes a lie." An ancient poet +has outdone Polonius in the advice he gives: "To thyself be faithful: if +in thy heart thou strayest not from truth, without prayer of thine the +Gods will keep thee whole." The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Tsu-tsu +gives expression in the _Doctrine of the Mean_, attributes to it +transcendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine. +"Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity +there would be nothing." He then dwells with eloquence on its +far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes +without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose +without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a +combination of "Word" and "Perfect," one is tempted to draw a parallel +between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of _Logos_--to such height +does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight. + +Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly. The bushi held that +his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than +that of the tradesman and peasant. _Bushi no ichi-gon_--the word of a +samurai or in exact German equivalent _ein Ritterwort_--was sufficient +guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such +weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a +written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity. +Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for +_ni-gon_, a double tongue. + +The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of +Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher +not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to +their honor. I am well aware that they did swear by different deities or +upon their swords; but never has swearing degenerated into wanton form +and irreverent interjection. To emphasize our words a practice of +literally sealing with blood was sometimes resorted to. For the +explanation of such a practice, I need only refer my readers to Goethe's +Faust. + +A recent American writer is responsible for this statement, that if you +ask an ordinary Japanese which is better, to tell a falsehood or be +impolite, he will not hesitate to answer "to tell a falsehood!" Dr. +Peery[14] is partly right and partly wrong; right in that an ordinary +Japanese, even a samurai, may answer in the way ascribed to him, but +wrong in attributing too much weight to the term he translates +"falsehood." This word (in Japanese _uso_) is employed to denote +anything which is not a truth (_makoto_) or fact (_honto_). Lowell tells +us that Wordsworth could not distinguish between truth and fact, and an +ordinary Japanese is in this respect as good as Wordsworth. Ask a +Japanese, or even an American of any refinement, to tell you whether he +dislikes you or whether he is sick at his stomach, and he will not +hesitate long to tell falsehoods and answer, "I like you much," or, "I +am quite well, thank you." To sacrifice truth merely for the sake of +politeness was regarded as an "empty form" (_kyo-rei_) and "deception by +sweet words," and was never justified. + +[Footnote 14: Peery, _The Gist of Japan_, p. 86.] + +I own I am speaking now of the Bushido idea of veracity; but it may not +be amiss to devote a few words to our commercial integrity, of which I +have heard much complaint in foreign books and journals. A loose +business morality has indeed been the worst blot on our national +reputation; but before abusing it or hastily condemning the whole race +for it, let us calmly study it and we shall be rewarded with consolation +for the future. + +Of all the great occupations of life, none was farther removed from the +profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the +category of vocations,--the knight, the tiller of the soil, the +mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and +could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the +counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social +arrangement. Montesquieu has made it clear that the debarring of the +nobility from mercantile pursuits was an admirable social policy, in +that it prevented wealth from accumulating in the hands of the powerful. +The separation of power and riches kept the distribution of the latter +more nearly equable. Professor Dill, the author of "Roman Society in the +Last Century of the Western Empire," has brought afresh to our mind that +one cause of the decadence of the Roman Empire, was the permission given +to the nobility to engage in trade, and the consequent monopoly of +wealth and power by a minority of the senatorial families. + +Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of +development which it would have attained under freer conditions. The +obloquy attached to the calling naturally brought within its pale such +as cared little for social repute. "Call one a thief and he will steal:" +put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it, +for it is natural that "the normal conscience," as Hugh Black says, +"rises to the demands made on it, and easily falls to the limit of the +standard expected from it." It is unnecessary to add that no business, +commercial or otherwise, can be transacted without a code of morals. Our +merchants of the feudal period had one among themselves, without which +they could never have developed, as they did, such fundamental +mercantile institutions as the guild, the bank, the bourse, insurance, +checks, bills of exchange, etc.; but in their relations with people +outside their vocation, the tradesmen lived too true to the reputation +of their order. + +This being the case, when the country was opened to foreign trade, only +the most adventurous and unscrupulous rushed to the ports, while the +respectable business houses declined for some time the repeated requests +of the authorities to establish branch houses. Was Bushido powerless to +stay the current of commercial dishonor? Let us see. + +Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a +few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, +feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai's fiefs were taken +and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to +invest them in mercantile transactions. Now you may ask, "Why could they +not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations +and so reform the old abuses?" Those who had eyes to see could not weep +enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with +the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably +failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through +sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival. When +we know that eighty per cent. of the business houses fail in so +industrial a country as America, is it any wonder that scarcely one +among a hundred samurai who went into trade could succeed in his new +vocation? It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes +were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; +but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth +were not the ways of honor. In what respects, then, were they different? + +Of the three incentives to Veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz: the +industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was +altogether lacking in Bushido. As to the second, it could develop little +in a political community under a feudal system. It is in its +philosophical, and as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that Honesty +attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues. With all my sincere +regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I +ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that "Honesty is the best +policy," that it _pays_ to be honest. Is not this virtue, then, its own +reward? If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, +I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies! + +If Bushido rejects a doctrine of _quid pro quo_ rewards, the shrewder +tradesman will readily accept it. Lecky has very truly remarked that +Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as +Nietzsche puts it, "Honesty is the youngest of virtues"--in other +words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry. Without +this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most +cultivated mind could adopt and nourish. Such minds were general among +the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian +foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive. Industries advancing, +Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice. Just +think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the +professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of "a lamentable +lack of reliability with regard to German shipments _inter alia_, +apparent both as to quality and quantity;" now-a-days we hear +comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade. In +twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays. Already +our merchants are finding that out. For the rest I recommend the reader +to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this point.[15] It is +interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were +the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the +form of promissory notes. It was quite a usual thing to insert such +clauses as these: "In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I +shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;" or, "In case I +fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool," and the like. + +[Footnote 15: Knapp, _Feudal and Modern Japan_, Vol. I, Ch. IV. Ransome, +_Japan in Transition_, Ch. VIII.] + +Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive +higher than courage. In the absence of any positive commandment against +bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply +denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable. As a matter of +fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and +its German etymology so identified with + + + +HONOR, + +that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration +of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood. + +The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity +and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to +value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word +ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used +freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as _na_ (name) +_men-moku_ (countenance), _guai-bun_ (outside hearing), reminding us +respectively of the biblical use of "name," of the evolution of the term +"personality" from the Greek mask, and of "fame." A good name--one's +reputation, the immortal part of one's self, what remains being +bestial--assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its +integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (_Ren-chi-shin_) was +one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. "You will be +laughed at," "It will disgrace you," "Are you not ashamed?" were the +last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. +Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the +child's heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its +mother's womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being +closely bound up with strong family consciousness. "In losing the +solidarity of families," says Balzac, "society has lost the fundamental +force which Montesquieu named Honor." Indeed, the sense of shame seems +to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our +race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in +consequence of tasting "the fruit of that forbidden tree" was, to my +mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the +awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in +pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and +tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her +dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience +clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial +ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will +efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who +refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his +youth; "because," he said, "dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which +time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge." + +Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, +what Carlyle has latterly expressed,--namely, that "Shame is the soil of +all Virtue, of good manners and good morals." + +The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks such +eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it nevertheless +hung like Damocles' sword over the head of every samurai and often +assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated +which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the +slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took +offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary +strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a +well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea +jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple +and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed +on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior +with a beast--I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe. +Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; (1) that they +were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made +of the samurai's profession of honor; and (3) that a very strong sense +of shame was developed among them. It is plainly unfair to take an +abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of +the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and +extravagance--inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania +there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium +tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai +about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine +virtue? + +The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined to +run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and patience. +To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as "short-tempered." +The popular adage said: "To bear what you think you cannot bear is +really to bear." The great Iyyasu left to posterity a few maxims, +among which are the following:--"The life of man is like going a long +distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not. * * * * +Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. * * * +Forbearance is the basis of length of days." He proved in his life what +he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths +of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he +attributed, "I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;" to +Hidyoshi, "I will force her to sing for me;" and to Iyyasu, "I will +wait till she opens her lips." + +Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In +one place he writes to this effect: "Though you denude yourself and +insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your +outrage." Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy +a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath. + +To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could +reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, +for instance, this saying of Ogawa: "When others speak all manner of +evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect +that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties." Take +another of Kumazawa:--"When others blame thee, blame them not; when +others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion +and Desire part." Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon +whose overhanging brows "shame is ashamed to sit;"--"The Way is the way +of Heaven and Earth: Man's place is to follow it: therefore make it the +object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with +equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love +others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy +partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou +comest not short of thine own mark." Some of those sayings remind us of +Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality +natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings +remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts. + +It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of +magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing +clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few +enlightened minds being aware that it "from no condition rises," but +that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than +for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in +Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, "'Tis in every man's +mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly +honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men +confer is not good honor. Those whom Cho the Great ennobles, he can +make mean again." + +For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, +as we shall see later, while Honor--too often nothing higher than vain +glory or worldly approbation--was prized as the _summum bonum_ of +earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal +toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he +crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it +until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother +refused to see her sons again unless they could "return home," as the +expression is, "caparisoned in brocade." To shun shame or win a name, +samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals +of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows +with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyyasu, in +spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at +the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept +so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the +resources at his command. "Take comfort, Sire," said he, "at thought of +the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there +will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself." The boy fixed his +indignant gaze upon the man and said--"How foolishly you talk! Can ever +my fourteenth year come round again?" + +Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained +therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered +dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down. + +Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to +sacrifice, was + + + +THE DUTY OF LOYALTY, + +which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other +virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, +with other classes of people, but this virtue--homage and fealty to a +superior--is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity +is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,--a +gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the +code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance. + +In spite of Hegel's criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, +being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a +bond established on totally unjust principles,[16] a great compatriot of +his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue. +Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the _Treue_ he boasts of +was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but +because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people +where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where "everybody is as +good as anybody else," and, as the Irishman added, "better too," such +exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed +"excellent within certain bounds," but preposterous as encouraged among +us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the +Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the +truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary +beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we +conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception +is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we +carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. Griffis[17] was +quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made +obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was +given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I +will relate of one "who could endure to follow a fall'n lord" and who +thus, as Shakespeare assures, "earned a place i' the story." + +[Footnote 16: _Philosophy of History_ (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV, +Sec. II, Ch. I.] + +[Footnote 17: _Religions of Japan_.] + +The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizan, +who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the +capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent +upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son--not yet +grown--reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept +by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizan. When orders are dispatched +to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a +certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He +ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the +boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children +born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protg. His +despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is +announced--a comely boy of the same age as his master's son, escorted by +a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between +infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In +the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his +life,--the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. +Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom +comes the suggestion. + +Here, then, is the scape-goat!--The rest of the narrative may be briefly +told.--On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to +identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the +false head? The poor Genzo's hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to +strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination +defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him, +goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone, +pronounces it genuine.--That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother +we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for +his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the +wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of +Michizan's bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced +her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family's +benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but +his son could serve the cause of the grandsire's lord. As one acquainted +with the exile's family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task +of identifying the boy's head. Now the day's--yea, the life's--hard work +is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his +wife, saying: "Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service +to his lord!" + +"What an atrocious story!" I hear my readers exclaim,--"Parents +deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of +another man's." But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is +a story of vicarious death--as significant as, and not more revolting +than, the story of Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases +it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of +a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or +heard by an outward or an inward ear;--but I abstain from preaching. + +The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for +father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief +the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest +of the family and of the members thereof is intact,--one and +inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection--natural, +instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural +love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? "For if ye love +them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the +same?" + +In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart +struggle of Shigemori concerning his father's rebellious conduct. "If I +be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my +sovereign must go amiss." Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying +with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may +be released from this world where it is hard for purity and +righteousness to dwell. + +Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and +affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself +contains an adequate rendering of _ko_, our conception of filial piety, +and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of +Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the +king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the +samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty. + +Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived +the state as antedating the individual--the latter being born into the +former as part and parcel thereof--he must live and die for it or for +the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will +remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the +city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he +makes them (the laws, or the state) say:--"Since you were begotten and +nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our +offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!" These are words +which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing +has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the +laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty +is an ethical outcome of this political theory. + +I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer's view according to which +political obedience--Loyalty--is accredited with only a transitional +function.[18] It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue +thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe _that_ +day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem +says, "tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss." We may +remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the +English, "the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity +which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has," as Monsieur +Boutmy recently said, "only passed more or less into their profound +loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their +extraordinary attachment to the dynasty." + +[Footnote 18: _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.] + +Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to +loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is +realized--will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence +disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to +another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a +ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch +who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a +very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer, +made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the +claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with +treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and +Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of +Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of the +Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, "serve two +masters without holding to the one or despising the other," "rendering +unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that +are God's." Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to +concede one iota of loyalty to his _daemon_, obey with equal fidelity +and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His +conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the +day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the +dictates of their conscience! + +Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord +or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said: + + "Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot. + My life thou shalt command, but not my shame. + The one my duty owes; but my fair name, + Despite of death, that lives upon my grave, + To dark dishonor's use, thou shalt not have." + +A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak +or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the +Precepts. Such an one was despised as _nei-shin_, a cringeling, who +makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as _ch-shin_, a favorite who +steals his master's affections by means of servile compliance; these two +species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago +describes,--the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his +own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master's ass; +the other trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart +attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal +path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him +of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master +deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual +course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and +conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with +the shedding of his own blood. + +Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its +ideal being set upon honor, the whole + + + +EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF +A SAMURAI, + +were conducted accordingly. + +The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up +character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, +intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part aesthetic +accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a +man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai +training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the +word _Chi_, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom +in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate +place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be +_Chi_, _Jin_, _Yu_, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A +samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of +his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his +profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; +he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish +courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed "'tis not the creed +that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed." +Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual +training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth +that he strove after,--literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and +philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for +the exposition of some military or political problem. + +From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the +curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted +mainly of the following,--fencing, archery, _jiujutsu_ or _yawara_, +horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics, +literature and history. Of these, _jiujutsu_ and caligraphy may require +a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing, +probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of +pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was +accepted as indicative of one's personal character. _Jiujutsu_ may be +briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose +of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not +depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in +that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such +part of the enemy's body as will make him numb and incapable of +resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for +action for the time being. + +A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education +and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of +instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in +part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific +precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was +unfavorable to fostering numerical notions. + +Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius +that "ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than +gain which darkens him." Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear +and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in +hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrre of La Mancha. He disdains +money itself,--the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably +filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an +age is "that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death." +Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as +their lavish use is panegyrized. "Less than all things," says a current +precept, "men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is +hindered." Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of +economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of +the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of +numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the +distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left +to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by +a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well +enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of +raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift +was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for +the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to +manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, +sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans. + +We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial +agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby +showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money +itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of +the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. +These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something +low--low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations. + +Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself +could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is +the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men +have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is +making its way in our time and generation! + +The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the +study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and +deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind +of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, +decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with +information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies +that Bacon gives,--for delight, ornament, and ability,--Bushido had +decided preference for the last, where their use was "in judgment and +the disposition of business." Whether it was for the disposition of +public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a +practical end in view that education was conducted. "Learning without +thought," said Confucius, "is labor lost: thought without learning is +perilous." + +When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is +chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his +vocation partakes of a sacred character. "It is the parent who has borne +me: it is the teacher who makes me man." With this idea, therefore, the +esteem in which one's preceptor was held was very high. A man to evoke +such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed +with superior personality without lacking erudition. He was a father to +the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring. "Thy father and thy +mother"--so runs our maxim--"are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and +thy lord are like the sun and moon." + +The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue +among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be +rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it +of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not +because it was valueless but because it was invaluable. Here the +non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than +modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for +services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas +the best service done in education,--namely, in soul development (and +this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or +measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, +is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their +teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were +not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients +as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, +too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg. They were +grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity. They were +an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were +thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines, + + + +SELF-CONTROL, + +which was universally required of samurai. + +The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance +without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring +us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of +our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and +eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I +say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can +ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some +of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer +hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any +race under the sky. + +I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than +others--yes, doubly more--since the very attempt to, restrain natural +promptings entails suffering. Imagine boys--and girls too--brought up +not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for +the relief of their feelings,--and there is a physiological problem +whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive. + +It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his +face. "He shows no sign of joy or anger," was a phrase used in +describing a strong character. The most natural affections were kept +under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his +dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,--no, not in the presence of +other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth +in the remark of a witty youth when he said, "American husbands kiss +their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat +theirs in public and kiss them in private." + +Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by +passion of any kind. I remember when, during the late war with China, a +regiment left a certain town, a large concourse of people flocked to the +station to bid farewell to the general and his army. On this occasion +an American resident resorted to the place, expecting to witness loud +demonstrations, as the nation itself was highly excited and there were +fathers, mothers, and sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The +American was strangely disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the +train began to move, the hats of thousands of people were silently taken +off and their heads bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of +handkerchiefs, no word uttered, but deep silence in which only an +attentive ear could catch a few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I +know of a father who spent whole nights listening to the breathing of a +sick child, standing behind the door that he might not be caught in such +an act of parental weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last +moments, refrained from sending for her son, that he might not be +disturbed in his studies. Our history and everyday life are replete with +examples of heroic matrons who can well bear comparison with some of the +most touching pages of Plutarch. Among our peasantry an Ian Maclaren +would be sure to find many a Marget Howe. + +It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for the +absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of Japan. +When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is +to quietly suppress any indication of it. In rare instances is the +tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of +sincerity and fervor. It is putting a premium upon a breach of the third +commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experience. It is +truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most +secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. "Dost +thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time +for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone +in quietness and secrecy,"--writes a young samurai in his diary. + +To give in so many articulate words one's inmost thoughts and +feelings--notably the religious--is taken among us as an unmistakable +sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. "Only a +pomegranate is he"--so runs a popular saying--"who, when he gapes his +mouth, displays the contents of his heart." + +It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant our +emotions are moved we try to guard our lips in order to hide them. +Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defined it, "the art of +concealing thought." + +Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will +invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At first +you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you will get +a few broken commonplaces--"Human life has sorrow;" "They who meet must +part;" "He that is born must die;" "It is foolish to count the years of +a child that is gone, but a woman's heart will indulge in follies;" and +the like. So the noble words of a noble Hohenzollern--"Lerne zu leiden +ohne Klagen"--had found many responsive minds among us, long before they +were uttered. + +Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the frailties +of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better +reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter +with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when +disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of sorrow +or rage. + +The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they find +their safety-valve in poetical aphorism. A poet of the tenth century +writes, "In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by sorrow, +tells its bitter grief in verse." A mother who tries to console her +broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase +after the dragon-fly, hums, + + "How far to-day in chase, I wonder, + Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!" + +I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant +justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a +foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding +hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a +measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an +appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and +dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question. + +It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference +to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as +it goes. The next question is,--Why are our nerves less tightly strung? +It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be +our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the +Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read _Sartor +Resartus_ as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was +our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to +recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the +explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in +self-control, none can be correct. + +Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress +the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into +distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or +hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart +and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive +excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of +self-restraint is to keep our mind _level_--as our expression is--or, to +borrow a Greek term, attain the state of _euthymia_, which Democritus +called the highest good. + +The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of +the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely, + + + +THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE +AND REDRESS, + +of which (the former known as _hara-kiri_ and the latter as +_kataki-uchi_ )many foreign writers have treated more or less fully. + +To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only +to _seppuku_ or _kappuku_, popularly known as _hara-kiri_--which means +self-immolation by disembowelment. "Ripping the abdomen? How +absurd!"--so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may +sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to +students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus' mouth--"Thy +(Caesar's) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper +entrails." Listen to a modern English poet, who in his _Light of Asia_, +speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:--none blames him for +bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, +look at Guercino's painting of Cato's death, in the Palazzo Rossa in +Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, +will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this +mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most +touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars +our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, +of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a +sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else--the sign which +Constantine beheld would not conquer the world! + +Not for extraneous associations only does _seppuku_ lose in our mind any +taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body +to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of +the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph's "bowels +yearning upon his brother," or David prayed the Lord not to forget his +bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of +the "sounding" or the "troubling" of bowels, they all and each endorsed +the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was +enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and +kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term +_hara_ was more comprehensive than the Greek _phren_ or _thumos_ and +the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell +somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the +peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by +one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul +is located in the pineal gland, still insist in using the term _ventre_ +in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless +physiologically significant. Similarly _entrailles_ stands in their +language for affection and compassion. Nor is such belief mere +superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the +heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese +knew better than Romeo "in what vile part of this anatomy one's name did +lodge." Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, +denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are +strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental +physiology once admitted, the syllogism of _seppuku_ is easy to +construct. "I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares +with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean." + +I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral +justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was +ample excuse with many for taking one's own life. How many acquiesced in +the sentiment expressed by Garth, + + "When honor's lost, 'tis a relief to die; + Death's but a sure retreat from infamy," + +and have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death when honor +was involved, was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many +complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure +from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to +be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are +honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive +admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius +and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly +existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the +philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his +pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the +state--which he knew was morally mistaken--in spite of the possibilities +of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even +offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his +whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical +compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of +the judges was compulsory: it said, "Thou shalt die,--and that by thy +own hand." If suicide meant no more than dying by one's own hand, +Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with +the crime; Plato, who was averse to it, would not call his master a +suicide. + +Now my readers will understand that _seppuku_ was not a mere suicidal +process. It was an institution, legal and ceremonial. An invention of +the middle ages, it was a process by which warriors could expiate their +crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their +friends, or prove their sincerity. When enforced as a legal punishment, +it was practiced with due ceremony. It was a refinement of +self-destruction, and none could perform it without the utmost coolness +of temper and composure of demeanor, and for these reasons it was +particularly befitting the profession of bushi. + +Antiquarian curiosity, if nothing else, would tempt me to give here a +description of this obsolete ceremonial; but seeing that such a +description was made by a far abler writer, whose book is not much read +now-a-days, I am tempted to make a somewhat lengthy quotation. Mitford, +in his "Tales of Old Japan," after giving a translation of a treatise on +_seppuku_ from a rare Japanese manuscript, goes on to describe an +instance of such an execution of which he was an eye-witness:-- + +"We (seven foreign representatives) were invited to follow the Japanese +witness into the _hondo_ or main hall of the temple, where the ceremony +was to be performed. It was an imposing scene. A large hall with a high +roof supported by dark pillars of wood. From the ceiling hung a +profusion of those huge gilt lamps and ornaments peculiar to Buddhist +temples. In front of the high altar, where the floor, covered with +beautiful white mats, is raised some three or four inches from the +ground, was laid a rug of scarlet felt. Tall candles placed at regular +intervals gave out a dim mysterious light, just sufficient to let all +the proceedings be seen. The seven Japanese took their places on the +left of the raised floor, the seven foreigners on the right. No other +person was present. + +"After the interval of a few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki +Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, +walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar +hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied +by a _kaishaku_ and three officers, who wore the _jimbaori_ or war +surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word _kaishaku_ it should be +observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. +The office is that of a gentleman: in many cases it is performed by a +kinsman or friend of the condemned, and the relation between them is +rather that of principal and second than that of victim and executioner. +In this instance the _kaishaku_ was a pupil of Taki Zenzaburo, and was +selected by friends of the latter from among their own number for his +skill in swordsmanship. + +"With the _kaishaku_ on his left hand, Taki Zenzaburo advanced slowly +towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then +drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps +even with more deference; in each case the salutation was ceremoniously +returned. Slowly and with great dignity the condemned man mounted on to +the raised floor, prostrated himself before the high altar twice, and +seated[19] himself on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, +the _kaishaku_ crouching on his left hand side. One of the three +attendant officers then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used +in the temple for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the +_wakizashi_, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a +half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor's. This he +handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it +reverently, raising it to his head with both hands, and placed it in +front of himself. + +[Footnote 19: Seated himself--that is, in the Japanese fashion, his +knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his heels. In +this position, which is one of respect, he remained until his death.] + +"After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which +betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a +man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in +his face or manner, spoke as follows:-- + +'I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners +at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel +myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing +the act.' + +"Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down +to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to +custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from +falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling +forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand he took the dirk that lay +before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a +moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then +stabbing himself deeply below the waist in the left-hand side, he drew +the dirk slowly across to his right side, and turning it in the wound, +gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he +never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned +forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first +time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the +_kaishaku_, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching +his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in +the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with +one blow the head had been severed from the body. + +"A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood +throbbing out of the inert head before us, which but a moment before had +been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible. + +"The _kaishaku_ made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of paper +which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; +and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the +execution. + +"The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and +crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called to us to +witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been +faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the +temple." + +I might multiply any number of descriptions of _seppuku_ from literature +or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will +suffice. + +Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen +years of age, made an effort to kill Iyyasu in order to avenge their +father's wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made +prisoners. The old general admired the pluck of the youths who dared an +attempt on his life and ordered that they should be allowed to die an +honorable death. Their little brother Hachimaro, a mere infant of eight +summers, was condemned to a similar fate, as the sentence was pronounced +on all the male members of the family, and the three were taken to a +monastery where it was to be executed. A physician who was present on +the occasion has left us a diary from which the following scene is +translated. "When they were all seated in a row for final despatch, +Sakon turned to the youngest and said--'Go thou first, for I wish to be +sure that thou doest it aright.' Upon the little one's replying that, as +he had never seen _seppuku_ performed, he would like to see his brothers +do it and then he could follow them, the older brothers smiled between +their tears:--'Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of +being our father's child.' When they had placed him between them, Sakon +thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and +asked--'Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don't push the dagger +too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees +well composed.' Naiki did likewise and said to the boy--'Keep thy eyes +open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels +anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy +effort to cut across.' The child looked from one to the other, and when +both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the +example set him on either hand." + +The glorification of _seppuku_ offered, naturally enough, no small +temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely +incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, +hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and +dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent +gates. Life was cheap--cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of +honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the +_agio_, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser +metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of +Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all +victims of self-destruction! + +And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike +cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and +was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself +hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with +use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted--did not the noblest of +the Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like +circumstances?--deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude +approaching a Christian martyr's, cheered himself with an impromptu +verse: + + "Come! evermore come, + Ye dread sorrows and pains! + And heap on my burden'd back; + That I not one test may lack + Of what strength in me remains!" + +This, then, was the Bushido teaching--Bear and face all calamities and +adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as Mencius[20] +taught, "When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it +first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with +toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; +and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his +mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies." True honor +lies in fulfilling Heaven's decree and no death incurred in so doing is +ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly +indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne's, _Religio Medici_ +there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in +our Precepts. Let me quote it: "It is a brave act of valor to contemn +death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest +valor to dare to live." A renowned priest of the seventeenth century +satirically observed--"Talk as he may, a samurai who ne'er has died is +apt in decisive moments to flee or hide." Again--Him who once has died +in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of +Tametomo can pierce. How near we come to the portals of the temple whose +Builder taught "he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it!" +These are but a few of the numerous examples which tend to confirm the +moral identity of the human species, notwithstanding an attempt so +assiduously made to render the distinction between Christian and Pagan +as great as possible. + +[Footnote 20: I use Dr. Legge's translation verbatim.] + +We have thus seen that the Bushido institution of suicide was neither +so irrational nor barbarous as its abuse strikes us at first sight. We +will now see whether its sister institution of Redress--or call it +Revenge, if you will--has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose +of this question in a few words, since a similar institution, or call it +custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all +peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the +continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain +recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? +Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and +only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time +which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, and only the +vigilant vengeance of the victim's people preserves social order. "What +is the most beautiful thing on earth?" said Osiris to Horus. The reply +was, "To avenge a parent's wrongs,"--to which a Japanese would have +added "and a master's." + +In revenge there is something which satisfies one's sense of justice. +The avenger reasons:--"My good father did not deserve death. He who +killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not +tolerate a deed like this: Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the +will of my father; it is the will of Heaven that the evil-doer cease +from his work. He must perish by my hand; because he shed my father's +blood, I, who am his flesh and blood, must shed the murderer's. The same +Heaven shall not shelter him and me." The ratiocination is simple and +childish (though we know Hamlet did not reason much more deeply), +nevertheless it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice +"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Our sense of revenge is as +exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation +are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone. + +In Judaism, which believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, +which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; +but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a +kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be +judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven +Ronins was condemned to death;--he had no court of higher instance to +appeal to; his faithful retainers addressed themselves to Vengeance, the +only Supreme Court existing; they in their turn were condemned by common +law,--but the popular instinct passed a different judgment and hence +their memory is still kept as green and fragrant as are their graves at +Sengakuji to this day. + +Though Lao-tse taught to recompense injury with kindness, the voice of +Confucius was very much louder, which counselled that injury must be +recompensed with justice;--and yet revenge was justified only when it +was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One's own +wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne +and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal's +oath to avenge his country's wrongs, but he scorns James Hamilton for +wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife's grave, as an +eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray. + +Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their _raison +d'tre_ at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of +romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the +murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family +vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale +of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the +injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society +will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is +no need of _kataki-uchi_. If this had meant that "hunger of the heart +which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of +the victim," as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs +in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it. + +As to _seppuku_, though it too has no existence _de jure_, we still hear +of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as +long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of +self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with +fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have +to concede to _seppuku_ an aristocratic position among them. He +maintains that "when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at +the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it +may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by +madness, or by morbid excitement."[21] But a normal _seppuku_ does not +savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost _sang froid_ being +necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which +Dr. Strahan[22] divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the +Irrational or True, _seppuku_ is the best example of the former type. + +[Footnote 21: Morselli, _Suicide_, p. 314.] + +[Footnote 22: _Suicide and Insanity_.] + +From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of +Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in +social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called + + + +THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE +SAMURAI, + +and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed +that "The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell," he only echoed a +Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It +was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was +apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a +_go_-board[23] and initiated into the rights of the military profession +by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk +with which he had been playing. After this first ceremony of _adoptio +per arma_, he was no more to be seen outside his father's gates without +this badge of his status, even if it was usually substituted for +every-day wear by a gilded wooden dirk. Not many years pass before he +wears constantly the genuine steel, though blunt, and then the sham arms +are thrown aside and with enjoyment keener than his newly acquired +blades, he marches out to try their edge on wood and stone. When be +reaches man's estate at the age of fifteen, being given independence of +action, he can now pride himself upon the possession of arms sharp +enough for any work. The very possession of the dangerous instrument +imparts to him a feeling and an air of self-respect and responsibility. +"He beareth not his sword in vain." What he carries in his belt is a +symbol of what he carries in his mind and heart--Loyalty and Honor. The +two swords, the longer and the shorter--called respectively _daito_ and +_shoto_ or _katana_ and _wakizashi_--never leave his side. When at home, +they grace the most conspicuous place in study or parlor; by night they +guard his pillow within easy reach of his hand. Constant companions, +they are beloved, and proper names of endearment given them. Being +venerated, they are well-nigh worshiped. The Father of History has +recorded as a curious piece of information that the Scythians sacrificed +to an iron scimitar. Many a temple and many a family in Japan hoards a +sword as an object of adoration. Even the commonest dirk has due respect +paid to it. Any insult to it is tantamount to personal affront. Woe to +him who carelessly steps over a weapon lying on the floor! + +[Footnote 23: The game of _go_ is sometimes called Japanese checkers, +but is much more intricate than the English game. The _go-_board +contains 361 squares and is supposed to represent a battle-field--the +object of the game being to occupy as much space as possible.] + +So precious an object cannot long escape the notice and the skill of +artists nor the vanity of its owner, especially in times of peace, when +it is worn with no more use than a crosier by a bishop or a sceptre by a +king. Shark-skin and finest silk for hilt, silver and gold for guard, +lacquer of varied hues for scabbard, robbed the deadliest weapon of half +its terror; but these appurtenances are playthings compared with the +blade itself. + +The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his +workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and +purification, or, as the phrase was, "he committed his soul and spirit +into the forging and tempering of the steel." Every swing of the sledge, +every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a +religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of +his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as +a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there +is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface +the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate +texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which +histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting +exquisite grace with utmost strength;--all these thrill us with mixed +feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror. Harmless were its +mission, if it only remained a thing of beauty and joy! But, ever within +reach of the hand, it presented no small temptation for abuse. Too often +did the blade flash forth from its peaceful sheath. The abuse sometimes +went so far as to try the acquired steel on some harmless creature's +neck. + +The question that concerns us most is, however,--Did Bushido justify +the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As +it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its +misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on +undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use +it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count +Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our +history, when assassinations, suicides, and other sanguinary practices +were the order of the day. Endowed as he once was with almost +dictatorial powers, repeatedly marked out as an object for +assassination, he never tarnished his sword with blood. In relating some +of his reminiscences to a friend he says, in a quaint, plebeian way +peculiar to him:--"I have a great dislike for killing people and so I +haven't killed one single man. I have released those whose heads should +have been chopped off. A friend said to me one day, 'You don't kill +enough. Don't you eat pepper and egg-plants?' Well, some people are no +better! But you see that fellow was slain himself. My escape may be due +to my dislike of killing. I had the hilt of my sword so tightly fastened +to the scabbard that it was hard to draw the blade. I made up my mind +that though they cut me, I will not cut. Yes, yes! some people are truly +like fleas and mosquitoes and they bite--but what does their biting +amount to? It itches a little, that's all; it won't endanger life." +These are the words of one whose Bushido training was tried in the fiery +furnace of adversity and triumph. The popular apothegm--"To be beaten is +to conquer," meaning true conquest consists in not opposing a riotous +foe; and "The best won victory is that obtained without shedding of +blood," and others of similar import--will show that after all the +ultimate ideal of knighthood was Peace. + +It was a great pity that this high ideal was left exclusively to priests +and moralists to preach, while the samurai went on practicing and +extolling martial traits. In this they went so far as to tinge the +ideals of womanhood with Amazonian character. Here we may profitably +devote a few paragraphs to the subject of + + + +THE TRAINING AND POSITION OF +WOMAN. + +The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of +paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the +comprehension of men's "arithmetical understanding." The Chinese +ideogram denoting "the mysterious," "the unknowable," consists of two +parts, one meaning "young" and the other "woman," because the physical +charms and delicate thoughts of the fair sex are above the coarse mental +calibre of our sex to explain. + +In the Bushido ideal of woman, however, there is little mystery and only +a seeming paradox. I have said that it was Amazonian, but that is only +half the truth. Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman +holding a broom--certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively +against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more +harmless uses for which the besom was first invented--the idea involved +being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the +English wife (weaver) and daughter (_duhitar_, milkmaid). Without +confining the sphere of woman's activity to _Kche, Kirche, Kinder_, as +the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood +was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions--Domesticity and +Amazonian traits--are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, +as we shall see. + +Bushido being a teaching primarily intended for the masculine sex, the +virtues it prized in woman were naturally far from being distinctly +feminine. Winckelmann remarks that "the supreme beauty of Greek art is +rather male than female," and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral +conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised +those women most "who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their +sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the +bravest of men."[24] Young girls therefore, were trained to repress +their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate +weapons,--especially the long-handled sword called _nagi-nata_, so as to +be able to hold their own against unexpected odds. Yet the primary +motive for exercises of this martial character was not for use in the +field; it was twofold--personal and domestic. Woman owning no suzerain +of her own, formed her own bodyguard. With her weapon she guarded her +personal sanctity with as much zeal as her husband did his master's. The +domestic utility of her warlike training was in the education of her +sons, as we shall see later. + +[Footnote 24: Lecky, _History of European Morals_ II, p. 383.] + +Fencing and similar exercises, if rarely of practical use, were a +wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But +these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could +be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood, +were presented with dirks (_kai-ken_, pocket poniards), which might be +directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their +own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them +severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of +self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and +Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a +Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her +father's dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a +disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to +perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in +anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must +know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever +the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty +with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of +the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an +abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our +bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among +us.[25] On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the +samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner, +seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery, +says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to +write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction. +When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves +her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these +verses;-- + + "For fear lest clouds may dim her light, + Should she but graze this nether sphere, + The young moon poised above the height + Doth hastily betake to flight." + +[Footnote 25: For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing see +Finck's _Lotos Time in Japan_, pp. 286-297.] + +It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was +our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the +gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and +literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our +literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women +played an important role in the history of Japanese _belles lettres_. +Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of _geisha_) +only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale +the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the +technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate +object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of +sound is attainable without the player's heart being in harmony with +herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in +the training of youths--that accomplishments were ever kept subservient +to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and +brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I +sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in +London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in +his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of +business for them. + +The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social +ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social +parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,--in other words, as a +part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided +their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women +of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly +intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost +sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and +integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and +day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to +their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her +father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from +earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of +independence, but of dependent service. Man's helpmeet, if her presence +is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she +retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth +becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but, +when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties, +disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal +wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, +in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon +pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take +her husband's place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon +her own devoted head. + +The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before +taking her own life, needs no comment:--"Oft have I heard that no +accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that +all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common +bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to +our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two +short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow +followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being +loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be +the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving +partner. I have heard that K[=o]-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China, +lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave +as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt +farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope +or joy--why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I +not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime +tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good +master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as +deep as the sea and as high as the hills." + +Woman's surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and +family, was as willing and honorable as the man's self-surrender to the +good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no +life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well +as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than +was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was +recognized as _Naijo_, "the inner help." In the ascending scale of +service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might +annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I +know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of +Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of +each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator. +Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service--the serving of a cause +higher than one's own self, even at the sacrifice of one's +individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that +Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission--as far as that +is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth. + +My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish +surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced +with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by +Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The +point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so +thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was +required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its +Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the +view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman's rights, who +exclaimed, "May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against +ancient customs!" Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female +status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the +loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which +are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part +of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can +the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the +true course for their historical development to take? These are grave +questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime +let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen +was really so bad as to justify a revolt. + +We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to "God and +the ladies,"--the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we +are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that +gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker +vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot +contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences, +while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is +feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily +low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M. +Guizot's theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer's? In reply I might +aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to +the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the +military nobles, the _daimio_, and the court nobles, the _kug_--these +higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were +masses of the common people--mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants--whose +life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as +the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have +been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the +industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This +is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she +experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the +lower the social class--as, for instance, among small artisans--the more +equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility, +too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked, +chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex +into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally +effeminate. Thus Spencer's dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As +to Guizot's, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will +remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration, +so that his generalization applies to the _daimio_ and the _kug_. + +I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words +give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do +not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man's equal; but until +we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will +always be misunderstandings upon this subject. + +When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves, +_e.g._, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble +ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American +Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had +no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what +Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal +rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the +only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it +would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in +pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in +comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it +enough, to compare woman's status to man's as the value of silver is +compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a +method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important +kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In +view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil +its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its +relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from +economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a +standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of +woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very +little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this +double measurement;--as a social-political unit not much, while as wife +and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among +so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly +venerated? Was it not because they were _matrona_, mothers? Not as +fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So +with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the +government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers +and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted +to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were +primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the +education of their children. + +I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among +half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression +for one's wife is "my rustic wife" and the like, she is despised and +held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as "my foolish +father," "my swinish son," "my awkward self," etc., are in current use, +is not the answer clear enough? + +To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further +than the so-called Christian. "Man and woman shall be one flesh." The +individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband +and wife are two persons;--hence when they disagree, their separate +_rights_ are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their +vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and--nonsensical +blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband +or wife speaks to a third party of his other half--better or worse--as +being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of +one's self as "my bright self," "my lovely disposition," and so forth? +We think praising one's own wife or one's own husband is praising a part +of one's own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad +taste among us,--and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have +diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one's consort +was a usage most in vogue among the samurai. + +The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe +of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the +Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of +the numerical insufficiency of women[26] (who, now increasing, are, I am +afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the +respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief +standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main +water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was +located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul +and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the +early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader's +notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as +lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion +presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being +founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, +though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions +which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me +the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, +which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment +doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,--a +separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in +Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I +might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and +Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties +as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan. + +[Footnote 26: I refer to those days when girls were imported from +England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.] + +It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in +the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military +class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of + + + +THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO + +on the nation at large. + +We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which +rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more +elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its +rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually +casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first +enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from +amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, +and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are +no less contagious than vices. "There needs but one wise man in a +company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion," says Emerson. No +social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral +influence. + +Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely +has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of +the squires and _gentlemen_? Very truly does M. Taine say, "These three +syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English +society." Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement +and fling back the question--"When Adam delved and Eve span, where then +was the gentleman?" All the more pity that a gentleman was not present +in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for +his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more +tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful +experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor, +treason and rebellion. + +What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of +the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed +through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the +populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their +example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these +were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the +commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of +virtues for their own sake. + +In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a +small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says--"In English +Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to +Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman)." Write in place of +Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the +main features of the literary history of Japan. + +The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction--the +theatres, the story-teller's booths, the preacher's dais, the musical +recitations, the novels--have taken for their chief theme the stories of +the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire +of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsun and his faithful retainer +Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with +gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its +embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The +clerks and the shop-boys, after their day's work is over and the +_amado_[27] of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story +of Nobunaga and Hidyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes +their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to +the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is +taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of +ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and +virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour +with greedy ear the romance of the samurai. + +[Footnote 27: Outside shutters.] + +The samurai grew to be the _beau ideal_ of the whole race. "As among +flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord," so sang +the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class +itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity, +no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus +from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly +the work of Knighthood. + +Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, "Aristocracy and +Evolution," has eloquently told us that "social evolution, in so far as +it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of +the intentions of great men;" further, that historical progress is +produced by a struggle "not among the community generally, to live, but +a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct, +to employ, the majority in the best way." Whatever may be said about the +soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the +part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our +Empire. + +How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in +the development of a certain order of men, known as _otoko-dat_, the +natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of +them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen +and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of +hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that +samurai did to daimio, the willing service of "limb and life, of body, +chattels and earthly honor." Backed by a vast multitude of rash and +impetuous working-men, those born "bosses" formed a formidable check to +the rampancy of the two-sworded order. + +In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where +it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral +standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at +first as the glory of the elite, became in time an aspiration and +inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not +attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet _Yamato Damashii_, +the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the _Volksgeist_ of the +Island Realm. If religion is no more than "Morality touched by +emotion," as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better +entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoori has put the mute +utterance of the nation into words when he sings:-- + + "Isles of blest Japan! + Should your Yamato spirit + Strangers seek to scan, + Say--scenting morn's sun-lit air, + Blows the cherry wild and fair!" + +Yes, the _sakura_[28] has for ages been the favorite of our people and +the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition +which the poet uses, the words the _wild cherry flower scenting the +morning sun_. + +[Footnote 28: _Cerasus pseudo-cerasus_, Lindley.] + +The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild--in the sense +of natural--growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental +qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its +essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But +its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and +grace of its beauty appeal to _our_ aesthetic sense as no other flower +can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, +which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are +hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she +clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop +untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy +odors--all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no +dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at +the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light +fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its +showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is +volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious +ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is +something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the +_sakura_ quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to +illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more +serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of +beauteous day. + +When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his +heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that +the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the +whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a +time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs +and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily +tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one +is the sakura the flower of the nation. + +Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the +wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, +is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so +frailly mortal? + + + +IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE? + +Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already +wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline? + +It were a sad thing if a nation's soul could die so fast. That were a +poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The +aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national +character, is as tenacious as the "irreducible elements of species, of +the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the +carnivorous animal." In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations +and brilliant generalizations, M. LeBon[29] says, "The discoveries due +to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or +defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: +they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for +centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities." +These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over, +provided there were qualities and defects of character which _constitute +the exclusive patrimony_ of each people. Schematizing theories of this +sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and +they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In +studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon +European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that +no one quality of character was its _exclusive_ patrimony. It is true +the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is +this aggregate which Emerson names a "compound result into which every +great force enters as an ingredient." But, instead of making it, as +LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord +philosopher calls it "an element which unites the most forcible persons +of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; +and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack +the Masonic sign." + +[Footnote 29: _The Psychology of Peoples_, p. 33.] + +The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in +particular, cannot be said to form "an irreducible element of species," +but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. +Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the +last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it +transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely +widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has +calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, +"each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty +millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D." The merest peasant +that grubs the soil, "bowed by the weight of centuries," has in his +veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as "to the +ox." + +An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the +nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when +Yoshida Shoin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote +on the eve of his execution the following stanza;-- + + "Full well I knew this course must end in death; + It was Yamato spirit urged me on + To dare whate'er betide." + +Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor +force of our country. + +Mr. Ransome says that "there are three distinct Japans in existence +side by side to-day,--the old, which has not wholly died out; the new, +hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now +through its most critical throes." While this is very true in most +respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete +institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions, +requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old +Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove +the formative force of the new era. + +The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the +hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, +were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of +Knighthood. Some writers[30] have lately tried to prove that the +Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making +of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this +honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it +will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of +preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they +have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian +missionaries are doing great things for Japan--in the domain of +education, and especially of moral education:--only, the mysterious +though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in +divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet +Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the +character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged +us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern +Japan--of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the +reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:--and you +will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought +and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and +observation of the Far East,[31] that only the respect in which Japan +differed from other oriental despotisms lay in "the ruling influence +among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious +codes of honor that man has ever devised," he touched the main spring +which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is +destined to be. + +[Footnote 30: Speer; _Missions and Politics in Asia_, Lecture IV, pp. +189-190; Dennis: _Christian Missions and Social Progress_, Vol. I, p. +32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.] + +[Footnote 31: _The Far East_, p. 375.] + +The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a +work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one +were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When +we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the +latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study +Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the +development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much +less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of +oriental institutions and peoples has written:--"We are told every day +how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those +islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan, +but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of +organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful. +She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before +imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence," continues +Mr. Townsend, "unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea +of China. Where is the European apostle," asks our author, "or +philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made Japan?"[32] Mr. +Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought +about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he +had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation +would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than +Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as +an inferior power,--that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or +industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of +transformation. + +[Footnote 32: Meredith Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, N.Y., 1900, 28.] + +The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read. +A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most +eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the +working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The +universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly +ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance, +fortitude and bravery that "the little Jap" possesses, were sufficiently +proved in the China-Japanese war.[33] "Is there any nation more loyal +and patriotic?" is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer, +"There is not," we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood. + +[Footnote 33: Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and Yamada +on _Heroic Japan_, and Diosy on _The New Far East_.] + +On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and +defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of +abstruse philosophy--while some of our young men have already gained +international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved +anything in philosophical lines--is traceable to the neglect of +metaphysical training under Bushido's regimen of education. Our sense of +honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; +and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, +that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor. + +Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, +dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, +stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane +things? He is the _shosei_ (student), to whom the earth is too small and +the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe +and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of +wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for +knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods +are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of +Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national +honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of +Bushido. + +Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said +that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people +responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it +has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly +translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different +degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion +could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an +appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master. +The word "Loyalty" revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted +to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued +"students' strike" in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction +with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the +Director,--"Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought +to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is not +manly to push a falling man." The scientific incapacity of the +professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into +insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By +arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great +magnitude can be accomplished. + +One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the +missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history--"What do we care for +heathen records?" some say--and consequently estrange their religion +from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed +to for centuries past. Mocking a nation's history!--as though the career +of any people--even of the lowest African savages possessing no +record--were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by +the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be +deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races +themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and +white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race +forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the +past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new +religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an "old, old story," which, if +presented in intelligible words,--that is to say, if expressed in the +vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people--will find easy +lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality. +Christianity in its American or English form--with more of Anglo-Saxon +freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder--is a poor scion +to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot +the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel +on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible--in Hawaii, +where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in +amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal +race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan--nay, it is +a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his +kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following +words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:--"Men +have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering +how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may +have been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of +themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity +with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at +impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be +said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of +religion."[34] + +[Footnote 34: Jowett, _Sermons on Faith and Doctrine_, II.] + +But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little +doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a +power which we must take into account in reckoning + + + +THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO, + +whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, +that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at +work to threaten it. + +Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the +Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats +itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did +with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay +of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application +to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that +helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages +are as surely working for the decline of Bushido. + +One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan +is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and +was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan +no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother +institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift +for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it +under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little +room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its +infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are +being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and +Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the +Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted +to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet +we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow +journalism. + +Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of +Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, "the decay of the ceremonial +code--or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life--among +the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities of +latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate +sensibilities." The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can +tolerate no form or shape of trust--and Bushido was a trust organized by +those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, fixing +the grades and value of moral qualities--is alone powerful enough to +engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are +antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely +criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, +cannot admit "purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an +exclusive class."[35] Add to this the progress of popular instruction, +of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,--then we can +easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai's sword nor the +sharpest shafts shot from Bushido's boldest bows can aught avail. The +state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same--shall we +call it the _Ehrenstaat_ or, after the manner of Carlyle, the +Heroarchy?--is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and +gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The +words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may +aptly be repeated of the samurai, that "the medium in which their +ardent deeds took shape is forever gone." + +[Footnote 35: _Norman Conquest_, Vol. V, p. 482.] + +Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into +the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away +as "the captains and the kings depart." + +If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues--be +it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome--can never make on earth a +"continuing city." Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in +man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly +virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to +fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that +Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but +Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, +with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to +emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. +Callings nobler and broader than a warrior's claim our attention to-day. +With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better +knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of +Benevolence--dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?--will expand +into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than +subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more +than citizens, being men. + +Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the +wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world +confirms the prophecy the "the meek shall inherit the earth." A nation +that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank +of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain +indeed! + +When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not +only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an +honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry +dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says +that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of +France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally +abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of +Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of +swords, rang out the old, "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence +of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," it rang +in the new age of "sophisters, economists, and calculators." + +It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of +Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work +of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does +ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, +burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, +without a master's hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis +Napoleon beat the Prussians with his _Mitrailleuse_, or the Spaniards +with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the +old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite +saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of +implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do +not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does +not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea +and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and +beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of +our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly +visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show +a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial +virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, "but ours on +trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come," +and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate +one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to +widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life. + +It has been predicted--and predictions have been corroborated by the +events of the last half century--that the moral system of Feudal Japan, +like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new +ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. +Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must +not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is +not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from +other birds. "The Kingdom of God is within you." It does not come +rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing +across the seas, however broad. "God has granted," says the Koran, "to +every people a prophet in its own tongue." The seeds of the Kingdom, as +vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido. +Now its days are closing--sad to say, before its full fruition--and we +turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of +strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to +take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and +Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The +only other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with +Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with +which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like "a dimly burning wick" +which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame. +Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets--notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos +and Habakkuk--Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of +rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, +which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, +will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its +capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, +self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in +some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing +phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, +the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene. + +Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)--or will the +future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and +Hellenism?--will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals +will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which +side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it +can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is +willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total +extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It +is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and +vitality are still felt through many channels of life--in the philosophy +of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world. +Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his +spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal +discipline of Zeno at work. + +Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will +not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor +may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their +ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it +will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich +life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its +very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a +far-off unseen hill, "the wayside gaze beyond;"--then in the beautiful +language of the Quaker poet, + + "The traveler owns the grateful sense + Of sweetness near he knows not whence, + And, pausing, takes with forehead bare + The benediction of the air." + +[Illustration] + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitob + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + +***** This file should be named 12096-8.txt or 12096-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/9/12096/ + +Produced by Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Bushido, the Soul of Japan + +Author: Inazo Nitob + +Release Date: April 21, 2004 [EBook #12096] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h1>BUSHIDO<br /> +THE SOUL OF JAPAN</h1> +<br /> + +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2>INAZO NITOBÉ, A.M., Ph.D.</h2> + +<br /> +<h4>Author's Edition, Revised and Enlarged<br /> +13th EDITION<br /> +1908<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +DECEMBER, 1904</h4> + + +<h5>TO MY BELOVED UNCLE<br /> +TOKITOSHI OTA<br /> +WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST<br /> +AND<br /> +TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI<br /> +I DEDICATE<br /> +THIS LITTLE BOOK</h5> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i27">—"That way<br /></span> +<span>Over the mountain, which who stands upon,<br /></span> +<span>Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road;<br /></span> +<span>While if he views it from the waste itself,<br /></span> +<span>Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,<br /></span> +<span>Not vague, mistakable! What's a break or two<br /></span> +<span>Seen from the unbroken desert either side?<br /></span> +<span>And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)<br /></span> +<span>What if the breaks themselves should prove at last<br /></span> +<span>The most consummate of contrivances<br /></span> +<span>To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?"</span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span>—ROBERT BROWNING, <i>Bishop Blougram's Apology</i>.</span> +</div></div> +<br /> + +<div class="blkquot"> + <p>"There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have + from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a + predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of + mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of + honor."</p> + + <p>—HALLAM, <i>Europe in the Middle Ages</i>.</p> +</div> +<br /> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Chivalry is itself the poetry of life."</span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span>—SCHLEGEL, <i>Philosophy of History</i>.</span> +</div></div> + +<p> </p> + +<a name="PREFACE1"></a><h2>PREFACE</h2> + +<p>About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof +of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our +conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of +religion. "Do you mean to say," asked the venerable professor, "that you +have no religious instruction in your schools?" On my replying in the +negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I +shall not easily forget, he repeated "No religion! How do you impart +moral education?" The question stunned me at the time. I could give no +ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, +were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the +different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find +that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils.</p> + +<p>The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries +put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs +prevail in Japan.</p> + +<p>In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my +wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and +Bushido,<a name="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1">[1]</a> the +moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1">[1]</a><div class="note"> +Pronounced <i>Boó-shee-doh'</i>. In putting Japanese words and +names into English, Hepburn's rule is followed, that the vowels should +be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in English.</div> + +<p>Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put +down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given +in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught +and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force.</p> + +<p>Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest +Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging +to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over +them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while +these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I +have often thought,—"Had I their gift of language, I would present the +cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!" But one who speaks in a borrowed +tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible.</p> + +<p>All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I +have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, +believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the +comprehension of foreign readers.</p> + +<p>Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious +workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity +itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and +with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the +teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the +religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as +well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God +hath made a testament which maybe called "old" with every people and +nation,—Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my +theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public.</p> + +<p>In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend +Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the +characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this +book.</p> + +<p>INAZO NITOBE.</p> + +<p>Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<a name="PREFACE2"></a><h2>PREFACE<br /> +TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION</h2> + +<p>Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, +this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has +passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth +appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be +issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of +Messrs. George H. Putnam's Sons, of New York.</p> + +<p>In the meantime, <i>Bushido</i> has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev +of Khandesh, into German by Fräulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian +by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life +in Lemberg,—although this Polish edition has been censured by the +Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into +French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian +officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for +the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian +public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been +published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger +students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also +owe much for his aid in other ways.</p> + +<p>I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found +sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the +subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly +flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that +President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and +distributing several dozens of copies among his friends.</p> + +<p>In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have +largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, +as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on +Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot +of Japanese ethics—Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather +to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular +virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot +draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge +upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are +touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and +discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger +than it is.</p> + +<p>This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt +I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful +suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement.</p> + +<p>I.N.</p> + +Kyoto,<br /> +Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905.<br /> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<br /> +<p><a href="#PREFACE1">Preface</a></p> + +<p><a href="#PREFACE2">Preface to the Tenth and Revised Edition</a></p> + +<p><a href="#BUSHIDO">Bushido as an Ethical System</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SOURCES">Sources of Bushido</a></p> + +<p><a href="#RECTITUDE">Rectitude or Justice</a></p> + +<p><a href="#COURAGE">Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing</a></p> + +<p><a href="#BENEVOLENCE">Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress</a></p> + +<p><a href="#POLITENESS">Politeness</a></p> + +<p><a href="#VERACITY">Veracity or Truthfulness</a></p> + +<p><a href="#HONOR">Honor</a></p> + +<p><a href="#DUTY">The Duty of Loyalty</a></p> + +<p><a href="#EDUCATION">Education and Training of a Samurai</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SELF-CONTROL">Self-Control</a></p> + +<p><a href="#INSTITUTIONS">The Institutions of Suicide and Redress</a></p> + +<p><a href="#SWORD">The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai</a></p> + +<p><a href="#TRAINING">The Training and Position of Woman</a></p> + +<p><a href="#INFLUENCE">The Influence of Bushido</a></p> + +<p><a href="#ALIVE">Is Bushido Still Alive?</a></p> + +<p><a href="#FUTURE">The Future of Bushido</a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<a name="BUSHIDO"></a><h2>BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM.</h2> + +<p>Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its +emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique +virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living +object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape +or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware +that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society +which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as +those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed +their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of +feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother +institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the +language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the +neglected bier of its European prototype.</p> + +<p>It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so +erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that +chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either +among the nations of antiquity or among the modern +Orientals.<a name="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2">[2]</a> Such +ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good +Doctor's work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking +at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the +time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx, +writing his "Capital," called the attention of his readers to the +peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of +feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would +likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study +of chivalry in the Japan of the present.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2">[2]</a><div class="note"> +<i>History Philosophically Illustrated</i>, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol. +II, p. 2.</div> + +<p>Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between +European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of +this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, +<i>firstly</i>, the origin and sources of our chivalry; <i>secondly</i>, its +character and teaching; <i>thirdly</i>, its influence among the masses; and, +<i>fourthly</i>, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these +several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I +should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national +history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most +likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative +Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt +with as corollaries.</p> + +<p>The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the +original, more expressive than Horsemanship. <i>Bu-shi-do</i> means literally +Military-Knight-Ways—the ways which fighting nobles should observe in +their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the "Precepts +of Knighthood," the <i>noblesse oblige</i> of the warrior class. Having thus +given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the +word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable +for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, +engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must +wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a +national <i>timbre</i> so expressive of race characteristics that the best of +translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice +and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German "<i>Gemüth</i>" +signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words +verbally so closely allied as the English <i>gentleman</i> and the French +<i>gentilhomme</i>?</p> + +<p>Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were +required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it +consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from +the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a +code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful +sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets +of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however +able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an +organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, +fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English +Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to +compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in +the seventeenth century Military Statutes (<i>Buké Hatto</i>) were +promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with +marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but +meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time +and place and say, "Here is its fountain head." Only as it attains +consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be +identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many +threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the +political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman +Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the +ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in +England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period +previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in +Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned.</p> + +<p>Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, +the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These +were known as <i>samurai</i>, meaning literally, like the old English <i>cniht</i> +(knecht, knight), guards or attendants—resembling in character the +<i>soldurii</i> whom Caesar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the +<i>comitati</i>, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his +time; or, to take a still later parallel, the <i>milites medii</i> that one +reads about in the history of Mediaeval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word +<i>Bu-ké</i> or <i>Bu-shi</i> (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. +They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough +breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally +recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and +the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went +on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only "a rude race, +all masculine, with brutish strength," to borrow Emerson's phrase, +surviving to form families and the ranks of the <i>samurai</i>. Coming to +profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great +responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of +behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and +belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among +themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of +honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some +resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors.</p> + +<p>Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive +sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and +civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire +of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, "to leave behind him the name of a +fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one." +And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which +moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even +so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions +endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom's is the basis on which the +greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to +discover that <i>Bushido</i> does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting +in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, +brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, "We know from what +failings our virtue +springs."<a name="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3">[3]</a> +"Sneaks" and "cowards" are epithets of +the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life +with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and +its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher +authority and more rational sources for its own justification, +satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, +without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal +of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with +concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with +spiritual data. "Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a +perfect Christian knight," says Lamartine. In Japan there were several</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="SOURCES"></a> +<h2>SOURCES OF BUSHIDO,</h2> + +<p>of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust +in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in +sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with +death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil +master the utmost of his art, told him, "Beyond this my instruction must +give way to Zen teaching." "Zen" is the Japanese equivalent for the +Dhyâna, which "represents human effort to reach through meditation zones +of thought beyond the range of verbal +expression."<a name="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4">[4]</a> Its method is +contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be +convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, +of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this +Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, +and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself +above mundane things and awakes, "to a new Heaven and a new Earth."</p> + +<a name="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3">[3]</a><div class="note"> +Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace loving +men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the fervor of a +worshiper of the strenuous life. "When I tell you," he says in the +<i>Crown of Wild Olive</i>, "that war is the foundation of all the arts, I +mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and +faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very +dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. * * * I found in +brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength +of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace, +taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by +peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."</div> + +<a name="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4">[4]</a><div class="note"> +Lafcadio Hearn, <i>Exotics and Retrospectives</i>, p. 84.</div> + +<p>What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such +loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such +filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by +the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant +character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of +"original sin." On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and +God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which +divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto +shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, +and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part of +its furnishing. The presence of this article, is easy to explain: it +typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, +reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in +front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its +shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic +injunction, "Know Thyself." But self-knowledge does not imply, either in +the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, +not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral +kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the +Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his +eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter +veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman +conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so +much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its +nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its +ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial +family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more +than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain—it is the +sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the +Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a <i>Rechtsstaat</i>, or even the +Patron of a <i>Culturstaat</i>—he is the bodily representative of Heaven on +earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. +Boutmy<a name="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5">[5]</a> says +is true of English royalty—that it "is not only the +image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity," as I +believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in +Japan.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5">[5]</a><div class="note"> +<i>The English People</i>, p. 188.</div> + +<p>The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the +emotional life of our race—Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp +very truly says: "In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell +whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven +or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation +itself."<a name="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6">[6]</a> A similar +confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. I +said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect on +account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of national +instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a systematic +philosophy or a rational theology. This religion—or, is it not more +correct to say, the race emotions which this religion +expressed?—thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and +love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for +Shintoism, unlike the Mediaeval Christian Church, prescribed to its +votaries scarcely any <i>credenda</i>, furnishing them at the same time with +<i>agenda</i> of a straightforward and simple type.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6">[6]</a><div class="note"> +"<i>Feudal and Modern Japan</i>" Vol. I, p. 183.</div> + +<p>As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the +most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral +relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), +father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between +friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had +recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, +benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts +was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling +class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the +requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius +exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often +quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic +natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the +existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under +censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment +in the heart of the samurai.</p> + +<p>The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books +for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere +acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in +no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an +intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant +of <i>Analects</i>. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling +sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be +boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little +smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more +so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge +becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the +learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was +considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to +ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike +spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, +that the cosmic process was unmoral.</p> + +<p>Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in +itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who +stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient +machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, +knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in +life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the +Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, "To +know and to act are one and the same."</p> + +<p>I beg leave for a moment's digression while I am on this subject, +inasmuch as some of the noblest types of <i>bushi</i> were strongly +influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily +recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making +allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, "Seek +ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things +shall be added unto you," conveys a thought that may be found on almost +any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese +disciple<a name="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7">[7]</a> of his says—"The lord +of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, +becomes his mind (<i>Kokoro</i>); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever +luminous:" and again, "The spiritual light of our essential being is +pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up +in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called +conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of +heaven." How very much do these words sound like some passages from +Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think +that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto +religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming's +precepts. He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to +extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, +not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature +of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not +farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of +things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors +charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and +its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity +of temper cannot be gainsaid.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7">[7]</a><div class="note">Miwa Shissai.</div> + +<p>Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which <i>Bushido</i> +imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few +and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct +of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of +our nation's history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our +warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of +commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the +highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands +of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. +An acute French <i>savant</i>, M. de la Mazelière, thus sums up his +impressions of the sixteenth century:—"Toward the middle of the +sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in +society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to +barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,—these +formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in +whom Taine praises 'the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden +resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to +suffer.' In Japan as in Italy 'the rude manners of the Middle Ages made +of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.' And this +is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the +principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one +finds there between minds (<i>esprits</i>) as well as between temperaments. +While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of +energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character +as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of +civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to +Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak +of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its +mountains."</p> + +<p>To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazelière +writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="RECTITUDE"></a> +<h2>RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE,</h2> + +<p>the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more +loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The +conception of Rectitude may be erroneous—it may be narrow. A well-known +bushi defines it as a power of resolution;—"Rectitude is the power of +deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, +without wavering;—to die when it is right to die, to strike when to +strike is right." Another speaks of it in the following terms: +"Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without +bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor +feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of +a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as +nothing." Mencius calls Benevolence man's mind, and Rectitude or +Righteousness his path. "How lamentable," he exclaims, "is it to neglect +the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it +again! When men's fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them +again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it." Have we +not here "as in a glass darkly" a parable propounded three hundred years +later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself <i>the +Way</i> of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray +from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and +narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise.</p> + +<p>Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace +brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it +dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet +<i>Gishi</i> (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that +signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls—of whom +so much is made in our popular education—are known in common parlance +as the Forty-seven <i>Gishi</i>.</p> + +<p>In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and +downright falsehood for <i>ruse de guerre</i>, this manly virtue, frank and +honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly +praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to Valor, another martial virtue. +But before proceeding to speak of Valor, let me linger a little while on +what I may term a derivation from Rectitude, which, at first deviating +slightly from its original, became more and more removed from it, until +its meaning was perverted in the popular acceptance. I speak of <i>Gi-ri</i>, +literally the Right Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense +of duty which public opinion expected an incumbent to fulfil. In its +original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,—hence, +we speak of the <i>Giri</i> we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to +society at large, and so forth. In these instances <i>Giri</i> is duty; for +what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. +Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative?</p> + +<p><i>Giri</i> primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology +was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, +though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be some +other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated this +authority in <i>Giri</i>. Very rightly did they formulate this +authority—<i>Giri</i>—since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, +recourse must be had to man's intellect and his reason must be quickened +to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of +any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous, Right +Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. <i>Giri</i> thus understood is a +severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards +perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it +is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should +be <i>the</i> law. I deem it a product of the conditions of an artificial +society—of a society in which accident of birth and unmerited favour +instituted class distinctions, in which the family was the social unit, +in which seniority of age was of more account than superiority of +talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb before +arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, <i>Giri</i> +in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain +this and sanction that,—as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, +sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why +a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father's +dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, <i>Giri</i> has, in my +opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into +cowardly fear of censure. I might say of <i>Giri</i> what Scott wrote of +patriotism, that "as it is the fairest, so it is often the most +suspicious, mask of other feelings." Carried beyond or below Right +Reason, <i>Giri</i> became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings +every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily have been turned +into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of</p> +<br /> + +<a name="COURAGE"></a> +<h2>COURAGE, THE SPIRIT OF DARING<br /> +AND BEARING,</h2> + +<p>to the consideration of which we shall now return. Courage was scarcely +deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in +the cause of Righteousness. In his "Analects" Confucius defines Courage +by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. "Perceiving +what is right," he says, "and doing it not, argues lack of courage." Put +this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, "Courage is doing +what is right." To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one's self, +to rush into the jaws of death—these are too often identified with +Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct—what +Shakespeare calls, "valor misbegot"—is unjustly applauded; but not so +in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, +was called a "dog's death." "To rush into the thick of battle and to be +slain in it," says a Prince of Mito, "is easy enough, and the merest +churl is equal to the task; but," he continues, "it is true courage to +live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die," +and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines +courage as "the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he +should not fear." A distinction which is made in the West between moral +and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai +youth has not heard of "Great Valor" and the "Valor of a Villein?"</p> + +<p>Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of +soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be +trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular +virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits +were repeated almost before boys left their mother's breast. Does a +little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: +"What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your +arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit +<i>harakiri</i>?" We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little +boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little +page, "Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow +bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms +to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a +samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger." +Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though +stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early +imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness +sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called +forth all the pluck that was in them. "Bears hurl their cubs down the +gorge," they said. Samurai's sons were let down the steep valleys of +hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of +food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for +inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter +strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the +sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to +their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they +frequently—once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of +learning,—came together in small groups and passed the night without +sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny +places—to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be +haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when +decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the +ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the +darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the +trunkless head.</p> + +<p>Does this ultra-Spartan system of "drilling the nerves" strike the +modern pedagogist with horror and doubt—doubt whether the tendency +would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the +heart? Let us see what other concepts Bushido had of Valor.</p> + +<p>The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure—calm presence +of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical +manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave +man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the +equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the +midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake +him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the +menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, +for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain +in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing +or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature—of +what we call a capacious mind (<i>Yoyū</i>), which, for from being pressed or +crowded, has always room for something more.</p> + +<p>It passes current among us as a piece of authentic history, that as Ōta +Dokan, the great builder of the castle of Tokyo, was pierced through +with a spear, his assassin, knowing the poetical predilection of his +victim, accompanied his thrust with this couplet—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Ah! how in moments like these<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Our heart doth grudge the light of life;"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>whereupon the expiring hero, not one whit daunted by the mortal wound in +his side, added the lines—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Had not in hours of peace,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">It learned to lightly look on life."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is even a sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which +are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in +old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to +exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not +solely a matter of brute force; it was, as, well, an intellectual +engagement.</p> + +<p>Of such character was the battle fought on the bank of the Koromo River, +late in the eleventh century. The eastern army routed, its leader, +Sadato, took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and +called aloud—"It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the +enemy," Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted +an impromptu verse—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth" (<i>koromo</i>).<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when the defeated warrior, +undismayed, completed the couplet—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Since age has worn its threads by use."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yoshiie, whose bow had all the while been bent, suddenly unstrung it and +turned away, leaving his prospective victim to do as he pleased. When +asked the reason of his strange behavior, he replied that he could not +bear to put to shame one who had kept his presence of mind while hotly +pursued by his enemy.</p> + +<p>The sorrow which overtook Antony and Octavius at the death of Brutus, +has been the general experience of brave men. Kenshin, who fought for +fourteen years with Shingen, when he heard of the latter's death, wept +aloud at the loss of "the best of enemies." It was this same Kenshin who +had set a noble example for all time, in his treatment of Shingen, +whose provinces lay in a mountainous region quite away from the sea, and +who had consequently depended upon the Hōjō provinces of the Tokaido for +salt. The Hōjō prince wishing to weaken him, although not openly at war +with him, had cut off from Shingen all traffic in this important +article. Kenshin, hearing of his enemy's dilemma and able to obtain his +salt from the coast of his own dominions, wrote Shingen that in his +opinion the Hōjō lord had committed a very mean act, and that although +he (Kenshin) was at war with him (Shingen) he had ordered his subjects +to furnish him with plenty of salt—adding, "I do not fight with salt, +but with the sword," affording more than a parallel to the words of +Camillus, "We Romans do not fight with gold, but with iron." Nietzsche +spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, "You are to be proud of your +enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success also." Indeed +valor and honor alike required that we should own as enemies in war only +such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. When valor attains this +height, it becomes akin to</p> +<br /> + +<a name="BENEVOLENCE"></a> +<h2>BENEVOLENCE, THE FEELING OF<br /> +DISTRESS,</h2> + +<p>love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, which were +ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes +of the human soul. Benevolence was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold +sense;—princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; +princely as particularly befitting a princely profession. We needed no +Shakespeare to feel—though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we +needed him to express it—that mercy became a monarch better than his +crown, that it was above his sceptered sway. How often both Confucius +and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist +in benevolence. Confucius would say, "Let but a prince cultivate virtue, +people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will +bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right +uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth an outcome." Again, "Never has +there been a case of a sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not +loving righteousness," Mencius follows close at his heels and says, +"Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power in +a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a whole +empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue." Also,—"It +is impossible that any one should become ruler of the people to whom +they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts." Both defined this +indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, +"Benevolence—Benevolence is Man." Under the régime of feudalism, which +could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that we +owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter +surrender of "life and limb" on the part of the governed would have left +nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural +consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called "oriental +despotism,"—as though there were no despots of occidental history!</p> + +<p>Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a +mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote +that "Kings are the first servants of the State," jurists thought +rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. +Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan, +Yozan of Yonézawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that +feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although +unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher +sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father +to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not +usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal +government—paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular +government (Uncle Sam's, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and +a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey +reluctantly, while in the other they do so with "that proud submission, +that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, +even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted +freedom."<a name="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8">[8]</a> The old +saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the "king +of devils, because of his subjects' often insurrections against, and +depositions of, their princes," and which made the French monarch the +"king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and Impositions," but +which gave the title of "the king of men" to the sovereign of Spain +"because of his subjects' willing obedience." But enough!—</p> + +<a name="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8">[8]</a><div class="note"> +Burke, <i>French Revolution</i>.</div> + +<p>Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which +it is impossible to harmonize. Pobyedonostseff has clearly set before us +the contrast in the foundations of English and other European +communities; namely that these were organized on the basis of common +interest, while that was distinguished by a strongly developed +independent personality. What this Russian statesman says of the +personal dependence of individuals on some social alliance and in the +end of ends of the State, among the continental nations of Europe and +particularly among Slavonic peoples, is doubly true of the Japanese. +Hence not only is a free exercise of monarchical power not felt as +heavily by us as in Europe, but it is generally moderated by parental +consideration for the feelings of the people. "Absolutism," says +Bismarck, "primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty, +devotion to duty, energy and inward humility." If I may be allowed to +make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of +the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of "Kingship, by the +grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to +the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can +release the monarch."</p> + +<p>We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright +Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the +gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned +against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with +justice and rectitude. Masamuné expressed it well in his oft-quoted +aphorism—"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; +Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness."</p> + +<p>Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is +universally true that "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the +daring." "<i>Bushi no +nasaké</i>"—the tenderness of a warrior—had a sound +which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy +of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other +being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, +but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not +remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with +power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual +or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual, +since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the +recipient.</p> + +<p>Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to +turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius +taught concerning the power of Love. "Benevolence," he says, "brings +under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: +they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to +extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots." He also +says that "the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore +a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in +distress." Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his +ethical philosophy on Sympathy.</p> + +<p>It is indeed striking how closely the code of knightly honor of one +country coincides with that of others; in other words, how the much +abused oriental ideas of morals find their counterparts in the noblest +maxims of European literature. If the well-known lines,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>Hae tibi erunt artes—pacisque imponere morem,<br /></span> +<span>Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>were shown a Japanese gentleman, he might readily accuse the Mantuan +bard of plagiarizing from the literature of his own country. Benevolence +to the weak, the downtrodden or the vanquished, was ever extolled as +peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art must be +familiar with the representation of a priest riding backwards on a cow. +The rider was once a warrior who in his day made his name a by-word of +terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-ura, (1184 A.D.), which was +one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy and in +single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms. Now the +etiquette of war required that on such occasions no blood should be +spilt, unless the weaker party proved to be a man of rank or ability +equal to that of the stronger. The grim combatant would have the name of +the man under him; but he refusing to make it known, his helmet was +ruthlessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and +beardless, made the astonished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth +to his feet, in paternal tones he bade the stripling go: "Off, young +prince, to thy mother's side! The sword of Kumagaye shall never be +tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o'er yon pass before +thy enemies come in sight!" The young warrior refused to go and begged +Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above the +hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time +before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; +there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who this +self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden arms; the +strong hand of the warrior quivers; again he begs his victim to flee for +his life. Finding all his entreaties vain and hearing the approaching +steps of his comrades, he exclaims: "If thou art overtaken, thou mayest +fall at a more ignoble hand than mine. O, thou Infinite! receive his +soul!" In an instant the sword flashes in the air, and when it falls it +is red with adolescent blood. When the war is ended, we find our soldier +returning in triumph, but little cares he now for honor or fame; he +renounces his warlike career, shaves his head, dons a priestly garb, +devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never turning his back +to the West, where lies the Paradise whence salvation comes and whither +the sun hastes daily for his rest.</p> + +<p>Critics may point out flaws in this story, which is casuistically +vulnerable. Let it be: all the same it shows that Tenderness, Pity and +Love, were traits which adorned the most sanguinary exploits of the +samurai. It was an old maxim among them that "It becometh not the fowler +to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom." This in a large +measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered peculiarly +Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us. For decades before +we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had +familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe. In the +principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the +custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of +trumpets or the beat of drums,—"those clamorous harbingers of blood and +death"—stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and +tender melodies on +the <i>biwa</i>,<a name="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9">[9]</a> soothing our fiery spirits, drawing +our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage. Polybius +tells us of the Constitution of Arcadia, which required all youths +under thirty to practice music, in order that this gentle art might +alleviate the rigors of that inclement region. It is to its influence +that he attributes the absence of cruelty in that part of the Arcadian +mountains.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9">[9]</a><div class="note"> +A musical instrument, resembling the guitar.</div> + +<p>Nor was Satsuma the only place in Japan where gentleness was inculcated +among the warrior class. A Prince of Shirakawa jots down his random +thoughts, and among them is the following: "Though they come stealing to +your bedside in the silent watches of the night, drive not away, but +rather cherish these—the fragrance of flowers, the sound of distant +bells, the insect humming of a frosty night." And again, "Though they +may wound your feelings, these three you have only to forgive, the +breeze that scatters your flowers, the cloud that hides your moon, and +the man who tries to pick quarrels with you."</p> + +<p>It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler +emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged. Our poetry has +therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness. A well-known +anecdote of a rustic samurai illustrates a case in point. When he was +told to learn versification, and "The Warbler's +Notes"<a name="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10">[10]</a> was given him +for the subject of his first attempt, his fiery spirit rebelled and he +<i>flung</i> at the feet of his master this uncouth production, which ran</p> + +<a name="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10">[10]</a><div class="note"> +The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the nightingale of Japan.</div> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"The brave warrior keeps apart<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The ear that might listen<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To the warbler's song."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the +youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to +the sweet notes of the <i>uguisu</i>, and he wrote</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Stands the warrior, mailed and strong,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To hear the uguisu's song,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Warbled sweet the trees among."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We admire and enjoy the heroic incident in Körner's short life, when, as +he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous "Farewell to +Life." Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our +warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to +the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was +either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might +be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an +ode,—and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the +breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers.</p> + +<p>What Christianity has done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the +midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in +Japan. The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for +the sufferings of others. Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect +for others' feelings, are at the root of</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="POLITENESS"></a> +<h2>POLITENESS,</h2> + +<p>that courtesy and urbanity of manners which has been noticed by every +foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait. Politeness is a poor virtue, +if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it +should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the +feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of +things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter +express no plutocratic distinctions, but were originally distinctions +for actual merit.</p> + +<p>In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love. We may +reverently say, politeness "suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, +vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, +seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of +evil." Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six +elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, +inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of social intercourse?</p> + +<p>While thus extolling Politeness, far be it from me to put it in the +front rank of virtues. If we analyze it, we shall find it correlated +with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone? +While—or rather because—it was exalted as peculiar to the profession +of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there +came into existence its counterfeits. Confucius himself has repeatedly +taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as +sounds are of music.</p> + +<p>When propriety was elevated to the <i>sine qua non</i> of social intercourse, +it was only to be expected that an elaborate system of etiquette should +come into vogue to train youth in correct social behavior. How one must +bow in accosting others, how he must walk and sit, were taught and +learned with utmost care. Table manners grew to be a science. Tea +serving and drinking were raised to a ceremony. A man of education is, +of course, expected to be master of all these. Very fitly does Mr. +Veblen, in his interesting +book,<a name="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11">[11]</a> +call decorum "a product and an exponent of the leisure-class life."</p> + +<a name="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11">[11]</a><div class="note"><i>Theory + of the Leisure Class</i>, N.Y. 1899, p. 46.</div> + +<p>I have heard slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate +discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much +of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. +I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, +but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to +ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my +mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the +contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for +the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether +trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most +appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything +to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both +the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as +the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain +definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a +novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed +is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the +most economical use of force,—hence, according to Spencer's dictum, the +most graceful.</p> + +<p>The spiritual significance of social decorum,—or, I might say, to +borrow from the vocabulary of the "Philosophy of Clothes," the +spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward +garments,—is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us +in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our +ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave +rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book. +It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, +that I wish to emphasize.</p> + +<p>I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so +much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into +existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was +put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the +Ogasawara, in the following terms: "The end of all etiquette is to so +cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the +roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person." It means, in other +words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the +parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such +harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of +spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word +<i>biensèance</i><a name="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12">[12]</a> +comes thus to contain!</p> + +<a name="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12">[12]</a><div class="note"> +Etymologically <i>well-seatedness</i>.</div> + +<p>If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it +follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful +deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine +manners, therefore, mean power in repose. When the barbarian Gauls, +during the sack of Rome, burst into the assembled Senate and dared pull +the beards of the venerable Fathers, we think the old gentlemen were to +blame, inasmuch as they lacked dignity and strength of manners. Is lofty +spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not?—All +roads lead to Rome!</p> + +<p>As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then +become spiritual culture, I may take <i>Cha-no-yu</i>, the tea ceremony. +Tea-sipping as a fine art! Why should it not be? In the children drawing +pictures on the sand, or in the savage carving on a rock, was the +promise of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. How much more is the drinking +of a beverage, which began with the transcendental contemplation of a +Hindoo anchorite, entitled to develop into a handmaid of Religion and +Morality? That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure +and quietness of demeanor, which are the first essentials of <i>Cha-no-yu</i> +are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right +feeling. The scrupulous cleanliness of the little room, shut off from +sight and sound of the madding crowd, is in itself conducive to direct +one's thoughts from the world. The bare interior does not engross one's +attention like the innumerable pictures and bric-a-brac of a Western +parlor; the presence of +<i>kakemono</i><a name="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13">[13]</a> +calls our attention more to grace +of design than to beauty of color. The utmost refinement of taste is the +object aimed at; whereas anything like display is banished with +religious horror. The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative +recluse, in a time when wars and the rumors of wars were incessant, is +well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. +Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company +assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their +swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, +there to find peace and friendship.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13">[13]</a><div class="note"> +Hanging scrolls, which may be either paintings or +ideograms, used for decorative purposes.</div> + +<p><i>Cha-no-yu</i> is more than a ceremony—it is a fine art; it is poetry, +with articulate gestures for rhythm: it is a <i>modus operandi</i> of soul +discipline. Its greatest value lies in this last phase. Not infrequently +the other phases preponderated in the mind of its votaries, but that +does not prove that its essence was not of a spiritual nature.</p> + +<p>Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart +grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, +springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and +actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever +a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should +weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Such +didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, +expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, +as one missionary lady of twenty years' residence once said to me, +"awfully funny." You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over +you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly +his hat is off—well, that is perfectly natural, but the "awfully funny" +performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down +and he stands in the glaring sun also. How foolish!—Yes, exactly so, +provided the motive were less than this: "You are in the sun; I +sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it +were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot +shade you, I will share your discomforts." Little acts of this kind, +equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities. +They are the "bodying forth" of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of +others.</p> + +<p>Another "awfully funny" custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; +but many superficial writers on Japan, have dismissed it by simply +attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every +foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in +making proper reply upon the occasion. In America, when you make a gift, +you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander +it. The underlying idea with you is, "This is a nice gift: if it were +not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to +give you anything but what is nice." In contrast to this, our logic +runs: "You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you. You +will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my +good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token. +It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for +you." Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate +idea is one and the same. Neither is "awfully funny." The American +speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the +spirit which prompts the gift.</p> + +<p>It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety +shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to +take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass +judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or +to observe rules of propriety about eating? A Chinese sage answers, "If +you take a case where the eating is all-important, and the observing the +rules of propriety is of little importance, and compare them together, +why merely say that the eating is of the more importance?" "Metal is +heavier than feathers," but does that saying have reference to a single +clasp of metal and a wagon-load of feathers? Take a piece of wood a foot +thick and raise it above the pinnacle of a temple, none would call it +taller than the temple. To the question, "Which is the more important, +to tell the truth or to be polite?" the Japanese are said to give an +answer diametrically opposite to what the American will say,—but I +forbear any comment until I come to speak of</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="VERACITY"></a> +<h2>VERACITY OR TRUTHFULNESS,</h2> + +<p>without which Politeness is a farce and a show. "Propriety carried +beyond right bounds," says Masamuné, "becomes a lie." An ancient poet +has outdone Polonius in the advice he gives: "To thyself be faithful: if +in thy heart thou strayest not from truth, without prayer of thine the +Gods will keep thee whole." The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Tsu-tsu +gives expression in the <i>Doctrine of the Mean</i>, attributes to it +transcendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine. +"Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity +there would be nothing." He then dwells with eloquence on its +far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes +without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose +without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a +combination of "Word" and "Perfect," one is tempted to draw a parallel +between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of <i>Logos</i>—to such height +does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight.</p> + +<p>Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly. The bushi held that +his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than +that of the tradesman and peasant. <i>Bushi no ichi-gon</i>—the word of a +samurai or in exact German equivalent <i>ein Ritterwort</i>—was sufficient +guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such +weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a +written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity. +Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for +<i>ni-gon</i>, a double tongue.</p> + +<p>The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of +Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher +not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to +their honor. I am well aware that they did swear by different deities or +upon their swords; but never has swearing degenerated into wanton form +and irreverent interjection. To emphasize our words a practice of +literally sealing with blood was sometimes resorted to. For the +explanation of such a practice, I need only refer my readers to Goethe's +Faust.</p> + +<p>A recent American writer is responsible for this statement, that if you +ask an ordinary Japanese which is better, to tell a falsehood or be +impolite, he will not hesitate to answer "to tell a falsehood!" Dr. +Peery<a name="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14">[14]</a> is partly +right and partly wrong; right in that an ordinary +Japanese, even a samurai, may answer in the way ascribed to him, but +wrong in attributing too much weight to the term he translates +"falsehood." This word (in Japanese <i>uso</i>) is employed to denote +anything which is not a truth (<i>makoto</i>) or fact (<i>honto</i>). Lowell tells +us that Wordsworth could not distinguish between truth and fact, and an +ordinary Japanese is in this respect as good as Wordsworth. Ask a +Japanese, or even an American of any refinement, to tell you whether he +dislikes you or whether he is sick at his stomach, and he will not +hesitate long to tell falsehoods and answer, "I like you much," or, "I +am quite well, thank you." To sacrifice truth merely for the sake of +politeness was regarded as an "empty form" (<i>kyo-rei</i>) and "deception by +sweet words," and was never justified.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14">[14]</a><div class="note"> +Peery, <i>The Gist of Japan</i>, p. 86.</div> + +<p>I own I am speaking now of the Bushido idea of veracity; but it may not +be amiss to devote a few words to our commercial integrity, of which I +have heard much complaint in foreign books and journals. A loose +business morality has indeed been the worst blot on our national +reputation; but before abusing it or hastily condemning the whole race +for it, let us calmly study it and we shall be rewarded with consolation +for the future.</p> + +<p>Of all the great occupations of life, none was farther removed from the +profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the +category of vocations,—the knight, the tiller of the soil, the +mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and +could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the +counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social +arrangement. Montesquieu has made it clear that the debarring of the +nobility from mercantile pursuits was an admirable social policy, in +that it prevented wealth from accumulating in the hands of the powerful. +The separation of power and riches kept the distribution of the latter +more nearly equable. Professor Dill, the author of "Roman Society in the +Last Century of the Western Empire," has brought afresh to our mind that +one cause of the decadence of the Roman Empire, was the permission given +to the nobility to engage in trade, and the consequent monopoly of +wealth and power by a minority of the senatorial families.</p> + +<p>Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of +development which it would have attained under freer conditions. The +obloquy attached to the calling naturally brought within its pale such +as cared little for social repute. "Call one a thief and he will steal:" +put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it, +for it is natural that "the normal conscience," as Hugh Black says, +"rises to the demands made on it, and easily falls to the limit of the +standard expected from it." It is unnecessary to add that no business, +commercial or otherwise, can be transacted without a code of morals. Our +merchants of the feudal period had one among themselves, without which +they could never have developed, as they did, such fundamental +mercantile institutions as the guild, the bank, the bourse, insurance, +checks, bills of exchange, etc.; but in their relations with people +outside their vocation, the tradesmen lived too true to the reputation +of their order.</p> + +<p>This being the case, when the country was opened to foreign trade, only +the most adventurous and unscrupulous rushed to the ports, while the +respectable business houses declined for some time the repeated requests +of the authorities to establish branch houses. Was Bushido powerless to +stay the current of commercial dishonor? Let us see.</p> + +<p>Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a +few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, +feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai's fiefs were taken +and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to +invest them in mercantile transactions. Now you may ask, "Why could they +not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations +and so reform the old abuses?" Those who had eyes to see could not weep +enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with +the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably +failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through +sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival. When +we know that eighty per cent. of the business houses fail in so +industrial a country as America, is it any wonder that scarcely one +among a hundred samurai who went into trade could succeed in his new +vocation? It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes +were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; +but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth +were not the ways of honor. In what respects, then, were they different?</p> + +<p>Of the three incentives to Veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz: the +industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was +altogether lacking in Bushido. As to the second, it could develop little +in a political community under a feudal system. It is in its +philosophical, and as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that Honesty +attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues. With all my sincere +regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I +ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that "Honesty is the best +policy," that it <i>pays</i> to be honest. Is not this virtue, then, its own +reward? If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, +I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies!</p> + +<p>If Bushido rejects a doctrine of <i>quid pro quo</i> rewards, the shrewder +tradesman will readily accept it. Lecky has very truly remarked that +Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as +Nietzsche puts it, "Honesty is the youngest of virtues"—in other +words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry. Without +this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most +cultivated mind could adopt and nourish. Such minds were general among +the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian +foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive. Industries advancing, +Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice. Just +think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the +professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of "a lamentable +lack of reliability with regard to German shipments <i>inter alia</i>, +apparent both as to quality and quantity;" now-a-days we hear +comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade. In +twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays. Already +our merchants are finding that out. For the rest I recommend the reader +to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this +point.<a name="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15">[15]</a> It is +interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were +the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the +form of promissory notes. It was quite a usual thing to insert such +clauses as these: "In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I +shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;" or, "In case I +fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool," and the like.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15">[15]</a><div class="note"> +Knapp, <i>Feudal and Modern Japan</i>, Vol. I, Ch. IV. Ransome, +<i>Japan in Transition</i>, Ch. VIII.</div> + +<p>Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive +higher than courage. In the absence of any positive commandment against +bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply +denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable. As a matter of +fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and +its German etymology so identified with</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="HONOR"></a> +<h2>HONOR,</h2> + +<p>that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration +of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood.</p> + +<p>The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity +and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to +value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word +ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used +freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as <i>na</i> (name) +<i>men-moku</i> (countenance), <i>guai-bun</i> (outside hearing), reminding us +respectively of the biblical use of "name," of the evolution of the term +"personality" from the Greek mask, and of "fame." A good name—one's +reputation, the immortal part of one's self, what remains being +bestial—assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its +integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (<i>Ren-chi-shin</i>) was +one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. "You will be +laughed at," "It will disgrace you," "Are you not ashamed?" were the +last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. +Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the +child's heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its +mother's womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being +closely bound up with strong family consciousness. "In losing the +solidarity of families," says Balzac, "society has lost the fundamental +force which Montesquieu named Honor." Indeed, the sense of shame seems +to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our +race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in +consequence of tasting "the fruit of that forbidden tree" was, to my +mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the +awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in +pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and +tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her +dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience +clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial +ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will +efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who +refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his +youth; "because," he said, "dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which +time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge."</p> + +<p>Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, +what Carlyle has latterly expressed,—namely, that "Shame is the soil of +all Virtue, of good manners and good morals."</p> + +<p>The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks such +eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it nevertheless +hung like Damocles' sword over the head of every samurai and often +assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated +which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the +slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took +offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary +strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a +well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea +jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple +and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed +on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior +with a beast—I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe. +Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; (1) that they +were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made +of the samurai's profession of honor; and (3) that a very strong sense +of shame was developed among them. It is plainly unfair to take an +abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of +the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and +extravagance—inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania +there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium +tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai +about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine +virtue?</p> + +<p>The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined to +run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and patience. +To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as "short-tempered." +The popular adage said: "To bear what you think you cannot bear is +really to bear." The great Iyéyasu left to posterity a few maxims, +among which are the following:—"The life of man is like going a long +distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not. * * * * +Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. * * * +Forbearance is the basis of length of days." He proved in his life what +he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths +of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he +attributed, "I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;" to +Hidéyoshi, "I will force her to sing for me;" and +to Iyéyasu, "I will +wait till she opens her lips."</p> + +<p>Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In +one place he writes to this effect: "Though you denude yourself and +insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your +outrage." Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy +a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath.</p> + +<p>To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could +reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, +for instance, this saying of Ogawa: "When others speak all manner of +evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect +that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties." Take +another of Kumazawa:—"When others blame thee, blame them not; when +others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion +and Desire part." Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon +whose overhanging brows "shame is ashamed to sit;"—"The Way is the way +of Heaven and Earth: Man's place is to follow it: therefore make it the +object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with +equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love +others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy +partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou +comest not short of thine own mark." Some of those sayings remind us of +Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality +natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings +remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts.</p> + +<p>It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of +magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing +clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few +enlightened minds being aware that it "from no condition rises," but +that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than +for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in +Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, "'Tis in every man's +mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly +honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men +confer is not good honor. Those whom Châo the Great ennobles, he can +make mean again."</p> + +<p>For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, +as we shall see later, while Honor—too often nothing higher than vain +glory or worldly approbation—was prized as the <i>summum bonum</i> of +earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal +toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he +crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it +until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother +refused to see her sons again unless they could "return home," as the +expression is, "caparisoned in brocade." To shun shame or win a name, +samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals +of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows +with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyéyasu, in +spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at +the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept +so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the +resources at his command. "Take comfort, Sire," said he, "at thought of +the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there +will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself." The boy fixed his +indignant gaze upon the man and said—"How foolishly you talk! Can ever +my fourteenth year come round again?"</p> + +<p>Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained +therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered +dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down.</p> + +<p>Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to +sacrifice, was</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="DUTY"></a> +<h2>THE DUTY OF LOYALTY,</h2> + +<p>which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other +virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, +with other classes of people, but this virtue—homage and fealty to a +superior—is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity +is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,—a +gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the +code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance.</p> + +<p>In spite of Hegel's criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, +being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a +bond established on totally unjust +principles,<a name="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16">[16]</a> a great compatriot of +his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue. +Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the <i>Treue</i> he boasts of +was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but +because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people +where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where "everybody is as +good as anybody else," and, as the Irishman added, "better too," such +exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed +"excellent within certain bounds," but preposterous as encouraged among +us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the +Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the +truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary +beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we +conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception +is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we +carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. +Griffis<a name="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17">[17]</a> was +quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made +obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was +given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I +will relate of one "who could endure to follow a fall'n lord" and who +thus, as Shakespeare assures, "earned a place i' the story."</p> + +<a name="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16">[16]</a><div class="note"> +<i>Philosophy of History</i> (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV, +Sec. II, Ch. I.</div> + +<a name="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17">[17]</a><div class="note"> +<i>Religions of Japan</i>.</div> + +<p>The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizané, +who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the +capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent +upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son—not yet +grown—reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept +by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizané. When orders are dispatched +to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a +certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He +ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the +boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children +born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protégé. His +despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is +announced—a comely boy of the same age as his master's son, escorted by +a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between +infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In +the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his +life,—the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. +Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom +comes the suggestion.</p> + +<p>Here, then, is the scape-goat!—The rest of the narrative may be briefly +told.—On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to +identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the +false head? The poor Genzo's hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to +strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination +defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him, +goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone, +pronounces it genuine.—That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother +we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for +his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the +wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of +Michizané's bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced +her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family's +benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but +his son could serve the cause of the grandsire's lord. As one acquainted +with the exile's family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task +of identifying the boy's head. Now the day's—yea, the life's—hard work +is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his +wife, saying: "Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service +to his lord!"</p> + +<p>"What an atrocious story!" I hear my readers exclaim,—"Parents +deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of +another man's." But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is +a story of vicarious death—as significant as, and not more revolting +than, the story of Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases +it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of +a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or +heard by an outward or an inward ear;—but I abstain from preaching.</p> + +<p>The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for +father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief +the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest +of the family and of the members thereof is intact,—one and +inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection—natural, +instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural +love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? "For if ye love +them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the +same?"</p> + +<p>In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart +struggle of Shigemori concerning his father's rebellious conduct. "If I +be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my +sovereign must go amiss." Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying +with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may +be released from this world where it is hard for purity and +righteousness to dwell.</p> + +<p>Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and +affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself +contains an adequate rendering of <i>ko</i>, our conception of filial piety, +and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of +Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the +king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the +samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty.</p> + +<p>Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived +the state as antedating the individual—the latter being born into the +former as part and parcel thereof—he must live and die for it or for +the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will +remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the +city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he +makes them (the laws, or the state) say:—"Since you were begotten and +nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our +offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!" These are words +which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing +has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the +laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty +is an ethical outcome of this political theory.</p> + +<p>I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer's view according to which +political obedience—Loyalty—is accredited with only a transitional +function.<a name="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18">[18]</a> +It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue +thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe <i>that</i> +day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem +says, "tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss." We may +remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the +English, "the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity +which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has," as Monsieur +Boutmy recently said, "only passed more or less into their profound +loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their +extraordinary attachment to the dynasty."</p> + +<a name="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18">[18]</a><div class="note"> +<i>Principles of Ethics</i>, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.</div> + +<p>Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to +loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is +realized—will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence +disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to +another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a +ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch +who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a +very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer, +made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the +claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with +treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and +Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of +Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of the +Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, "serve two +masters without holding to the one or despising the other," "rendering +unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that +are God's." Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to +concede one iota of loyalty to his <i>daemon</i>, obey with equal fidelity +and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His +conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the +day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the +dictates of their conscience!</p> + +<p>Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord +or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">My life thou shalt command, but not my shame.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The one my duty owes; but my fair name,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Despite of death, that lives upon my grave,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To dark dishonor's use, thou shalt not have."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak +or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the +Precepts. Such a one was despised as <i>nei-shin</i>, a cringeling, who +makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as <i>chô-shin</i>, a favorite who +steals his master's affections by means of servile compliance; these two +species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago +describes,—the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his +own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master's ass; +the other trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart +attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal +path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him +of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master +deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual +course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and +conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with +the shedding of his own blood.</p> + +<p>Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its +ideal being set upon honor, the whole</p> +<br /> + +<a name="EDUCATION"></a> +<h2>EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF<br /> +A SAMURAI,</h2> + +<p>were conducted accordingly.</p> + +<p>The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up +character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, +intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part aesthetic +accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a +man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai +training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the +word <i>Chi</i>, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom +in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate +place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be +<i>Chi</i>, <i>Jin</i>, <i>Yu</i>, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A +samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of +his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his +profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; +he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish +courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed "'tis not the creed +that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed." +Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual +training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth +that he strove after,—literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and +philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for +the exposition of some military or political problem.</p> + +<p>From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the +curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted +mainly of the following,—fencing, archery, <i>jiujutsu</i> or <i>yawara</i>, +horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics, +literature and history. Of these, <i>jiujutsu</i> and caligraphy may require +a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing, +probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of +pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was +accepted as indicative of one's personal character. <i>Jiujutsu</i> may be +briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose +of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not +depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in +that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such +part of the enemy's body as will make him numb and incapable of +resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for +action for the time being.</p> + +<p>A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education +and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of +instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in +part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific +precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was +unfavorable to fostering numerical notions.</p> + +<p>Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius +that "ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than +gain which darkens him." Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear +and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in +hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrère of La Mancha. He disdains +money itself,—the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably +filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an +age is "that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death." +Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as +their lavish use is panegyrized. "Less than all things," says a current +precept, "men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is +hindered." Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of +economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of +the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of +numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the +distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left +to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by +a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well +enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of +raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift +was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for +the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to +manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, +sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans.</p> + +<p>We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial +agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby +showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money +itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of +the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. +These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something +low—low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations.</p> + +<p>Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself +could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is +the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men +have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is +making its way in our time and generation!</p> + +<p>The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the +study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and +deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind +of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, +decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with +information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies +that Bacon gives,—for delight, ornament, and ability,—Bushido had +decided preference for the last, where their use was "in judgment and +the disposition of business." Whether it was for the disposition of +public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a +practical end in view that education was conducted. "Learning without +thought," said Confucius, "is labor lost: thought without learning is +perilous."</p> + +<p>When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is +chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his +vocation partakes of a sacred character. "It is the parent who has borne +me: it is the teacher who makes me man." With this idea, therefore, the +esteem in which one's preceptor was held was very high. A man to evoke +such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed +with superior personality without lacking erudition. He was a father to +the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring. "Thy father and thy +mother"—so runs our maxim—"are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and +thy lord are like the sun and moon."</p> + +<p>The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue +among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be +rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it +of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not +because it was valueless but because it was invaluable. Here the +non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than +modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for +services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas +the best service done in education,—namely, in soul development (and +this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or +measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, +is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their +teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were +not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients +as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, +too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg. They were +grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity. They were +an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were +thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines,</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="SELF-CONTROL"></a> +<h2>SELF-CONTROL,</h2> + +<p>which was universally required of samurai.</p> + +<p>The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance +without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring +us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of +our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and +eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I +say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can +ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some +of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer +hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any +race under the sky.</p> + +<p>I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than +others—yes, doubly more—since the very attempt to restrain natural +promptings entails suffering. Imagine boys—and girls too—brought up +not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for +the relief of their feelings,—and there is a physiological problem +whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive.</p> + +<p>It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his +face. "He shows no sign of joy or anger," was a phrase used in +describing a strong character. The most natural affections were kept +under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his +dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,—no, not in the presence of +other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth +in the remark of a witty youth when he said, "American husbands kiss +their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat +theirs in public and kiss them in private."</p> + +<p>Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by +passion of any kind. I remember when, during the late war with China, a +regiment left a certain town, a large concourse of people flocked to the +station to bid farewell to the general and his army. On this occasion +an American resident resorted to the place, expecting to witness loud +demonstrations, as the nation itself was highly excited and there were +fathers, mothers, and sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The +American was strangely disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the +train began to move, the hats of thousands of people were silently taken +off and their heads bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of +handkerchiefs, no word uttered, but deep silence in which only an +attentive ear could catch a few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I +know of a father who spent whole nights listening to the breathing of a +sick child, standing behind the door that he might not be caught in such +an act of parental weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last +moments, refrained from sending for her son, that he might not be +disturbed in his studies. Our history and everyday life are replete with +examples of heroic matrons who can well bear comparison with some of the +most touching pages of Plutarch. Among our peasantry an Ian Maclaren +would be sure to find many a Marget Howe.</p> + +<p>It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for the +absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of Japan. +When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is +to quietly suppress any indication of it. In rare instances is the +tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of +sincerity and fervor. It is putting a premium upon a breach of the third +commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experience. It is +truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most +secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. "Dost +thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time +for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone +in quietness and secrecy,"—writes a young samurai in his diary.</p> + +<p>To give in so many articulate words one's inmost thoughts and +feelings—notably the religious—is taken among us as an unmistakable +sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. "Only a +pomegranate is he"—so runs a popular saying—"who, when he gapes his +mouth, displays the contents of his heart."</p> + +<p>It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant our +emotions are moved we try to guard our lips in order to hide them. +Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defined it, "the art of +concealing thought."</p> + +<p>Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will +invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At first +you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you will get +a few broken commonplaces—"Human life has sorrow;" "They who meet must +part;" "He that is born must die;" "It is foolish to count the years of +a child that is gone, but a woman's heart will indulge in follies;" and +the like. So the noble words of a noble Hohenzollern—"Lerne zu leiden +ohne Klagen"—had found many responsive minds among us, long before they +were uttered.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the frailties +of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better +reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter +with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when +disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of sorrow +or rage.</p> + +<p>The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they find +their safety-valve in poetical aphorism. A poet of the tenth century +writes, "In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by sorrow, +tells its bitter grief in verse." A mother who tries to console her +broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase +after the dragon-fly, hums,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"How far to-day in chase, I wonder,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant +justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a +foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding +hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a +measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an +appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and +dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question.</p> + +<p>It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference +to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as +it goes. The next question is,—Why are our nerves less tightly strung? +It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be +our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the +Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read <i>Sartor +Resartus</i> as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was +our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to +recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the +explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in +self-control, none can be correct.</p> + +<p>Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress +the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into +distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or +hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart +and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive +excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of +self-restraint is to keep our mind <i>level</i>—as our expression is—or, to +borrow a Greek term, attain the state of <i>euthymia</i>, which Democritus +called the highest good.</p> + +<p>The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of +the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely,</p> +<br /> + +<a name="INSTITUTIONS"></a> +<h2>THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE<br /> +AND REDRESS,</h2> + +<p>of which (the former known as <i>hara-kiri</i> and the latter as +<i>kataki-uchi</i>) many foreign writers have treated more or less fully.</p> + +<p>To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only +to <i>seppuku</i> or <i>kappuku</i>, popularly known as <i>hara-kiri</i>—which means +self-immolation by disembowelment. "Ripping the abdomen? How +absurd!"—so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may +sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to +students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus' mouth—"Thy +(Caesar's) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper +entrails." Listen to a modern English poet, who in his <i>Light of Asia</i>, +speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:—none blames him for +bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, +look at Guercino's painting of Cato's death, in the Palazzo Rossa in +Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, +will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this +mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most +touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars +our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, +of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a +sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else—the sign which +Constantine beheld would not conquer the world!</p> + +<p>Not for extraneous associations only does <i>seppuku</i> lose in our mind any +taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body +to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of +the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph's "bowels +yearning upon his brother," or David prayed the Lord not to forget his +bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of +the "sounding" or the "troubling" of bowels, they all and each endorsed +the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was +enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and +kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term +<i>hara</i> was more comprehensive than the Greek <i>phren</i> or <i>thumos</i>> and +the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell +somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the +peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by +one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul +is located in the pineal gland, still insist in using the term <i>ventre</i> +in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless +physiologically significant. Similarly <i>entrailles</i> stands in their +language for affection and compassion. Nor is such belief mere +superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the +heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese +knew better than Romeo "in what vile part of this anatomy one's name did +lodge." Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, +denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are +strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental +physiology once admitted, the syllogism of <i>seppuku</i> is easy to +construct. "I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares +with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean."</p> + +<p>I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral +justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was +ample excuse with many for taking one's own life. How many acquiesced in +the sentiment expressed by Garth,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"When honor's lost, 'tis a relief to die;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Death's but a sure retreat from infamy,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death when honor +was involved, was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many +complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure +from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to +be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are +honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive +admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius +and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly +existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the +philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his +pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the +state—which he knew was morally mistaken—in spite of the possibilities +of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even +offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his +whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical +compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of +the judges was compulsory: it said, "Thou shalt die,—and that by thy +own hand." If suicide meant no more than dying by one's own hand, +Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with +the crime; Plato, who was averse to it, would not call his master a +suicide.</p> + +<p>Now my readers will understand that <i>seppuku</i> was not a mere suicidal +process. It was an institution, legal and ceremonial. An invention of +the middle ages, it was a process by which warriors could expiate their +crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their +friends, or prove their sincerity. When enforced as a legal punishment, +it was practiced with due ceremony. It was a refinement of +self-destruction, and none could perform it without the utmost coolness +of temper and composure of demeanor, and for these reasons it was +particularly befitting the profession of bushi.</p> + +<p>Antiquarian curiosity, if nothing else, would tempt me to give here a +description of this obsolete ceremonial; but seeing that such a +description was made by a far abler writer, whose book is not much read +now-a-days, I am tempted to make a somewhat lengthy quotation. Mitford, +in his "Tales of Old Japan," after giving a translation of a treatise on +<i>seppuku</i> from a rare Japanese manuscript, goes on to describe an +instance of such an execution of which he was an eye-witness:—</p> + +<p>"We (seven foreign representatives) were invited to follow the Japanese +witness into the <i>hondo</i> or main hall of the temple, where the ceremony +was to be performed. It was an imposing scene. A large hall with a high +roof supported by dark pillars of wood. From the ceiling hung a +profusion of those huge gilt lamps and ornaments peculiar to Buddhist +temples. In front of the high altar, where the floor, covered with +beautiful white mats, is raised some three or four inches from the +ground, was laid a rug of scarlet felt. Tall candles placed at regular +intervals gave out a dim mysterious light, just sufficient to let all +the proceedings be seen. The seven Japanese took their places on the +left of the raised floor, the seven foreigners on the right. No other +person was present.</p> + +<p>"After the interval of a few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki +Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, +walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar +hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied +by a <i>kaishaku</i> and three officers, who wore the <i>jimbaori</i> or war +surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word <i>kaishaku</i> it should be +observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. +The office is that of a gentleman: in many cases it is performed by a +kinsman or friend of the condemned, and the relation between them is +rather that of principal and second than that of victim and executioner. +In this instance the <i>kaishaku</i> was a pupil of Taki Zenzaburo, and was +selected by friends of the latter from among their own number for his +skill in swordsmanship.</p> + +<p>"With the <i>kaishaku</i> on his left hand, Taki Zenzaburo advanced slowly +towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then +drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps +even with more deference; in each case the salutation was ceremoniously +returned. Slowly and with great dignity the condemned man mounted on to +the raised floor, prostrated himself before the high altar twice, and +seated<a name="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19">[19]</a> +himself on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, +the <i>kaishaku</i> crouching on his left hand side. One of the three +attendant officers then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used +in the temple for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the +<i>wakizashi</i>, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a +half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor's. This he +handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it +reverently, raising it to his head with both hands, and placed it in +front of himself.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19">[19]</a><div class="note"> +Seated himself—that is, in the Japanese fashion, his +knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his heels. In +this position, which is one of respect, he remained until his death.</div> + +<p>"After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which +betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a +man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in +his face or manner, spoke as follows:—</p> + +<p>'I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners +at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel +myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing +the act.'</p> + +<p>"Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down +to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to +custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from +falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling +forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand he took the dirk that lay +before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a +moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then +stabbing himself deeply below the waist in the left-hand side, he drew +the dirk slowly across to his right side, and turning it in the wound, +gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he +never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned +forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first +time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the +<i>kaishaku</i>, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching +his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in +the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with +one blow the head had been severed from the body.</p> + +<p>"A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood +throbbing out of the inert head before us, which but a moment before had +been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible.</p> + +<p>"The <i>kaishaku</i> made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of paper +which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; +and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the +execution.</p> + +<p>"The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and +crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called to us to +witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been +faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the +temple."</p> + +<p>I might multiply any number of descriptions of <i>seppuku</i> from literature +or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will +suffice.</p> + +<p>Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen +years of age, made an effort to kill Iyéyasu in order to avenge their +father's wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made +prisoners. The old general admired the pluck of the youths who dared an +attempt on his life and ordered that they should be allowed to die an +honorable death. Their little brother Hachimaro, a mere infant of eight +summers, was condemned to a similar fate, as the sentence was pronounced +on all the male members of the family, and the three were taken to a +monastery where it was to be executed. A physician who was present on +the occasion has left us a diary from which the following scene is +translated. "When they were all seated in a row for final despatch, +Sakon turned to the youngest and said—'Go thou first, for I wish to be +sure that thou doest it aright.' Upon the little one's replying that, as +he had never seen <i>seppuku</i> performed, he would like to see his brothers +do it and then he could follow them, the older brothers smiled between +their tears:—'Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of +being our father's child.' When they had placed him between them, Sakon +thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and +asked—'Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don't push the dagger +too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees +well composed.' Naiki did likewise and said to the boy—'Keep thy eyes +open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels +anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy +effort to cut across.' The child looked from one to the other, and when +both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the +example set him on either hand."</p> + +<p>The glorification of <i>seppuku</i> offered, naturally enough, no small +temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely +incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, +hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and +dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent +gates. Life was cheap—cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of +honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the +<i>agio</i>, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser +metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of +Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all +victims of self-destruction!</p> + +<p>And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike +cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and was +pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself +hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with +use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted—did not the noblest of the +Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like +circumstances?—deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude +approaching a Christian martyr's, cheered himself with an impromptu +verse:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Come! evermore come,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Ye dread sorrows and pains!<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And heap on my burden'd back;<br /></span> +<span class="i3">That I not one test may lack<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of what strength in me remains!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This, then, was the Bushido teaching—Bear and face all calamities and +adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as +Mencius<a name="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20">[20]</a> +taught, "When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it +first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with +toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; +and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his +mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies." True honor +lies in fulfilling Heaven's decree and no death incurred in so doing is +ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly +indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne's, <i>Religio Medici</i> +there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in +our Precepts. Let me quote it: "It is a brave act of valor to contemn +death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest +valor to dare to live." A renowned priest of the seventeenth century +satirically observed—"Talk as he may, a samurai who ne'er has died is +apt in decisive moments to flee or hide." Again—Him who once has died +in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of +Tametomo can pierce. How near we come to the portals of the temple whose +Builder taught "he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it!" +These are but a few of the numerous examples which tend to confirm the +moral identity of the human species, notwithstanding an attempt so +assiduously made to render the distinction between Christian and Pagan +as great as possible.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20">[20]</a><div class="note"> +I use Dr. Legge's translation verbatim.</div> + +<p>We have thus seen that the Bushido institution of suicide was neither +so irrational nor barbarous as its abuse strikes us at first sight. We +will now see whether its sister institution of Redress—or call it +Revenge, if you will—has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose +of this question in a few words, since a similar institution, or call it +custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all +peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the +continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain +recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? +Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and +only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time +which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, and only the +vigilant vengeance of the victim's people preserves social order. "What +is the most beautiful thing on earth?" said Osiris to Horus. The reply +was, "To avenge a parent's wrongs,"—to which a Japanese would have +added "and a master's."</p> + +<p>In revenge there is something which satisfies one's sense of justice. +The avenger reasons:—"My good father did not deserve death. He who +killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not +tolerate a deed like this: Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the +will of my father; it is the will of Heaven that the evil-doer cease +from his work. He must perish by my hand; because he shed my father's +blood, I, who am his flesh and blood, must shed the murderer's. The same +Heaven shall not shelter him and me." The ratiocination is simple and +childish (though we know Hamlet did not reason much more deeply), +nevertheless it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice +"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Our sense of revenge is as +exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation +are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone.</p> + +<p>In Judaism, which believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, +which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; +but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a +kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be +judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven +Ronins was condemned to death;—he had no court of higher instance to +appeal to; his faithful retainers addressed themselves to Vengeance, the +only Supreme Court existing; they in their turn were condemned by common +law,—but the popular instinct passed a different judgment and hence +their memory is still kept as green and fragrant as are their graves at +Sengakuji to this day.</p> + +<p>Though Lao-tse taught to recompense injury with kindness, the voice of +Confucius was very much louder, which counselled that injury must be +recompensed with justice;—and yet revenge was justified only when it +was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One's own +wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne +and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal's +oath to avenge his country's wrongs, but he scorns James Hamilton for +wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife's grave, as an +eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray.</p> + +<p>Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their <i>raison +d'être</i> at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of +romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the +murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family +vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale +of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the +injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society +will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is +no need of <i>kataki-uchi</i>. If this had meant that "hunger of the heart +which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of +the victim," as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs +in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it.</p> + +<p>As to <i>seppuku</i>, though it too has no existence <i>de jure</i>, we still hear +of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as +long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of +self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with +fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have +to concede to <i>seppuku</i> an aristocratic position among them. He +maintains that "when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at +the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it +may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by +madness, or by morbid +excitement."<a name="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21">[21]</a> +But a normal <i>seppuku</i> does not +savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost <i>sang froid</i> being +necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which +Dr. Strahan<a name="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22">[22]</a> divides +suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the +Irrational or True, <i>seppuku</i> is the best example of the former type.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21">[21]</a><div class="note"> +Morselli, <i>Suicide</i>, p. 314.</div> + +<a name="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22">[22]</a><div class="note"> +<i>Suicide and Insanity</i>.</div> + +<p>From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of +Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in +social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called</p> +<br /> + +<h2> +<a name="SWORD"></a> +THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE<br /> +SAMURAI,</h2> + +<p>and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed +that "The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell," he only echoed a +Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It +was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was +apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a +<i>go</i>-board<a name="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23">[23]</a> +and initiated into the rights of the military profession +by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk +with which he had been playing. After this first ceremony of <i>adoptio +per arma</i>, he was no more to be seen outside his father's gates without +this badge of his status, even if it was usually substituted for +every-day wear by a gilded wooden dirk. Not many years pass before he +wears constantly the genuine steel, though blunt, and then the sham arms +are thrown aside and with enjoyment keener than his newly acquired +blades, he marches out to try their edge on wood and stone. When be +reaches man's estate at the age of fifteen, being given independence of +action, he can now pride himself upon the possession of arms sharp +enough for any work. The very possession of the dangerous instrument +imparts to him a feeling and an air of self-respect and responsibility. +"He beareth not his sword in vain." What he carries in his belt is a +symbol of what he carries in his mind and heart—Loyalty and Honor. The +two swords, the longer and the shorter—called respectively <i>daito</i> and +<i>shoto</i> or <i>katana</i> and <i>wakizashi</i>—never leave his side. When at home, +they grace the most conspicuous place in study or parlor; by night they +guard his pillow within easy reach of his hand. Constant companions, +they are beloved, and proper names of endearment given them. Being +venerated, they are well-nigh worshiped. The Father of History has +recorded as a curious piece of information that the Scythians sacrificed +to an iron scimitar. Many a temple and many a family in Japan hoards a +sword as an object of adoration. Even the commonest dirk has due respect +paid to it. Any insult to it is tantamount to personal affront. Woe to +him who carelessly steps over a weapon lying on the floor!</p> + +<a name="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23">[23]</a><div class="note"> +The game of <i>go</i> is sometimes called Japanese checkers, +but is much more intricate than the English game. The <i>go-</i>board +contains 361 squares and is supposed to represent a battle-field—the +object of the game being to occupy as much space as possible.</div> + +<p>So precious an object cannot long escape the notice and the skill of +artists nor the vanity of its owner, especially in times of peace, when +it is worn with no more use than a crosier by a bishop or a sceptre by a +king. Shark-skin and finest silk for hilt, silver and gold for guard, +lacquer of varied hues for scabbard, robbed the deadliest weapon of half +its terror; but these appurtenances are playthings compared with the +blade itself.</p> + +<p>The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his +workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and +purification, or, as the phrase was, "he committed his soul and spirit +into the forging and tempering of the steel." Every swing of the sledge, +every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a +religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of +his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as +a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there +is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface +the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate +texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which +histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting +exquisite grace with utmost strength;—all these thrill us with mixed +feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror. Harmless were its +mission, if it only remained a thing of beauty and joy! But, ever within +reach of the hand, it presented no small temptation for abuse. Too often +did the blade flash forth from its peaceful sheath. The abuse sometimes +went so far as to try the acquired steel on some harmless creature's +neck.</p> + +<p>The question that concerns us most is, however,—Did Bushido justify +the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As +it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its +misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on +undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use +it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count +Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our +history, when assassinations, suicides, and other sanguinary practices +were the order of the day. Endowed as he once was with almost +dictatorial powers, repeatedly marked out as an object for +assassination, he never tarnished his sword with blood. In relating some +of his reminiscences to a friend he says, in a quaint, plebeian way +peculiar to him:—"I have a great dislike for killing people and so I +haven't killed one single man. I have released those whose heads should +have been chopped off. A friend said to me one day, 'You don't kill +enough. Don't you eat pepper and egg-plants?' Well, some people are no +better! But you see that fellow was slain himself. My escape may be due +to my dislike of killing. I had the hilt of my sword so tightly fastened +to the scabbard that it was hard to draw the blade. I made up my mind +that though they cut me, I will not cut. Yes, yes! some people are truly +like fleas and mosquitoes and they bite—but what does their biting +amount to? It itches a little, that's all; it won't endanger life." +These are the words of one whose Bushido training was tried in the fiery +furnace of adversity and triumph. The popular apothegm—"To be beaten is +to conquer," meaning true conquest consists in not opposing a riotous +foe; and "The best won victory is that obtained without shedding of +blood," and others of similar import—will show that after all the +ultimate ideal of knighthood was Peace.</p> + +<p>It was a great pity that this high ideal was left exclusively to priests +and moralists to preach, while the samurai went on practicing and +extolling martial traits. In this they went so far as to tinge the +ideals of womanhood with Amazonian character. Here we may profitably +devote a few paragraphs to the subject of</p> +<br /> + +<a name="TRAINING"></a> +<h2>THE TRAINING AND POSITION OF<br /> +WOMAN.</h2> + +<p>The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of +paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the +comprehension of men's "arithmetical understanding." The Chinese +ideogram denoting "the mysterious," "the unknowable," consists of two +parts, one meaning "young" and the other "woman," because the physical +charms and delicate thoughts of the fair sex are above the coarse mental +calibre of our sex to explain.</p> + +<p>In the Bushido ideal of woman, however, there is little mystery and only +a seeming paradox. I have said that it was Amazonian, but that is only +half the truth. Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman +holding a broom—certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively +against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more +harmless uses for which the besom was first invented—the idea involved +being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the +English wife (weaver) and daughter (<i>duhitar</i>, milkmaid). Without +confining the sphere of woman's activity to <i>Küche, Kirche, Kinder</i>, as +the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood +was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions—Domesticity and +Amazonian traits—are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, +as we shall see.</p> + +<p>Bushido being a teaching primarily intended for the masculine sex, the +virtues it prized in woman were naturally far from being distinctly +feminine. Winckelmann remarks that "the supreme beauty of Greek art is +rather male than female," and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral +conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised +those women most "who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their +sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the +bravest of men."<a name="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24">[24] +</a> Young girls therefore, were trained to repress +their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate +weapons,—especially the long-handled sword called <i>nagi-nata</i>, so as to +be able to hold their own against unexpected odds. Yet the primary +motive for exercises of this martial character was not for use in the +field; it was twofold—personal and domestic. Woman owning no suzerain +of her own, formed her own bodyguard. With her weapon she guarded her +personal sanctity with as much zeal as her husband did his master's. The +domestic utility of her warlike training was in the education of her +sons, as we shall see later.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24">[24]</a><div class="note"> +Lecky, <i>History of European Morals</i> II, p. 383.</div> + +<p>Fencing and similar exercises, if rarely of practical use, were a +wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But +these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could +be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood, +were presented with dirks (<i>kai-ken</i>, pocket poniards), which might be +directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their +own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them +severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of +self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and +Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a +Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her +father's dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a +disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to +perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in +anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must +know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever +the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty +with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of +the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an +abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our +bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among +us.<a name="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25">[25]</a> +On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the +samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner, +seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery, +says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to +write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction. +When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves +her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these +verses;—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"For fear lest clouds may dim her light,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Should she but graze this nether sphere,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The young moon poised above the height<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Doth hastily betake to flight."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<a name="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25">[25]</a><div class="note"> +For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing see +Finck's <i>Lotos Time in Japan</i>, pp. 286-297.</div> + +<p>It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was +our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the +gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and +literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our +literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women +played an important role in the history of Japanese <i>belles lettres</i>. +Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of <i>geisha</i>) +only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale +the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the +technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate +object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of +sound is attainable without the player's heart being in harmony with +herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in +the training of youths—that accomplishments were ever kept subservient +to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and +brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I +sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in +London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in +his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of +business for them.</p> + +<p>The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social +ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social +parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,—in other words, as a +part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided +their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women +of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly +intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost +sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and +integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and +day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to +their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her +father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from +earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of +independence, but of dependent service. Man's helpmeet, if her presence +is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she +retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth +becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but, +when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties, +disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal +wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, +in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon +pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take +her husband's place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon +her own devoted head.</p> + +<p>The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before +taking her own life, needs no comment:—"Oft have I heard that no +accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that +all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common +bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to +our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two +short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow +followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being +loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be +the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving +partner. I have heard that Kō-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China, +lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave +as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt +farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope +or joy—why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I +not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime +tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good +master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as +deep as the sea and as high as the hills."</p> + +<p>Woman's surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and +family, was as willing and honorable as the man's self-surrender to the +good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no +life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well +as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than +was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was +recognized as <i>Naijo</i>, "the inner help." In the ascending scale of +service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might +annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I +know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of +Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of +each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator. +Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service—the serving of a cause +higher than one's own self, even at the sacrifice of one's +individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that +Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission—as far as that +is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth.</p> + +<p>My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish +surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced +with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by +Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The +point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so +thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was +required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its +Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the +view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman's rights, who +exclaimed, "May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against +ancient customs!" Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female +status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the +loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which +are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part +of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can +the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the +true course for their historical development to take? These are grave +questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime +let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen +was really so bad as to justify a revolt.</p> + +<p>We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to "God and +the ladies,"—the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we +are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that +gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker +vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot +contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences, +while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is +feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily +low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M. +Guizot's theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer's? In reply I might +aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to +the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the +military nobles, the <i>daimio</i>, and the court nobles, the <i>kugé</i>—these +higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were +masses of the common people—mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants—whose +life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as +the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have +been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the +industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This +is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she +experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the +lower the social class—as, for instance, among small artisans—the more +equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility, +too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked, +chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex +into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally +effeminate. Thus Spencer's dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As +to Guizot's, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will +remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration, +so that his generalization applies to the <i>daimio</i> and the <i>kugé</i>.</p> + +<p>I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words +give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do +not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man's equal; but until +we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will +always be misunderstandings upon this subject.</p> + +<p>When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves, +<i>e.g.</i>, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble +ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American +Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had +no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what +Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal +rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the +only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it +would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in +pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in +comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it +enough, to compare woman's status to man's as the value of silver is +compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a +method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important +kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In +view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil +its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its +relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from +economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a +standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of +woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very +little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this +double measurement;—as a social-political unit not much, while as wife +and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among +so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly +venerated? Was it not because they were <i>matrona</i>, mothers? Not as +fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So +with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the +government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers +and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted +to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were +primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the +education of their children.</p> + +<p>I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among +half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression +for one's wife is "my rustic wife" and the like, she is despised and +held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as "my foolish +father," "my swinish son," "my awkward self," etc., are in current use, +is not the answer clear enough?</p> + +<p>To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further +than the so-called Christian. "Man and woman shall be one flesh." The +individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband +and wife are two persons;—hence when they disagree, their separate +<i>rights</i> are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their +vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and—nonsensical +blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband +or wife speaks to a third party of his other half—better or worse—as +being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of +one's self as "my bright self," "my lovely disposition," and so forth? +We think praising one's own wife or one's own husband is praising a part +of one's own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad +taste among us,—and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have +diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one's consort +was a usage most in vogue among the samurai.</p> + +<p>The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe +of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the +Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of +the numerical insufficiency of +women<a name="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26">[26]</a> +(who, now increasing, are, I am +afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the +respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief +standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main +water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was +located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul +and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the +early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader's +notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as +lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion +presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being +founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, +though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions +which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me +the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, +which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment +doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,—a +separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in +Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I +might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and +Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties +as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26">[26]</a><div class="note"> +I refer to those days when girls were imported from +England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.</div> + +<p>It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in +the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military +class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="INFLUENCE"></a> +<h2>THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO</h2> + +<p>on the nation at large.</p> + +<p>We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which +rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more +elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its +rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually +casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first +enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from +amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, +and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are +no less contagious than vices. "There needs but one wise man in a +company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion," says Emerson. No +social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral +influence.</p> + +<p>Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely +has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of +the squires and <i>gentlemen</i>? Very truly does M. Taine say, "These three +syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English +society." Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement +and fling back the question—"When Adam delved and Eve span, where then +was the gentleman?" All the more pity that a gentleman was not present +in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for +his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more +tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful +experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor, +treason and rebellion.</p> + +<p>What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of +the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed +through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the +populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their +example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these +were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the +commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of +virtues for their own sake.</p> + +<p>In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a +small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says—"In English +Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to +Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman)." Write in place of +Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the +main features of the literary history of Japan.</p> + +<p>The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction—the +theatres, the story-teller's booths, the preacher's dais, the musical +recitations, the novels—have taken for their chief theme the stories of +the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire +of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsuné and his faithful retainer +Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with +gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its +embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The +clerks and the shop-boys, after their day's work is over and the +<i>amado</i><a name="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27">[27]</a> +of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story +of Nobunaga and Hidéyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes +their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to +the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is +taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of +ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and +virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour +with greedy ear the romance of the samurai.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27">[27]</a><div class="note"> +Outside shutters.</div> + +<p>The samurai grew to be the <i>beau ideal</i> of the whole race. "As among +flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord," so sang +the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class +itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity, +no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus +from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly +the work of Knighthood.</p> + +<p>Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, "Aristocracy and +Evolution," has eloquently told us that "social evolution, in so far as +it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of +the intentions of great men;" further, that historical progress is +produced by a struggle "not among the community generally, to live, but +a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct, +to employ, the majority in the best way." Whatever may be said about the +soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the +part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our +Empire.</p> + +<p>How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in +the development of a certain order of men, known as <i>otoko-daté</i>, the +natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of +them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen +and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of +hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that +samurai did to daimio, the willing service of "limb and life, of body, +chattels and earthly honor." Backed by a vast multitude of rash and +impetuous working-men, those born "bosses" formed a formidable check to +the rampancy of the two-sworded order.</p> + +<p>In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where +it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral +standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at +first as the glory of the elite, became in time an aspiration and +inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not +attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet <i>Yamato Damashii</i>, +the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the <i>Volksgeist</i> of the +Island Realm. If religion is no more than "Morality touched by +emotion," as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better +entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoori has put the mute +utterance of the nation into words when he sings:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Isles of blest Japan!<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Should your Yamato spirit<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Strangers seek to scan,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Say—scenting morn's sun-lit air,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Blows the cherry wild and fair!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yes, the +<i>sakura</i><a name="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28">[28]</a> +has for ages been the favorite of our people and +the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition +which the poet uses, the words the <i>wild cherry flower scenting the +morning sun</i>.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28">[28]</a><div class="note"> +<i>Cerasus pseudo-cerasus</i>, Lindley.</div> + +<p>The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild—in the sense +of natural—growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental +qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its +essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But +its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and +grace of its beauty appeal to <i>our</i> aesthetic sense as no other flower +can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, +which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are +hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she +clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop +untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy +odors—all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no +dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at +the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light +fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its +showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is +volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious +ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is +something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the +<i>sakura</i> quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to +illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more +serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of +beauteous day.</p> + +<p>When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his +heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that +the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the +whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a +time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs +and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily +tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one +is the sakura the flower of the nation.</p> + +<p>Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the +wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, +is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so +frailly mortal?</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="ALIVE"></a> +<h2>IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE?</h2> + +<p>Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already +wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline?</p> + +<p>It were a sad thing if a nation's soul could die so fast. That were a +poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The +aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national +character, is as tenacious as the "irreducible elements of species, of +the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the +carnivorous animal." In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations +and brilliant generalizations, +M. LeBon<a name="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29">[29]</a> +says, "The discoveries due +to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or +defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: +they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for +centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities." +These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over, +provided there were qualities and defects of character which <i>constitute +the exclusive patrimony</i> of each people. Schematizing theories of this +sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and +they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In +studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon +European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that +no one quality of character was its <i>exclusive</i> patrimony. It is true +the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is +this aggregate which Emerson names a "compound result into which every +great force enters as an ingredient." But, instead of making it, as +LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord +philosopher calls it "an element which unites the most forcible persons +of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; +and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack +the Masonic sign."</p> + +<a name="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29">[29]</a><div class="note"> +<i>The Psychology of Peoples</i>, p. 33.</div> + +<p>The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in +particular, cannot be said to form "an irreducible element of species," +but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. +Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the +last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it +transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely +widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has +calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, +"each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty +millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D." The merest peasant +that grubs the soil, "bowed by the weight of centuries," has in his +veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as "to the +ox."</p> + +<p>An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the +nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when +Yoshida Shoin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote +on the eve of his execution the following stanza;—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"Full well I knew this course must end in death;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">It was Yamato spirit urged me on<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To dare whate'er betide."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor +force of our country.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ransome says that "there are three distinct Japans in existence +side by side to-day,—the old, which has not wholly died out; the new, +hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now +through its most critical throes." While this is very true in most +respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete +institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions, +requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old +Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove +the formative force of the new era.</p> + +<p>The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the +hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, +were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of +Knighthood. Some +writers<a name="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30">[30]</a> +have lately tried to prove that the +Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making +of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this +honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it +will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of +preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they +have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian +missionaries are doing great things for Japan—in the domain of +education, and especially of moral education:—only, the mysterious +though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in +divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet +Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the +character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged +us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern +Japan—of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the +reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:—and you +will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought +and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and +observation of the Far +East,<a name="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31">[31]</a> +that only the respect in which Japan +differed from other oriental despotisms lay in "the ruling influence +among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious +codes of honor that man has ever devised," he touched the main spring +which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is +destined to be.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30">[30]</a><div class="note"> +Speer; <i>Missions and Politics in Asia</i>, Lecture IV, pp. +189-190; Dennis: <i>Christian Missions and Social Progress</i>, Vol. I, p. +32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.</div> + +<a name="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31">[31]</a><div class="note"> +<i>The Far East</i>, p. 375.</div> + +<p>The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a +work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one +were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When +we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the +latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study +Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the +development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much +less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of +oriental institutions and peoples has written:—"We are told every day +how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those +islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan, +but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of +organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful. +She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before +imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence," continues +Mr. Townsend, "unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea +of China. Where is the European apostle," asks our author, "or +philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made +Japan?"<a name="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32">[32]</a> +Mr. Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought +about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he +had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation +would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than +Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as +an inferior power,—that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or +industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of +transformation.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32">[32]</a><div class="note"> +Meredith Townsend, <i>Asia and Europe</i>, N.Y., 1900, 28.</div> + +<p>The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read. +A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most +eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the +working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The +universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly +ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance, +fortitude and bravery that "the little Jap" possesses, were sufficiently +proved in the China-Japanese +war.<a name="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33">[33]</a> +"Is there any nation more loyal +and patriotic?" is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer, +"There is not," we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood.</p> + +<a name="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33">[33]</a><div class="note"> +Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and Yamada +on <i>Heroic Japan</i>, and Diosy on <i>The New Far East</i>.</div> + +<p>On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and +defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of +abstruse philosophy—while some of our young men have already gained +international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved +anything in philosophical lines—is traceable to the neglect of +metaphysical training under Bushido's regimen of education. Our sense of +honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; +and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, +that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor.</p> + +<p>Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, +dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, +stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane +things? He is the <i>shosei</i> (student), to whom the earth is too small and +the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe +and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of +wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for +knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods +are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of +Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national +honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of +Bushido.</p> + +<p>Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said +that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people +responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it +has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly +translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different +degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion +could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an +appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master. +The word "Loyalty" revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted +to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued +"students' strike" in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction +with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the +Director,—"Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought +to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is not +manly to push a falling man." The scientific incapacity of the +professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into +insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By +arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great +magnitude can be accomplished.</p> + +<p>One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the +missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history—"What do we care for +heathen records?" some say—and consequently estrange their religion +from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed +to for centuries past. Mocking a nation's history!—as though the career +of any people—even of the lowest African savages possessing no +record—were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by +the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be +deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races +themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and +white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race +forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the +past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new +religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an "old, old story," which, if +presented in intelligible words,—that is to say, if expressed in the +vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people—will find easy +lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality. +Christianity in its American or English form—with more of Anglo-Saxon +freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder—is a poor scion +to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot +the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel +on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible—in Hawaii, +where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in +amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal +race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan—nay, it is +a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his +kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following +words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:—"Men +have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering +how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may have +been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of +themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity +with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at +impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be +said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of +religion."<a name="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34">[34]</a></p> + +<a name="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34">[34]</a><div class="note"> +Jowett, <i>Sermons on Faith and Doctrine</i>, II.</div> + +<p>But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little +doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a +power which we must take into account in reckoning</p> + +<br /> + +<a name="FUTURE"></a> +<h2>THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO,</h2> + +<p>whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, +that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at +work to threaten it.</p> + +<p>Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the +Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats +itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did +with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay +of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application +to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that +helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages +are as surely working for the decline of Bushido.</p> + +<p>One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan +is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and +was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan +no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother +institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift +for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it +under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little +room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its +infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are +being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and +Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the +Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted +to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet +we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow +journalism.</p> + +<p>Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of +Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, "the decay of the ceremonial +code—or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life—among +the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities of +latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate +sensibilities." The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can +tolerate no form or shape of trust—and Bushido was a trust organized by +those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, fixing +the grades and value of moral qualities—is alone powerful enough to +engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are +antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely +criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, +cannot admit "purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an +exclusive class."<a name="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35">[35]</a> +Add to this the progress of popular instruction, +of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,—then we can +easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai's sword nor the +sharpest shafts shot from Bushido's boldest bows can aught avail. The +state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same—shall we +call it the <i>Ehrenstaat</i> or, after the manner of Carlyle, the +Heroarchy?—is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and +gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The +words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may +aptly be repeated of the samurai, that "the medium in which their +ardent deeds took shape is forever gone."</p> + +<a name="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35">[35]</a><div class="note"> +<i>Norman Conquest</i>, Vol. V, p. 482.</div> + +<p>Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into +the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away +as "the captains and the kings depart."</p> + +<p>If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues—be +it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome—can never make on earth a +"continuing city." Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in +man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly +virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to +fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that +Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but +Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, +with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to +emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. +Callings nobler and broader than a warrior's claim our attention to-day. +With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better +knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of +Benevolence—dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?—will expand +into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than +subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more +than citizens, being men.</p> + +<p>Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the +wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world +confirms the prophecy that "the meek shall inherit the earth." A nation +that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank +of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain +indeed!</p> + +<p>When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not +only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an +honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry +dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says +that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of +France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally +abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of +Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of +swords, rang out the old, "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence +of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," it rang +in the new age of "sophisters, economists, and calculators."</p> + +<p>It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of +Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work +of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does +ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, +burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, +without a master's hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis +Napoleon beat the Prussians with his <i>Mitrailleuse</i>, or the Spaniards +with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the +old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite +saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of +implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do +not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does +not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea +and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and +beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of +our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly +visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show +a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial +virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, "but ours on +trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come," +and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate +one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to +widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life.</p> + +<p>It has been predicted—and predictions have been corroborated by the +events of the last half century—that the moral system of Feudal Japan, +like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new +ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. +Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must +not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is +not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from +other birds. "The Kingdom of God is within you." It does not come +rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing +across the seas, however broad. "God has granted," says the Koran, "to +every people a prophet in its own tongue." The seeds of the Kingdom, as +vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido. +Now its days are closing—sad to say, before its full fruition—and we +turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of +strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to +take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and +Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The only +other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with +Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with +which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like "a dimly burning wick" +which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame. +Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets—notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos +and Habakkuk—Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of +rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, +which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, +will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its +capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, +self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in +some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing +phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, +the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene.</p> + +<p>Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)—or will the +future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and +Hellenism?—will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals +will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which +side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it +can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is +willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total +extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It +is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and +vitality are still felt through many channels of life—in the philosophy +of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world. +Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his +spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal +discipline of Zeno at work.</p> + +<p>Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will +not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor +may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their +ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it +will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich +life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its +very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a +far-off unseen hill, "the wayside gaze beyond;"—then in the beautiful +language of the Quaker poet,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span>"The traveler owns the grateful sense<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of sweetness near he knows not whence,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And, pausing, takes with forehead bare<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The benediction of the air."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<center><p> +<img src="images/illus.jpg" width="305" height="432" alt="scroll"> +</p></center> + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitob + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + +***** This file should be named 12096-h.htm or 12096-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/9/12096/ + +Produced by Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Bushido, the Soul of Japan + +Author: Inazo Nitobe + +Release Date: April 21, 2004 [EBook #12096] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + + + + +Produced by Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + + + + + + +BUSHIDO +THE SOUL OF JAPAN + + +BY +INAZO NITOBE, A.M., Ph.D. + + +Author's Edition, Revised and Enlarged +13th EDITION +1908 + + +DECEMBER, 1904 + + +TO MY BELOVED UNCLE +TOKITOSHI OTA +WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST +AND +TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI +I DEDICATE +THIS LITTLE BOOK + + + --"That way + Over the mountain, which who stands upon, + Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road; + While if he views it from the waste itself, + Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow, + Not vague, mistakable! What's a break or two + Seen from the unbroken desert either side? + And then (to bring in fresh philosophy) + What if the breaks themselves should prove at last + The most consummate of contrivances + To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?" + + --ROBERT BROWNING, + + _Bishop Blougram's Apology_. + + + "There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have + from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a + predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind. + These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of honor." + + --HALLAM, + + _Europe in the Middle Ages_. + + + "Chivalry is itself the poetry of life." + + --SCHLEGEL, + + _Philosophy of History_. + + + +[Transcriber's Note: [=O] represents O with macron, + [=o] represents o with macron, + [=u] represents u with macron] + + + +PREFACE + + +About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof +of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our +conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of +religion. "Do you mean to say," asked the venerable professor, "that you +have no religious instruction in your schools?" On my replying in the +negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I +shall not easily forget, he repeated "No religion! How do you impart +moral education?" The question stunned me at the time. I could give no +ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, +were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the +different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find +that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils. + +The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries +put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs +prevail in Japan. + +In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my +wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and Bushido,[1] the +moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume. + +[Footnote 1: Pronounced _Boo-shee-doh'_. In putting Japanese words and +names into English, Hepburn's rule is followed, that the vowels should +be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in English.] + +Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put +down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given +in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught +and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force. + +Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest +Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging +to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over +them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while +these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I +have often thought,--"Had I their gift of language, I would present the +cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!" But one who speaks in a borrowed +tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible. + +All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I +have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, +believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the +comprehension of foreign readers. + +Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious +workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity +itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and +with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the +teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the +religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as +well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God +hath made a testament which maybe called "old" with every people and +nation,--Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my +theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public. + +In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend +Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the +characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this +book. + +INAZO NITOBE. + +Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899. + + + + +PREFACE + + +TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION + +Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, +this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has +passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth +appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be +issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of +Messrs. George H. Putnam's Sons, of New York. + +In the meantime, _Bushido_ has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev +of Khandesh, into German by Fraeulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian +by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life +in Lemberg,--although this Polish edition has been censured by the +Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into +French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian +officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for +the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian +public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been +published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger +students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also +owe much for his aid in other ways. + +I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found +sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the +subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly +flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that +President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and +distributing several dozens of copies among his friends. + +In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have +largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, +as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on +Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot +of Japanese ethics--Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather +to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular +virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot +draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge +upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are +touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and +discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger +than it is. + +This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt +I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful +suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement. + +I.N. + +Kyoto, +Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Bushido as an Ethical System + +Sources of Bushido + +Rectitude or Justice + +Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing + +Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress + +Politeness + +Veracity or Truthfulness + +Honor + +The Duty of Loyalty + +Education and Training of a Samurai + +Self-Control + +The Institutions of Suicide and Redress + +The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai + +The Training and Position of Woman + +The Influence of Bushido + +Is Bushido Still Alive? + +The Future of Bushido + + + + +BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM. + + +Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its +emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique +virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living +object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape +or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware +that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society +which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as +those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed +their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of +feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother +institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the +language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the +neglected bier of its European prototype. + +It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so +erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that +chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either +among the nations of antiquity or among the modern Orientals.[2] Such +ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good +Doctor's work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking +at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the +time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx, +writing his "Capital," called the attention of his readers to the +peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of +feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would +likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study +of chivalry in the Japan of the present. + +[Footnote 2: _History Philosophically Illustrated_, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol. +II, p. 2.] + +Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between +European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of +this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate, +_firstly_, the origin and sources of our chivalry; _secondly_, its +character and teaching; _thirdly_, its influence among the masses; and, +_fourthly_, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these +several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I +should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national +history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most +likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative +Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt +with as corollaries. + +The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the +original, more expressive than Horsemanship. _Bu-shi-do_ means literally +Military-Knight-Ways--the ways which fighting nobles should observe in +their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the "Precepts +of Knighthood," the _noblesse oblige_ of the warrior class. Having thus +given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the +word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable +for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, +engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must +wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a +national _timbre_ so expressive of race characteristics that the best of +translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice +and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German "_Gemueth_" +signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words +verbally so closely allied as the English _gentleman_ and the French +_gentilhomme_? + +Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were +required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it +consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from +the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a +code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful +sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets +of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however +able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an +organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, +fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English +Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to +compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in +the seventeenth century Military Statutes (_Buke Hatto_) were +promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with +marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but +meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time +and place and say, "Here is its fountain head." Only as it attains +consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be +identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many +threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the +political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman +Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the +ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in +England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period +previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in +Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned. + +Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, +the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These +were known as _samurai_, meaning literally, like the old English _cniht_ +(knecht, knight), guards or attendants--resembling in character the +_soldurii_ whom Caesar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the +_comitati_, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his +time; or, to take a still later parallel, the _milites medii_ that one +reads about in the history of Mediaeval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word +_Bu-ke_ or _Bu-shi_ (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. +They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough +breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally +recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and +the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went +on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only "a rude race, +all masculine, with brutish strength," to borrow Emerson's phrase, +surviving to form families and the ranks of the _samurai_. Coming to +profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great +responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of +behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and +belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among +themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of +honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some +resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors. + +Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive +sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and +civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire +of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, "to leave behind him the name of a +fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one." +And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which +moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even +so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions +endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom's is the basis on which the +greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to +discover that _Bushido_ does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting +in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, +brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, "We know from what +failings our virtue springs."[3] "Sneaks" and "cowards" are epithets of +the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life +with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and +its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher +authority and more rational sources for its own justification, +satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone, +without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal +of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with +concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with +spiritual data. "Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a +perfect Christian knight," says Lamartine. In Japan there were several + + + +SOURCES OF BUSHIDO, + +of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust +in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in +sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with +death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil +master the utmost of his art, told him, "Beyond this my instruction must +give way to Zen teaching." "Zen" is the Japanese equivalent for the +Dhyana, which "represents human effort to reach through meditation zones +of thought beyond the range of verbal expression."[4] Its method is +contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be +convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can, +of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this +Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect, +and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself +above mundane things and awakes, "to a new Heaven and a new Earth." + +[Footnote 3: Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace loving +men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the fervor of a +worshiper of the strenuous life. "When I tell you," he says in the +_Crown of Wild Olive_, "that war is the foundation of all the arts, I +mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and +faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very +dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. * * * I found in +brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength +of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace, +taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by +peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."] + +[Footnote 4: Lafcadio Hearn, _Exotics and Retrospectives_, p. 84.] + +What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such +loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such +filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by +the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant +character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of +"original sin." On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and +God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which +divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto +shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, +and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part +of its furnishing. The presence of this article, is easy to explain: it +typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, +reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in +front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its +shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic +injunction, "Know Thyself." But self-knowledge does not imply, either in +the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, +not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral +kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the +Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his +eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter +veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman +conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so +much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its +nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its +ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial +family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more +than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain--it is the +sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the +Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a _Rechtsstaat_, or even the +Patron of a _Culturstaat_--he is the bodily representative of Heaven on +earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M. +Boutmy[5] says is true of English royalty--that it "is not only the +image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity," as I +believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in +Japan. + +[Footnote 5: _The English People_, p. 188.] + +The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the +emotional life of our race--Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp +very truly says: "In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell +whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven +or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself."[6] A similar +confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith. +I said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect +on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of +national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a +systematic philosophy or a rational theology. This religion--or, is +it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion +expressed?--thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and +love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for +Shintoism, unlike the Mediaeval Christian Church, prescribed to its +votaries scarcely any _credenda_, furnishing them at the same time with +_agenda_ of a straightforward and simple type. + +[Footnote 6: "_Feudal and Modern Japan_" Vol. I, p. 183.] + +As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the +most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral +relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed), +father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between +friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had +recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm, +benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts +was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling +class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the +requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius +exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often +quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic +natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the +existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under +censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment +in the heart of the samurai. + +The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books +for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere +acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in +no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an +intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant +of _Analects_. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling +sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be +boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little +smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more +so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge +becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the +learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was +considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to +ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike +spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley, +that the cosmic process was unmoral. + +Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in +itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who +stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient +machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, +knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in +life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the +Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, "To +know and to act are one and the same." + +I beg leave for a moment's digression while I am on this subject, +inasmuch as some of the noblest types of _bushi_ were strongly +influenced by the teachings of this sage. Western readers will easily +recognize in his writings many parallels to the New Testament. Making +allowance for the terms peculiar to either teaching, the passage, "Seek +ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things +shall be added unto you," conveys a thought that may be found on almost +any page of Wan Yang Ming. A Japanese disciple[7] of his says--"The lord +of heaven and earth, of all living beings, dwelling in the heart of man, +becomes his mind (_Kokoro_); hence a mind is a living thing, and is ever +luminous:" and again, "The spiritual light of our essential being is +pure, and is not affected by the will of man. Spontaneously springing up +in our mind, it shows what is right and wrong: it is then called +conscience; it is even the light that proceedeth from the god of +heaven." How very much do these words sound like some passages from +Isaac Pennington or other philosophic mystics! I am inclined to think +that the Japanese mind, as expressed in the simple tenets of the Shinto +religion, was particularly open to the reception of Yang Ming's +precepts. He carried his doctrine of the infallibility of conscience to +extreme transcendentalism, attributing to it the faculty to perceive, +not only the distinction between right and wrong, but also the nature +of psychical facts and physical phenomena. He went as far as, if not +farther than, Berkeley and Fichte, in Idealism, denying the existence of +things outside of human ken. If his system had all the logical errors +charged to Solipsism, it had all the efficacy of strong conviction and +its moral import in developing individuality of character and equanimity +of temper cannot be gainsaid. + +[Footnote 7: Miwa Shissai.] + +Thus, whatever the sources, the essential principles which _Bushido_ +imbibed from them and assimilated to itself, were few and simple. Few +and simple as these were, they were sufficient to furnish a safe conduct +of life even through the unsafest days of the most unsettled period of +our nation's history. The wholesome, unsophisticated nature of our +warrior ancestors derived ample food for their spirit from a sheaf of +commonplace and fragmentary teachings, gleaned as it were on the +highways and byways of ancient thought, and, stimulated by the demands +of the age, formed from these gleanings anew and unique type of manhood. +An acute French _savant_, M. de la Mazeliere, thus sums up his +impressions of the sixteenth century:--"Toward the middle of the +sixteenth century, all is confusion in Japan, in the government, in +society, in the church. But the civil wars, the manners returning to +barbarism, the necessity for each to execute justice for himself,--these +formed men comparable to those Italians of the sixteenth century, in +whom Taine praises 'the vigorous initiative, the habit of sudden +resolutions and desperate undertakings, the grand capacity to do and to +suffer.' In Japan as in Italy 'the rude manners of the Middle Ages made +of man a superb animal, wholly militant and wholly resistant.' And this +is why the sixteenth century displays in the highest degree the +principal quality of the Japanese race, that great diversity which one +finds there between minds (_esprits_) as well as between temperaments. +While in India and even in China men seem to differ chiefly in degree of +energy or intelligence, in Japan they differ by originality of character +as well. Now, individuality is the sign of superior races and of +civilizations already developed. If we make use of an expression dear to +Nietzsche, we might say that in Asia, to speak of humanity is to speak +of its plains; in Japan as in Europe, one represents it above all by its +mountains." + +To the pervading characteristics of the men of whom M. de la Mazeliere +writes, let us now address ourselves. I shall begin with + + + +RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE, + +the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai. Nothing is more +loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked undertakings. The +conception of Rectitude may be erroneous--it may be narrow. A well-known +bushi defines it as a power of resolution;--"Rectitude is the power of +deciding upon a certain course of conduct in accordance with reason, +without wavering;--to die when it is right to die, to strike when to +strike is right." Another speaks of it in the following terms: +"Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness and stature. As without +bones the head cannot rest on the top of the spine, nor hands move nor +feet stand, so without rectitude neither talent nor learning can make of +a human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as +nothing." Mencius calls Benevolence man's mind, and Rectitude or +Righteousness his path. "How lamentable," he exclaims, "is it to neglect +the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it +again! When men's fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them +again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it." Have we +not here "as in a glass darkly" a parable propounded three hundred years +later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, who called Himself _the +Way_ of Righteousness, through whom the lost could be found? But I stray +from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius, is a straight and +narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the lost paradise. + +Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of peace +brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it +dissipations of all kinds and gentle accomplishments, the epithet +_Gishi_ (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any name that +signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven Faithfuls--of whom +so much is made in our popular education--are known in common parlance +as the Forty-seven _Gishi_. + +In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and +downright falsehood for _ruse de guerre_, this manly virtue, frank and +honest, was a jewel that shone the brightest and was most highly +praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to Valor, another martial virtue. +But before proceeding to speak of Valor, let me linger a little while on +what I may term a derivation from Rectitude, which, at first deviating +slightly from its original, became more and more removed from it, until +its meaning was perverted in the popular acceptance. I speak of _Gi-ri_, +literally the Right Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense +of duty which public opinion expected an incumbent to fulfil. In its +original and unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,--hence, +we speak of the _Giri_ we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to +society at large, and so forth. In these instances _Giri_ is duty; for +what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. +Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative? + +_Giri_ primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its etymology +was derived from the fact that in our conduct, say to our parents, +though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must be +some other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated +this authority in _Giri_. Very rightly did they formulate this +authority--_Giri--since if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, +recourse must be had to man's intellect and his reason must be quickened +to convince him of the necessity of acting aright. The same is true of +any other moral obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous. Right +Reason steps in to prevent our shirking it. _Giri_ thus understood is a +severe taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards +perform their part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it +is infinitely inferior to the Christian doctrine of love, which should +be _the_ law. I deem it a product of the conditions of an artificial +society--of a society in which accident of birth and unmerited favour +instituted class distinctions, in which the family was the social unit, +in which seniority of age was of more account than superiority of +talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb before +arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, _Giri_ +in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to explain +this and sanction that,--as, for example, why a mother must, if need be, +sacrifice all her other children in order to save the first-born; or why +a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay for the father's +dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, _Giri_ has, in my +opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into +cowardly fear of censure. I might say of _Giri_ what Scott wrote of +patriotism, that "as it is the fairest, so it is often the most +suspicious, mask of other feelings." Carried beyond or below Right +Reason, _Giri_ became a monstrous misnomer. It harbored under its wings +every sort of sophistry and hypocrisy. It might easily--have been turned +into a nest of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of + + + +COURAGE, THE SPIRIT OF DARING +AND BEARING, + +to the consideration of which we shall now return. Courage was scarcely +deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in +the cause of Righteousness. In his "Analects" Confucius defines Courage +by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. "Perceiving +what is right," he says, "and doing it not, argues lack of courage." Put +this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, "Courage is doing +what is right." To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one's self, +to rush into the jaws of death--these are too often identified with +Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct--what +Shakespeare calls, "valor misbegot"--is unjustly applauded; but not so +in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, +was called a "dog's death." "To rush into the thick of battle and to be +slain in it," says a Prince of Mito, "is easy enough, and the merest +churl is equal to the task; but," he continues, "it is true courage to +live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die," +and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines +courage as "the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he +should not fear." A distinction which is made in the West between moral +and physical courage has long been recognized among us. What samurai +youth has not heard of "Great Valor" and the "Valor of a Villein?" + +Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of +soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be +trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular +virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits +were repeated almost before boys left their mother's breast. Does a +little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: +"What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your +arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit +_harakiri_?" We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little +boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little +page, "Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow +bills are opened wide, and now see! there comes their mother with worms +to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! but for a +samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger." +Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though +stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of early +imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness. Parents, with sternness +sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called +forth all the pluck that was in them. "Bears hurl their cubs down the +gorge," they said. Samurai's sons were let down the steep valleys of +hardship, and spurred to Sisyphus-like tasks. Occasional deprivation of +food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for +inuring them to endurance. Children of tender age were sent among utter +strangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the +sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to +their teacher with bare feet in the cold of winter; they +frequently--once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of +learning,--came together in small groups and passed the night without +sleep, in reading aloud by turns. Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny +places--to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed to be +haunted, were favorite pastimes of the young. In the days when +decapitation was public, not only were small boys sent to witness the +ghastly scene, but they were made to visit alone the place in the +darkness of night and there to leave a mark of their visit on the +trunkless head. + +Does this ultra-Spartan system of "drilling the nerves" strike the +modern pedagogist with horror and doubt--doubt whether the tendency +would not be brutalizing, nipping in the bud the tender emotions of the +heart? Let us see what other concepts Bushido had of Valor. + +The spiritual aspect of valor is evidenced by composure--calm presence +of mind. Tranquillity is courage in repose. It is a statical +manifestation of valor, as daring deeds are a dynamical. A truly brave +man is ever serene; he is never taken by surprise; nothing ruffles the +equanimity of his spirit. In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the +midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind. Earthquakes do not shake +him, he laughs at storms. We admire him as truly great, who, in the +menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; who, +for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril or hum a strain +in the face of death. Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing +or in the voice, is taken as an infallible index of a large nature--of +what we call a capacious mind (_yoy[=u]_), which, for from being pressed +or crowded, has always room for something more. + +It passes current among us as a piece of authentic history, that as +[=O]ta Dokan, the great builder of the castle of Tokyo, was pierced +through with a spear, his assassin, knowing the poetical predilection of +his victim, accompanied his thrust with this couplet-- + + "Ah! how in moments like these + Our heart doth grudge the light of life;" + +whereupon the expiring hero, not one whit daunted by the mortal wound in +his side, added the lines-- + + "Had not in hours of peace, + It learned to lightly look on life." + +There is even a sportive element in a courageous nature. Things which +are serious to ordinary people, may be but play to the valiant. Hence in +old warfare it was not at all rare for the parties to a conflict to +exchange repartee or to begin a rhetorical contest. Combat was not +solely a matter of brute force; it was, as, well, an intellectual +engagement. + +Of such character was the battle fought on the bank of the Koromo River, +late in the eleventh century. The eastern army routed, its leader, +Sadato, took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and +called aloud--"It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the +enemy," Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted +an impromptu verse-- + + "Torn into shreds is the warp of the cloth" (_koromo_). + +Scarcely had the words escaped his lips when the defeated warrior, +undismayed, completed the couplet-- + + "Since age has worn its threads by use." + +Yoshiie, whose bow had all the while been bent, suddenly unstrung it and +turned away, leaving his prospective victim to do as he pleased. When +asked the reason of his strange behavior, he replied that he could not +bear to put to shame one who had kept his presence of mind while hotly +pursued by his enemy. + +The sorrow which overtook Antony and Octavius at the death of Brutus, +has been the general experience of brave men. Kenshin, who fought for +fourteen years with Shingen, when he heard of the latter's death, wept +aloud at the loss of "the best of enemies." It was this same Kenshin who +had set a noble example for all time, in his treatment of Shingen, whose +provinces lay in a mountainous region quite away from the sea, and who +had consequently depended upon the H[=o]j[=o] provinces of the Tokaido +for salt. The H[=o]j[=o] prince wishing to weaken him, although not +openly at war with him, had cut off from Shingen all traffic in this +important article. Kenshin, hearing of his enemy's dilemma and able to +obtain his salt from the coast of his own dominions, wrote Shingen that +in his opinion the H[=o]j[=o] lord had committed a very mean act, and +that although he (Kenshin) was at war with him (Shingen) he had ordered +his subjects to furnish him with plenty of salt--adding, "I do not fight +with salt, but with the sword," affording more than a parallel to the +words of Camillus, "We Romans do not fight with gold, but with iron." +Nietzsche spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, "You are to be +proud of your enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success +also." Indeed valor and honor alike required that we should own as +enemies in war only such as prove worthy of being friends in peace. When +valor attains this height, it becomes akin to + + + +BENEVOLENCE, THE FEELING OF +DISTRESS, + +love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, which were +ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes +of the human soul. Benevolence was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold +sense;--princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; +princely as particularly befitting a princely profession. We needed no +Shakespeare to feel--though, perhaps, like the rest of the world, we +needed him to express it--that mercy became a monarch better than his +crown, that it was above his sceptered sway. How often both Confucius +and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist +in benevolence. Confucius would say, "Let but a prince cultivate virtue, +people will flock to him; with people will come to him lands; lands will +bring forth for him wealth; wealth will give him the benefit of right +uses. Virtue is the root, and wealth an outcome." Again, "Never has +there been a case of a sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not +loving righteousness," Mencius follows close at his heels and says, +"Instances are on record where individuals attained to supreme power +in a single state, without benevolence, but never have I heard of a +whole empire falling into the hands of one who lacked this virtue." +Also,--"It is impossible that any one should become ruler of the +people to whom they have not yielded the subjection of their hearts." +Both defined this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, +"Benevolence--Benevolence is Man." Under the regime of feudalism, which +could easily be perverted into militarism, it was to Benevolence that +we owed our deliverance from despotism of the worst kind. An utter +surrender of "life and limb" on the part of the governed would have left +nothing for the governing but self-will, and this has for its natural +consequence the growth of that absolutism so often called "oriental +despotism,"--as though there were no despots of occidental history! + +Let it be far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a +mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote +that "Kings are the first servants of the State," jurists thought +rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. +Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western Japan, +Yozan of Yonezawa made exactly the same declaration, showing that +feudalism was not all tyranny and oppression. A feudal prince, although +unmindful of owing reciprocal obligations to his vassals, felt a higher +sense of responsibility to his ancestors and to Heaven. He was a father +to his subjects, whom Heaven entrusted to his care. In a sense not +usually assigned to the term, Bushido accepted and corroborated paternal +government--paternal also as opposed to the less interested avuncular +government (Uncle Sam's, to wit!). The difference between a despotic and +a paternal government lies in this, that in the one the people obey +reluctantly, while in the other they do so with "that proud submission, +that dignified obedience, that subordination of heart which kept alive, +even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted freedom."[8] The old +saying is not entirely false which called the king of England the "king +of devils, because of his subjects' often insurrections against, and +depositions of, their princes," and which made the French monarch the +"king of asses, because of their infinite taxes and Impositions," but +which gave the title of "the king of men" to the sovereign of Spain +"because of his subjects' willing obedience." But enough!-- + +[Footnote 8: Burke, _French Revolution_.] + +Virtue and absolute power may strike the Anglo-Saxon mind as terms which +it is impossible to harmonize. Pobyedonostseff has clearly set before us +the contrast in the foundations of English and other European +communities; namely that these were organized on the basis of common +interest, while that was distinguished by a strongly developed +independent personality. What this Russian statesman says of the +personal dependence of individuals on some social alliance and in the +end of ends of the State, among the continental nations of Europe and +particularly among Slavonic peoples, is doubly true of the Japanese. +Hence not only is a free exercise of monarchical power not felt as +heavily by us as in Europe, but it is generally moderated by parental +consideration for the feelings of the people. "Absolutism," says +Bismarck, "primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty, +devotion to duty, energy and inward humility." If I may be allowed to +make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of +the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of "Kingship, by the +grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to +the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can +release the monarch." + +We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright +Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the +gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned +against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with +justice and rectitude. Masamune expressed it well in his oft-quoted +aphorism--"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; +Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness." + +Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is +universally true that "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the +daring." "_Bushi no nasake_"--the tenderness of a warrior--had a sound +which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy +of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other +being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, +but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not +remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with +power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual +or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual, +since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the +recipient. + +Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to +turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius +taught concerning the power of Love. "Benevolence," he says, "brings +under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: +they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to +extinguish with a cupful a whole burning wagon-load of fagots." He also +says that "the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence, therefore +a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in +distress." Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his +ethical philosophy on Sympathy. + +It is indeed striking how closely the code of knightly honor of one +country coincides with that of others; in other words, how the much +abused oriental ideas of morals find their counterparts in the noblest +maxims of European literature. If the well-known lines, + + Hae tibi erunt artes--pacisque imponere morem, + Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos, + +were shown a Japanese gentleman, he might readily accuse the Mantuan +bard of plagiarizing from the literature of his own country. Benevolence +to the weak, the downtrodden or the vanquished, was ever extolled as +peculiarly becoming to a samurai. Lovers of Japanese art must be +familiar with the representation of a priest riding backwards on a cow. +The rider was once a warrior who in his day made his name a by-word of +terror. In that terrible battle of Sumano-ura, (1184 A.D.), which was +one of the most decisive in our history, he overtook an enemy and in +single combat had him in the clutch of his gigantic arms. Now the +etiquette of war required that on such occasions no blood should be +spilt, unless the weaker party proved to be a man of rank or ability +equal to that of the stronger. The grim combatant would have the name of +the man under him; but he refusing to make it known, his helmet was +ruthlessly torn off, when the sight of a juvenile face, fair and +beardless, made the astonished knight relax his hold. Helping the youth +to his feet, in paternal tones he bade the stripling go: "Off, young +prince, to thy mother's side! The sword of Kumagaye shall never be +tarnished by a drop of thy blood. Haste and flee o'er yon pass before +thy enemies come in sight!" The young warrior refused to go and begged +Kumagaye, for the honor of both, to despatch him on the spot. Above the +hoary head of the veteran gleams the cold blade, which many a time +before has sundered the chords of life, but his stout heart quails; +there flashes athwart his mental eye the vision of his own boy, who this +self-same day marched to the sound of bugle to try his maiden arms; the +strong hand of the warrior quivers; again he begs his victim to flee for +his life. Finding all his entreaties vain and hearing the approaching +steps of his comrades, he exclaims: "If thou art overtaken, thou mayest +fall at a more ignoble hand than mine. O, thou Infinite! receive his +soul!" In an instant the sword flashes in the air, and when it falls it +is red with adolescent blood. When the war is ended, we find our soldier +returning in triumph, but little cares he now for honor or fame; he +renounces his warlike career, shaves his head, dons a priestly garb, +devotes the rest of his days to holy pilgrimage, never turning his back +to the West, where lies the Paradise whence salvation comes and whither +the sun hastes daily for his rest. + +Critics may point out flaws in this story, which is casuistically +vulnerable. Let it be: all the same it shows that Tenderness, Pity and +Love, were traits which adorned the most sanguinary exploits of the +samurai. It was an old maxim among them that "It becometh not the fowler +to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom." This in a large +measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered peculiarly +Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us. For decades before +we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had +familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe. In the +principality of Satsuma, noted for its martial spirit and education, the +custom prevailed for young men to practice music; not the blast of +trumpets or the beat of drums,--"those clamorous harbingers of blood and +death"--stirring us to imitate the actions of a tiger, but sad and +tender melodies on the _biwa_,[9] soothing our fiery spirits, drawing +our thoughts away from scent of blood and scenes of carnage. Polybius +tells us of the Constitution of Arcadia, which required all youths +under thirty to practice music, in order that this gentle art might +alleviate the rigors of that inclement region. It is to its influence +that he attributes the absence of cruelty in that part of the Arcadian +mountains. + +[Footnote 9: A musical instrument, resembling the guitar.] + +Nor was Satsuma the only place in Japan where gentleness was inculcated +among the warrior class. A Prince of Shirakawa jots down his random +thoughts, and among them is the following: "Though they come stealing to +your bedside in the silent watches of the night, drive not away, but +rather cherish these--the fragrance of flowers, the sound of distant +bells, the insect humming of a frosty night." And again, "Though they +may wound your feelings, these three you have only to forgive, the +breeze that scatters your flowers, the cloud that hides your moon, and +the man who tries to pick quarrels with you." + +It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler +emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged. Our poetry has +therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness. A well-known +anecdote of a rustic samurai illustrates a case in point. When he was +told to learn versification, and "The Warbler's Notes"[10] was given him +for the subject of his first attempt, his fiery spirit rebelled and he +_flung_ at the feet of his master this uncouth production, which ran + +[Footnote 10: The uguisu or warbler, sometimes called the nightingale of +Japan.] + + "The brave warrior keeps apart + The ear that might listen + To the warbler's song." + +His master, undaunted by the crude sentiment, continued to encourage the +youth, until one day the music of his soul was awakened to respond to +the sweet notes of the _uguisu_, and he wrote + + "Stands the warrior, mailed and strong, + To hear the uguisu's song, + Warbled sweet the trees among." + +We admire and enjoy the heroic incident in Koerner's short life, when, as +he lay wounded on the battle-field, he scribbled his famous "Farewell to +Life." Incidents of a similar kind were not at all unusual in our +warfare. Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to +the improvisation of a single sentiment. Everybody of any education was +either a poet or a poetaster. Not infrequently a marching soldier might +be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an +ode,--and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the +breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers. + +What Christianity has done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the +midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in +Japan. The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for +the sufferings of others. Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect +for others' feelings, are at the root of + + + +POLITENESS, + +that courtesy and urbanity of manners which has been noticed by every +foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait. Politeness is a poor virtue, +if it is actuated only by a fear of offending good taste, whereas it +should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the +feelings of others. It also implies a due regard for the fitness of +things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter +express no plutocratic distinctions, but were originally distinctions +for actual merit. + +In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love. We may +reverently say, politeness "suffereth long, and is kind; envieth not, +vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unseemly, +seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, taketh not account of +evil." Is it any wonder that Professor Dean, in speaking of the six +elements of Humanity, accords to Politeness an exalted position, +inasmuch as it is the ripest fruit of social intercourse? + +While thus extolling Politeness, far be it from me to put it in the +front rank of virtues. If we analyze it, we shall find it correlated +with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone? +While--or rather because--it was exalted as peculiar to the profession +of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there +came into existence its counterfeits. Confucius himself has repeatedly +taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as +sounds are of music. + +When propriety was elevated to the _sine qua non_ of social intercourse, +it was only to be expected that an elaborate system of etiquette should +come into vogue to train youth in correct social behavior. How one must +bow in accosting others, how he must walk and sit, were taught and +learned with utmost care. Table manners grew to be a science. Tea +serving and drinking were raised to a ceremony. A man of education is, +of course, expected to be master of all these. Very fitly does Mr. +Veblen, in his interesting book,[11] call decorum "a product and an +exponent of the leisure-class life." + +[Footnote 11: _Theory of the Leisure Class_, N.Y. 1899, p. 46.] + +I have heard slighting remarks made by Europeans upon our elaborate +discipline of politeness. It has been criticized as absorbing too much +of our thought and in so far a folly to observe strict obedience to it. +I admit that there may be unnecessary niceties in ceremonious etiquette, +but whether it partakes as much of folly as the adherence to +ever-changing fashions of the West, is a question not very clear to my +mind. Even fashions I do not consider solely as freaks of vanity; on the +contrary, I look upon these as a ceaseless search of the human mind for +the beautiful. Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether +trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most +appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything +to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both +the most economical and the most graceful. Mr. Spencer defines grace as +the most economical manner of motion. The tea ceremony presents certain +definite ways of manipulating a bowl, a spoon, a napkin, etc. To a +novice it looks tedious. But one soon discovers that the way prescribed +is, after all, the most saving of time and labor; in other words, the +most economical use of force,--hence, according to Spencer's dictum, the +most graceful. + +The spiritual significance of social decorum,--or, I might say, to +borrow from the vocabulary of the "Philosophy of Clothes," the +spiritual discipline of which etiquette and ceremony are mere outward +garments,--is out of all proportion to what their appearance warrants us +in believing. I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our +ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave +rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavor to do in this book. +It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, +that I wish to emphasize. + +I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so +much so that different schools advocating different systems, came into +existence. But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was +put by a great exponent of the best known school of etiquette, the +Ogasawara, in the following terms: "The end of all etiquette is to so +cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the +roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person." It means, in other +words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the +parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such +harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of +spirit over the flesh. What a new and deep significance the French word +_bienseance_[12] comes thus to contain! + +[Footnote 12: Etymologically _well-seatedness_.] + +If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it +follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful +deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine +manners, therefore, mean power in repose. When the barbarian Gauls, +during the sack of Rome, burst into the assembled Senate and dared pull +the beards of the venerable Fathers, we think the old gentlemen were to +blame, inasmuch as they lacked dignity and strength of manners. Is lofty +spiritual attainment really possible through etiquette? Why not?--All +roads lead to Rome! + +As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then +become spiritual culture, I may take _Cha-no-yu_, the tea ceremony. +Tea-sipping as a fine art! Why should it not be? In the children drawing +pictures on the sand, or in the savage carving on a rock, was the +promise of a Raphael or a Michael Angelo. How much more is the drinking +of a beverage, which began with the transcendental contemplation of a +Hindoo anchorite, entitled to develop into a handmaid of Religion and +Morality? That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure +and quietness of demeanor, which are the first essentials of _Cha-no-yu_ +are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right +feeling. The scrupulous cleanliness of the little room, shut off from +sight and sound of the madding crowd, is in itself conducive to direct +one's thoughts from the world. The bare interior does not engross one's +attention like the innumerable pictures and bric-a-brac of a Western +parlor; the presence of _kakemono_[13] calls our attention more to grace +of design than to beauty of color. The utmost refinement of taste is the +object aimed at; whereas anything like display is banished with +religious horror. The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative +recluse, in a time when wars and the rumors of wars were incessant, is +well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime. +Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company +assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their +swords, the ferocity of the battle-field or the cares of government, +there to find peace and friendship. + +[Footnote 13: Hanging scrolls, which may be either paintings or +ideograms, used for decorative purposes.] + +_Cha-no-yu_ is more than a ceremony--it is a fine art; it is poetry, +with articulate gestures for rhythm: it is a _modus operandi_ of soul +discipline. Its greatest value lies in this last phase. Not infrequently +the other phases preponderated in the mind of its votaries, but that +does not prove that its essence was not of a spiritual nature. + +Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart +grace to manners; but its function does not stop here. For propriety, +springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and +actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever +a graceful expression of sympathy. Its requirement is that we should +weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice. Such +didactic requirement, when reduced into small every-day details of life, +expresses itself in little acts scarcely noticeable, or, if noticed, is, +as one missionary lady of twenty years' residence once said to me, +"awfully funny." You are out in the hot glaring sun with no shade over +you; a Japanese acquaintance passes by; you accost him, and instantly +his hat is off--well, that is perfectly natural, but the "awfully funny" +performance is, that all the while he talks with you his parasol is down +and he stands in the glaring sun also. How foolish!--Yes, exactly so, +provided the motive were less than this: "You are in the sun; I +sympathize with you; I would willingly take you under my parasol if it +were large enough, or if we were familiarly acquainted; as I cannot +shade you, I will share your discomforts." Little acts of this kind, +equally or more amusing, are not mere gestures or conventionalities. +They are the "bodying forth" of thoughtful feelings for the comfort of +others. + +Another "awfully funny" custom is dictated by our canons of Politeness; +but many superficial writers on Japan, have dismissed it by simply +attributing it to the general topsy-turvyness of the nation. Every +foreigner who has observed it will confess the awkwardness he felt in +making proper reply upon the occasion. In America, when you make a gift, +you sing its praises to the recipient; in Japan we depreciate or slander +it. The underlying idea with you is, "This is a nice gift: if it were +not nice I would not dare give it to you; for it will be an insult to +give you anything but what is nice." In contrast to this, our logic +runs: "You are a nice person, and no gift is nice enough for you. You +will not accept anything I can lay at your feet except as a token of my +good will; so accept this, not for its intrinsic value, but as a token. +It will be an insult to your worth to call the best gift good enough for +you." Place the two ideas side by side; and we see that the ultimate +idea is one and the same. Neither is "awfully funny." The American +speaks of the material which makes the gift; the Japanese speaks of the +spirit which prompts the gift. + +It is perverse reasoning to conclude, because our sense of propriety +shows itself in all the smallest ramifications of our deportment, to +take the least important of them and uphold it as the type, and pass +judgment upon the principle itself. Which is more important, to eat or +to observe rules of propriety about eating? A Chinese sage answers, "If +you take a case where the eating is all-important, and the observing the +rules of propriety is of little importance, and compare them together, +why merely say that the eating is of the more importance?" "Metal is +heavier than feathers," but does that saying have reference to a single +clasp of metal and a wagon-load of feathers? Take a piece of wood a foot +thick and raise it above the pinnacle of a temple, none would call it +taller than the temple. To the question, "Which is the more important, +to tell the truth or to be polite?" the Japanese are said to give an +answer diametrically opposite to what the American will say,--but I +forbear any comment until I come to speak of + + + +VERACITY OR TRUTHFULNESS, + +without which Politeness is a farce and a show. "Propriety carried +beyond right bounds," says Masamune, "becomes a lie." An ancient poet +has outdone Polonius in the advice he gives: "To thyself be faithful: if +in thy heart thou strayest not from truth, without prayer of thine the +Gods will keep thee whole." The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Tsu-tsu +gives expression in the _Doctrine of the Mean_, attributes to it +transcendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine. +"Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity +there would be nothing." He then dwells with eloquence on its +far-reaching and long enduring nature, its power to produce changes +without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose +without effort. From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a +combination of "Word" and "Perfect," one is tempted to draw a parallel +between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of _Logos_--to such height +does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight. + +Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly. The bushi held that +his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than +that of the tradesman and peasant. _Bushi no ichi-gon_--the word of a +samurai or in exact German equivalent _ein Ritterwort_--was sufficient +guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such +weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a +written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity. +Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for +_ni-gon_, a double tongue. + +The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of +Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher +not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to +their honor. I am well aware that they did swear by different deities or +upon their swords; but never has swearing degenerated into wanton form +and irreverent interjection. To emphasize our words a practice of +literally sealing with blood was sometimes resorted to. For the +explanation of such a practice, I need only refer my readers to Goethe's +Faust. + +A recent American writer is responsible for this statement, that if you +ask an ordinary Japanese which is better, to tell a falsehood or be +impolite, he will not hesitate to answer "to tell a falsehood!" Dr. +Peery[14] is partly right and partly wrong; right in that an ordinary +Japanese, even a samurai, may answer in the way ascribed to him, but +wrong in attributing too much weight to the term he translates +"falsehood." This word (in Japanese _uso_) is employed to denote +anything which is not a truth (_makoto_) or fact (_honto_). Lowell tells +us that Wordsworth could not distinguish between truth and fact, and an +ordinary Japanese is in this respect as good as Wordsworth. Ask a +Japanese, or even an American of any refinement, to tell you whether he +dislikes you or whether he is sick at his stomach, and he will not +hesitate long to tell falsehoods and answer, "I like you much," or, "I +am quite well, thank you." To sacrifice truth merely for the sake of +politeness was regarded as an "empty form" (_kyo-rei_) and "deception by +sweet words," and was never justified. + +[Footnote 14: Peery, _The Gist of Japan_, p. 86.] + +I own I am speaking now of the Bushido idea of veracity; but it may not +be amiss to devote a few words to our commercial integrity, of which I +have heard much complaint in foreign books and journals. A loose +business morality has indeed been the worst blot on our national +reputation; but before abusing it or hastily condemning the whole race +for it, let us calmly study it and we shall be rewarded with consolation +for the future. + +Of all the great occupations of life, none was farther removed from the +profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the +category of vocations,--the knight, the tiller of the soil, the +mechanic, the merchant. The samurai derived his income from land and +could even indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the +counter and abacus were abhorred. We knew the wisdom of this social +arrangement. Montesquieu has made it clear that the debarring of the +nobility from mercantile pursuits was an admirable social policy, in +that it prevented wealth from accumulating in the hands of the powerful. +The separation of power and riches kept the distribution of the latter +more nearly equable. Professor Dill, the author of "Roman Society in the +Last Century of the Western Empire," has brought afresh to our mind that +one cause of the decadence of the Roman Empire, was the permission given +to the nobility to engage in trade, and the consequent monopoly of +wealth and power by a minority of the senatorial families. + +Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of +development which it would have attained under freer conditions. The +obloquy attached to the calling naturally brought within its pale such +as cared little for social repute. "Call one a thief and he will steal:" +put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it, +for it is natural that "the normal conscience," as Hugh Black says, +"rises to the demands made on it, and easily falls to the limit of the +standard expected from it." It is unnecessary to add that no business, +commercial or otherwise, can be transacted without a code of morals. Our +merchants of the feudal period had one among themselves, without which +they could never have developed, as they did, such fundamental +mercantile institutions as the guild, the bank, the bourse, insurance, +checks, bills of exchange, etc.; but in their relations with people +outside their vocation, the tradesmen lived too true to the reputation +of their order. + +This being the case, when the country was opened to foreign trade, only +the most adventurous and unscrupulous rushed to the ports, while the +respectable business houses declined for some time the repeated requests +of the authorities to establish branch houses. Was Bushido powerless to +stay the current of commercial dishonor? Let us see. + +Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a +few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, +feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai's fiefs were taken +and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to +invest them in mercantile transactions. Now you may ask, "Why could they +not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations +and so reform the old abuses?" Those who had eyes to see could not weep +enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with +the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably +failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through +sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival. When +we know that eighty per cent. of the business houses fail in so +industrial a country as America, is it any wonder that scarcely one +among a hundred samurai who went into trade could succeed in his new +vocation? It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes +were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; +but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth +were not the ways of honor. In what respects, then, were they different? + +Of the three incentives to Veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz: the +industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was +altogether lacking in Bushido. As to the second, it could develop little +in a political community under a feudal system. It is in its +philosophical, and as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that Honesty +attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues. With all my sincere +regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I +ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that "Honesty is the best +policy," that it _pays_ to be honest. Is not this virtue, then, its own +reward? If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, +I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies! + +If Bushido rejects a doctrine of _quid pro quo_ rewards, the shrewder +tradesman will readily accept it. Lecky has very truly remarked that +Veracity owes its growth largely to commerce and manufacture; as +Nietzsche puts it, "Honesty is the youngest of virtues"--in other +words, it is the foster-child of industry, of modern industry. Without +this mother, Veracity was like a blue-blood orphan whom only the most +cultivated mind could adopt and nourish. Such minds were general among +the samurai, but, for want of a more democratic and utilitarian +foster-mother, the tender child failed to thrive. Industries advancing, +Veracity will prove an easy, nay, a profitable, virtue to practice. Just +think, as late as November 1880, Bismarck sent a circular to the +professional consuls of the German Empire, warning them of "a lamentable +lack of reliability with regard to German shipments _inter alia_, +apparent both as to quality and quantity;" now-a-days we hear +comparatively little of German carelessness and dishonesty in trade. In +twenty years her merchants learned that in the end honesty pays. Already +our merchants are finding that out. For the rest I recommend the reader +to two recent writers for well-weighed judgment on this point.[15] It is +interesting to remark in this connection that integrity and honor were +the surest guaranties which even a merchant debtor could present in the +form of promissory notes. It was quite a usual thing to insert such +clauses as these: "In default of the repayment of the sum lent to me, I +shall say nothing against being ridiculed in public;" or, "In case I +fail to pay you back, you may call me a fool," and the like. + +[Footnote 15: Knapp, _Feudal and Modern Japan_, Vol. I, Ch. IV. Ransome, +_Japan in Transition_, Ch. VIII.] + +Often have I wondered whether the Veracity of Bushido had any motive +higher than courage. In the absence of any positive commandment against +bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as sin, but simply +denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonorable. As a matter of +fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and +its German etymology so identified with + + + +HONOR, + +that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration +of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood. + +The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity +and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to +value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word +ordinarily given now-a-days as the translation of Honor was not used +freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as _na_ (name) +_men-moku_ (countenance), _guai-bun_ (outside hearing), reminding us +respectively of the biblical use of "name," of the evolution of the term +"personality" from the Greek mask, and of "fame." A good name--one's +reputation, the immortal part of one's self, what remains being +bestial--assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its +integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (_Ren-chi-shin_) was +one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. "You will be +laughed at," "It will disgrace you," "Are you not ashamed?" were the +last appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. +Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the +child's heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while it was in its +mother's womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being +closely bound up with strong family consciousness. "In losing the +solidarity of families," says Balzac, "society has lost the fundamental +force which Montesquieu named Honor." Indeed, the sense of shame seems +to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of our +race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in +consequence of tasting "the fruit of that forbidden tree" was, to my +mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the +awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in +pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and +tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her +dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience +clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial +ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will +efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who +refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his +youth; "because," he said, "dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which +time, instead of effacing, only helps to enlarge." + +Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, +what Carlyle has latterly expressed,--namely, that "Shame is the soil of +all Virtue, of good manners and good morals." + +The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature lacks such +eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it nevertheless +hung like Damocles' sword over the head of every samurai and often +assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated +which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the +slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took +offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary +strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a +well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea +jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple +and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed +on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior +with a beast--I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe. +Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; (1) that they +were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made +of the samurai's profession of honor; and (3) that a very strong sense +of shame was developed among them. It is plainly unfair to take an +abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of +the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and +extravagance--inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania +there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium +tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai +about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine +virtue? + +The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined to +run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and patience. +To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as "short-tempered." +The popular adage said: "To bear what you think you cannot bear is +really to bear." The great Iyeyasu left to posterity a few maxims, +among which are the following:--"The life of man is like going a long +distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not. * * * * +Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. * * * +Forbearance is the basis of length of days." He proved in his life what +he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths +of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he +attributed, "I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;" to +Hideyoshi, "I will force her to sing for me;" and to Iyeyasu, "I will +wait till she opens her lips." + +Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In +one place he writes to this effect: "Though you denude yourself and +insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your +outrage." Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy +a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath. + +To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could +reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take, +for instance, this saying of Ogawa: "When others speak all manner of +evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect +that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties." Take +another of Kumazawa:--"When others blame thee, blame them not; when +others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion +and Desire part." Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon +whose overhanging brows "shame is ashamed to sit;"--"The Way is the way +of Heaven and Earth: Man's place is to follow it: therefore make it the +object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with +equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love +others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy +partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou +comest not short of thine own mark." Some of those sayings remind us of +Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality +natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings +remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts. + +It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of +magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing +clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few +enlightened minds being aware that it "from no condition rises," but +that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than +for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in +Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, "'Tis in every man's +mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly +honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men +confer is not good honor. Those whom Chao the Great ennobles, he can +make mean again." + +For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, +as we shall see later, while Honor--too often nothing higher than vain +glory or worldly approbation--was prized as the _summum bonum_ of +earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal +toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he +crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it +until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother +refused to see her sons again unless they could "return home," as the +expression is, "caparisoned in brocade." To shun shame or win a name, +samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals +of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows +with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyeyasu, in +spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at +the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept +so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the +resources at his command. "Take comfort, Sire," said he, "at thought of +the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there +will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself." The boy fixed his +indignant gaze upon the man and said--"How foolishly you talk! Can ever +my fourteenth year come round again?" + +Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained +therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered +dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down. + +Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to +sacrifice, was + + + +THE DUTY OF LOYALTY, + +which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other +virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics, +with other classes of people, but this virtue--homage and fealty to a +superior--is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity +is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,--a +gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the +code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance. + +In spite of Hegel's criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals, +being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a +bond established on totally unjust principles,[16] a great compatriot of +his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue. +Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the _Treue_ he boasts of +was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but +because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people +where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where "everybody is as +good as anybody else," and, as the Irishman added, "better too," such +exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed +"excellent within certain bounds," but preposterous as encouraged among +us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the +Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the +truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary +beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we +conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception +is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we +carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. Griffis[17] was +quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made +obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was +given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I +will relate of one "who could endure to follow a fall'n lord" and who +thus, as Shakespeare assures, "earned a place i' the story." + +[Footnote 16: _Philosophy of History_ (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV, +Sec. II, Ch. I.] + +[Footnote 17: _Religions of Japan_.] + +The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizane, +who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the +capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent +upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son--not yet +grown--reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept +by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizane. When orders are dispatched +to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a +certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He +ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the +boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children +born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protege. His +despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is +announced--a comely boy of the same age as his master's son, escorted by +a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between +infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In +the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his +life,--the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world. +Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom +comes the suggestion. + +Here, then, is the scape-goat!--The rest of the narrative may be briefly +told.--On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to +identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the +false head? The poor Genzo's hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to +strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination +defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him, +goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone, +pronounces it genuine.--That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother +we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for +his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the +wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of +Michizane's bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced +her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family's +benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but +his son could serve the cause of the grandsire's lord. As one acquainted +with the exile's family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task +of identifying the boy's head. Now the day's--yea, the life's--hard work +is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his +wife, saying: "Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service +to his lord!" + +"What an atrocious story!" I hear my readers exclaim,--"Parents +deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of +another man's." But this child was a conscious and willing victim: it is +a story of vicarious death--as significant as, and not more revolting +than, the story of Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases +it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of +a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or +heard by an outward or an inward ear;--but I abstain from preaching. + +The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for +father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief +the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest +of the family and of the members thereof is intact,--one and +inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection--natural, +instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural +love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? "For if ye love +them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the +same?" + +In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart +struggle of Shigemori concerning his father's rebellious conduct. "If I +be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my +sovereign must go amiss." Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying +with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may +be released from this world where it is hard for purity and +righteousness to dwell. + +Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and +affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself +contains an adequate rendering of _ko_, our conception of filial piety, +and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of +Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the +king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the +samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty. + +Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived +the state as antedating the individual--the latter being born into the +former as part and parcel thereof--he must live and die for it or for +the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will +remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the +city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he +makes them (the laws, or the state) say:--"Since you were begotten and +nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our +offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!" These are words +which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing +has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the +laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty +is an ethical outcome of this political theory. + +I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer's view according to which +political obedience--Loyalty--is accredited with only a transitional +function.[18] It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue +thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe _that_ +day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem +says, "tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss." We may +remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the +English, "the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity +which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has," as Monsieur +Boutmy recently said, "only passed more or less into their profound +loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their +extraordinary attachment to the dynasty." + +[Footnote 18: _Principles of Ethics_, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.] + +Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to +loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is +realized--will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence +disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to +another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a +ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch +who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a +very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer, +made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the +claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with +treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and +Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of +Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of the +Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, "serve two +masters without holding to the one or despising the other," "rendering +unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that +are God's." Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to +concede one iota of loyalty to his _daemon_, obey with equal fidelity +and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His +conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the +day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the +dictates of their conscience! + +Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord +or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said: + + "Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot. + My life thou shalt command, but not my shame. + The one my duty owes; but my fair name, + Despite of death, that lives upon my grave, + To dark dishonor's use, thou shalt not have." + +A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak +or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the +Precepts. Such an one was despised as _nei-shin_, a cringeling, who +makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as _cho-shin_, a favorite who +steals his master's affections by means of servile compliance; these two +species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago +describes,--the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his +own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master's ass; +the other trimm'd in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart +attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal +path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him +of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master +deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual +course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and +conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with +the shedding of his own blood. + +Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its +ideal being set upon honor, the whole + + + +EDUCATION AND TRAINING OF +A SAMURAI, + +were conducted accordingly. + +The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up +character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, +intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part aesthetic +accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a +man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai +training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the +word _Chi_, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom +in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate +place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be +_Chi_, _Jin_, _Yu_, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A +samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of +his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his +profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; +he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish +courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed "'tis not the creed +that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed." +Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual +training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth +that he strove after,--literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and +philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for +the exposition of some military or political problem. + +From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the +curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted +mainly of the following,--fencing, archery, _jiujutsu_ or _yawara_, +horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics, +literature and history. Of these, _jiujutsu_ and caligraphy may require +a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing, +probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of +pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was +accepted as indicative of one's personal character. _Jiujutsu_ may be +briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose +of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not +depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in +that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such +part of the enemy's body as will make him numb and incapable of +resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for +action for the time being. + +A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education +and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of +instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in +part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific +precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was +unfavorable to fostering numerical notions. + +Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius +that "ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than +gain which darkens him." Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear +and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in +hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrere of La Mancha. He disdains +money itself,--the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably +filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an +age is "that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death." +Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as +their lavish use is panegyrized. "Less than all things," says a current +precept, "men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is +hindered." Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of +economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of +the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of +numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the +distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left +to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by +a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well +enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of +raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift +was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for +the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to +manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class, +sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans. + +We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial +agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby +showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money +itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of +the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. +These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something +low--low as compared with moral and intellectual vocations. + +Money and the love of it being thus diligently ignored, Bushido itself +could long remain free from a thousand and one evils of which money is +the root. This is sufficient reason for the fact that our public men +have long been free from corruption; but, alas, how fast plutocracy is +making its way in our time and generation! + +The mental discipline which would now-a-days be chiefly aided by the +study of mathematics, was supplied by literary exegesis and +deontological discussions. Very few abstract subjects troubled the mind +of the young, the chief aim of their education being, as I have said, +decision of character. People whose minds were simply stored with +information found no great admirers. Of the three services of studies +that Bacon gives,--for delight, ornament, and ability,--Bushido had +decided preference for the last, where their use was "in judgment and +the disposition of business." Whether it was for the disposition of +public business or for the exercise of self-control, it was with a +practical end in view that education was conducted. "Learning without +thought," said Confucius, "is labor lost: thought without learning is +perilous." + +When character and not intelligence, when the soul and not the head, is +chosen by a teacher for the material to work upon and to develop, his +vocation partakes of a sacred character. "It is the parent who has borne +me: it is the teacher who makes me man." With this idea, therefore, the +esteem in which one's preceptor was held was very high. A man to evoke +such confidence and respect from the young, must necessarily be endowed +with superior personality without lacking erudition. He was a father to +the fatherless, and an adviser to the erring. "Thy father and thy +mother"--so runs our maxim--"are like heaven and earth; thy teacher and +thy lord are like the sun and moon." + +The present system of paying for every sort of service was not in vogue +among the adherents of Bushido. It believed in a service which can be +rendered only without money and without price. Spiritual service, be it +of priest or teacher, was not to be repaid in gold or silver, not +because it was valueless but because it was invaluable. Here the +non-arithmetical honor-instinct of Bushido taught a truer lesson than +modern Political Economy; for wages and salaries can be paid only for +services whose results are definite, tangible, and measurable, whereas +the best service done in education,--namely, in soul development (and +this includes the services of a pastor), is not definite, tangible or +measurable. Being immeasurable, money, the ostensible measure of value, +is of inadequate use. Usage sanctioned that pupils brought to their +teachers money or goods at different seasons of the year; but these were +not payments but offerings, which indeed were welcome to the recipients +as they were usually men of stern calibre, boasting of honorable penury, +too dignified to work with their hands and too proud to beg. They were +grave personifications of high spirits undaunted by adversity. They were +an embodiment of what was considered as an end of all learning, and were +thus a living example of that discipline of disciplines, + + + +SELF-CONTROL, + +which was universally required of samurai. + +The discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance +without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring +us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by manifestations of +our own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical turn of mind, and +eventually to confirm it into a national trait of apparent stoicism. I +say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe that true stoicism can +ever become the characteristic of a whole nation, and also because some +of our national manners and customs may seem to a foreign observer +hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to tender emotion as any +race under the sky. + +I am inclined to think that in one sense we have to feel more than +others--yes, doubly more--since the very attempt to, restrain natural +promptings entails suffering. Imagine boys--and girls too--brought up +not to resort to the shedding of a tear or the uttering of a groan for +the relief of their feelings,--and there is a physiological problem +whether such effort steels their nerves or makes them more sensitive. + +It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his +face. "He shows no sign of joy or anger," was a phrase used in +describing a strong character. The most natural affections were kept +under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his +dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,--no, not in the presence of +other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth +in the remark of a witty youth when he said, "American husbands kiss +their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat +theirs in public and kiss them in private." + +Calmness of behavior, composure of mind, should not be disturbed by +passion of any kind. I remember when, during the late war with China, a +regiment left a certain town, a large concourse of people flocked to the +station to bid farewell to the general and his army. On this occasion +an American resident resorted to the place, expecting to witness loud +demonstrations, as the nation itself was highly excited and there were +fathers, mothers, and sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The +American was strangely disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the +train began to move, the hats of thousands of people were silently taken +off and their heads bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of +handkerchiefs, no word uttered, but deep silence in which only an +attentive ear could catch a few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I +know of a father who spent whole nights listening to the breathing of a +sick child, standing behind the door that he might not be caught in such +an act of parental weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last +moments, refrained from sending for her son, that he might not be +disturbed in his studies. Our history and everyday life are replete with +examples of heroic matrons who can well bear comparison with some of the +most touching pages of Plutarch. Among our peasantry an Ian Maclaren +would be sure to find many a Marget Howe. + +It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for the +absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of Japan. +When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first instinct is +to quietly suppress any indication of it. In rare instances is the +tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have eloquence of +sincerity and fervor. It is putting a premium upon a breach of the third +commandment to encourage speaking lightly of spiritual experience. It is +truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the most sacred words, the most +secret heart experiences, thrown out in promiscuous audiences. "Dost +thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with tender thoughts? It is time +for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with speech; but let it work alone +in quietness and secrecy,"--writes a young samurai in his diary. + +To give in so many articulate words one's inmost thoughts and +feelings--notably the religious--is taken among us as an unmistakable +sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. "Only a +pomegranate is he"--so runs a popular saying--"who, when he gapes his +mouth, displays the contents of his heart." + +It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant our +emotions are moved we try to guard our lips in order to hide them. +Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defined it, "the art of +concealing thought." + +Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will +invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At first +you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you will get +a few broken commonplaces--"Human life has sorrow;" "They who meet must +part;" "He that is born must die;" "It is foolish to count the years of +a child that is gone, but a woman's heart will indulge in follies;" and +the like. So the noble words of a noble Hohenzollern--"Lerne zu leiden +ohne Klagen"--had found many responsive minds among us, long before they +were uttered. + +Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the frailties +of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a better +reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency; for laughter +with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper, when +disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of sorrow +or rage. + +The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they find +their safety-valve in poetical aphorism. A poet of the tenth century +writes, "In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by sorrow, +tells its bitter grief in verse." A mother who tries to console her +broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase +after the dragon-fly, hums, + + "How far to-day in chase, I wonder, + Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!" + +I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant +justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a +foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding +hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a +measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an +appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and +dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question. + +It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference +to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as +it goes. The next question is,--Why are our nerves less tightly strung? +It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be +our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the +Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read _Sartor +Resartus_ as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was +our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to +recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the +explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in +self-control, none can be correct. + +Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress +the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into +distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or +hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart +and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive +excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of +self-restraint is to keep our mind _level_--as our expression is--or, to +borrow a Greek term, attain the state of _euthymia_, which Democritus +called the highest good. + +The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of +the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely, + + + +THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE +AND REDRESS, + +of which (the former known as _hara-kiri_ and the latter as +_kataki-uchi_ )many foreign writers have treated more or less fully. + +To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only +to _seppuku_ or _kappuku_, popularly known as _hara-kiri_--which means +self-immolation by disembowelment. "Ripping the abdomen? How +absurd!"--so cry those to whom the name is new. Absurdly odd as it may +sound at first to foreign ears, it can not be so very foreign to +students of Shakespeare, who puts these words in Brutus' mouth--"Thy +(Caesar's) spirit walks abroad and turns our swords into our proper +entrails." Listen to a modern English poet, who in his _Light of Asia_, +speaks of a sword piercing the bowels of a queen:--none blames him for +bad English or breach of modesty. Or, to take still another example, +look at Guercino's painting of Cato's death, in the Palazzo Rossa in +Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, +will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this +mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most +touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars +our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, +of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a +sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or else--the sign which +Constantine beheld would not conquer the world! + +Not for extraneous associations only does _seppuku_ lose in our mind any +taint of absurdity; for the choice of this particular part of the body +to operate upon, was based on an old anatomical belief as to the seat of +the soul and of the affections. When Moses wrote of Joseph's "bowels +yearning upon his brother," or David prayed the Lord not to forget his +bowels, or when Isaiah, Jeremiah and other inspired men of old spoke of +the "sounding" or the "troubling" of bowels, they all and each endorsed +the belief prevalent among the Japanese that in the abdomen was +enshrined the soul. The Semites habitually spoke of the liver and +kidneys and surrounding fat as the seat of emotion and of life. The term +_hara_ was more comprehensive than the Greek _phren_ or _thumos_ and +the Japanese and Hellenese alike thought the spirit of man to dwell +somewhere in that region. Such a notion is by no means confined to the +peoples of antiquity. The French, in spite of the theory propounded by +one of their most distinguished philosophers, Descartes, that the soul +is located in the pineal gland, still insist in using the term _ventre_ +in a sense, which, if anatomically too vague, is nevertheless +physiologically significant. Similarly _entrailles_ stands in their +language for affection and compassion. Nor is such belief mere +superstition, being more scientific than the general idea of making the +heart the centre of the feelings. Without asking a friar, the Japanese +knew better than Romeo "in what vile part of this anatomy one's name did +lodge." Modern neurologists speak of the abdominal and pelvic brains, +denoting thereby sympathetic nerve-centres in those parts which are +strongly affected by any psychical action. This view of mental +physiology once admitted, the syllogism of _seppuku_ is easy to +construct. "I will open the seat of my soul and show you how it fares +with it. See for yourself whether it is polluted or clean." + +I do not wish to be understood as asserting religious or even moral +justification of suicide, but the high estimate placed upon honor was +ample excuse with many for taking one's own life. How many acquiesced in +the sentiment expressed by Garth, + + "When honor's lost, 'tis a relief to die; + Death's but a sure retreat from infamy," + +and have smilingly surrendered their souls to oblivion! Death when honor +was involved, was accepted in Bushido as a key to the solution of many +complex problems, so that to an ambitious samurai a natural departure +from life seemed a rather tame affair and a consummation not devoutly to +be wished for. I dare say that many good Christians, if only they are +honest enough, will confess the fascination of, if not positive +admiration for, the sublime composure with which Cato, Brutus, Petronius +and a host of other ancient worthies, terminated their own earthly +existence. Is it too bold to hint that the death of the first of the +philosophers was partly suicidal? When we are told so minutely by his +pupils how their master willingly submitted to the mandate of the +state--which he knew was morally mistaken--in spite of the possibilities +of escape, and how he took up the cup of hemlock in his own hand, even +offering libation from its deadly contents, do we not discern in his +whole proceeding and demeanor, an act of self-immolation? No physical +compulsion here, as in ordinary cases of execution. True the verdict of +the judges was compulsory: it said, "Thou shalt die,--and that by thy +own hand." If suicide meant no more than dying by one's own hand, +Socrates was a clear case of suicide. But nobody would charge him with +the crime; Plato, who was averse to it, would not call his master a +suicide. + +Now my readers will understand that _seppuku_ was not a mere suicidal +process. It was an institution, legal and ceremonial. An invention of +the middle ages, it was a process by which warriors could expiate their +crimes, apologize for errors, escape from disgrace, redeem their +friends, or prove their sincerity. When enforced as a legal punishment, +it was practiced with due ceremony. It was a refinement of +self-destruction, and none could perform it without the utmost coolness +of temper and composure of demeanor, and for these reasons it was +particularly befitting the profession of bushi. + +Antiquarian curiosity, if nothing else, would tempt me to give here a +description of this obsolete ceremonial; but seeing that such a +description was made by a far abler writer, whose book is not much read +now-a-days, I am tempted to make a somewhat lengthy quotation. Mitford, +in his "Tales of Old Japan," after giving a translation of a treatise on +_seppuku_ from a rare Japanese manuscript, goes on to describe an +instance of such an execution of which he was an eye-witness:-- + +"We (seven foreign representatives) were invited to follow the Japanese +witness into the _hondo_ or main hall of the temple, where the ceremony +was to be performed. It was an imposing scene. A large hall with a high +roof supported by dark pillars of wood. From the ceiling hung a +profusion of those huge gilt lamps and ornaments peculiar to Buddhist +temples. In front of the high altar, where the floor, covered with +beautiful white mats, is raised some three or four inches from the +ground, was laid a rug of scarlet felt. Tall candles placed at regular +intervals gave out a dim mysterious light, just sufficient to let all +the proceedings be seen. The seven Japanese took their places on the +left of the raised floor, the seven foreigners on the right. No other +person was present. + +"After the interval of a few minutes of anxious suspense, Taki +Zenzaburo, a stalwart man thirty-two years of age, with a noble air, +walked into the hall attired in his dress of ceremony, with the peculiar +hempen-cloth wings which are worn on great occasions. He was accompanied +by a _kaishaku_ and three officers, who wore the _jimbaori_ or war +surcoat with gold tissue facings. The word _kaishaku_ it should be +observed, is one to which our word executioner is no equivalent term. +The office is that of a gentleman: in many cases it is performed by a +kinsman or friend of the condemned, and the relation between them is +rather that of principal and second than that of victim and executioner. +In this instance the _kaishaku_ was a pupil of Taki Zenzaburo, and was +selected by friends of the latter from among their own number for his +skill in swordsmanship. + +"With the _kaishaku_ on his left hand, Taki Zenzaburo advanced slowly +towards the Japanese witnesses, and the two bowed before them, then +drawing near to the foreigners they saluted us in the same way, perhaps +even with more deference; in each case the salutation was ceremoniously +returned. Slowly and with great dignity the condemned man mounted on to +the raised floor, prostrated himself before the high altar twice, and +seated[19] himself on the felt carpet with his back to the high altar, +the _kaishaku_ crouching on his left hand side. One of the three +attendant officers then came forward, bearing a stand of the kind used +in the temple for offerings, on which, wrapped in paper, lay the +_wakizashi_, the short sword or dirk of the Japanese, nine inches and a +half in length, with a point and an edge as sharp as a razor's. This he +handed, prostrating himself, to the condemned man, who received it +reverently, raising it to his head with both hands, and placed it in +front of himself. + +[Footnote 19: Seated himself--that is, in the Japanese fashion, his +knees and toes touching the ground and his body resting on his heels. In +this position, which is one of respect, he remained until his death.] + +"After another profound obeisance, Taki Zenzaburo, in a voice which +betrayed just so much emotion and hesitation as might be expected from a +man who is making a painful confession, but with no sign of either in +his face or manner, spoke as follows:-- + +'I, and I alone, unwarrantably gave the order to fire on the foreigners +at Kobe, and again as they tried to escape. For this crime I disembowel +myself, and I beg you who are present to do me the honor of witnessing +the act.' + +"Bowing once more, the speaker allowed his upper garments to slip down +to his girdle, and remained naked to the waist. Carefully, according to +custom, he tucked his sleeves under his knees to prevent himself from +falling backward; for a noble Japanese gentleman should die falling +forwards. Deliberately, with a steady hand he took the dirk that lay +before him; he looked at it wistfully, almost affectionately; for a +moment he seemed to collect his thoughts for the last time, and then +stabbing himself deeply below the waist in the left-hand side, he drew +the dirk slowly across to his right side, and turning it in the wound, +gave a slight cut upwards. During this sickeningly painful operation he +never moved a muscle of his face. When he drew out the dirk, he leaned +forward and stretched out his neck; an expression of pain for the first +time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the +_kaishaku_, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching +his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in +the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with +one blow the head had been severed from the body. + +"A dead silence followed, broken only by the hideous noise of the blood +throbbing out of the inert head before us, which but a moment before had +been a brave and chivalrous man. It was horrible. + +"The _kaishaku_ made a low bow, wiped his sword with a piece of paper +which he had ready for the purpose, and retired from the raised floor; +and the stained dirk was solemnly borne away, a bloody proof of the +execution. + +"The two representatives of the Mikado then left their places, and +crossing over to where the foreign witnesses sat, called to us to +witness that the sentence of death upon Taki Zenzaburo had been +faithfully carried out. The ceremony being at an end, we left the +temple." + +I might multiply any number of descriptions of _seppuku_ from literature +or from the relation of eye-witnesses; but one more instance will +suffice. + +Two brothers, Sakon and Naiki, respectively twenty-four and seventeen +years of age, made an effort to kill Iyeyasu in order to avenge their +father's wrongs; but before they could enter the camp they were made +prisoners. The old general admired the pluck of the youths who dared an +attempt on his life and ordered that they should be allowed to die an +honorable death. Their little brother Hachimaro, a mere infant of eight +summers, was condemned to a similar fate, as the sentence was pronounced +on all the male members of the family, and the three were taken to a +monastery where it was to be executed. A physician who was present on +the occasion has left us a diary from which the following scene is +translated. "When they were all seated in a row for final despatch, +Sakon turned to the youngest and said--'Go thou first, for I wish to be +sure that thou doest it aright.' Upon the little one's replying that, as +he had never seen _seppuku_ performed, he would like to see his brothers +do it and then he could follow them, the older brothers smiled between +their tears:--'Well said, little fellow! So canst thou well boast of +being our father's child.' When they had placed him between them, Sakon +thrust the dagger into the left side of his own abdomen and +asked--'Look, brother! Dost understand now? Only, don't push the dagger +too far, lest thou fall back. Lean forward, rather, and keep thy knees +well composed.' Naiki did likewise and said to the boy--'Keep thy eyes +open or else thou mayst look like a dying woman. If thy dagger feels +anything within and thy strength fails, take courage and double thy +effort to cut across.' The child looked from one to the other, and when +both had expired, he calmly half denuded himself and followed the +example set him on either hand." + +The glorification of _seppuku_ offered, naturally enough, no small +temptation to its unwarranted committal. For causes entirely +incompatible with reason, or for reasons entirely undeserving of death, +hot headed youths rushed into it as insects fly into fire; mixed and +dubious motives drove more samurai to this deed than nuns into convent +gates. Life was cheap--cheap as reckoned by the popular standard of +honor. The saddest feature was that honor, which was always in the +_agio_, so to speak, was not always solid gold, but alloyed with baser +metals. No one circle in the Inferno will boast of greater density of +Japanese population than the seventh, to which Dante consigns all +victims of self-destruction! + +And yet, for a true samurai to hasten death or to court it, was alike +cowardice. A typical fighter, when he lost battle after battle and +was pursued from plain to hill and from bush to cavern, found himself +hungry and alone in the dark hollow of a tree, his sword blunt with +use, his bow broken and arrows exhausted--did not the noblest of +the Romans fall upon his own sword in Phillippi under like +circumstances?--deemed it cowardly to die, but with a fortitude +approaching a Christian martyr's, cheered himself with an impromptu +verse: + + "Come! evermore come, + Ye dread sorrows and pains! + And heap on my burden'd back; + That I not one test may lack + Of what strength in me remains!" + +This, then, was the Bushido teaching--Bear and face all calamities and +adversities with patience and a pure conscience; for as Mencius[20] +taught, "When Heaven is about to confer a great office on anyone, it +first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with +toil; it exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty; +and it confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his +mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies." True honor +lies in fulfilling Heaven's decree and no death incurred in so doing is +ignominious, whereas death to avoid what Heaven has in store is cowardly +indeed! In that quaint book of Sir Thomas Browne's, _Religio Medici_ +there is an exact English equivalent for what is repeatedly taught in +our Precepts. Let me quote it: "It is a brave act of valor to contemn +death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest +valor to dare to live." A renowned priest of the seventeenth century +satirically observed--"Talk as he may, a samurai who ne'er has died is +apt in decisive moments to flee or hide." Again--Him who once has died +in the bottom of his breast, no spears of Sanada nor all the arrows of +Tametomo can pierce. How near we come to the portals of the temple whose +Builder taught "he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it!" +These are but a few of the numerous examples which tend to confirm the +moral identity of the human species, notwithstanding an attempt so +assiduously made to render the distinction between Christian and Pagan +as great as possible. + +[Footnote 20: I use Dr. Legge's translation verbatim.] + +We have thus seen that the Bushido institution of suicide was neither +so irrational nor barbarous as its abuse strikes us at first sight. We +will now see whether its sister institution of Redress--or call it +Revenge, if you will--has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose +of this question in a few words, since a similar institution, or call it +custom, if that suits you better, has at some time prevailed among all +peoples and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the +continuance of duelling and lynching. Why, has not an American captain +recently challenged Esterhazy, that the wrongs of Dreyfus be avenged? +Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, and +only the jealousy of a lover protects a woman from abuse: so in a time +which has no criminal court, murder is not a crime, and only the +vigilant vengeance of the victim's people preserves social order. "What +is the most beautiful thing on earth?" said Osiris to Horus. The reply +was, "To avenge a parent's wrongs,"--to which a Japanese would have +added "and a master's." + +In revenge there is something which satisfies one's sense of justice. +The avenger reasons:--"My good father did not deserve death. He who +killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not +tolerate a deed like this: Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the +will of my father; it is the will of Heaven that the evil-doer cease +from his work. He must perish by my hand; because he shed my father's +blood, I, who am his flesh and blood, must shed the murderer's. The same +Heaven shall not shelter him and me." The ratiocination is simple and +childish (though we know Hamlet did not reason much more deeply), +nevertheless it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice +"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Our sense of revenge is as +exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation +are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone. + +In Judaism, which believed in a jealous God, or in Greek mythology, +which provided a Nemesis, vengeance may be left to superhuman agencies; +but common sense furnished Bushido with the institution of redress as a +kind of ethical court of equity, where people could take cases not to be +judged in accordance with ordinary law. The master of the forty-seven +Ronins was condemned to death;--he had no court of higher instance to +appeal to; his faithful retainers addressed themselves to Vengeance, the +only Supreme Court existing; they in their turn were condemned by common +law,--but the popular instinct passed a different judgment and hence +their memory is still kept as green and fragrant as are their graves at +Sengakuji to this day. + +Though Lao-tse taught to recompense injury with kindness, the voice of +Confucius was very much louder, which counselled that injury must be +recompensed with justice;--and yet revenge was justified only when it +was undertaken in behalf of our superiors and benefactors. One's own +wrongs, including injuries done to wife and children, were to be borne +and forgiven. A samurai could therefore fully sympathize with Hannibal's +oath to avenge his country's wrongs, but he scorns James Hamilton for +wearing in his girdle a handful of earth from his wife's grave, as an +eternal incentive to avenge her wrongs on the Regent Murray. + +Both of these institutions of suicide and redress lost their _raison +d'etre_ at the promulgation of the criminal code. No more do we hear of +romantic adventures of a fair maiden as she tracks in disguise the +murderer of her parent. No more can we witness tragedies of family +vendetta enacted. The knight errantry of Miyamoto Musashi is now a tale +of the past. The well-ordered police spies out the criminal for the +injured party and the law metes out justice. The whole state and society +will see that wrong is righted. The sense of justice satisfied, there is +no need of _kataki-uchi_. If this had meant that "hunger of the heart +which feeds upon the hope of glutting that hunger with the life-blood of +the victim," as a New England divine has described it, a few paragraphs +in the Criminal Code would not so entirely have made an end of it. + +As to _seppuku_, though it too has no existence _de jure_, we still hear +of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear, I am afraid, as +long as the past is remembered. Many painless and time-saving methods of +self-immolation will come in vogue, as its votaries are increasing with +fearful rapidity throughout the world; but Professor Morselli will have +to concede to _seppuku_ an aristocratic position among them. He +maintains that "when suicide is accomplished by very painful means or at +the cost of prolonged agony, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it +may be assigned as the act of a mind disordered by fanaticism, by +madness, or by morbid excitement."[21] But a normal _seppuku_ does not +savor of fanaticism, or madness or excitement, utmost _sang froid_ being +necessary to its successful accomplishment. Of the two kinds into which +Dr. Strahan[22] divides suicide, the Rational or Quasi, and the +Irrational or True, _seppuku_ is the best example of the former type. + +[Footnote 21: Morselli, _Suicide_, p. 314.] + +[Footnote 22: _Suicide and Insanity_.] + +From these bloody institutions, as well as from the general tenor of +Bushido, it is easy to infer that the sword played an important part in +social discipline and life. The saying passed as an axiom which called + + + +THE SWORD THE SOUL OF THE +SAMURAI, + +and made it the emblem of power and prowess. When Mahomet proclaimed +that "The sword is the key of Heaven and of Hell," he only echoed a +Japanese sentiment. Very early the samurai boy learned to wield it. It +was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was +apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a +_go_-board[23] and initiated into the rights of the military profession +by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk +with which he had been playing. After this first ceremony of _adoptio +per arma_, he was no more to be seen outside his father's gates without +this badge of his status, even if it was usually substituted for +every-day wear by a gilded wooden dirk. Not many years pass before he +wears constantly the genuine steel, though blunt, and then the sham arms +are thrown aside and with enjoyment keener than his newly acquired +blades, he marches out to try their edge on wood and stone. When be +reaches man's estate at the age of fifteen, being given independence of +action, he can now pride himself upon the possession of arms sharp +enough for any work. The very possession of the dangerous instrument +imparts to him a feeling and an air of self-respect and responsibility. +"He beareth not his sword in vain." What he carries in his belt is a +symbol of what he carries in his mind and heart--Loyalty and Honor. The +two swords, the longer and the shorter--called respectively _daito_ and +_shoto_ or _katana_ and _wakizashi_--never leave his side. When at home, +they grace the most conspicuous place in study or parlor; by night they +guard his pillow within easy reach of his hand. Constant companions, +they are beloved, and proper names of endearment given them. Being +venerated, they are well-nigh worshiped. The Father of History has +recorded as a curious piece of information that the Scythians sacrificed +to an iron scimitar. Many a temple and many a family in Japan hoards a +sword as an object of adoration. Even the commonest dirk has due respect +paid to it. Any insult to it is tantamount to personal affront. Woe to +him who carelessly steps over a weapon lying on the floor! + +[Footnote 23: The game of _go_ is sometimes called Japanese checkers, +but is much more intricate than the English game. The _go-_board +contains 361 squares and is supposed to represent a battle-field--the +object of the game being to occupy as much space as possible.] + +So precious an object cannot long escape the notice and the skill of +artists nor the vanity of its owner, especially in times of peace, when +it is worn with no more use than a crosier by a bishop or a sceptre by a +king. Shark-skin and finest silk for hilt, silver and gold for guard, +lacquer of varied hues for scabbard, robbed the deadliest weapon of half +its terror; but these appurtenances are playthings compared with the +blade itself. + +The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his +workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and +purification, or, as the phrase was, "he committed his soul and spirit +into the forging and tempering of the steel." Every swing of the sledge, +every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a +religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of +his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as +a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there +is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface +the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate +texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which +histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting +exquisite grace with utmost strength;--all these thrill us with mixed +feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror. Harmless were its +mission, if it only remained a thing of beauty and joy! But, ever within +reach of the hand, it presented no small temptation for abuse. Too often +did the blade flash forth from its peaceful sheath. The abuse sometimes +went so far as to try the acquired steel on some harmless creature's +neck. + +The question that concerns us most is, however,--Did Bushido justify +the promiscuous use of the weapon? The answer is unequivocally, no! As +it laid great stress on its proper use, so did it denounce and abhor its +misuse. A dastard or a braggart was he who brandished his weapon on +undeserved occasions. A self-possessed man knows the right time to use +it, and such times come but rarely. Let us listen to the late Count +Katsu, who passed through one of the most turbulent times of our +history, when assassinations, suicides, and other sanguinary practices +were the order of the day. Endowed as he once was with almost +dictatorial powers, repeatedly marked out as an object for +assassination, he never tarnished his sword with blood. In relating some +of his reminiscences to a friend he says, in a quaint, plebeian way +peculiar to him:--"I have a great dislike for killing people and so I +haven't killed one single man. I have released those whose heads should +have been chopped off. A friend said to me one day, 'You don't kill +enough. Don't you eat pepper and egg-plants?' Well, some people are no +better! But you see that fellow was slain himself. My escape may be due +to my dislike of killing. I had the hilt of my sword so tightly fastened +to the scabbard that it was hard to draw the blade. I made up my mind +that though they cut me, I will not cut. Yes, yes! some people are truly +like fleas and mosquitoes and they bite--but what does their biting +amount to? It itches a little, that's all; it won't endanger life." +These are the words of one whose Bushido training was tried in the fiery +furnace of adversity and triumph. The popular apothegm--"To be beaten is +to conquer," meaning true conquest consists in not opposing a riotous +foe; and "The best won victory is that obtained without shedding of +blood," and others of similar import--will show that after all the +ultimate ideal of knighthood was Peace. + +It was a great pity that this high ideal was left exclusively to priests +and moralists to preach, while the samurai went on practicing and +extolling martial traits. In this they went so far as to tinge the +ideals of womanhood with Amazonian character. Here we may profitably +devote a few paragraphs to the subject of + + + +THE TRAINING AND POSITION OF +WOMAN. + +The female half of our species has sometimes been called the paragon of +paradoxes, because the intuitive working of its mind is beyond the +comprehension of men's "arithmetical understanding." The Chinese +ideogram denoting "the mysterious," "the unknowable," consists of two +parts, one meaning "young" and the other "woman," because the physical +charms and delicate thoughts of the fair sex are above the coarse mental +calibre of our sex to explain. + +In the Bushido ideal of woman, however, there is little mystery and only +a seeming paradox. I have said that it was Amazonian, but that is only +half the truth. Ideographically the Chinese represent wife by a woman +holding a broom--certainly not to brandish it offensively or defensively +against her conjugal ally, neither for witchcraft, but for the more +harmless uses for which the besom was first invented--the idea involved +being thus not less homely than the etymological derivation of the +English wife (weaver) and daughter (_duhitar_, milkmaid). Without +confining the sphere of woman's activity to _Kueche, Kirche, Kinder_, as +the present German Kaiser is said to do, the Bushido ideal of womanhood +was preeminently domestic. These seeming contradictions--Domesticity and +Amazonian traits--are not inconsistent with the Precepts of Knighthood, +as we shall see. + +Bushido being a teaching primarily intended for the masculine sex, the +virtues it prized in woman were naturally far from being distinctly +feminine. Winckelmann remarks that "the supreme beauty of Greek art is +rather male than female," and Lecky adds that it was true in the moral +conception of the Greeks as in their art. Bushido similarly praised +those women most "who emancipated themselves from the frailty of their +sex and displayed an heroic fortitude worthy of the strongest and the +bravest of men."[24] Young girls therefore, were trained to repress +their feelings, to indurate their nerves, to manipulate +weapons,--especially the long-handled sword called _nagi-nata_, so as to +be able to hold their own against unexpected odds. Yet the primary +motive for exercises of this martial character was not for use in the +field; it was twofold--personal and domestic. Woman owning no suzerain +of her own, formed her own bodyguard. With her weapon she guarded her +personal sanctity with as much zeal as her husband did his master's. The +domestic utility of her warlike training was in the education of her +sons, as we shall see later. + +[Footnote 24: Lecky, _History of European Morals_ II, p. 383.] + +Fencing and similar exercises, if rarely of practical use, were a +wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But +these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could +be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood, +were presented with dirks (_kai-ken_, pocket poniards), which might be +directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their +own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them +severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of +self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and +Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a +Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her +father's dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a +disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to +perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in +anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must +know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever +the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty +with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of +the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an +abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our +bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among +us.[25] On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the +samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner, +seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery, +says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to +write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction. +When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves +her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these +verses;-- + + "For fear lest clouds may dim her light, + Should she but graze this nether sphere, + The young moon poised above the height + Doth hastily betake to flight." + +[Footnote 25: For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing see +Finck's _Lotos Time in Japan_, pp. 286-297.] + +It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was +our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the +gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and +literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our +literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women +played an important role in the history of Japanese _belles lettres_. +Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of _geisha_) +only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale +the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the +technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate +object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of +sound is attainable without the player's heart being in harmony with +herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in +the training of youths--that accomplishments were ever kept subservient +to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and +brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I +sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in +London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in +his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of +business for them. + +The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social +ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social +parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,--in other words, as a +part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided +their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women +of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly +intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost +sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and +integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and +day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to +their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her +father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from +earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of +independence, but of dependent service. Man's helpmeet, if her presence +is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she +retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth +becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but, +when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties, +disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal +wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who, +in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon +pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take +her husband's place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon +her own devoted head. + +The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before +taking her own life, needs no comment:--"Oft have I heard that no +accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that +all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common +bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to +our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two +short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow +followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being +loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be +the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving +partner. I have heard that K[=o]-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China, +lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave +as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt +farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope +or joy--why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I +not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime +tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good +master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as +deep as the sea and as high as the hills." + +Woman's surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and +family, was as willing and honorable as the man's self-surrender to the +good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no +life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well +as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than +was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was +recognized as _Naijo_, "the inner help." In the ascending scale of +service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might +annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I +know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of +Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of +each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator. +Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service--the serving of a cause +higher than one's own self, even at the sacrifice of one's +individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that +Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission--as far as that +is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth. + +My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish +surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced +with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by +Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The +point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so +thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was +required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its +Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the +view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman's rights, who +exclaimed, "May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against +ancient customs!" Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female +status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the +loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which +are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part +of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can +the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the +true course for their historical development to take? These are grave +questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime +let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen +was really so bad as to justify a revolt. + +We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to "God and +the ladies,"--the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we +are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that +gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker +vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot +contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences, +while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is +feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily +low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M. +Guizot's theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer's? In reply I might +aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to +the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the +military nobles, the _daimio_, and the court nobles, the _kuge_--these +higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were +masses of the common people--mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants--whose +life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as +the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have +been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the +industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This +is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she +experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the +lower the social class--as, for instance, among small artisans--the more +equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility, +too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked, +chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex +into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally +effeminate. Thus Spencer's dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As +to Guizot's, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will +remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration, +so that his generalization applies to the _daimio_ and the _kuge_. + +I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words +give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do +not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man's equal; but until +we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will +always be misunderstandings upon this subject. + +When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves, +_e.g._, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble +ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American +Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had +no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what +Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal +rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the +only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it +would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in +pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in +comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it +enough, to compare woman's status to man's as the value of silver is +compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a +method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important +kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In +view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil +its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its +relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from +economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a +standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of +woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very +little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this +double measurement;--as a social-political unit not much, while as wife +and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among +so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly +venerated? Was it not because they were _matrona_, mothers? Not as +fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So +with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the +government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers +and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted +to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were +primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the +education of their children. + +I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among +half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression +for one's wife is "my rustic wife" and the like, she is despised and +held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as "my foolish +father," "my swinish son," "my awkward self," etc., are in current use, +is not the answer clear enough? + +To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further +than the so-called Christian. "Man and woman shall be one flesh." The +individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband +and wife are two persons;--hence when they disagree, their separate +_rights_ are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their +vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and--nonsensical +blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband +or wife speaks to a third party of his other half--better or worse--as +being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of +one's self as "my bright self," "my lovely disposition," and so forth? +We think praising one's own wife or one's own husband is praising a part +of one's own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad +taste among us,--and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have +diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one's consort +was a usage most in vogue among the samurai. + +The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe +of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the +Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of +the numerical insufficiency of women[26] (who, now increasing, are, I am +afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the +respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief +standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main +water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was +located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul +and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the +early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader's +notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as +lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion +presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being +founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind, +though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions +which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me +the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man, +which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment +doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,--a +separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in +Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I +might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and +Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties +as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan. + +[Footnote 26: I refer to those days when girls were imported from +England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.] + +It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in +the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military +class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of + + + +THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO + +on the nation at large. + +We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which +rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more +elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its +rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually +casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first +enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from +amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader, +and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are +no less contagious than vices. "There needs but one wise man in a +company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion," says Emerson. No +social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral +influence. + +Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely +has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of +the squires and _gentlemen_? Very truly does M. Taine say, "These three +syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English +society." Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement +and fling back the question--"When Adam delved and Eve span, where then +was the gentleman?" All the more pity that a gentleman was not present +in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for +his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more +tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful +experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor, +treason and rebellion. + +What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of +the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed +through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the +populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their +example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these +were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the +commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of +virtues for their own sake. + +In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a +small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says--"In English +Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to +Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman)." Write in place of +Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the +main features of the literary history of Japan. + +The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction--the +theatres, the story-teller's booths, the preacher's dais, the musical +recitations, the novels--have taken for their chief theme the stories of +the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire +of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsune and his faithful retainer +Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with +gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its +embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The +clerks and the shop-boys, after their day's work is over and the +_amado_[27] of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story +of Nobunaga and Hideyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes +their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to +the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is +taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of +ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and +virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour +with greedy ear the romance of the samurai. + +[Footnote 27: Outside shutters.] + +The samurai grew to be the _beau ideal_ of the whole race. "As among +flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord," so sang +the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class +itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity, +no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus +from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly +the work of Knighthood. + +Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, "Aristocracy and +Evolution," has eloquently told us that "social evolution, in so far as +it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of +the intentions of great men;" further, that historical progress is +produced by a struggle "not among the community generally, to live, but +a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct, +to employ, the majority in the best way." Whatever may be said about the +soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the +part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our +Empire. + +How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in +the development of a certain order of men, known as _otoko-date_, the +natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of +them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen +and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of +hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that +samurai did to daimio, the willing service of "limb and life, of body, +chattels and earthly honor." Backed by a vast multitude of rash and +impetuous working-men, those born "bosses" formed a formidable check to +the rampancy of the two-sworded order. + +In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where +it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral +standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at +first as the glory of the elite, became in time an aspiration and +inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not +attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet _Yamato Damashii_, +the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the _Volksgeist_ of the +Island Realm. If religion is no more than "Morality touched by +emotion," as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better +entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoori has put the mute +utterance of the nation into words when he sings:-- + + "Isles of blest Japan! + Should your Yamato spirit + Strangers seek to scan, + Say--scenting morn's sun-lit air, + Blows the cherry wild and fair!" + +Yes, the _sakura_[28] has for ages been the favorite of our people and +the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition +which the poet uses, the words the _wild cherry flower scenting the +morning sun_. + +[Footnote 28: _Cerasus pseudo-cerasus_, Lindley.] + +The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild--in the sense +of natural--growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental +qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its +essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But +its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and +grace of its beauty appeal to _our_ aesthetic sense as no other flower +can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, +which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are +hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she +clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop +untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy +odors--all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no +dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at +the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light +fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its +showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is +volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious +ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is +something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the +_sakura_ quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to +illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more +serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of +beauteous day. + +When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his +heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that +the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the +whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a +time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs +and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily +tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one +is the sakura the flower of the nation. + +Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the +wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever, +is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so +frailly mortal? + + + +IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE? + +Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already +wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline? + +It were a sad thing if a nation's soul could die so fast. That were a +poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The +aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national +character, is as tenacious as the "irreducible elements of species, of +the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the +carnivorous animal." In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations +and brilliant generalizations, M. LeBon[29] says, "The discoveries due +to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or +defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: +they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for +centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities." +These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over, +provided there were qualities and defects of character which _constitute +the exclusive patrimony_ of each people. Schematizing theories of this +sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and +they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In +studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon +European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that +no one quality of character was its _exclusive_ patrimony. It is true +the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is +this aggregate which Emerson names a "compound result into which every +great force enters as an ingredient." But, instead of making it, as +LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord +philosopher calls it "an element which unites the most forcible persons +of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; +and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack +the Masonic sign." + +[Footnote 29: _The Psychology of Peoples_, p. 33.] + +The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in +particular, cannot be said to form "an irreducible element of species," +but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. +Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the +last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it +transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely +widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has +calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, +"each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty +millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D." The merest peasant +that grubs the soil, "bowed by the weight of centuries," has in his +veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as "to the +ox." + +An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the +nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when +Yoshida Shoin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote +on the eve of his execution the following stanza;-- + + "Full well I knew this course must end in death; + It was Yamato spirit urged me on + To dare whate'er betide." + +Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor +force of our country. + +Mr. Ransome says that "there are three distinct Japans in existence +side by side to-day,--the old, which has not wholly died out; the new, +hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now +through its most critical throes." While this is very true in most +respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete +institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions, +requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old +Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove +the formative force of the new era. + +The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the +hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, +were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of +Knighthood. Some writers[30] have lately tried to prove that the +Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making +of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this +honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it +will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of +preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they +have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian +missionaries are doing great things for Japan--in the domain of +education, and especially of moral education:--only, the mysterious +though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in +divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet +Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the +character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged +us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern +Japan--of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the +reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:--and you +will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought +and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and +observation of the Far East,[31] that only the respect in which Japan +differed from other oriental despotisms lay in "the ruling influence +among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious +codes of honor that man has ever devised," he touched the main spring +which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is +destined to be. + +[Footnote 30: Speer; _Missions and Politics in Asia_, Lecture IV, pp. +189-190; Dennis: _Christian Missions and Social Progress_, Vol. I, p. +32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.] + +[Footnote 31: _The Far East_, p. 375.] + +The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a +work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one +were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When +we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the +latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study +Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the +development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much +less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of +oriental institutions and peoples has written:--"We are told every day +how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those +islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan, +but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of +organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful. +She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before +imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence," continues +Mr. Townsend, "unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea +of China. Where is the European apostle," asks our author, "or +philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made Japan?"[32] Mr. +Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought +about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he +had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation +would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than +Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as +an inferior power,--that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or +industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of +transformation. + +[Footnote 32: Meredith Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, N.Y., 1900, 28.] + +The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read. +A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most +eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the +working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The +universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly +ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance, +fortitude and bravery that "the little Jap" possesses, were sufficiently +proved in the China-Japanese war.[33] "Is there any nation more loyal +and patriotic?" is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer, +"There is not," we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood. + +[Footnote 33: Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and Yamada +on _Heroic Japan_, and Diosy on _The New Far East_.] + +On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and +defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of +abstruse philosophy--while some of our young men have already gained +international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved +anything in philosophical lines--is traceable to the neglect of +metaphysical training under Bushido's regimen of education. Our sense of +honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; +and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, +that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor. + +Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair, +dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book, +stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane +things? He is the _shosei_ (student), to whom the earth is too small and +the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe +and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of +wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for +knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods +are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of +Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national +honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of +Bushido. + +Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said +that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people +responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it +has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly +translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different +degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion +could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an +appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master. +The word "Loyalty" revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted +to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued +"students' strike" in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction +with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the +Director,--"Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought +to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is not +manly to push a falling man." The scientific incapacity of the +professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into +insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By +arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great +magnitude can be accomplished. + +One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the +missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history--"What do we care for +heathen records?" some say--and consequently estrange their religion +from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed +to for centuries past. Mocking a nation's history!--as though the career +of any people--even of the lowest African savages possessing no +record--were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by +the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be +deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races +themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and +white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race +forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the +past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new +religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an "old, old story," which, if +presented in intelligible words,--that is to say, if expressed in the +vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people--will find easy +lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality. +Christianity in its American or English form--with more of Anglo-Saxon +freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder--is a poor scion +to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot +the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel +on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible--in Hawaii, +where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in +amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal +race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan--nay, it is +a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his +kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following +words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:--"Men +have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering +how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may +have been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of +themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity +with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at +impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be +said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of +religion."[34] + +[Footnote 34: Jowett, _Sermons on Faith and Doctrine_, II.] + +But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little +doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a +power which we must take into account in reckoning + + + +THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO, + +whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, +that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at +work to threaten it. + +Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the +Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats +itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did +with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay +of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application +to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that +helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages +are as surely working for the decline of Bushido. + +One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan +is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and +was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan +no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother +institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift +for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it +under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little +room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its +infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are +being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and +Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the +Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted +to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet +we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow +journalism. + +Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of +Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, "the decay of the ceremonial +code--or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life--among +the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities of +latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate +sensibilities." The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can +tolerate no form or shape of trust--and Bushido was a trust organized by +those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture, fixing +the grades and value of moral qualities--is alone powerful enough to +engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are +antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely +criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity, +cannot admit "purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an +exclusive class."[35] Add to this the progress of popular instruction, +of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,--then we can +easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai's sword nor the +sharpest shafts shot from Bushido's boldest bows can aught avail. The +state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same--shall we +call it the _Ehrenstaat_ or, after the manner of Carlyle, the +Heroarchy?--is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and +gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The +words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may +aptly be repeated of the samurai, that "the medium in which their +ardent deeds took shape is forever gone." + +[Footnote 35: _Norman Conquest_, Vol. V, p. 482.] + +Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into +the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away +as "the captains and the kings depart." + +If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues--be +it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome--can never make on earth a +"continuing city." Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in +man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly +virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to +fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that +Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but +Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, +with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to +emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. +Callings nobler and broader than a warrior's claim our attention to-day. +With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better +knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of +Benevolence--dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?--will expand +into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than +subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more +than citizens, being men. + +Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the +wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world +confirms the prophecy the "the meek shall inherit the earth." A nation +that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank +of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain +indeed! + +When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not +only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an +honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry +dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says +that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of +France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally +abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of +Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of +swords, rang out the old, "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence +of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise," it rang +in the new age of "sophisters, economists, and calculators." + +It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of +Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work +of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does +ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway, +burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven, +without a master's hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis +Napoleon beat the Prussians with his _Mitrailleuse_, or the Spaniards +with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the +old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite +saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of +implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do +not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does +not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea +and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and +beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of +our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly +visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show +a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial +virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, "but ours on +trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come," +and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate +one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to +widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life. + +It has been predicted--and predictions have been corroborated by the +events of the last half century--that the moral system of Feudal Japan, +like its castles and its armories, will crumble into dust, and new +ethics rise phoenix-like to lead New Japan in her path of progress. +Desirable and probable as the fulfilment of such a prophecy is, we must +not forget that a phoenix rises only from its own ashes, and that it is +not a bird of passage, neither does it fly on pinions borrowed from +other birds. "The Kingdom of God is within you." It does not come +rolling down the mountains, however lofty; it does not come sailing +across the seas, however broad. "God has granted," says the Koran, "to +every people a prophet in its own tongue." The seeds of the Kingdom, as +vouched for and apprehended by the Japanese mind, blossomed in Bushido. +Now its days are closing--sad to say, before its full fruition--and we +turn in every direction for other sources of sweetness and light, of +strength and comfort, but among them there is as yet nothing found to +take its place. The profit and loss philosophy of Utilitarians and +Materialists finds favor among logic-choppers with half a soul. The +only other ethical system which is powerful enough to cope with +Utilitarianism and Materialism is Christianity, in comparison with +which Bushido, it must be confessed, is like "a dimly burning wick" +which the Messiah was proclaimed not to quench but to fan into a flame. +Like His Hebrew precursors, the prophets--notably Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos +and Habakkuk--Bushido laid particular stress on the moral conduct of +rulers and public men and of nations, whereas the Ethics of Christ, +which deal almost solely with individuals and His personal followers, +will find more and more practical application as individualism, in its +capacity of a moral factor, grows in potency. The domineering, +self-assertive, so-called master-morality of Nietzsche, itself akin in +some respects to Bushido, is, if I am not greatly mistaken, a passing +phase or temporary reaction against what he terms, by morbid distortion, +the humble, self-denying slave-morality of the Nazarene. + +Christianity and Materialism (including Utilitarianism)--or will the +future reduce them to still more archaic forms of Hebraism and +Hellenism?--will divide the world between them. Lesser systems of morals +will ally themselves on either side for their preservation. On which +side will Bushido enlist? Having no set dogma or formula to defend, it +can afford to disappear as an entity; like the cherry blossom, it is +willing to die at the first gust of the morning breeze. But a total +extinction will never be its lot. Who can say that stoicism is dead? It +is dead as a system; but it is alive as a virtue: its energy and +vitality are still felt through many channels of life--in the philosophy +of Western nations, in the jurisprudence of all the civilized world. +Nay, wherever man struggles to raise himself above himself, wherever his +spirit masters his flesh by his own exertions, there we see the immortal +discipline of Zeno at work. + +Bushido as an independent code of ethics may vanish, but its power will +not perish from the earth; its schools of martial prowess or civic honor +may be demolished, but its light and its glory will long survive their +ruins. Like its symbolic flower, after it is blown to the four winds, it +will still bless mankind with the perfume with which it will enrich +life. Ages after, when its customaries shall have been buried and its +very name forgotten, its odors will come floating in the air as from a +far-off unseen hill, "the wayside gaze beyond;"--then in the beautiful +language of the Quaker poet, + + "The traveler owns the grateful sense + Of sweetness near he knows not whence, + And, pausing, takes with forehead bare + The benediction of the air." + +[Illustration] + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobe + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN *** + +***** This file should be named 12096.txt or 12096.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/2/0/9/12096/ + +Produced by Paul Murray, Andrea Ball, the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team and the Million Book Project/State Central Library, +Hyderabad + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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