Amazakaru
Hi no iru kuni ni
Kite wa aredo,
Yamato-nishiki no
Iro wa kawaraji.
I
He was born in a city of the interior, the seat of a daimyo of
three hundred thousand koku, where no foreigner had ever been.
The yashiki of his father, a samurai of high rank, stood within
the outer fortifications surrounding the prince's castle. It was
a spacious yashiki; and behind it and around it were landscape
gardens, one of which contained a small shrine of the god of
armies. Forty years ago there were many such homes. To artist
eyes the few still remaining seem like fairy palaces, and their
gardens like dreams of the Buddhist paradise.
But sons of samurai were severely disciplined in those days; and
the one of whom I write had little time for dreaming. The period
of caresses was made painfully brief for him. Even before he was
invested with his first hakama, or trousers,--a great ceremony in
that epoch,--he was weaned as far as possible from tender
influence, and taught to check the natural impulses of childish
affection. Little comrades would ask him mockingly, "Do you still
need milk?" if they saw him walking out with his mother, although
he might love her in the house as demonstratively as he pleased,
during the hours he could pass by her side. These were not many.
All inactive pleasures were severely restricted by his
discipline; and even comforts, except during illness, were not
allowed him. Almost from the time he could speak he was enjoined
to consider duty the guiding motive of life, self-control the
first requisite of conduct, pain and death matters of no
consequence in the selfish sense.
There was a grimmer side to this Spartan discipline, designed to
cultivate a cold sternness never to be relaxed during youth,
except in the screened intimacy of the home. The boys were inured
to sights of blood. They were taken to witness executions; they
were expected to display no emotion; and they were obliged, on
their return home, to quell any secret feeling of horror by
eating plentifully of rice tinted blood-color by an admixture of
salted plum juice. Even more difficult things might be demanded
of a very young boy,--to go alone at midnight to the
execution-ground, for example, and bring back a head in proof of
courage. For the fear of the dead was held not less contemptible
in a samurai than the fear of man. The samurai child was pledged
to fear nothing. In all such tests, the demeanor exacted was
perfect impassiveness; any swaggering would have been judged
quite as harshly as any sign of cowardice.
As a boy grew up, he was obliged to find his pleasures chiefly in
those bodily exercises which were the samurai's early and
constant preparations for war,--archery and riding, wrestling and
fencing. Playmates were found for him; but these were older
youths, sons of retainers, chosen for ability to assist him in
the practice of martial exercises. It was their duty also to
teach him how to swim, to handle a boat, to develop his young
muscles. Between such physical training and the study of the
Chinese classics the greater part of each day was divided for
him. His diet, though ample, was never dainty; his clothing,
except in time of great ceremony, was light and coarse; and he
was not allowed the use of fire merely to warm himself. While
studying of winter mornings, if his hands became too cold to use
the writing brush, he would be ordered to plunge them into icy
water to restore the circulation; and if his feet were numbed by
frost, he would be told to run about in the snow to make them
warm. Still more rigid was his training in the special etiquette
of the military class, and he was early made to know that the
little sword in his girdle was neither an ornament nor a
plaything. He was shown how to use it, how to take his own life
at a moment's notice, without shrinking, whenever the code of his
class might so order(1).
Also in the matter of religion, the training of a samurai boy was
peculiar. He was educated to revere the ancient gods and the
spirits of his ancestors; he was well schooled in the Chinese
ethics; and he was taught something of Buddhist philosophy and
faith. But he was likewise taught that hope of heaven and fear of
hell were for the ignorant only; and that the superior man should
be influenced in his conduct by nothing more selfish than the
love of right for its own sake, and the recognition of duty as a
universal law.
Gradually, as the period of boyhood ripened into youth, his
conduct was less subjected to supervision. He was left more and
more free to act upon his own judgment,--but with full knowledge
that a mistake would not be forgotten; that a serious offense
would never be fully condoned, and that a well-merited reprimand
was more to be dreaded than death. On the other hand, there were
few moral dangers against which to guard him. Professional vice
was then strictly banished from many of the provincial
castle-towns; and even so much of the non-moral side of life as
might have been reflected in popular romance and drama, a young
samurai could know little about. He was taught to despise that
common literature appealing either to the softer emotions or the
passions, as essentially unmanly reading; and the public theatre
was forbidden to his class(2). Thus, in that innocent provincial
life of Old Japan, a young samurai might grow up exceptionally
pure-minded and simple-hearted.
So grew up the young samurai concerning whom these things are
written,--fearless, courteous, self-denying, despising pleasure,
and ready at an instant's notice to give his life for love,
loyalty, or honor. But though already a warrior in frame and
spirit, he was in years scarcely more than a boy when the country
was first startled by the coming of the Black Ships.