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.