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.”