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.]