wholesome counterbalance to the otherwise sedentary habits of woman. But
these exercises were not followed only for hygienic purposes. They could
be turned into use in times of need. Girls, when they reached womanhood,
were presented with dirks (_kai-ken_, pocket poniards), which might be
directed to the bosom of their assailants, or, if advisable, to their
own. The latter was very often the case: and yet I will not judge them
severely. Even the Christian conscience with its horror of
self-immolation, will not be harsh with them, seeing Pelagia and
Domnina, two suicides, were canonized for their purity and piety. When a
Japanese Virginia saw her chastity menaced, she did not wait for her
father’s dagger. Her own weapon lay always in her bosom. It was a
disgrace to her not to know the proper way in which she had to
perpetrate self-destruction. For example, little as she was taught in
anatomy, she must know the exact spot to cut in her throat: she must
know how to tie her lower limbs together with a belt so that, whatever
the agonies of death might be, her corpse be found in utmost modesty
with the limbs properly composed. Is not a caution like this worthy of
the Christian Perpetua or the Vestal Cornelia? I would not put such an
abrupt interrogation, were it not for a misconception, based on our
bathing customs and other trifles, that chastity is unknown among
us.[25] On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the
samurai woman, held above life itself. A young woman, taken prisoner,
seeing herself in danger of violence at the hands of the rough soldiery,
says she will obey their pleasure, provided she be first allowed to
write a line to her sisters, whom war has dispersed in every direction.
When the epistle is finished, off she runs to the nearest well and saves
her honor by drowning. The letter she leaves behind ends with these
verses;—
“For fear lest clouds may dim her light,
Should she but graze this nether sphere,
The young moon poised above the height
Doth hastily betake to flight.”
[Footnote 25: For a very sensible explanation of nudity and bathing
see Finck’s _Lotos Time in Japan_, pp. 286-297.]
It would be unfair to give my readers an idea that masculinity alone was
our highest ideal for woman. Far from it! Accomplishments and the
gentler graces of life were required of them. Music, dancing and
literature were not neglected. Some of the finest verses in our
literature were expressions of feminine sentiments; in fact, women
played an important role in the history of Japanese _belles lettres_.
Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of _geisha_)
only to smooth the angularity of their movements. Music was to regale
the weary hours of their fathers and husbands; hence it was not for the
technique, the art as such, that music was learned; for the ultimate
object was purification of heart, since it was said that no harmony of
sound is attainable without the player’s heart being in harmony with
herself. Here again we see the same idea prevailing which we notice in
the training of youths—that accomplishments were ever kept subservient
to moral worth. Just enough of music and dancing to add grace and
brightness to life, but never to foster vanity and extravagance. I
sympathize with the Persian prince, who, when taken into a ball-room in
London and asked to take part in the merriment, bluntly remarked that in
his country they provided a particular set of girls to do that kind of
business for them.
The accomplishments of our women were not acquired for show or social
ascendency. They were a home diversion; and if they shone in social
parties, it was as the attributes of a hostess,—in other words, as a
part of the household contrivance for hospitality. Domesticity guided
their education. It may be said that the accomplishments of the women
of Old Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly
intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost
sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and
integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and
day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to
their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her
father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from
earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of
independence, but of dependent service. Man’s helpmeet, if her presence
is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she
retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth
becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but,
when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties,
disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal
wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who,
in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon
pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take
her husband’s place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon
her own devoted head.
The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before
taking her own life, needs no comment:—“Oft have I heard that no
accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that
all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common
bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to
our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two
short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow
followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being
loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be
the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving
partner. I have heard that Kō-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China,
lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave
as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt
farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope
or joy—why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I
not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime
tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good
master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as
deep as the sea and as high as the hills.”
Woman’s surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and
family, was as willing and honorable as the man’s self-surrender to the
good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no
life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well
as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than
was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was
recognized as _Naijo_, “the inner help.” In the ascending scale of
service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might
annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I
know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of
Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of
each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator.
Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service—the serving of a cause
higher than one’s own self, even at the sacrifice of one’s
individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that
Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission—as far as that
is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth.
My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish
surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced
with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by
Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The
point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was
required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its
Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the
view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman’s rights, who
exclaimed, “May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against
ancient customs!” Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female
status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the
loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which
are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part
of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can
the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the
true course for their historical development to take? These are grave
questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime
let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen
was really so bad as to justify a revolt.
We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to “God and
the ladies,”—the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we
are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that
gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker
vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot
contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences,
while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is
feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily
low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M.
Guizot’s theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer’s? In reply I might
aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to
the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the
military nobles, the _daimio_, and the court nobles, the _kugé_—these
higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were
masses of the common people—mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants—whose
life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as
the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have
been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the
industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This
is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she
experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the
lower the social class—as, for instance, among small artisans—the more
equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility,
too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked,
chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex
into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally
effeminate. Thus Spencer’s dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As
to Guizot’s, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will
remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration,
so that his generalization applies to the _daimio_ and the _kugé_.
I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words
give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do
not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man’s equal; but until
we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will
always be misunderstandings upon this subject.
When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves,
_e.g._, before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble
ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American
Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had
no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what
Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal
rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the
only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it
would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in
pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in
comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it
enough, to compare woman’s status to man’s as the value of silver is
compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a
method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important
kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In
view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil
its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its
relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from
economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a
standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of
woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very
little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this
double measurement;—as a social-political unit not much, while as wife
and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among
so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly
venerated? Was it not because they were _matrona_, mothers? Not as
fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So
with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the
government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers
and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted
to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were
primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the
education of their children.
I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among
half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression
for one’s wife is “my rustic wife” and the like, she is despised and
held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as “my foolish
father,” “my swinish son,” “my awkward self,” etc., are in current use,
is not the answer clear enough?
To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further
than the so-called Christian. “Man and woman shall be one flesh.” The
individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband
and wife are two persons;—hence when they disagree, their separate
_rights_ are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their
vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and—nonsensical
blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband
or wife speaks to a third party of his other half—better or worse—as
being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of
one’s self as “my bright self,” “my lovely disposition,” and so forth?
We think praising one’s own wife or one’s own husband is praising a part
of one’s own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad
taste among us,—and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have
diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one’s consort
was a usage most in vogue among the samurai.
The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe
of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the
Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of
the numerical insufficiency of women[26] (who, now increasing, are, I am
afraid, fast losing the prestige their colonial mothers enjoyed), the
respect man pays to woman has in Western civilization become the chief
standard of morality. But in the martial ethics of Bushido, the main
water-shed dividing the good and the bad was sought elsewhere. It was
located along the line of duty which bound man to his own divine soul
and then to other souls, in the five relations I have mentioned in the
early part of this paper. Of these we have brought to our reader’s
notice, Loyalty, the relation between one man as vassal and another as
lord. Upon the rest, I have only dwelt incidentally as occasion
presented itself; because they were not peculiar to Bushido. Being
founded on natural affections, they could but be common to all mankind,
though in some particulars they may have been accentuated by conditions
which its teachings induced. In this connection, there comes before me
the peculiar strength and tenderness of friendship between man and man,
which often added to the bond of brotherhood a romantic attachment
doubtless intensified by the separation of the sexes in youth,—a
separation which denied to affection the natural channel open to it in
Western chivalry or in the free intercourse of Anglo-Saxon lands. I
might fill pages with Japanese versions of the story of Damon and
Pythias or Achilles and Patroclos, or tell in Bushido parlance of ties
as sympathetic as those which bound David and Jonathan.
[Footnote 26: I refer to those days when girls were imported from
England and given in marriage for so many pounds of tobacco, etc.]
It is not surprising, however, that the virtues and teachings unique in
the Precepts of Knighthood did not remain circumscribed to the military
class. This makes us hasten to the consideration of
THE INFLUENCE OF BUSHIDO
on the nation at large.
We have brought into view only a few of the more prominent peaks which
rise above the range of knightly virtues, in themselves so much more
elevated than the general level of our national life. As the sun in its
rising first tips the highest peaks with russet hue, and then gradually
casts its rays on the valley below, so the ethical system which first
enlightened the military order drew in course of time followers from
amongst the masses. Democracy raises up a natural prince for its leader,
and aristocracy infuses a princely spirit among the people. Virtues are
no less contagious than vices. “There needs but one wise man in a
company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion,” says Emerson. No
social class or caste can resist the diffusive power of moral
influence.
Prate as we may of the triumphant march of Anglo-Saxon liberty, rarely
has it received impetus from the masses. Was it not rather the work of
the squires and _gentlemen_? Very truly does M. Taine say, “These three
syllables, as used across the channel, summarize the history of English
society.” Democracy may make self-confident retorts to such a statement
and fling back the question—“When Adam delved and Eve span, where then
was the gentleman?” All the more pity that a gentleman was not present
in Eden! The first parents missed him sorely and paid a high price for
his absence. Had he been there, not only would the garden have been more
tastefully dressed, but they would have learned without painful
experience that disobedience to Jehovah was disloyalty and dishonor,
treason and rebellion.
What Japan was she owed to the samurai. They were not only the flower of
the nation but its root as well. All the gracious gifts of Heaven flowed
through them. Though they kept themselves socially aloof from the
populace, they set a moral standard for them and guided them by their
example. I admit Bushido had its esoteric and exoteric teachings; these
were eudemonistic, looking after the welfare and happiness of the
commonalty, while those were aretaic, emphasizing the practice of
virtues for their own sake.
In the most chivalrous days of Europe, Knights formed numerically but a
small fraction of the population, but, as Emerson says—“In English
Literature half the drama and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to
Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure (gentleman).” Write in place of
Sidney and Scott, Chikamatsu and Bakin, and you have in a nutshell the
main features of the literary history of Japan.
The innumerable avenues of popular amusement and instruction—the
theatres, the story-teller’s booths, the preacher’s dais, the musical
recitations, the novels—have taken for their chief theme the stories of
the samurai. The peasants round the open fire in their huts never tire
of repeating the achievements of Yoshitsuné and his faithful retainer
Benkei, or of the two brave Soga brothers; the dusky urchins listen with
gaping mouths until the last stick burns out and the fire dies in its
embers, still leaving their hearts aglow with the tale that is told. The
clerks and the shop-boys, after their day’s work is over and the
_amado_[27] of the store are closed, gather together to relate the story
of Nobunaga and Hidéyoshi far into the night, until slumber overtakes
their weary eyes and transports them from the drudgery of the counter to
the exploits of the field. The very babe just beginning to toddle is
taught to lisp the adventures of Momotaro, the daring conqueror of
ogre-land. Even girls are so imbued with the love of knightly deeds and
virtues that, like Desdemona, they would seriously incline to devour
with greedy ear the romance of the samurai.
[Footnote 27: Outside shutters.]
The samurai grew to be the _beau ideal_ of the whole race. “As among
flowers the cherry is queen, so among men the samurai is lord,” so sang
the populace. Debarred from commercial pursuits, the military class
itself did not aid commerce; but there was no channel of human activity,
no avenue of thought, which did not receive in some measure an impetus
from Bushido. Intellectual and moral Japan was directly or indirectly
the work of Knighthood.
Mr. Mallock, in his exceedingly suggestive book, “Aristocracy and
Evolution,” has eloquently told us that “social evolution, in so far as
it is other than biological, may be defined as the unintended result of
the intentions of great men;” further, that historical progress is
produced by a struggle “not among the community generally, to live, but
a struggle amongst a small section of the community to lead, to direct,
to employ, the majority in the best way.” Whatever may be said about the
soundness of his argument, these statements are amply verified in the
part played by bushi in the social progress, as far as it went, of our
Empire.
How the spirit of Bushido permeated all social classes is also shown in
the development of a certain order of men, known as _otoko-daté_, the
natural leaders of democracy. Staunch fellows were they, every inch of
them strong with the strength of massive manhood. At once the spokesmen
and the guardians of popular rights, they had each a following of
hundreds and thousands of souls who proffered in the same fashion that
samurai did to daimio, the willing service of “limb and life, of body,
chattels and earthly honor.” Backed by a vast multitude of rash and
impetuous working-men, those born “bosses” formed a formidable check to
the rampancy of the two-sworded order.
In manifold ways has Bushido filtered down from the social class where
it originated, and acted as leaven among the masses, furnishing a moral
standard for the whole people. The Precepts of Knighthood, begun at
first as the glory of the élite, became in time an aspiration and
inspiration to the nation at large; and though the populace could not
attain the moral height of those loftier souls, yet _Yamato Damashii_,
the Soul of Japan, ultimately came to express the _Volksgeist_ of the
Island Realm. If religion is no more than “Morality touched by
emotion,” as Matthew Arnold defines it, few ethical systems are better
entitled to the rank of religion than Bushido. Motoöri has put the mute
utterance of the nation into words when he sings:—
“Isles of blest Japan!
Should your Yamato spirit
Strangers seek to scan,
Say—scenting morn’s sun-lit air,
Blows the cherry wild and fair!”
Yes, the _sakura_[28] has for ages been the favorite of our people and
the emblem of our character. Mark particularly the terms of definition
which the poet uses, the words the _wild cherry flower scenting the
morning sun_.
[Footnote 28: _Cerasus pseudo-cerasus_, Lindley.]