of natural—growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental
qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its
essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But
its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and
grace of its beauty appeal to _our_ æsthetic sense as no other flower
can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses,
which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are
hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she
clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop
untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy
odors—all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no
dagger or poison under its beauty, which is ever ready to depart life at
the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light
fragrance never palls. Beauty of color and of form is limited in its
showing; it is a fixed quality of existence, whereas fragrance is
volatile, ethereal as the breathing of life. So in all religious
ceremonies frankincense and myrrh play a prominent part. There is
something spirituelle in redolence. When the delicious perfume of the
_sakura_ quickens the morning air, as the sun in its course rises to
illumine first the isles of the Far East, few sensations are more
serenely exhilarating than to inhale, as it were, the very breath of
beauteous day.
When the Creator himself is pictured as making new resolutions in his
heart upon smelling a sweet savor (Gen. VIII, 21), is it any wonder that
the sweet-smelling season of the cherry blossom should call forth the
whole nation from their little habitations? Blame them not, if for a
time their limbs forget their toil and moil and their hearts their pangs
and sorrows. Their brief pleasure ended, they return to their daily
tasks with new strength and new resolutions. Thus in ways more than one
is the sakura the flower of the nation.
Is, then, this flower, so sweet and evanescent, blown whithersoever the
wind listeth, and, shedding a puff of perfume, ready to vanish forever,
is this flower the type of the Yamato spirit? Is the Soul of Japan so
frailly mortal?
IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE?
Or has Western civilization, in its march through the land, already
wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline?
It were a sad thing if a nation’s soul could die so fast. That were a
poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences. The
aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national
character, is as tenacious as the “irreducible elements of species, of
the fins of fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the
carnivorous animal.” In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations
and brilliant generalizations, M. LeBon[29] says, “The discoveries due
to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or
defects of character constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people:
they are the firm rock which the waters must wash day by day for
centuries, before they can wear away even its external asperities.”
These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over,
provided there were qualities and defects of character which _constitute
the exclusive patrimony_ of each people. Schematizing theories of this
sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and
they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In
studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon
European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that
no one quality of character was its _exclusive_ patrimony. It is true
the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is
this aggregate which Emerson names a “compound result into which every
great force enters as an ingredient.” But, instead of making it, as
LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord
philosopher calls it “an element which unites the most forcible persons
of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other;
and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack
the Masonic sign.”
[Footnote 29: _The Psychology of Peoples_, p. 33.]
The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in
particular, cannot be said to form “an irreducible element of species,”
but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt.
Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the
last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it
transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely
widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has
calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century,
“each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty
millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D.” The merest peasant
that grubs the soil, “bowed by the weight of centuries,” has in his
veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as “to the
ox.”
An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the
nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when
Yoshida Shôin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote
on the eve of his execution the following stanza;—
“Full well I knew this course must end in death;
It was Yamato spirit urged me on
To dare whate’er betide.”
Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor
force of our country.
Mr. Ransome says that “there are three distinct Japans in existence
side by side to-day,—the old, which has not wholly died out; the new,
hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now
through its most critical throes.” While this is very true in most
respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete
institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions,
requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old
Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove
the formative force of the new era.
The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the
hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation,
were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of
Knighthood. Some writers[30] have lately tried to prove that the
Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making
of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this
honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it
will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of
preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they
have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian
missionaries are doing great things for Japan—in the domain of
education, and especially of moral education:—only, the mysterious
though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in
divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet
Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the
character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged
us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern
Japan—of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the
reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:—and you
will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought
and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and
observation of the Far East,[31] that only the respect in which Japan
differed from other oriental despotisms lay in “the ruling influence
among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious
codes of honor that man has ever devised,” he touched the main spring
which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is
destined to be.
[Footnote 30: Speer; _Missions and Politics in Asia_, Lecture IV,
pp. 189-190; Dennis: _Christian Missions and Social Progress_, Vol.
I, p. 32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.]
[Footnote 31: _The Far East_, p. 375.]
The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a
work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one
were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When
we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the
latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study
Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the
development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much
less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of
oriental institutions and peoples has written:—“We are told every day
how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those
islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan,
but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of
organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful.
She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before
imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence,” continues
Mr. Townsend, “unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea
of China. Where is the European apostle,” asks our author, “or
philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made Japan?”[32] Mr.
Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought
about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he
had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation
would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than
Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as
an inferior power,—that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or
industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of
transformation.
[Footnote 32: Meredith Townsend, _Asia and Europe_, N.Y., 1900, 28.]
The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read.
A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most
eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the
working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The
universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly
ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance,
fortitude and bravery that “the little Jap” possesses, were sufficiently
proved in the China-Japanese war.[33] “Is there any nation more loyal
and patriotic?” is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer,
“There is not,” we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood.
[Footnote 33: Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and
Yamada on _Heroic Japan_, and Diosy on _The New Far East_.]
On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and
defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of
abstruse philosophy—while some of our young men have already gained
international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved
anything in philosophical lines—is traceable to the neglect of
metaphysical training under Bushido’s regimen of education. Our sense of
honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness;
and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us,
that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor.
Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair,
dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book,
stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane
things? He is the _shosei_ (student), to whom the earth is too small and
the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe
and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of
wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for
knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods
are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of
Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national
honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of
Bushido.
Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said
that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people
responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it
has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly
translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different
degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion
could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an
appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master.
The word “Loyalty” revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted
to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued
“students’ strike” in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction
with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the
Director,—“Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought
to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is
not manly to push a falling man.” The scientific incapacity of the
professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into
insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By
arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great
magnitude can be accomplished.
One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the
missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history—“What do we care for
heathen records?” some say—and consequently estrange their religion
from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed
to for centuries past. Mocking a nation’s history!—as though the career
of any people—even of the lowest African savages possessing no
record—were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by
the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be
deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races
themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and
white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race
forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the
past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new
religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an “old, old story,” which, if
presented in intelligible words,—that is to say, if expressed in the
vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people—will find easy
lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality.
Christianity in its American or English form—with more of Anglo-Saxon
freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder—is a poor scion
to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the new faith uproot
the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel
on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic process may be possible—in Hawaii,
where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in
amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal
race: such a process is most decidedly impossible in Japan—nay, it is
a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his
kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following
words of a saintly man, devout Christian and profound scholar:—“Men
have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering
how much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may
have been mingled with the other. They have compared the best part of
themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity
with the corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at
impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that could be
said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of
religion.”[34]
[Footnote 34: Jowett, _Sermons on Faith and Doctrine_, II.]
But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little
doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess is a
power which we must take into account in reckoning
THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO,
whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air,
that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces are at
work to threaten it.
Few historical comparisons can be more judiciously made than between the
Chivalry of Europe and the Bushido of Japan, and, if history repeats
itself, it certainly will do with the fate of the latter what it did
with that of the former. The particular and local causes for the decay
of Chivalry which St. Palaye gives, have, of course, little application
to Japanese conditions; but the larger and more general causes that
helped to undermine Knighthood and Chivalry in and after the Middle Ages
are as surely working for the decline of Bushido.
One remarkable difference between the experience of Europe and of Japan
is, that, whereas in Europe when Chivalry was weaned from Feudalism and
was adopted by the Church, it obtained a fresh lease of life, in Japan
no religion was large enough to nourish it; hence, when the mother
institution, Feudalism, was gone, Bushido, left an orphan, had to shift
for itself. The present elaborate military organization might take it
under its patronage, but we know that modern warfare can afford little
room for its continuous growth. Shintoism, which fostered it in its
infancy, is itself superannuated. The hoary sages of ancient China are
being supplanted by the intellectual parvenu of the type of Bentham and
Mill. Moral theories of a comfortable kind, flattering to the
Chauvinistic tendencies of the time, and therefore thought well-adapted
to the need of this day, have been invented and propounded; but as yet
we hear only their shrill voices echoing through the columns of yellow
journalism.
Principalities and powers are arrayed against the Precepts of
Knighthood. Already, as Veblen says, “the decay of the ceremonial
code—or, as it is otherwise called, the vulgarization of life—among
the industrial classes proper, has become one of the chief enormities
of latter-day civilization in the eyes of all persons of delicate
sensibilities.” The irresistible tide of triumphant democracy, which can
tolerate no form or shape of trust—and Bushido was a trust organized
by those who monopolized reserve capital of intellect and culture,
fixing the grades and value of moral qualities—is alone powerful enough
to engulf the remnant of Bushido. The present societary forces are
antagonistic to petty class spirit, and Chivalry is, as Freeman severely
criticizes, a class spirit. Modern society, if it pretends to any unity,
cannot admit “purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an
exclusive class.”[35] Add to this the progress of popular instruction,
of industrial arts and habits, of wealth and city-life,—then we can
easily see that neither the keenest cuts of samurai’s sword nor the
sharpest shafts shot from Bushido’s boldest bows can aught avail. The
state built upon the rock of Honor and fortified by the same—shall we
call it the _Ehrenstaat_ or, after the manner of Carlyle, the
Heroarchy?—is fast falling into the hands of quibbling lawyers and
gibbering politicians armed with logic-chopping engines of war. The
words which a great thinker used in speaking of Theresa and Antigone may
aptly be repeated of the samurai, that “the medium in which their ardent
deeds took shape is forever gone.”
[Footnote 35: _Norman Conquest_, Vol. V, p. 482.]
Alas for knightly virtues! alas for samurai pride! Morality ushered into
the world with the sound of bugles and drums, is destined to fade away
as “the captains and the kings depart.”
If history can teach us anything, the state built on martial virtues—be
it a city like Sparta or an Empire like Rome—can never make on earth a
“continuing city.” Universal and natural as is the fighting instinct in
man, fruitful as it has proved to be of noble sentiments and manly
virtues, it does not comprehend the whole man. Beneath the instinct to
fight there lurks a diviner instinct to love. We have seen that
Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but
Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless,
with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to
emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times.
Callings nobler and broader than a warrior’s claim our attention to-day.
With an enlarged view of life, with the growth of democracy, with better
knowledge of other peoples and nations, the Confucian idea of
Benevolence—dare I also add the Buddhist idea of Pity?—will expand
into the Christian conception of Love. Men have become more than
subjects, having grown to the estate of citizens: nay, they are more
than citizens, being men.
Though war clouds hang heavy upon our horizon, we will believe that the
wings of the angel of peace can disperse them. The history of the world
confirms the prophecy that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” A nation
that sells its birthright of peace, and backslides from the front rank
of Industrialism into the file of Filibusterism, makes a poor bargain
indeed!
When the conditions of society are so changed that they have become not
only adverse but hostile to Bushido, it is time for it to prepare for an
honorable burial. It is just as difficult to point out when chivalry
dies, as to determine the exact time of its inception. Dr. Miller says
that Chivalry was formally abolished in the year 1559, when Henry II. of
France was slain in a tournament. With us, the edict formally
abolishing Feudalism in 1870 was the signal to toll the knell of
Bushido. The edict, issued two years later, prohibiting the wearing of
swords, rang out the old, “the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence
of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise,” it rang
in the new age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators.”
It has been said that Japan won her late war with China by means of
Murata guns and Krupp cannon; it has been said the victory was the work
of a modern school system; but these are less than half-truths. Does
ever a piano, be it of the choicest workmanship of Ehrbar or Steinway,
burst forth into the Rhapsodies of Liszt or the Sonatas of Beethoven,
without a master’s hand? Or, if guns win battles, why did not Louis
Napoleon beat the Prussians with his _Mitrailleuse_, or the Spaniards
with their Mausers the Filipinos, whose arms were no better than the
old-fashioned Remingtons? Needless to repeat what has grown a trite
saying that it is the spirit that quickeneth, without which the best of
implements profiteth but little. The most improved guns and cannon do
not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does
not make a coward a hero. No! What won the battles on the Yalu, in Corea
and Manchuria, was the ghosts of our fathers, guiding our hands and
beating in our hearts. They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of
our warlike ancestors. To those who have eyes to see, they are clearly
visible. Scratch a Japanese of the most advanced ideas, and he will show
a samurai. The great inheritance of honor, of valor and of all martial
virtues is, as Professor Cramb very fitly expresses it, “but ours on
trust, the fief inalienable of the dead and of the generation to come,”
and the summons of the present is to guard this heritage, nor to bate
one jot of the ancient spirit; the summons of the future will be so to
widen its scope as to apply it in all walks and relations of life.