Bushido, the Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe
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Inazo Nitobe >> Bushido, the Soul of Japan
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8 BUSHIDO
THE SOUL OF JAPAN
BY
INAZO NITOBE, A.M., Ph.D.
Author's Edition, Revised and Enlarged
13th EDITION
1908
DECEMBER, 1904
TO MY BELOVED UNCLE
TOKITOSHI OTA
WHO TAUGHT ME TO REVERE THE PAST
AND
TO ADMIRE THE DEEDS OF THE SAMURAI
I DEDICATE
THIS LITTLE BOOK
--"That way
Over the mountain, which who stands upon,
Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road;
While if he views it from the waste itself,
Up goes the line there, plain from base to brow,
Not vague, mistakable! What's a break or two
Seen from the unbroken desert either side?
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)
What if the breaks themselves should prove at last
The most consummate of contrivances
To train a man's eye, teach him what is faith?"
--ROBERT BROWNING,
_Bishop Blougram's Apology_.
"There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have
from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a
predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind.
These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of honor."
--HALLAM,
_Europe in the Middle Ages_.
"Chivalry is itself the poetry of life."
--SCHLEGEL,
_Philosophy of History_.
[Transcriber's Note: [=O] represents O with macron,
[=o] represents o with macron,
[=u] represents u with macron]
PREFACE
About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof
of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our
conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of
religion. "Do you mean to say," asked the venerable professor, "that you
have no religious instruction in your schools?" On my replying in the
negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I
shall not easily forget, he repeated "No religion! How do you impart
moral education?" The question stunned me at the time. I could give no
ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days,
were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the
different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find
that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils.
The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries
put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs
prevail in Japan.
In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my
wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and Bushido,[1] the
moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume.
[Footnote 1: Pronounced _Boo-shee-doh'_. In putting Japanese words and
names into English, Hepburn's rule is followed, that the vowels should
be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in English.]
Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put
down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given
in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught
and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force.
Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest
Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging
to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over
them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while
these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I
have often thought,--"Had I their gift of language, I would present the
cause of Japan in more eloquent terms!" But one who speaks in a borrowed
tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible.
All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I
have made with parallel examples from European history and literature,
believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the
comprehension of foreign readers.
Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious
workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity
itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and
with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the
teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the
religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as
well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God
hath made a testament which maybe called "old" with every people and
nation,--Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my
theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public.
In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend
Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the
characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this
book.
INAZO NITOBE.
Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899.
PREFACE
TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION
Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago,
this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has
passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth
appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be
issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of
Messrs. George H. Putnam's Sons, of New York.
In the meantime, _Bushido_ has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev
of Khandesh, into German by Fraeulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian
by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life
in Lemberg,--although this Polish edition has been censured by the
Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into
French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian
officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for
the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian
public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been
published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger
students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also
owe much for his aid in other ways.
I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found
sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the
subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly
flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that
President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and
distributing several dozens of copies among his friends.
In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have
largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret,
as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on
Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot
of Japanese ethics--Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather
to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular
virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot
draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge
upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are
touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and
discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger
than it is.
This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt
I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful
suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement.
I.N.
Kyoto,
Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905.
CONTENTS
Bushido as an Ethical System
Sources of Bushido
Rectitude or Justice
Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing
Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress
Politeness
Veracity or Truthfulness
Honor
The Duty of Loyalty
Education and Training of a Samurai
Self-Control
The Institutions of Suicide and Redress
The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai
The Training and Position of Woman
The Influence of Bushido
Is Bushido Still Alive?
The Future of Bushido
BUSHIDO AS AN ETHICAL SYSTEM.
Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its
emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique
virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living
object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape
or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware
that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society
which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as
those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed
their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of
feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother
institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the
language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the
neglected bier of its European prototype.
It argues a sad defect of information concerning the Far East, when so
erudite a scholar as Dr. George Miller did not hesitate to affirm that
chivalry, or any other similar institution, has never existed either
among the nations of antiquity or among the modern Orientals.[2] Such
ignorance, however, is amply excusable, as the third edition of the good
Doctor's work appeared the same year that Commodore Perry was knocking
at the portals of our exclusivism. More than a decade later, about the
time that our feudalism was in the last throes of existence, Carl Marx,
writing his "Capital," called the attention of his readers to the
peculiar advantage of studying the social and political institutions of
feudalism, as then to be seen in living form only in Japan. I would
likewise invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study
of chivalry in the Japan of the present.
[Footnote 2: _History Philosophically Illustrated_, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol.
II, p. 2.]
Enticing as is a historical disquisition on the comparison between
European and Japanese feudalism and chivalry, it is not the purpose of
this paper to enter into it at length. My attempt is rather to relate,
_firstly_, the origin and sources of our chivalry; _secondly_, its
character and teaching; _thirdly_, its influence among the masses; and,
_fourthly_, the continuity and permanence of its influence. Of these
several points, the first will be only brief and cursory, or else I
should have to take my readers into the devious paths of our national
history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most
likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative
Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt
with as corollaries.
The Japanese word which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the
original, more expressive than Horsemanship. _Bu-shi-do_ means literally
Military-Knight-Ways--the ways which fighting nobles should observe in
their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the "Precepts
of Knighthood," the _noblesse oblige_ of the warrior class. Having thus
given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the
word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable
for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique,
engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must
wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a
national _timbre_ so expressive of race characteristics that the best of
translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice
and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German "_Gemueth_"
signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words
verbally so closely allied as the English _gentleman_ and the French
_gentilhomme_?
Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were
required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it
consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from
the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a
code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful
sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets
of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however
able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an
organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps,
fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English
Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to
compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus Act. True, early in
the seventeenth century Military Statutes (_Buke Hatto_) were
promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with
marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but
meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time
and place and say, "Here is its fountain head." Only as it attains
consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be
identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many
threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the
political institutions of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman
Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the
ascendency of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in
England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period
previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in
Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned.
Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated,
the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These
were known as _samurai_, meaning literally, like the old English _cniht_
(knecht, knight), guards or attendants--resembling in character the
_soldurii_ whom Caesar mentioned as existing in Aquitania, or the
_comitati_, who, according to Tacitus, followed Germanic chiefs in his
time; or, to take a still later parallel, the _milites medii_ that one
reads about in the history of Mediaeval Europe. A Sinico-Japanese word
_Bu-ke_ or _Bu-shi_ (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use.
They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough
breed who made fighting their vocation. This class was naturally
recruited, in a long period of constant warfare, from the manliest and
the most adventurous, and all the while the process of elimination went
on, the timid and the feeble being sorted out, and only "a rude race,
all masculine, with brutish strength," to borrow Emerson's phrase,
surviving to form families and the ranks of the _samurai_. Coming to
profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great
responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of
behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and
belonged to different clans. Just as physicians limit competition among
themselves by professional courtesy, just as lawyers sit in courts of
honor in cases of violated etiquette, so must also warriors possess some
resort for final judgment on their misdemeanors.
Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive
sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and
civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire
of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, "to leave behind him the name of a
fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one."
And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which
moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even
so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions
endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom's is the basis on which the
greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to
discover that _Bushido_ does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting
in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify,
brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, "We know from what
failings our virtue springs."[3] "Sneaks" and "cowards" are epithets of
the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life
with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and
its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher
authority and more rational sources for its own justification,
satisfaction and development. If military interests had operated alone,
without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the ideal
of knighthood have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with
concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with
spiritual data. "Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a
perfect Christian knight," says Lamartine. In Japan there were several
SOURCES OF BUSHIDO,
of which I may begin with Buddhism. It furnished a sense of calm trust
in Fate, a quiet submission to the inevitable, that stoic composure in
sight of danger or calamity, that disdain of life and friendliness with
death. A foremost teacher of swordsmanship, when he saw his pupil
master the utmost of his art, told him, "Beyond this my instruction must
give way to Zen teaching." "Zen" is the Japanese equivalent for the
Dhyana, which "represents human effort to reach through meditation zones
of thought beyond the range of verbal expression."[4] Its method is
contemplation, and its purport, as far as I understand it, to be
convinced of a principle that underlies all phenomena, and, if it can,
of the Absolute itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with this
Absolute. Thus defined, the teaching was more than the dogma of a sect,
and whoever attains to the perception of the Absolute raises himself
above mundane things and awakes, "to a new Heaven and a new Earth."
[Footnote 3: Ruskin was one of the most gentle-hearted and peace loving
men that ever lived. Yet he believed in war with all the fervor of a
worshiper of the strenuous life. "When I tell you," he says in the
_Crown of Wild Olive_, "that war is the foundation of all the arts, I
mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and
faculties of men. It is very strange to me to discover this, and very
dreadful, but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. * * * I found in
brief, that all great nations learned their truth of word and strength
of thought in war; that they were nourished in war and wasted by peace,
taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by
peace; in a word, that they were born in war and expired in peace."]
[Footnote 4: Lafcadio Hearn, _Exotics and Retrospectives_, p. 84.]
What Buddhism failed to give, Shintoism offered in abundance. Such
loyalty to the sovereign, such reverence for ancestral memory, and such
filial piety as are not taught by any other creed, were inculcated by
the Shinto doctrines, imparting passivity to the otherwise arrogant
character of the samurai. Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of
"original sin." On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and
God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum from which
divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto
shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship,
and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part
of its furnishing. The presence of this article, is easy to explain: it
typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear,
reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in
front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its
shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic
injunction, "Know Thyself." But self-knowledge does not imply, either in
the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man,
not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral
kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the
Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his
eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter
veiled his head, for his was reflection. Essentially like the Roman
conception of religion, our reflection brought into prominence not so
much the moral as the national consciousness of the individual. Its
nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its
ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial
family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more
than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain--it is the
sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers: to us the
Emperor is more than the Arch Constable of a _Rechtsstaat_, or even the
Patron of a _Culturstaat_--he is the bodily representative of Heaven on
earth, blending in his person its power and its mercy. If what M.
Boutmy[5] says is true of English royalty--that it "is not only the
image of authority, but the author and symbol of national unity," as I
believe it to be, doubly and trebly may this be affirmed of royalty in
Japan.
[Footnote 5: _The English People_, p. 188.]
The tenets of Shintoism cover the two predominating features of the
emotional life of our race--Patriotism and Loyalty. Arthur May Knapp
very truly says: "In Hebrew literature it is often difficult to tell
whether the writer is speaking of God or of the Commonwealth; of heaven
or of Jerusalem; of the Messiah or of the nation itself."[6] A similar
confusion may be noticed in the nomenclature of our national faith.
I said confusion, because it will be so deemed by a logical intellect
on account of its verbal ambiguity; still, being a framework of
national instinct and race feelings, Shintoism never pretends to a
systematic philosophy or a rational theology. This religion--or, is
it not more correct to say, the race emotions which this religion
expressed?--thoroughly imbued Bushido with loyalty to the sovereign and
love of country. These acted more as impulses than as doctrines; for
Shintoism, unlike the Mediaeval Christian Church, prescribed to its
votaries scarcely any _credenda_, furnishing them at the same time with
_agenda_ of a straightforward and simple type.
[Footnote 6: "_Feudal and Modern Japan_" Vol. I, p. 183.]
As to strictly ethical doctrines, the teachings of Confucius were the
most prolific source of Bushido. His enunciation of the five moral
relations between master and servant (the governing and the governed),
father and son, husband and wife, older and younger brother, and between
friend and friend, was but a confirmation of what the race instinct had
recognized before his writings were introduced from China. The calm,
benignant, and worldly-wise character of his politico-ethical precepts
was particularly well suited to the samurai, who formed the ruling
class. His aristocratic and conservative tone was well adapted to the
requirements of these warrior statesmen. Next to Confucius, Mencius
exercised an immense authority over Bushido. His forcible and often
quite democratic theories were exceedingly taking to sympathetic
natures, and they were even thought dangerous to, and subversive of, the
existing social order, hence his works were for a long time under
censure. Still, the words of this master mind found permanent lodgment
in the heart of the samurai.
The writings of Confucius and Mencius formed the principal text-books
for youths and the highest authority in discussion among the old. A mere
acquaintance with the classics of these two sages was held, however, in
no high esteem. A common proverb ridicules one who has only an
intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant
of _Analects_. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling
sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be
boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little
smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more
so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge
becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the
learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was
considered a machine. Intellect itself was considered subordinate to
ethical emotion. Man and the universe were conceived to be alike
spiritual and ethical. Bushido could not accept the judgment of Huxley,
that the cosmic process was unmoral.
Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in
itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom. Hence, he who
stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient
machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus,
knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in
life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the
Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, "To
know and to act are one and the same."
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