Bushido by Inazo Nitobe (best ebook reader for surface pro .txt) 📖

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 elite, 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. Motoori 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.]

 

The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild—in the sense

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 aesthetic 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