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

of every samurai and often

assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated

which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the

slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took

offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary

strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a

well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea

jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple

and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed

on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior

with a beast—I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe.

Yet, the circulation of such stories implies three things; (1) that they

were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made

of the samurai’s profession of honor; and (3) that a very strong sense

of shame was developed among them. It is plainly unfair to take an

abnormal case to cast blame upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of

the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and

extravagance—inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania

there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium

tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai

about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine

virtue?

 

The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined to

run was strongly counterbalanced by preaching magnanimity and patience.

To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as “short-tempered.”

The popular adage said: “To bear what you think you cannot bear is

really to bear.” The great Iyéyasu left to posterity a few maxims,

among which are the following:—“The life of man is like going a long

distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not.

Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own short-comings. *

Forbearance is the basis of length of days.” He proved in his life what

he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths

of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he

attributed, “I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;” to

Hidéyoshi, “I will force her to sing for me;” and to Iyéyasu, “I will

wait till she opens her lips.”

 

Patience and long suffering were also highly commended by Mencius. In

one place he writes to this effect: “Though you denude yourself and

insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my soul by your

outrage.” Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offense is unworthy

a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath.

 

To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could

reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances. Take,

for instance, this saying of Ogawa: “When others speak all manner of

evil things against thee, return not evil for evil, but rather reflect

that thou wast not more faithful in the discharge of thy duties.” Take

another of Kumazawa:—“When others blame thee, blame them not; when

others are angry at thee, return not anger. Joy cometh only as Passion

and Desire part.” Still another instance I may cite from Saigo, upon

whose overhanging brows “shame is ashamed to sit;”—“The Way is the way

of Heaven and Earth: Man’s place is to follow it: therefore make it the

object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with

equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love

others. Make not Man thy partner but Heaven, and making Heaven thy

partner do thy best. Never condemn others; but see to it that thou

comest not short of thine own mark.” Some of those sayings remind us of

Christian expostulations and show us how far in practical morality

natural religion can approach the revealed. Not only did these sayings

remain as utterances, but they were really embodied in acts.

 

It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of

magnanimity, patience and forgiveness. It was a great pity that nothing

clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes Honor, only a few

enlightened minds being aware that it “from no condition rises,” but

that it lies in each acting well his part: for nothing was easier than

for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in

Mencius in their calmer moments. Said this sage, “‘Tis in every man’s

mind to love honor: but little doth he dream that what is truly

honorable lies within himself and not anywhere else. The honor which men

confer is not good honor. Those whom Châo the Great ennobles, he can

make mean again.”

 

For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death,

as we shall see later, while Honor—too often nothing higher than vain

glory or worldly approbation—was prized as the summum bonum of

earthly existence. Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal

toward which youths had to strive. Many a lad swore within himself as he

crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it

until he had made a name in the world: and many an ambitious mother

refused to see her sons again unless they could “return home,” as the

expression is, “caparisoned in brocade.” To shun shame or win a name,

samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals

of bodily or mental suffering. They knew that honor won in youth grows

with age. In the memorable siege of Osaka, a young son of Iyéyasu, in

spite of his earnest entreaties to be put in the vanguard, was placed at

the rear of the army. When the castle fell, he was so chagrined and wept

so bitterly that an old councillor tried to console him with all the

resources at his command. “Take comfort, Sire,” said he, “at thought of

the long future before you. In the many years that you may live, there

will come divers occasions to distinguish yourself.” The boy fixed his

indignant gaze upon the man and said—“How foolishly you talk! Can ever

my fourteenth year come round again?”

 

Life itself was thought cheap if honor and fame could be attained

therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered

dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down.

 

Of the causes in comparison with which no life was too dear to

sacrifice, was

 

THE DUTY OF LOYALTY,

 

which was the key-stone making feudal virtues a symmetrical arch. Other

virtues feudal morality shares in common with other systems of ethics,

with other classes of people, but this virtue—homage and fealty to a

superior—is its distinctive feature. I am aware that personal fidelity

is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,—a

gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the

code of chivalrous honor that Loyalty assumes paramount importance.

 

In spite of Hegel’s criticism that the fidelity of feudal vassals,

being an obligation to an individual and not to a Commonwealth, is a

bond established on totally unjust principles,[16] a great compatriot of

his made it his boast that personal loyalty was a German virtue.

Bismarck had good reason to do so, not because the Treue he boasts of

was the monopoly of his Fatherland or of any single nation or race, but

because this favored fruit of chivalry lingers latest among the people

where feudalism has lasted longest. In America where “everybody is as

good as anybody else,” and, as the Irishman added, “better too,” such

exalted ideas of loyalty as we feel for our sovereign may be deemed

“excellent within certain bounds,” but preposterous as encouraged among

us. Montesquieu complained long ago that right on one side of the

Pyrenees was wrong on the other, and the recent Dreyfus trial proved the

truth of his remark, save that the Pyrenees were not the sole boundary

beyond which French justice finds no accord. Similarly, Loyalty as we

conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because our conception

is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we

carry it to a degree not reached in any other country. Griffis[17] was

quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made

obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was

given to Loyalty. At the risk of shocking some of my good readers, I

will relate of one “who could endure to follow a fall’n lord” and who

thus, as Shakespeare assures, “earned a place i’ the story.”

 

[Footnote 16: Philosophy of History (Eng. trans. by Sibree), Pt. IV,

Sec. II, Ch. I.]

 

[Footnote 17: Religions of Japan.]

 

The story is of one of the purest characters in our history, Michizané,

who, falling a victim to jealousy and calumny, is exiled from the

capital. Not content with this, his unrelenting enemies are now bent

upon the extinction of his family. Strict search for his son—not yet

grown—reveals the fact of his being secreted in a village school kept

by one Genzo, a former vassal of Michizané. When orders are dispatched

to the schoolmaster to deliver the head of the juvenile offender on a

certain day, his first idea is to find a suitable substitute for it. He

ponders over his school-list, scrutinizes with careful eyes all the

boys, as they stroll into the class-room, but none among the children

born of the soil bears the least resemblance to his protégé. His

despair, however, is but for a moment; for, behold, a new scholar is

announced—a comely boy of the same age as his master’s son, escorted by

a mother of noble mien. No less conscious of the resemblance between

infant lord and infant retainer, were the mother and the boy himself. In

the privacy of home both had laid themselves upon the altar; the one his

life,—the other her heart, yet without sign to the outer world.

Unwitting of what had passed between them, it is the teacher from whom

comes the suggestion.

 

Here, then, is the scape-goat!—The rest of the narrative may be briefly

told.—On the day appointed, arrives the officer commissioned to

identify and receive the head of the youth. Will he be deceived by the

false head? The poor Genzo’s hand is on the hilt of the sword, ready to

strike a blow either at the man or at himself, should the examination

defeat his scheme. The officer takes up the gruesome object before him,

goes calmly over each feature, and in a deliberate, business-like tone,

pronounces it genuine.—That evening in a lonely home awaits the mother

we saw in the school. Does she know the fate of her child? It is not for

his return that she watches with eagerness for the opening of the

wicket. Her father-in-law has been for a long time a recipient of

Michizané‘s bounties, but since his banishment circumstances have forced

her husband to follow the service of the enemy of his family’s

benefactor. He himself could not be untrue to his own cruel master; but

his son could serve the cause of the grandsire’s lord. As one acquainted

with the exile’s family, it was he who had been entrusted with the task

of identifying the boy’s head. Now the day’s—yea, the life’s—hard work

is done, he returns home and as he crosses its threshold, he accosts his

wife, saying: “Rejoice, my wife, our darling son has proved of service

to his lord!”

 

“What an atrocious story!” I hear my readers exclaim,—“Parents

deliberately sacrificing their own innocent child to save the life of

another man’s.” But this child was