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Title: Bushido, the Soul of Japan

 

Author: Inazo Nitobé

 

Release Date: April 21, 2004 [EBook #12096]

 

Language: English

 

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

 

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUSHIDO, THE SOUL OF JAPAN ***

 

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BUSHIDO THE SOUL OF JAPAN BY

INAZO NITOBÉ, 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 Boó-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 Fräulein 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