Bushido - Inazo Nitobe (color ebook reader TXT) 📗
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a story of vicarious death—as significant as, and not more revolting
than, the story of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac. In both cases
it was obedience to the call of duty, utter submission to the command of
a higher voice, whether given by a visible or an invisible angel, or
heard by an outward or an inward ear;—but I abstain from preaching.
The individualism of the West, which recognizes separate interests for
father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief
the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest
of the family and of the members thereof is intact,—one and
inseparable. This interest it bound up with affection—natural,
instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural
love (which animals themselves possess), what is that? “For if ye love
them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the
same?”
In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart
struggle of Shigemori concerning his father’s rebellious conduct. “If I
be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my
sovereign must go amiss.” Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying
with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may
be released from this world where it is hard for purity and
righteousness to dwell.
Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and
affection. Indeed neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself
contains an adequate rendering of ko, our conception of filial piety,
and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of
Loyalty. Women, too, encouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the
king. Ever as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the
samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of Loyalty.
Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived
the state as antedating the individual—the latter being born into the
former as part and parcel thereof—he must live and die for it or for
the incumbent of its legitimate authority. Readers of Crito will
remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the
city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape. Among others he
makes them (the laws, or the state) say:—“Since you were begotten and
nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our
offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you!” These are words
which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing
has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the
laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being. Loyalty
is an ethical outcome of this political theory.
I am not entirely ignorant of Mr. Spencer’s view according to which
political obedience—Loyalty—is accredited with only a transitional
function.[18] It may be so. Sufficient unto the day is the virtue
thereof. We may complacently repeat it, especially as we believe that
day to be a long space of time, during which, so our national anthem
says, “tiny pebbles grow into mighty rocks draped with moss.” We may
remember at this juncture that even among so democratic a people as the
English, “the sentiment of personal fidelity to a man and his posterity
which their Germanic ancestors felt for their chiefs, has,” as Monsieur
Boutmy recently said, “only passed more or less into their profound
loyalty to the race and blood of their princes, as evidenced in their
extraordinary attachment to the dynasty.”
[Footnote 18: Principles of Ethics, Vol. I, Pt. II, Ch. X.]
Political subordination, Mr. Spencer predicts, will give place to
loyalty to the dictates of conscience. Suppose his induction is
realized—will loyalty and its concomitant instinct of reverence
disappear forever? We transfer our allegiance from one master to
another, without being unfaithful to either; from being subjects of a
ruler that wields the temporal sceptre we become servants of the monarch
who sits enthroned in the penetralia of our heart. A few years ago a
very stupid controversy, started by the misguided disciples of Spencer,
made havoc among the reading class of Japan. In their zeal to uphold the
claim of the throne to undivided loyalty, they charged Christians with
treasonable propensities in that they avow fidelity to their Lord and
Master. They arrayed forth sophistical arguments without the wit of
Sophists, and scholastic tortuosities minus the niceties of the
Schoolmen. Little did they know that we can, in a sense, “serve two
masters without holding to the one or despising the other,” “rendering
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that
are God’s.” Did not Socrates, all the while he unflinchingly refused to
concede one iota of loyalty to his daemon, obey with equal fidelity
and equanimity the command of his earthly master, the State? His
conscience he followed, alive; his country he served, dying. Alack the
day when a state grows so powerful as to demand of its citizens the
dictates of their conscience!
Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord
or king. Thomas Mowbray was a veritable spokesman for us when he said:
“Myself I throw, dread sovereign, at thy foot.
My life thou shalt command, but not my shame.
The one my duty owes; but my fair name,
Despite of death, that lives upon my grave,
To dark dishonor’s use, thou shalt not have.”
A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious will or freak
or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the
Precepts. Such an one was despised as nei-shin, a cringeling, who
makes court by unscrupulous fawning or as chô-shin, a favorite who
steals his master’s affections by means of servile compliance; these two
species of subjects corresponding exactly to those which Iago
describes,—the one, a duteous and knee-crooking knave, doting on his
own obsequious bondage, wearing out his time much like his master’s ass;
the other trimm’d in forms and visages of duty, keeping yet his heart
attending on himself. When a subject differed from his master, the loyal
path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him
of his error, as Kent did to King Lear. Failing in this, let the master
deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual
course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and
conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with
the shedding of his own blood.
Life being regarded as the means whereby to serve his master, and its
ideal being set upon honor, the whole
EDUCATION AND TRAINING OFA SAMURAI,
were conducted accordingly.
The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up
character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence,
intelligence and dialectics. We have seen the important part aesthetic
accomplishments played in his education. Indispensable as they were to a
man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai
training. Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the
word Chi, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom
in the first instance and placed knowledge only in a very subordinate
place. The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be
Chi, Jin, Yu, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage. A
samurai was essentially a man of action. Science was without the pale of
his activity. He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his
profession of arms. Religion and theology were relegated to the priests;
he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish
courage. Like an English poet the samurai believed “‘tis not the creed
that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed.”
Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual
training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth
that he strove after,—literature was pursued mainly as a pastime, and
philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for
the exposition of some military or political problem.
From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the
curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted
mainly of the following,—fencing, archery, jiujutsu or yawara,
horsemanship, the use of the spear, tactics, caligraphy, ethics,
literature and history. Of these, jiujutsu and caligraphy may require
a few words of explanation. Great stress was laid on good writing,
probably because our logograms, partaking as they do of the nature of
pictures, possess artistic value, and also because chirography was
accepted as indicative of one’s personal character. Jiujutsu may be
briefly defined as an application of anatomical knowledge to the purpose
of offense or defense. It differs from wrestling, in that it does not
depend upon muscular strength. It differs from other forms of attack in
that it uses no weapon. Its feat consists in clutching or striking such
part of the enemy’s body as will make him numb and incapable of
resistance. Its object is not to kill, but to incapacitate one for
action for the time being.
A subject of study which one would expect to find in military education
and which is rather conspicuous by its absence in the Bushido course of
instruction, is mathematics. This, however, can be readily explained in
part by the fact that feudal warfare was not carried on with scientific
precision. Not only that, but the whole training of the samurai was
unfavorable to fostering numerical notions.
Chivalry is uneconomical; it boasts of penury. It says with Ventidius
that “ambition, the soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than
gain which darkens him.” Don Quixote takes more pride in his rusty spear
and skin-and-bone horse than in gold and lands, and a samurai is in
hearty sympathy with his exaggerated confrère of La Mancha. He disdains
money itself,—the art of making or hoarding it. It is to him veritably
filthy lucre. The hackneyed expression to describe the decadence of an
age is “that the civilians loved money and the soldiers feared death.”
Niggardliness of gold and of life excites as much disapprobation as
their lavish use is panegyrized. “Less than all things,” says a current
precept, “men must grudge money: it is by riches that wisdom is
hindered.” Hence children were brought up with utter disregard of
economy. It was considered bad taste to speak of it, and ignorance of
the value of different coins was a token of good breeding. Knowledge of
numbers was indispensable in the mustering of forces as well, as in the
distribution of benefices and fiefs; but the counting of money was left
to meaner hands. In many feudatories, public finance was administered by
a lower kind of samurai or by priests. Every thinking bushi knew well
enough that money formed the sinews of war; but he did not think of
raising the appreciation of money to a virtue. It is true that thrift
was enjoined by Bushido, but not for economical reasons so much as for
the exercise of abstinence. Luxury was thought the greatest menace to
manhood, and severest simplicity was required of the warrior class,
sumptuary laws being enforced in many of the clans.
We read that in ancient Rome the farmers of revenue and other financial
agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby
showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money
itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of
the Romans may be imagined. Not
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