Bushido, Inazo Nitobe [top rated ebook readers .txt] 📗

Japan, be they martial or pacific in character, were mainly

intended for the home; and, however far they might roam, they never lost

sight of the hearth as the center. It was to maintain its honor and

integrity that they slaved, drudged and gave up their lives. Night and

day, in tones at once firm and tender, brave and plaintive, they sang to

their little nests. As daughter, woman sacrificed herself for her

father, as wife for her husband, and as mother for her son. Thus from

earliest youth she was taught to deny herself. Her life was not one of

independence, but of dependent service. Man’s helpmeet, if her presence

is helpful she stays on the stage with him: if it hinders his work, she

retires behind the curtain. Not infrequently does it happen that a youth

becomes enamored of a maiden who returns his love with equal ardor, but,

when she realizes his interest in her makes him forgetful of his duties,

disfigures her person that her attractions may cease. Adzuma, the ideal

wife in the minds of samurai girls, finds herself loved by a man who,

in order to win her affection, conspires against her husband. Upon

pretence of joining in the guilty plot, she manages in the dark to take

her husband’s place, and the sword of the lover assassin descends upon

her own devoted head.

 

The following epistle written by the wife of a young daimio, before

taking her own life, needs no comment:—“Oft have I heard that no

accident or chance ever mars the march of events here below, and that

all moves in accordance with a plan. To take shelter under a common

bough or a drink of the same river, is alike ordained from ages prior to

our birth. Since we were joined in ties of eternal wedlock, now two

short years ago, my heart hath followed thee, even as its shadow

followeth an object, inseparably bound heart to heart, loving and being

loved. Learning but recently, however, that the coming battle is to be

the last of thy labor and life, take the farewell greeting of thy loving

partner. I have heard that K[=o]-u, the mighty warrior of ancient China,

lost a battle, loth to part with his favorite Gu. Yoshinaka, too, brave

as he was, brought disaster to his cause, too weak to bid prompt

farewell to his wife. Why should I, to whom earth no longer offers hope

or joy—why should I detain thee or thy thoughts by living? Why should I

not, rather, await thee on the road which all mortal kind must sometime

tread? Never, prithee, never forget the many benefits which our good

master Hideyori hath heaped upon thee. The gratitude we owe him is as

deep as the sea and as high as the hills.”

 

Woman’s surrender of herself to the good of her husband, home and

family, was as willing and honorable as the man’s self-surrender to the

good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no

life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well

as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than

was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was

recognized as Naijo, “the inner help.” In the ascending scale of

service stood woman, who annihilated herself for man, that he might

annihilate himself for the master, that he in turn might obey heaven. I

know the weakness of this teaching and that the superiority of

Christianity is nowhere more manifest than here, in that it requires of

each and every living soul direct responsibility to its Creator.

Nevertheless, as far as the doctrine of service—the serving of a cause

higher than one’s own self, even at the sacrifice of one’s

individuality; I say the doctrine of service, which is the greatest that

Christ preached and is the sacred keynote of his mission—as far as that

is concerned, Bushido is based on eternal truth.

 

My readers will not accuse me of undue prejudice in favor of slavish

surrender of volition. I accept in a large measure the view advanced

with breadth of learning and defended with profundity of thought by

Hegel, that history is the unfolding and realization of freedom. The

point I wish to make is that the whole teaching of Bushido was so

thoroughly imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, that it was

required not only of woman but of man. Hence, until the influence of its

Precepts is entirely done away with, our society will not realize the

view rashly expressed by an American exponent of woman’s rights, who

exclaimed, “May all the daughters of Japan rise in revolt against

ancient customs!” Can such a revolt succeed? Will it improve the female

status? Will the rights they gain by such a summary process repay the

loss of that sweetness of disposition, that gentleness of manner, which

are their present heritage? Was not the loss of domesticity on the part

of Roman matrons followed by moral corruption too gross to mention? Can

the American reformer assure us that a revolt of our daughters is the

true course for their historical development to take? These are grave

questions. Changes must and will come without revolts! In the meantime

let us see whether the status of the fair sex under the Bushido regimen

was really so bad as to justify a revolt.

 

We hear much of the outward respect European knights paid to “God and

the ladies,”—the incongruity of the two terms making Gibbon blush; we

are also told by Hallam that the morality of Chivalry was coarse, that

gallantry implied illicit love. The effect of Chivalry on the weaker

vessel was food for reflection on the part of philosophers, M. Guizot

contending that Feudalism and Chivalry wrought wholesome influences,

while Mr. Spencer tells us that in a militant society (and what is

feudal society if not militant?) the position of woman is necessarily

low, improving only as society becomes more industrial. Now is M.

Guizot’s theory true of Japan, or is Mr. Spencer’s? In reply I might

aver that both are right. The military class in Japan was restricted to

the samurai, comprising nearly 2,000,000 souls. Above them were the

military nobles, the daimio, and the court nobles, the kugé—these

higher, sybaritical nobles being fighters only in name. Below them were

masses of the common people—mechanics, tradesmen, and peasants—whose

life was devoted to arts of peace. Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as

the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have

been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the

industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it. This

is well illustrated by the position of woman; for in no class did she

experience less freedom than among the samurai. Strange to say, the

lower the social class—as, for instance, among small artisans—the more

equal was the position of husband and wife. Among the higher nobility,

too, the difference in the relations of the sexes was less marked,

chiefly because there were few occasions to bring the differences of sex

into prominence, the leisurely nobleman having become literally

effeminate. Thus Spencer’s dictum was fully exemplified in Old Japan. As

to Guizot’s, those who read his presentation of a feudal community will

remember that he had the higher nobility especially under consideration,

so that his generalization applies to the daimio and the kugé.

 

I shall be guilty of gross injustice to historical truth if my words

give one a very low opinion of the status of woman under Bushido. I do

not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man’s equal; but until

we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will

always be misunderstandings upon this subject.

 

When we think in how few respects men are equal among themselves,

e.g., before law courts or voting polls, it seems idle to trouble

ourselves with a discussion on the equality of sexes. When, the American

Declaration of Independence said that all men were created equal, it had

no reference to their mental or physical gifts: it simply repeated what

Ulpian long ago announced, that before the law all men are equal. Legal

rights were in this case the measure of their equality. Were the law the

only scale by which to measure the position of woman in a community, it

would be as easy to tell where she stands as to give her avoirdupois in

pounds and ounces. But the question is: Is there a correct standard in

comparing the relative social position of the sexes? Is it right, is it

enough, to compare woman’s status to man’s as the value of silver is

compared with that of gold, and give the ratio numerically? Such a

method of calculation excludes from consideration the most important

kind of value which a human being possesses; namely, the intrinsic. In

view of the manifold variety of requisites for making each sex fulfil

its earthly mission, the standard to be adopted in measuring its

relative position must be of a composite character; or, to borrow from

economic language, it must be a multiple standard. Bushido had a

standard of its own and it was binomial. It tried to guage the value of

woman on the battle-field and by the hearth. There she counted for very

little; here for all. The treatment accorded her corresponded to this

double measurement;—as a social-political unit not much, while as wife

and mother she received highest respect and deepest affection. Why among

so military a nation as the Romans, were their matrons so highly

venerated? Was it not because they were matrona, mothers? Not as

fighters or law-givers, but as their mothers did men bow before them. So

with us. While fathers and husbands were absent in field or camp, the

government of the household was left entirely in the hands of mothers

and wives. The education of the young, even their defence, was entrusted

to them. The warlike exercises of women, of which I have spoken, were

primarily to enable them intelligently to direct and follow the

education of their children.

 

I have noticed a rather superficial notion prevailing among

half-informed foreigners, that because the common Japanese expression

for one’s wife is “my rustic wife” and the like, she is despised and

held in little esteem. When it is told that such phrases as “my foolish

father,” “my swinish son,” “my awkward self,” etc., are in current use,

is not the answer clear enough?

 

To me it seems that our idea of marital union goes in some ways further

than the so-called Christian. “Man and woman shall be one flesh.” The

individualism of the Anglo-Saxon cannot let go of the idea that husband

and wife are two persons;—hence when they disagree, their separate

rights are recognized, and when they agree, they exhaust their

vocabulary in all sorts of silly pet-names and—nonsensical

blandishments. It sounds highly irrational to our ears, when a husband

or wife speaks to a third party of his other half—better or worse—as

being lovely, bright, kind, and what not. Is it good taste to speak of

one’s self as “my bright self,” “my lovely disposition,” and so forth?

We think praising one’s own wife or one’s own husband is praising a part

of one’s own self, and self-praise is regarded, to say the least, as bad

taste among us,—and I hope, among Christian nations too! I have

diverged at some length because the polite debasement of one’s consort

was a usage most in vogue among the samurai.

 

The Teutonic races beginning their tribal life with a superstitious awe

of the fair sex (though this is really wearing off in Germany!), and the

Americans beginning their social life under the painful consciousness of

the numerical insufficiency of women[26] (who, now increasing, are, I