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

a conscious and willing victim: it is

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 OF

A 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