Japan by the Japanese/Chapter 14.1

The straight and narrow way which Christ enjoined upon His followers indicates the moral path which each of us must observe in order to lead a blameless, consistent, and individual career. But the instant we try to survey the moral system of a whole people or race we are confronted, not by a single straight path, but by a vast plain, as it were, stretching from a dim light, far in the distance, with green, graceful hills skirting its base, to the wide plains dotted here with primeval forests, and there with gardens of daintiest flowers, and cut up by manifold paths of various breadth running in seemingly contradictory directions. How one is bewildered by a sight like this! How often one despairs of taking an intelligent view of an alien system of thought, moral or religious, and exclaims, ‘This people has no morals,’ or ‘This race is superstitious,’ and, so saying, thanks his little sky that he is better than his neighbours! But pharisaism wanes before the growth of broader sympathies and larger knowledge. Where we once only saw chaos we now catch glimpses of order.

Many others than Browning have felt the same, and only the most thoughtless are denied the sight of a road threading the apparent waste. It is quite a customary remark of foreign tourists that Japanese life is as singularly lacking in morals ​as Japanese flowers are in scent—a sad confession of the moral and intellectual tone of the tourists themselves! Those who associate fragrance with roses only, or morality with conventional Christianity, are sure to be disappointed in finding but little of either in Japan; but that is no proof that the Umi blossoms are not fragrant, or that Chivalry does not teach the best conduct of life. There is, however, good reason for the busy West to know so little of the Far East, especially regarding things that cannot be bought or sold with cash, for we have made neither the essence of the Umi to be bottled in flasks, like attar of roses, nor the precepts of Knighthood to be bound into a gilt-edged pocket edition like Episcopal or Methodist theology. Even the European form of Chivalry, I understand, is nowadays well-nigh incomprehensible to an ordinary English reader. A recent writer on the subject speaks of it as ‘a rule of sentiment and conduct which is more remote from modern life than the rules which prevailed in the times of the Greeks and Romans’ (Cornish F. Warre, ‘Chivalry,’ p. 10). How much more difficult must it be to make our Chivalry intelligible to Europe! Still, a little familiarity will show that a gentleman is everywhere a gentleman, much of the same type, and not very different in any respect. Read the Chronicles of Froissart or the Waverley Novels, and is there really so little in common between you and their heroes? Divest them of their armour, of their quaint manners, of their odd circumstances, or, rather, look steadfastly into them until, as Carlyle would say, they become transparent, and you see in the soul of a knight the soul of a modern gentleman. Do the same with a Samurai (Japanese knight), and you can easily understand our system of Chivalry and our morals.

The age of Chivalry is said to have passed away. As an institution it has disappeared, but sad will be the day when the virtues it has inculcated shall likewise disappear! Fortunately for us, like a disembodied spirit, they still live on, somewhat modified, but still, in their essence, remaining the same. The world has surely become richer by the legacy which Chivalry has left behind. Very properly has Hallam said:

If it is the general law of evolution that progeny represents and combines in itself all that has preceded it, then it follows that modern England must show, as it actually does, traces of feudal institutions, and modern English traces of chivalric ​sentiments. How much more must this be true of Japan, where feudalism was only abolished thirty years ago! As a matter of fact, Chivalry is still the dominant moral power amongst us. It has survived all the wrecks of feudalism, and however marred and mutilated it may be, its potency cannot be doubted. It is in its might that we live, move, and have our being.

The statement that Japan has cut off all connection with the past is only partially true. Such a statement has reference only to laws and politics, but not to moral ideas. We have put our hands to a plough ‘made in Germany’ or ‘made in America,’ as the case may be, and though we have not given them up, we have received an impulse from behind by what are sometimes called the antiquated moral notions begotten of Chivalry, and I dare say the furrows we are making will show the character of the motive power.

Let me state here, then, that whatever charges may be made against our people as immoral—and it must be remembered that the same charge can be, and is, actually made against any country, England not excluded, by travellers, since it is usually the worst, the lax, side of life to which a foreigner is first introduced, such as cafés, theatres, etc., instead of a family or church—we are far from being unmoral.

If I were to designate in English the ensemble of Japanese ethical ideas, I would use, as I have been doing all along, the term Chivalry, this coming nearest to what is known among us as Bushido (pronounced Boo-she-doh). The literal significance of Bushido is Fighting-Knight-Ways, and we may more freely translate it as Teachings of Knightly Behaviour, or Precepts of Knighthood, or perhaps even the Code of Honour. Some prefer the term of Shido, omitting the prefix Bu (military), thereby extending its meaning. Whichever term is chosen, it makes little difference in substance, since gentlemen and warriors were practically identical. Warriors in times of peace were gentlemen, and gentlemen were warriors in time of war. Though Shido has at once the advantage and the fault of what logicians call definiendo latior, it may be well to use Bushido, if for no other reason than that it is the term most in vogue. As Bushido was the noblesse oblige of the Samurai class, and as this word has lately become quite domiciled in the English vocabulary, we may go so far as to coin the term Samurai-ism as an equivalent of the subject we are discussing. Though Chivalry is no doubt the most appropriate rendering of Bushido, it will be advisable to retain it in the original, as the two conceptions are not exactly the same. For instance, Bushido was not an institution, which Chivalry was, and hence the latter means more than the former; still, as Bushido was a moral code through and through, which ​Chivalry was not, it was ethically more comprehensive than the latter. Moreover, the term, if rhetorically bad, does no violence to euphony, and bears on its face the impress of its unique origin and character.

True to its name, the morality of Bushido was based on manhood and manliness. As the old Romans made no distinction between valour and virtue, so was Bushido the apotheosis of strong manhood and of all manly qualities, which by no means exclude the tenderer side of our nature. It professes no revelation from above, and it boasts of no founder. Its ultimate sanction lay in the inborn sense of shame at all wrong-doing, and of honour in doing right. It offered no philosophical demonstration for this belief; but it accepted the Kantian teaching of the moral law in the conscience as the voice of heaven.

When I speak of Bushido as a code, I confess I use the term in a loose sense. Samurai-ism was never codified; or, if a few savants made attempts at it, the efficacy of the precepts was not due to their systematic treatment. Their treatises were never used as text-books in schools, nor did they usually grace our household shelves as works of reference. The power of Bushido was more than could be obtained from books and systems. It was carved on the fleshly tablets of the heart. Scant attention did it bestow on the credenda of its followers; its forte lay in controlling their agenda. Long before anything was written upon it, it had existed as a usage—a code of honour among the Samurai. Indeed, it had antedated the establishment of the military order, by and for which it was doubtless developed and named.

At first sight one gets the impression that it is an eclectic system of ethics derived chiefly from Chinese sources, because the terms used are strongly Confucian. Bushido borrowed its forms of expression largely from Chinese classics, from Confucius and Mencius, but even these sages were, if I may be allowed to say so, exploited more to enrich the native vocabulary than to impart, much less inspire, moral sentiments; hence, when we speak of the deep and wide influence of these Chinese teachers, we must bear in mind that their most valuable services consisted in awakening our own inborn ethical consciousness. For example, when Confucius taught of the five moral relations—viz., between parent and child, husband and wife, master and servant, brother and brother, friend and friend—and gave them names, it was the nomenclature, and not the morals themselves, that we adopted.

So much for what we owe to China. There was another source from which the Bushido derived no small nourishment, and that was Buddhism. The beneficent influences of this light ​of Asia on our civilization consisted in introducing the metaphysical elements, teaching us to solve in part the mysteries of our spiritual nature, of good and evil, of life and death—with which the practical minds of warriors were little concerned, but into which every rational soul is wont to pry ‘in times of calm weather.’ We may say that this Aryan religion has supplied our minds with the act of contemplation, whereas Shintoism, in spite of its worship of nature, puts more stress on reflection. Thus, what we most gained from Buddhism in moral respects was the method of contemplation as a modus operandi of spiritual culture, and not so much its philosophy as its dogmas.

In this way every alien form of thought but helped to swell the volume of our ethical sentiments, without diverting their direction or changing their essential quality. The truth is that Bushido is the totality of the moral instincts of the Japanese race, and as such it was in its elements coeval with our blood, and therefore also with our religion of Shintoism. I am strongly inclined to believe that the simple Shinto worship of nature and of ancestors was the foundation of Bushido, and that whatever we borrowed from Chinese philosophy or Hindu religion was its flowers—nay, scarcely flowers even, but rather acted as a fertilizer to feed the tree of the Yamato race to blossom into knightly deeds and virtues.

The central moral teachings of Shintoism seem to me to be these: Know thyself; reflect into thy mind; see in thy heart a god enthroned, appointing this, or commanding that; obey his mandate, and thou needest no other gods. Consider whence thou camest—namely, from thy parents, and they from theirs, and so back from generation to generation: thou owest thy being to thy progenitors, to whom, though invisible, thou canst still be thankful. Consider also where thou art—namely, in a well-ordered state, where thou and thine are safe and well: only in such a state could thy mother give birth and suck to thee; only in such a state can thy children thrive; forget not, therefore, him thy Lord and King, from whom peace, law, and order emanate. In such simple wise did Shintoism instil moral responsibility into our own conscience, filial love to our parents and forefathers, and loyalty to our King. These threefold duties, representing respectively personal, family, and social relations, may be called the primary moral notions, in the practical exercise of which many others must of necessity follow as postulates.

Having given a rough idea of what Bushido is, I will proceed to present a little more detailed account of its precepts. I shall begin with those which concern the duties which one owes to one’s self.

​Our person was regarded, first of all, as the most precious legacy left by our fathers, wherein dwelt in its most holy of holies a divine presence, to be dedicated to the service of god, parent, or master—that is to say, to the exercise of what Mr. Reade, the author of the ‘Martyrdom of Man,’ calls the reverential virtues. Our body is an instrument to be used for an end higher than its tenant’s interest. It was treated as something lent us for the time being to clothe our spirit with. Hygienic laws were followed, not so much because their observance was attended with pleasant results, but because our health was a source of pleasure to our parents, and because it could be useful in serving our master. It was a usual thing for one dying in youth of sickness or suicide to apologize to his sorrowing parents for his premature departure in terms something like these: ‘Forgive me that I go before you. I grieve, my father and mother, that I have to leave you behind me, now that you are growing older. In your old age you will miss me. I could have done something in return for all you have done for me. ’Tis all Heaven’s decree, and I must go.’

If Christianity taught us to be stewards of our wealth, Bushido taught us to be stewards of our health; and if Christianity taught that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, Bushido learned from Shintoism that in our tenement of clay is a divine immanence. I do not mean by this that Bushido was deistic, much less can I affirm that it was monotheistic. It was too honest and too practical to invent a theological system. ‘Man projects, as it were,’ says a recent writer, ‘a mighty shadow of himself and calls it God.’ The strength and weakness of Bushido lay in its possessing no dogmatic creed. It sufficed its votaries only to feel that there was something in their mind—the mysteries of which they little cared to analyze—always active with admonitions, which, when disobeyed, heaped upon the transgressors fiery coals of shame, and which could only be appeased by implicit obedience. In the absence of any written commandments, the Ren-chi-shin (consciousness of shame) was the last and highest court of appeal. A man who had lost his sense of shame forfeited his humane claims.

While Bushido took strong cognizance of the god-like man, it did not overlook his animal nature. As said one of our poets: ‘Should men speak of the Evil One, thou wilt laugh in their faces: what if thou hadst asked thy own heart?’ I need not add that this belief in the dual nature of man was not necessarily self-contradictory. From the Pauline doctrine that it is the law which makes sin manifest, it follows that the more stringent and exacting the law, the more manifest the sin. The clearer one’s conscience, the keener his sense of ​shame—not that he indulges more in shameful acts and thoughts, but the least of sins which would escape other eyes are manifest in his sight: hence the first duty of the Samurai, who prides himself upon being the archetype of the race, was to be master of himself. One of the greatest warriors of the eleventh century left a verse behind him, which, roughly translated, runs:

Self-mastery, the maintenance of equanimity of temper under conditions the most trying, in war or peace, of composure and presence of mind in sudden dangers, of fortitude in times of calamities and reverses, was exercised as one of the primary virtues of a man of action; it was even drilled into youths by genuine Spartan methods.

Paradoxical as it may seem at first appearance, this strong fortification of self against external causes of surprise was but one side of self-subjection. One of the terms of highest praise was ‘a man without a me.’ The complete effacement of self meant identification with a personality of some higher cause. The very duties that man performs are, according to our idea, not to buy salvation for himself; he has no prospect of a ‘reward in heaven’ offered him, if he does this or does not do that. The voice of Conscience, ‘Thou good and faithful servant,’ is the only and utmost reward. Impersonality, which Percival Lowell never tires of repeating is a characteristic of the soul of the Far East, may be partly explained by this precept of knighthood. From what I have said it may be seen that shame did not always imply degradation or humiliation in the sight of our fellow-creature. Our expression, Kokoroin-hajirn or Ten-in-hajirn—to be ashamed before one’s own mind or before heaven—has, perhaps, a better equivalent in German than in English in the words sich schämen. A teaching like this was absolutely necessary as well as salutary in a small feudal community where public opinion—which may be the notions of a handful of loquacious people—wielded a stronger influence than in the modern age, and where, therefore, other people’s fancies could more easily work detriment to independence of thought, and where, also, constant demands on self-abnegation could weaken trust in one’s own conviction. ‘As long as my mind’s mirror is unclouded by all your foul breathings upon its face, all is well,’ says a Samurai; or, as a poet has put it: ‘Leaving to each beholder to think whatever thoughts her presence may inspire, the autumn moon shines clear and serene on the crest of yon mount.’ It is true that to a Samurai, who should not be a recluse, it was not ​enough just to be untarnished: in active life occasions offered themselves which required some compromise, and the story of an ancient Chinese statesman was not forgotten. This nobleman, retiring from public life full of disgust, beguiled his days with angling. One evening, while he was thus occupied, a boat passed by, and a fisherman seated therein thus broke the silence of the sea: ‘Art thou not the illustrious lord of Sanyo? Wherefore this waste of time, when the land is in great need of thy services?’ The nobleman replied: ‘All the world is gone astray; I alone walk straight.’ Hereupon the fisherman took his oar, and beating time on the side of his craft as it floated away, sang: ‘A superior man keeps pace with the world: When the waters of the Soro stream are as pure as crystal, then may he dip the tassels of his coronet; when they are sullied with mud, then shall he wash his sandals therein.” A dangerous doctrine this, I own; still, not unworthy to be pondered over.

The first requisite for a perfect Samurai was, as I have said, ever to keep account with himself. Conscience, called among us by the comprehensive term Kokoro (which may mean mind, spirit, and heart as well), was the only criterion of right and wrong. But we know that conscience is a power of perception, and the whole tenor of Bushido being activity, we were taught the Socratic doctrine—though Socrates was as unknown to us as X rays—that thought and action are one and the same.

Whatever Conscience approves is Rectitude, and whatever enables us to obtain the latter in conformity with the former is Courage. It is only to be expected from the martial character of Bushido that Valour should play an important part. In early youth the Samurai was put to the task of bearing and daring. Boys, and girls also—though naturally to a less extent—were trained in a Lacedemonian fashion to endure privation of all kinds. To go through the snow bare-foot before sunrise to his exercise of fencing or archery; to visit graveyards in the small hours of night; to pass whole nights sitting upright and ready; to undergo severe tests which would strike as barbarous a modern ‘scientific’ pedagogue, were means of education to which every Samurai was subjected. Wholesome, and in many respects useful, as was such a process of steeling the nervous courage of a physical nature, it was not this that Bushido chiefly aimed at. It was Mencius who taught the difference between the valour of villeins and what he calls ‘great (i.e., moral) courage,’ and the man whose stamina lay in the former was given no higher epithet than ‘boor-warrior.’ ‘Courage when it passes beyond proper bounds turns into ferocity.’ Confucius taught so clearly that an act to be brave must first be right that one is almost tempted ​to charge Shakespeare with translating from the Chinese sage when we see him make the Earl of Albany say: ‘When I could not be honest I could not be valiant.’ This Rectitude, or Justice, was considered inseparable from Courage. Rectitude was, indeed, the sole justifying condition for the exercise of Valour. Only the rightness of a cause was determined not by utilitarian argument, but solely by subjective moral judgment. It was the motive, not the end, that imparted justness to conduct. In part, as John Stuart Mill has said, the motive and the object of a moral action are hardly distinguishable. It has always seemed to me that as our thought works only in a straight line, when we treat intellectually of a moral action, we think of the motive as a starting-point of a line which terminates in another point, the object; whereas a complete moral action may be likened to a solid sphere, an orb, in which justice runs from the centre in innumerable radii, and of which the substance is love. For if Rectitude gives form to character, Benevolence imparts quality and tone to it.

Bushido held Benevolence as the crowning attribute of a noble spirit. It taught that it was cowardice to crush a fallen man, that it was manly to help the weak and show sympathy to women and children, that a man is truly a Samurai who feels in his heart pity. Bushido, at its best, even went further than this, if we can trust Bakin as our guide. In his wonderful story of ‘Eight Hounds’ he makes Inui (who represents the virtue of Benevolence) play the part of a good Samaritan by saving the life of his own wounded enemy with medicine and nursing, an act worthy to be inscribed in the records of the Red Cross. I confess I feel a difference, without being able to express it, between Love, as taught by Christ, and Benevolence, upon which Bushido never ceases from insisting. Is it in their intrinsic character? Is it in their degree of intensity? Is it that the one is democratic and the other aristocratic? Is it in the ways of manifestation? Is it that the one is eternally feminine and the other eternally masculine? Or is it that the one is of Heaven, heavenly, and the other of the earth, earthy? I know not how to answer these and other questions arising in quick succession as my pen glides over the sheets; but this I believe—that Bushido, grounding itself in the light that lighteth every man coming into the world, anticipated a more glorious revelation of Love.

But to return. Bushido regarded Benevolence as the master virtue, not only because it masters all other virtues, but because it is the first thing needful if a man would master his fellows; hence Confucius and Mencius were tireless in teaching it to princes and rulers. In fact, that single word to them covered the whole duty of kingship. A few years ago (1897) the German ​Emperor, in his speech at Coblenz, reminded himself and his people of the ‘Kingship by the Grace of God, with its grave duties, its tremendous responsibility to the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can release the Monarch,’ and the so-called medieval strain sounded as if it had the same origin as the Bushido conception of moral duty. Benevolence and Magnanimity, the generous virtues, were derived, says Reade in a book from which I have quoted before (‘The Order of Moral Evolution’), from parental love, and hence a sovereign, who held in his hand the patria potestas over millions, was expected above all to prize and practise these virtues.

When a ruler is actuated by a lofty sense of the functions of his office as powers entrusted to him from above, there remains nothing higher for his subjects than to support him with all the obedience compatible with their duties to their own consciences. Bushido was thus like Christianity, a doctrine of duty and service. The governing and the governed were alike taught to serve a higher end, and to that end to sacrifice themselves. Did a monarch behave badly, Bushido did not lay before the suffering people the panacea of a good government by regicide. In all the forty-five centuries during which Japan has passed through many vicissitudes of national existence, no blot of the death of a Charles I. or a Louis XVI. ever stained the pages of her history. Did ever a Nero or a Caligula sit upon our throne? I have grounds for discrediting the story of Yuriaku’s atrocities and Buretsu’s brutalities.

The love that we bear to our Emperor naturally brings with it a love for the country over which he reigns. Hence our sentiment of patriotism—I will not call it a duty, for, as Dr. Samuel Johnson rightly suggests, patriotism is a sentiment and is more than a duty—I say our patriotism is fed by two streams of sentiment, namely, that of personal love to the monarch, and of our common love for the soil which gave us birth and provides us with hearth and home. Nay, there is another source from which our patriotism is fed: it is that the land guards in its bosom the bones of our fathers; and here I may dwell awhile upon our Filial Piety.

Parental love man possesses in common with the beasts, but filial love is little found among animals after they are weaned. Was it the last of the virtues to develop in the order of ethical evolution? Whatever its origin, Mr. Herbert Spencer evidently thinks it is a waning trait in an evolving humanity; and I am aware that everywhere there are signs of its giving way to individualism and egotism; especially does this seem to be the case in Christendom. Christianity, by which I do not mean what Jesus of Nazareth taught, but a ​mongrel moral system, a concoction of a little of obsolete Judaism, of Egyptian asceticism, of Greek sublimity, of Roman arrogance, of Teutonic superstitions, and, in fact, of anything and everything that tends to make sublunary existence easy by sanctioning the wholesale slaughter of weaker races, or now and then the lopping of crowned heads—Christianity, I say, teaches that the nucleus of a well-ordered society lay in conjugal relations between the first parents, and, further, that therefore a man must leave father and mother and cleave to his wife. A teaching, this, in itself not easy of comprehension, as Paul himself admits, and very dubious in application, meaning, as it so often does, that a silly youth, when he is infatuated with a giddy girl, may spurn his parents!

Christ certainly never meant it, nor did the decalogue command, ‘Thou shalt love thy wife more than thou shouldst honour thy father and mother.’ Bushido contends that society—fellowship of spirits—did not begin with Adam and his wife—i.e., with conjugal relations—but with Adam and his Father. Even without the help of Mark Twain’s vivid ‘Diary of Adam,’ we can picture to ourselves the time when Eve was an utter stranger in Eden. Before this long-haired creature appeared, Adam had already often communed with his Maker, Creator, Father, so that the relations between son and Father had existed, even according to the Biblical narrative, ere those between husband and wife; in other words, as far as precedence is concerned, Filial Piety was the first of the virtues. Well-nigh unknown among the lower animals, it was perhaps the first to be felt by men. It is not impossible that the instant a four-footed creature walked erect, he called out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So much for the claim made by Christianity that conjugal love precedes filial.

Our idea of filial love, therefore, is, above all, gratitude for existence and for all that it involves. This we learned from Shintoism; and, though Buddhism gave us a sceptical natural-historical conception of our birth, the good sense of the people rejected it as untrue.

I mean no braggadocio when I state as my belief that at the core the Japanese race instinct was (and I hope is) sound. It grasped moral truths more directly than its intellectual teachers of the Asiatic continent. There is more than man’s wit in the anecdote which follows: ‘A Chinese sovereign once made a present to Japan of “The Book of Twenty-four Acts of Filial Piety,” whereupon Japan sent a “Book of Twenty-four Acts of Filial Disobedience,” accompanied by a letter to the effect that, whereas in China one could find only twenty-four cases of filial love, in Japan one could not discover more than the same number of men who could be charged with disobedience.’

​I am far from having exhausted the subject of filial duties. It is in itself a large theme, and if we were to follow it in all its ramifications, such as the power and responsibility of parents, the worship of ancestors, the constitution of the family, the home education of youths, the place of a mother in the household, it would lead me into the regions of jurisprudence and sociology above my knowledge. Lack of time is my chief excuse for curtailing my discourse. This is, however, the right place to describe in a few words the position of woman, since it was chiefly as a mother that she received our homage. In no respect does our Chivalry differ more widely from the European than in its attitude toward the weaker sex. ‘In Europe gallantry,’ says St. Palaye, ‘is, as it were, the soul of society.’ The so-called gai sabreur—gay science of war and gallantry—was studied and exalted into laws more imperious than those of military honour. And what did it amount to? We see Gibbon blush as he alludes to it; we hear Hallam call it ‘illicit love’; Freeman and Green use terms even more severe. Still, there was a grain of truth in it. Were it not for these, where would the ladies of Christendom have been? Cornish repeats over and over again that courtesy to women was not a feature of European Chivalry, but that it was learned from the Saracens. We on our part had no Saracens to teach us; the Chinese sages and Buddhist monks gave us only depreciatory notions of womankind. It is a matter of constant surprise to me that, with all their great influence, Confucianism and Buddhism did not degrade our women’s social position. Whatever gallantry we had was our own, and this was due first of all to the teaching of manliness which enjoined upon the knights to be clement to the weak; it was due, in the next place, to the teaching of reverence for parents, making sacred the person of women as actual or potential mothers. I am neither so blind nor so partial as to assert that among the Samurai there existed no gaity or lax frivolity, no love of adventure; but these were side-issues, never forming part of the precepts of knighthood, as gai sabreur did of European Chivalry. Nothing is more erroneous than to regard the character of Samurai women as anything like that of the geisha type; it was, indeed, the very contrast between them that was the raison d’être of the latter; for the former was a sedate and even stern, earnest, ‘home-made body,’ with little tact for entertaining and much less for amusing, better versed in ancient poems than in the newest songs, more deft with swords and spears than with guitars and samisen. Plutarch tells us that the ambition of a Spartan woman was to be the wife of a great man, and the mother of illustrious sons. Bushido set no lower ideal before our maidens; their whole ​bringing up was in accordance with this view. Upland’s couplet that ‘she thrives in sunshine, but our strength in storm and rain,’ did not apply to the training of our girls. They were instructed in many martial practices, in the art of self-defence—that they might safeguard their person and their children—the art of committing suicide, that in case no alternative opened but disgrace, they might end their lives in due order and in comely fashion. Peaceful accomplishments—music, dancing, belles-lettres, flower arrangements, etc.—were not to be neglected, but readiness for emergency, housekeeping, and the education of children were considered by far the most weighty lessons to be learnt. The inuring of nerves to hardship was a necessary part of their training. Sobs and shrieks were regarded as unworthy of a Samurai woman. We read of a mother in whose presence her daughter was slaughtered calmly composing an ode—‘The mosses growing hidden in the bottom depth of an ancient well may bring to strangers’ ken the fluttering of their leaves, but never may my heart betray its emotions to human eye.’

Stoicism is a point insisted upon constantly in our self-culture; so that no sooner is our heart stirred than the will is brought into reflex motion to subdue it. Is a man angry? it is bad taste to rage; let him laugh out his indignation! Has tribulation stricken him? let him bury his tears in smiles. It is a very common remark that the Japanese are a bright-hearted, merry people, wearing a perpetual smile, and that the girls are ever simpering and giggling. As Lafcadio Hearn has in his inimitable style analyzed the Japanese smile, there is but little left to add. Suffice it to say that it is a complex phenomenon, being the result of several conscious and unconscious conflicts in the brain and in the breast. The constant endeavour to maintain serenity of mind is so closely connected with our sense of politeness and civility that I may now pass over to this trait of Samurai education. The underlying idea of politeness is to make your company and companionship agreeable to others. It is the first condition of good society. Bows and courtesies are but a small part of good breeding. If, however, your bows are so awkward as to offend your friend’s good taste, they deserve to be studied and amended. Etiquette, therefore, may be studied as one studies music for the voice or mathematics for mental discipline. This implies as little that manners are all as that the voice is everything. Etiquette is not an end in Bushido culture: it is one of the many ways whereby man may cultivate his spiritual nature. In drinking tea, it is a slight affair how you handle your spoon, but it is never too small to show what you are. ‘Manners make the man.’ Still, I cannot emphasize too strongly that ​manners and etiquette are valuable only as manifestations of a genuine culture of the soul, which pleases itself in imparting pleasure to others and in avoiding giving pain. Politeness must conform to the precept to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep,’ or, rather, to rejoice with those who rejoice, and not let others weep when you weep. Stoicism and politeness, apparently so far apart, are in reality brother and sister: he bears all that she may shine; without her he is stolid; without him she is trivial.

I can well imagine that, in the early days of Bushido, strict canons of proper behaviour had to be enforced to hold together so inflammable and ferocious a set of mortals as the two-sworded fighters. Everywhere with the bearing of weapons goes hand in hand propriety of conduct. Sir Stamford Raffles, in his ‘History of Java,’ attributes the courteous manners of the people to the custom of carrying the kris, or native knife. Whether gentility of manners is a race characteristic of the Malayans, as cleanliness seems to be, is a question not easy to answer; but certain it is that Bushido refined whatever courtesy we may have possessed as a Malayan element of our race. Courtliness and ceremonies are inherent in any form of Chivalry. ‘Though ceremony grown stale is tedious and meaningless,’ says Cornish, ‘it has its origin in natural dignity.’

That loftiness of demeanour, which was called parage and was part of the true Knight character, was distinguished from pride as clearly as admiration was from envy, and was inseparable from ceremony. There is always danger that ceremony and politeness may belie their real nature and turn respectively into stiff mannerism or glib obsequiousness. The moment sincerity is set aside, the most gentle behaviour has no justification for being lauded. Mere empty forms and phrases were abhorred by the stern ethics of Samurai-ism. Esoteric Bushido, if I may use such a term, would not tolerate any word of or act lacking in sincerity and veracity.

It is an exceedingly superficial remark, so often heard among Europeans, that the Japanese are too polite to be sincere, or, as one missionary writes, ‘They’ (a usual term for the inaptly-used noun ‘native.’ If I am not greatly mistaken, this word, of course etymologically perfectly correct, is generally applied to the people born in a country which forms a colony of another, and not to the inhabitants of an equal independent power; hence Englishmen may call Hindoos ‘natives’ in India, but it sounds strange to our ears to hear any European apply the term to the Japanese!) ‘are such inveterate liars.’ A girl from a missionary school gets married; her teacher asks her, ‘Is your husband good to you?’ The bride says ‘No,’ for she would not think of praising her other half more than herself, or ​admitting his tenderness to her. Forthwith the bridegroom is charged with cruelly maltreating her. If, happily, it is found afterwards that the newly-married couple are really as happy as can be, it is the turn of the wife to be charged with telling a falsehood. Such is the unregenerate politeness of these benighted heathens. You ask your Japanese friends in the very depths of affliction what ails them, and in reply you get a smile and the answer, ‘Nothing’; for why should they disturb the peace and serenity of their friends with their sorrows as long as they can bear them themselves? Such an answer you may call a lie—a conventional lie, at least, or, more fitly, perhaps, a lie of pride; nevertheless, is it not less blameworthy and more Christian than pouring into your neighbour’s ears all the woes which may constitute the truest facts of your life? No honest hater of cant will deny the truth as stated by George Eliot. ‘We mortals, men and women,’ says she, ‘devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” ‘Pride helps us,’ she continues, ‘and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges to hide our own hurts, not to hurt others.’

Veracity, far from being neglected, formed an important item in the category of knightly virtues. Truth-telling is not always recommended in military life. Strategy is not outspoken honesty. Consider what Lycurgus taught. Honesty is not easily born or bred in camps; rather is it a product of markets and workshops. When Mr. Kidd so exuberantly dilates on the superiority of Western civilization as being mainly due to such a democratic and plain, everyday virtue as honesty and the like, he mistakes effect largely for cause. It requires no flight of imagination or depth of cogitation to discover in industrial dealings that ‘honesty is the best policy,’ whereas veracity, as known in martial ethics, attains a higher and deeper and consequently rarer form, which Lecky calls the philosophical, as distinct from the political or industrial.

The mercantile calling was as far removed from Bushido as the north is from the south. To a Samurai, trade and commerce were small concerns to which it was derogatory to his dignity to pay any attention; hence the effect of Bushido upon the early days of our commerce was not appreciable. This was naturally followed by a low moral tone in the industrial classes. One vulnerable point of Bushido, which it shares with all class morality, is that it meted out honour in unequal degrees to the various vocations of society—most of all to the Samurai, then to the tillers of the soil, to mechanics, and least of all to merchants. The last-named being considered by the rest as the least honourable, naturally they adjusted their moral tone ​to their reputation. Still, as I have already observed, honesty is a virtue easiest learned in commercial transactions; for its reward is not laid so far off as heaven nor after death, but at the counter or else at the court, when the bills are due. Already in the last two decades we notice in our industrial circles a considerable improvement in this particular respect.

Bushido, being the morality of a certain class, had a circumscribed sphere, and so its precepts were strained to a higher pitch than would have been the case had its compass been more extensive. For instance, as they troubled themselves but little with the morality of the trades-people, they were the more strict in demanding honesty from their votaries. The punishment awaiting those who violated their code of Honour was terribly severe. Take hara-kiri as a type of what was expected of a Samurai when he disgraced himself. It is not unusual to hear this word, which, by the way, is more usually called by us seppuku or kappuku, jeeringly mentioned by foreign writers, and certainly the practice is in itself a revolting one. It is unjust, however, to look upon a practice like this from an altogether realistic point of view. To one who has never heard of the world tragedy of Mount Calvary what a disgusting sight Tissot’s picture of that scene presents! Death scenes even of the best are not always dramatic or picturesque. It is the story which casts a halo round a martyr’s livid death; it is the life the dead have lived which steals from death the pangs and ignominy. Were it not so, who would associate a cup of hemlock with philosophy, or a cross with the Gospel? If seppuku were a form of execution confined to robbers and pickpockets, well might it deserve its literal translation, ‘splitting the belly,’ and then be politely dispensed with in polite society. We may say of body-ripping what Carlyle said of religious mendicancy, that ‘it was no beautiful business, nor an honourable one in any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so had made it honoured of some.’ Seppuku does literally and actually mean cutting the abdomen. It was a form of death confined to the two-sworded order. Sometimes it was a punishment imposed by authority, or it might be self-imposed; sometimes it was a sacrifice (can I call it symbolical?) of life for a cause; sometimes, also, the last resort wherein honour could find refuge. When it was administered as a punishment it amounted to this: that the guilty one admitted his own crime; it was as though he said: ‘I have done wrong; I am ashamed before my own conscience. I punish myself with my own hand, for I judge myself.’ If the accused were innocent he would nevertheless often commit seppuku, the idea in this case being: ‘I am not guilty; I will show you my soul, that you may judge for yourself.’ The very natural ​question is often put by foreigners, ‘Why was this particular part of the body selected for the operation of self-immolation?’ I may say it can only be answered by referring them to a physiological belief as to the seat of the soul. Where lies the essence of life? is a query put forth and meditated upon by the wise men of all ages. The old Jewish prophets said in the bowels, the Greeks in the thumos or phren, the French in the ventre, the Japanese in the hara. Now, hara is a comprehensive term meaning the whole lower front part of the trunk. The large ganglionic centres in the abdomen, which are exceedingly sensitive to any psychic action, gave rise to the belief that there lay the seat of the soul. When Shakespeare puts into Brutus’ mouth, ‘Thy (Cæsar’s) spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords into our proper entrails,’ did he not put the great weight of his authority toward making such a belief plausible? To the practical and labour-saving mind of the West nothing could seem more unnecessary and foolish than to go through all this painful operation when a pistol-shot or a dose of arsenic would answer the purpose just as well. It must be remembered, however, that the Bushido idea of seppuku was not soley ‘to end the thousand and one ills to which flesh is heir.’ Death, as such, was not ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished for.’ Honour was what decided this action in life or death and honour never tolerates the idea of sneaking out of existeuce. The cool deliberation without which seppuku would be impossible was to prove that it was not adopted in haste or in a fit of madness. A clear conscience marked each step of the undertaking. The pain which it necessitated was the measure of the fortitude with which it was borne. In one word the committer of seppuku could say: ‘Bear witness that I die the death of the brave. I shirk no requirement that is demanded of courage.’ Then, too, to the Samurai, death, be it on the field of battle or on the mats (as we say) in peace was to be the crowning glory—‘the last of life, for which the first was made,’ and hence it was to be attended with full honour.

Seppuku is no longer a mode of punishment. The new criminal system code knows nothing of the time-honoured customs and institutions. A new ‘enlightened’ generation of jurists has risen who abhor such relics of barbarism. Youths who have never borne a sword, who have not learned what depth there is in shame and what heights in honour, and who find their standard of right and wrong only in physiology and in statute-books, are fast coming to the front. I mean no offence to Christian teachings, if indeed Christ did teach anything definite against self-murder, when I state that that day will be a sorry day for Japan when her sons shall grow ​oblivious of their appreciation of honour (I do not mean seppuku itself) which the fearful practice implied.

That inborn race instinct of honour is the only safeguard of our public morals, the sole imperative check on our private conduct, the one foundation of patriotism and Loyalty—Honour is the only tie that binds the Japanese to the ethical world; any other moral power is still feeble, either in its infancy or in its senility, though there is no denying that numerous and attractive panaceas are being advertised at every corner of the streets. Buddhism has lost its earnest strivings, busying itself with petty trifles among its small sects. The light of Confucius and Mencius has paled before the more taking, if more variegated, light of later philosophers. Christianity has wandered far from the teachings of its Divine Founder, and as too often preached is a farce and a caricature of the original. Diabolical Nietzsche and his shallow followers are gradually making their way, assuring to still shallower youths salvation through Hedonism, though it has not yet gained strong foothold, if ever it can. Unitarians present us with balance-sheets of pleasure and pain, assuring us that theirs is the only scientific system of moral book-keeping. Materialism is not slack in enlisting a large following, to which it doles out in well-tasting pills such comfort as the world can give. Reactionism has on its part tried hard to build a structure of its own, based on cant, bigotry, and hypocrisy, into which it would unite the whole Japanese race, and of course excluding foreigners. But all these systems and schools of ethics are mainly confined to lecture-rooms and to loud talkers. The heart of the nation is still swayed by Bushido. It commands and guides us, and, consciously or unconsciously, we follow. It is through the medium of Bushido that the best reverence of our fathers and the noblest lore of our mothers still spring, for our flesh and blood had been imbued with it. How could it be otherwise? ‘Bodykins, Master Page,’ says the country justice Shallow in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ ‘Bodykins, Master Page, though I now be old and of the peace, if I see a sword out my finger itches to make one. Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen, Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us; we are the sons of women, Master Page.’ We can be but the children of our parents. And when I say so I am far from advocating on the one hand the revival of old feudalism, for it was not a trait inherent in our race; nor do I mean, on the other hand, that we should preserve obsolete political or social institutions, for institutions must of necessity be ever changing with the march of time. The spirit of Bushido is ever ready to listen to and to adopt whatever is good, pure, and of good repute. The transformation of ​modern Japan is itself the fruit of the teachings of Bushido. The world admits that Japan, from being a nonenity in the politics of the world, has in the brief space of thirty years raised herself into the position of a first-class Power. The explanation of this seeming miracle has been attempted from various standpoints; but those who are not acquainted with the psychology of our race and with the precepts of Knighthood have despaired of finding an adequate theory, and have summarily attributed what is really no miracle at all to an apish mimicry. It is true that in a sense we certainly possess imitativeness. What progressive nation has not possessed and made use of it? Just think of how little Greek culture has originated on Hellenic soil. Of the Romans at their best, who does not know that they imitated most freely from Greece? How much of Spanish glory and grandeur at their zenith was of Moorish origin? I need not multiply examples. It seems to me that the most original—that is, the least imitative people—are the Chinese, and we see where their originality has led them. Imitation is educative, and education itself is, in the main, imitation. Wallace, and after him many other zoologists, have taught us what a rôle imitation and mimicry play in the preservation of life in nature. We shudder to think what might have been our fate, in this cannibalistic age of nations had we been always consistently original. Imitation has certainly been a means of our salvation.

But imitation is a term of wide significance, which may mean a blind aping such as is the frequent theme in ‘Æsop’s Fables,’ or it may mean an educative principle, a conscious following of a pattern selected with discretion and foresight. In this last instance imitation implies something more; it takes for granted a power of selecting and of acting accordingly. Such a power was Bushido, a teaching which, like its symbol, the cherry-blossom, was born and nurtured in the soil of our Island Realm. It breathed into our nostrils the breath of life, the Yamato-Damashii, the soul of Japan. Well has sung that ancient poet:

And the popular ballad responded ‘as among flowers the Sakura (cherry) is queen, so among men the Samurai is lord.’

But the Samurai is no more, and Bushido will follow in his steps; as his pride is swallowed up in the wide glory of an enlightened populace, so will the teachings of Bushido be merged into a larger, higher code of morals. Whatever ​evangel the coming age may reveal to our nation, it can but be in fulfilment of the law which Bushido has taught us for past centuries. In the meantime it becomes us to remain loyal to the best that we have inherited and that has been entrusted to us.