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.1 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 point the Western historical and ethical student to the study of chivalry in the Japan of the present.
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 paths of our national history; the second will be dwelt upon at greater length, as being most likely to interest students of International Ethics and Comparative Ethology in our ways of thought and action; and the rest will be dealt with as corollaries.
The Japanese word, which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the original, more expressive than Horsemanship. Bu-shi-do means literally Military-Knight-Ways—the ways which fighting nobles should observe in their daily life as well as in their vocation; in a word, the “Precepts of Knighthood,” the noblesse oblige of the warrior class. Having thus given its literal significance, I may be allowed henceforth to use the word in the original. The use of the original term is also advisable for this reason, that a teaching so circumscribed and unique, engendering a cast of mind and character so peculiar, so local, must wear the badge of its singularity on its face; then, some words have a national timbre so expressive of race characteristics that the best of translators can do them but scant justice, not to say positive injustice and grievance. Who can improve by translation what the German “Gemüth” signifies, or who does not feel the difference between the two words verbally so closely allied as the English gentleman and the French gentilhomme?
Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it consists of a few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful sanction of veritable deed, and of a law written on the fleshly tablets of the heart. It was founded not on the creation of one brain, however able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It, perhaps, fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English Constitution does in political history; yet it has had nothing to compare with the Magna Charta or the Habeas Corpus act. True, early in the seventeenth century Military Statutes (Buké Hatto) were promulgated; but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but meagerly touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time and place and say, “Here is its fountain head.” Only as it attains consciousness in the feudal age, its origin, in respect to time, may be identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the political institution of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the ascendancy of Yoritomo, late in the twelfth century. As, however, in England, we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in Japan had been long existent before the period I have mentioned.
Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These were known as samurai, meaning literally, like the old English cniht (knecht, knight), guards or attendants—resembling in character the soldurii whom Cæsar mentioned as existing in Aquitania. A Sinico-Japanese word Bu-ké or Bu-shi (Fighting Knights) was also adopted in common use. They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough breed who made fighting their vocation. Coming to profess great honor and great privileges, and correspondingly great responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of behavior, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and belonged to different clans.
Fair play in fight! What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive sense of savagery and childhood. Is it not the root of all military and civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, “to leave behind him the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one.” And yet, who does not know that this desire is the corner-stone on which moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom’s is the basis on which the greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to discover that Bushido does not stand on a lesser pedestal. If fighting in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, “We know from what failings our virtue springs.” “Sneaks” and “Cowards” are epithets of the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life with these notions, and knighthood also; but, as life grows larger and its relations many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher authority and more rational sources for its own justification, satisfaction and development. If military systems had operated alone, without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the moral ideal have fallen! In Europe, Christianity, interpreted with concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with spiritual data. “Religion, war and glory were the three souls of a perfect Christian knight,” says Lamartine. In Japan there were several
- History Philosophically Illustrated, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol. II, p. 2.
Read the companion to Bushido as an Ethical System
Context In this opening chapter Nitobe names his subject, sets out his plan and makes his claim: Japan had a chivalry of its own, still alive. He answers the Irish scholar Dr. George Miller, who had denied that anything like it existed among ancient peoples or in modern Asia; Nitobe dates the edition he cites to 1853, the year Commodore Perry’s ships reached Japan. He cites Carl Marx (Karl Marx), whose Capital (1867) pointed to Japan as a living example of feudalism. Burke’s eulogy is the lament in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) that the age of chivalry was gone. Tom Brown is the hero of Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days (1857). Nitobe dates Japanese feudalism from Yoritomo (Minamoto no Yoritomo) and mentions the Buké Hatto (Buke shohatto) of 1615. His aside that fighting is “brutal and wrong” shows the Quaker behind the argument. Historians see one point very differently. The word bushidō was rare before the 1890s, and warrior values varied greatly between the centuries of war and the long Tokugawa peace. Many regard the unified code as largely a modern construction that this book helped to build.
In plain words (our paraphrase, not the text) Chivalry, Nitobe begins, is as native to Japan as its emblem, the cherry blossom, and no pressed flower from the past. The feudal society that produced it is gone, but its light still reaches his people, like the light of a star that has burned out. An Irish scholar held that nothing like chivalry had existed in antiquity or in modern Asia. That can be forgiven, since the edition Nitobe cites came out, he says, in the year Commodore Perry arrived. Marx pointed to Japan as the one place where feudalism could still be seen alive, and Nitobe likewise invites Western students to study Japan’s living chivalry. He will treat chivalry’s origins briefly, its character and teaching at length, then its influence on ordinary people and its lasting power. Bu-shi-do means military-knight-ways, the conduct a warrior owes in daily life as well as in battle. Some words carry a nation’s character too closely to be translated, so he keeps the Japanese term. Bushido is not a written code. It lives in a few sayings, and more in deeds and the heart. No single person founded it; it grew over centuries of warfare, like the English Constitution. The seventeenth-century laws for the military houses deal mostly with castles and marriages and touch only lightly on morals. Bushido rose with feudalism, which in Japan dates from Yoritomo in the late twelfth century. The samurai were a privileged class, rough at first, who needed a common standard of behavior. Its seed was fair play: the schoolboy’s wish never to bully the small or run from the big. Fighting is brutal and wrong, as the Quakers rightly say, yet virtue can grow even from failings. Such instincts need higher support: in Europe, Christianity; in Japan, several sources.
Key terms bushidō (BOO-shee-doh): The way of the warrior. Nitobe renders it “Military-Knight-Ways” and “Precepts of Knighthood,” then keeps the Japanese word because no translation does it justice. samurai (SAH-moo-rye): The warrior class. Nitobe notes that the word first meant a guard or attendant, like the Old English cniht, from which “knight” comes. bushi (BOO-shee), “Bu-shi”: A more formal, Chinese-derived word for a warrior, which Nitobe translates as “Fighting Knights.” Buke shohatto (BOO-keh shoh-HAHT-toh), “Buké Hatto”: The “Military Statutes” of the early seventeenth century. Nitobe notes they dealt mostly with marriages and castles, touching moral teaching only meagerly, so bushido has no founding document. noblesse oblige (noh-BLESS oh-BLEEZH): The idea that rank brings duties as well as privileges. Nitobe uses it to sum up what bushido asked of the warrior class. feudalism: A society of lords and sworn vassals. Nitobe calls chivalry its child and dates it in Japan from Yoritomo’s rise in the late twelfth century.
To reflect on Nitobe traces great moral structures back to a schoolboy’s wish never to bully a smaller boy or run from a bigger one. Think of a rule of fairness you learned as a child. Where is it still at work in you, and where has it needed something more to hold it up?