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    Bushido
    Bushido
    Bushido
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    Bushido

    By Inazo Nitobe

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    Bushido, often translated as Way of the Warrior, came from the Samurai way of life and moral code. It emphasized loyalty, skill, moderation and honor, and became a widespread influence throughout Japan. In Shogakukan Kokugo Daijiten, the Japanese dictionary, "Bushido is defined as a unique philosophy (ronri) that spread through the warrior class from the Muromachi (chusei) period." Nitobe Inazo, in his book Bushido: The Soul of Japan, described it in this way. "...Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the samurai were required or instructed to observe...More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten...It was an organic growth of decades and centuries of military career."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherQasim Idrees
    Release dateFeb 23, 2018
    ISBN9788827578988
    Bushido
    Author

    Inazo Nitobe

    Inazo Nitobe fue un educador, político y escritor japonés. Nacido en Iwate, hijo de un samurái del clan Morioka, se formó en la Escuela de Agricultura de Sapporo y la Universidad Imperial de Tokio, que abandonó para ir a estudiar política y relaciones internacionales a Estados Unidos. Después de regresar a Japón en 1891, desempeñó cargos importantes como profesor de la Escuela de Agricultura de Sapporo, profesor de la Universidad Imperial de Tokio y primer presidente de la Universidad Cristiana para Mujeres de Tokio. Una de sus contribuciones más notables fue la educación basada en el personalismo, que puso en práctica cuando fue presidente de la Primera Escuela Superior de Tokio. También desempeñó cargos importantes como hombre de Estado. Fue administrador colonial en Taiwán, subsecretario general de la Sociedad de las Naciones y más tarde presidente del Consejo Japonés del Instituto de Relaciones del Pacífico. Además, Nitobe fue elegido miembro de la Cámara de los Pares. Goza de fama mundial por haber escrito Bushido. El código del samurái (1900).

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      Bushido - Inazo Nitobe

      Bushido

      Inazo Nitobe

      .

      PREFACE

      About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of religion. Do you mean to say, asked the venerable professor, that you have no religious instruction in your schools? On my replying in the negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I shall not easily forget, he repeated No religion! How do you impart moral education? The question stunned me at the time. I could give no ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils.

      The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs prevail in Japan.

      In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and Bushido,[1] the moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume.

      [1]

      Pronounced Boó-shee-doh'. In putting Japanese words and names into English, Hepburn's rule is followed, that the vowels should be used as in European languages, and the consonants as in English.

      Taking advantage of enforced idleness on account of long illness, I put down in the order now presented to the public some of the answers given in our household conversation. They consist mainly of what I was taught and told in my youthful days, when Feudalism was still in force.

      Between Lafcadio Hearn and Mrs. Hugh Fraser on one side and Sir Ernest Satow and Professor Chamberlain on the other, it is indeed discouraging to write anything Japanese in English. The only advantage I have over them is that I can assume the attitude of a personal defendant, while these distinguished writers are at best solicitors and attorneys. I have often thought,—Had I their gift of language, I would present the cause of Japan in more eloquent terms! But one who speaks in a borrowed tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible.

      All through the discourse I have tried to illustrate whatever points I have made with parallel examples from European history and literature, believing that these will aid in bringing the subject nearer to the comprehension of foreign readers.

      Should any of my allusions to religious subjects and to religious workers be thought slighting, I trust my attitude towards Christianity itself will not be questioned. It is with ecclesiastical methods and with the forms which obscure the teachings of Christ, and not with the teachings themselves, that I have little sympathy. I believe in the religion taught by Him and handed down to us in the New Testament, as well as in the law written in the heart. Further, I believe that God hath made a testament which maybe called old with every people and nation,—Gentile or Jew, Christian or Heathen. As to the rest of my theology, I need not impose upon the patience of the public.

      In concluding this preface, I wish to express my thanks to my friend Anna C. Hartshorne for many valuable suggestions and for the characteristically Japanese design made by her for the cover of this book.

      INAZO NITOBE.

      Malvern, Pa., Twelfth Month, 1899.

      PREFACE

      TO THE TENTH AND REVISED EDITION

      Since its first publication in Philadelphia, more than six years ago, this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth appearance in the English language. Simultaneously with this will be issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of Messrs. George H. Putnam's Sons, of New York.

      In the meantime, Bushido has been translated into Mahratti by Mr. Dev of Khandesh, into German by Fräulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life in Lemberg,—although this Polish edition has been censured by the Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into French. A Chinese translation is under contemplation. A Russian officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been published in Japanese. Full scholarly notes for the help of younger students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also owe much for his aid in other ways.

      I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the subject matter is of some interest to the world at large. Exceedingly flattering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and distributing several dozens of copies among his friends.

      In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have largely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot of Japanese ethics—Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particular virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to enlarge upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume larger than it is.

      This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement.

      I.N.

      Kyoto,

      Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905.

      CONTENTS

      Preface

      Preface to the Tenth and Revised Edition

      Bushido as an Ethical System

      Sources of Bushido

      Rectitude or Justice

      Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing

      Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress

      Politeness

      Veracity or Truthfulness

      Honor

      The Duty of Loyalty

      Education and Training of a Samurai

      Self-Control

      The Institutions of Suicide and Redress

      The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai

      The Training and Position of Woman

      The Influence of Bushido

      Is Bushido Still Alive?

      The Future of Bushido

      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.[2] 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 invite the Western historical and ethical student to the study of chivalry in the Japan of the present.

      [2]

      History Philosophically Illustrated, (3rd Ed. 1853), Vol. II, p. 2.

      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

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