Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobe, [1905], at sacred-texts.com
CHAPTER III
RECTITUDE OR JUSTICE
HERE we discern the most cogent precept in the code of the samurai.
Nothing is more loathsome to him than underhand dealings and crooked
undertakings. The conception of Rectitude may be erroneous--it may be
narrow. A well-known bushi defines it as a power of
resolution:--"Rectitude is the power of deciding upon a certain course
of conduct in accordance with reason, without wavering,--to die when it
is right to die, to strike when to strike is right." Another speaks of
it in the following terms: "Rectitude is the bone that gives firmness
and stature. As without bones the head cannot rest on the top of the
spine, nor hands move nor feet stand, so without rectitude neither
talent nor learning can make of a
human frame a samurai. With it the lack of accomplishments is as
nothing." Mencius calls Benevolence man's mind, and Rectitude or
Righteousness his path. "How lamentable," he exclaims, "is it to neglect
the path and not pursue it, to lose the mind and not know to seek it
again! When men's fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them
again, but they lose their mind and do not know to seek for it." Have we
not here "as in a glass darkly" a parable propounded three hundred
years later in another clime and by a greater Teacher, Who called
Himself the Way of righteousness, through whom the lost could be
found? But I stray from my point. Righteousness, according to Mencius,
is a straight and narrow path which a man ought to take to regain the
lost paradise.
Even in the latter days of feudalism, when the long continuance of
peace brought leisure into the life of the warrior class, and with it
dissipations of all kinds and accomplishments of gentle arts, the
epithet Gishi (a man of rectitude) was considered superior to any
name that signified mastery of learning or art. The Forty-seven
Faithfuls--of whom so much is made in our popular education--are known
in common parlance as the Forty-seven Gishi.
In times when cunning artifice was liable to pass for military tact and downright falsehood for ruse de guerre,
this manly virtue, frank and honest, was a jewel that shone the
brightest and was most highly praised. Rectitude is a twin brother to
Valour, another martial virtue. But before proceeding to speak of
Valour, let me linger a little while on what I may term a derivation
from Rectitude, which, at first deviating slightly from its original,
became more and more removed from it, until its meaning was perverted in
the popular acceptance. I speak of Gi-ri, literally the Right
Reason, but which came in time to mean a vague sense of duty which
public opinion expects an incumbent to fulfil. In its original and
unalloyed sense, it meant duty, pure and simple,--hence, we speak of the
Giri we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to society at large, and so forth. In
these instances Giri is duty; for what else is duty than what
Right Reason demands and commands us to do? Should not Right Reason be
our categorical imperative?
Giri primarily meant no more than duty, and I dare say its
etymology was derived from the fact, that in our conduct, say to our
parents, though love should be the only motive, lacking that, there must
be some other authority to enforce filial piety; and they formulated
this authority in Giri. Very rightly did they formulate this authority--Giri--since
if love does not rush to deeds of virtue, recourse must be had to man's
intellect and his reason must be quickened to convince him of the
necessity of acting aright. The same is true of any other moral
obligation. The instant Duty becomes onerous, Right Reason steps in to
prevent our shirking it. Giri thus understood is a severe
taskmaster, with a birch-rod in his hand to make sluggards perform their
part. It is a secondary power in ethics; as a motive it is infinitely
inferior to the Christian doctrine of love,
which should be the law. I deem it a product of the conditions
of an artificial society--of a society in which accident of birth and
unmerited favour instituted class distinctions, in which the family was
the social unit, in which seniority of age was of more account than
superiority of talents, in which natural affections had often to succumb
before arbitrary man-made customs. Because of this very artificiality, Giri
in time degenerated into a vague sense of propriety called up to
explain this and sanction that,--as, for example, why a mother must, if
need be, sacrifice all her other children in order to save the
first-born; or why a daughter must sell her chastity to get funds to pay
for the father's dissipation, and the like. Starting as Right Reason, Giri has, in my opinion, often stooped to casuistry. It has even degenerated into cowardly fear of censure. I might say of Giri
what Scott wrote of patriotism, that "as it is the fairest, so it is
often the most suspicious, mask of other feelings." Carried beyond or
below Right Reason, Giri
became a monstrous misnomer. It harboured under its wings every sort
of sophistry and hypocrisy. It would have been easily turned into a nest
of cowardice, if Bushido had not a keen and correct sense of courage,
the spirit of daring and bearing.