Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobe, [1905], at sacred-texts.com
CHAPTER XI
SELF-CONTROL
THE discipline of fortitude on the one hand, inculcating endurance
without a groan, and the teaching of politeness on the other, requiring
us not to mar the pleasure or serenity of another by expressions of our
own sorrow or pain, combined to engender a stoical
turn of mind, and eventually to confirm it into a national trait of
apparent stoicism. I say apparent stoicism, because I do not believe
that true stoicism can ever become the characteristic of a whole nation,
and also because some of our national manners and customs may seem to a
foreign observer hard-hearted. Yet we are really as susceptible to
tender emotion as any race under the sky.
I am inclined to think that in one sense we
have to feel more than others--yes, doubly more since the very
attempt to restrain natural promptings entails suffering. Imagine
boys--and girls, too--brought up not to resort to the shedding of a tear
or the uttering of a groan for the relief of their feelings,--and there
is a physiological problem whether such effort steels their nerves or
makes them more sensitive.
It was considered unmanly for a samurai to betray his emotions on his
face. "He shows no sign of joy or anger," was a phrase used, in
describing a great character. The most natural affections were kept
under control. A father could embrace his son only at the expense of his
dignity; a husband would not kiss his wife,--no, not in the presence of
other people, whatever he might do in private! There may be some truth
in the remark of a witty youth when he said, "American husbands kiss
their wives in public and beat them in private; Japanese husbands beat
theirs in public and kiss them in private."
Calmness of behaviour, composure of mind,
should not be disturbed by passion of any kind. I remember when,
during the late war with China, a regiment left a certain town, a large
concourse of people flocked to the station to bid farewell to the
general and his army. On this occasion an American resident resorted to
the place, expecting to witness loud demonstrations, as the nation
itself was highly excited and there were fathers, mothers, wives, and
sweethearts of the soldiers in the crowd. The American was strangely
disappointed; for as the whistle blew and the train began to move, the
hats of thousands of people were silently taken off and their heads
bowed in reverential farewell; no waving of handkerchiefs, no word
uttered, but deep silence in which only an attentive ear could catch a
few broken sobs. In domestic life, too, I know of a father who spent
whole nights listening to the breathing of a sick child, standing behind
the door that he might not be caught in such an act of parental
weakness! I know of a mother who, in her last moments, refrained from
sending for her
son, that he might not be disturbed in his studies. Our history and
everyday life are replete with examples of heroic matrons who can well
bear comparison with some of the most touching pages of Plutarch. Among
our peasantry an Ian Maclaren would be sure to find many a Marget Howe.
It is the same discipline of self-restraint which is accountable for
the absence of more frequent revivals in the Christian churches of
Japan. When a man or woman feels his or her soul stirred, the first
instinct is quietly to suppress the manifestation of it. In rare
instances is the tongue set free by an irresistible spirit, when we have
eloquence of sincerity and fervour. It is putting a premium upon a
breach of the third commandment to encourage speaking lightly of
spiritual experience. It is truly jarring to Japanese ears to hear the
most sacred words, the most secret heart experiences, thrown out in
promiscuous audiences. "Dost thou feel the soil of thy soul stirred with
tender thoughts? It is time for seeds to sprout. Disturb it not with
speech; but let it work alone in quietness and secrecy,"--writes a young samurai in his diary.
To give in so many articulate words one's inmost thoughts and
feelings--notably the religious--is taken among us as an unmistakable
sign that they are neither very profound nor very sincere. "Only a
pomegranate is he"--so runs a popular saying "who, when he gapes his
mouth, displays the contents of his heart."
It is not altogether perverseness of oriental minds that the instant
our emotions are moved, we try to guard our lips in order to hide them.
Speech is very often with us, as the Frenchman defines it, "the art of
concealing thought."
Call upon a Japanese friend in time of deepest affliction and he will
invariably receive you laughing, with red eyes or moist cheeks. At
first you may think him hysterical. Press him for explanation and you
will get a few broken commonplaces--"Human life has sorrow"; "They who
meet must part"; "He that is born must die"; "It is
foolish to count the years of a child that is gone, but a woman's
heart will indulge in follies"; and the like. So the noble words of a
noble Hohenzollern--"Lerne zu leiden ohne klagen"--had found many
responsive minds among us long before they were uttered.
Indeed, the Japanese have recourse to risibility whenever the
frailties of human nature are put to severest test. I think we possess a
better reason than Democritus himself for our Abderian tendency, for
laughter with us oftenest veils an effort to regain balance of temper
when disturbed by any untoward circumstance. It is a counterpoise of
sorrow or rage.
The suppression of feelings being thus steadily insisted upon, they
find their safety-valve in poetical aphorisms. A poet of the tenth
century writes "In Japan and China as well, humanity, when moved by
sorrow, tells its bitter grief inverse." Another who tries to console
her broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted
chase after the dragon-fly hums,
"How far to-day in chase, I wonder,
Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!"
Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!"
I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only
scant justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render
into a foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from
bleeding hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have
in a measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents
an appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and
dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question.
It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and
indifference to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is
plausible as far as it goes. The next question is,--Why are our nerves
less tightly strung? It may be our climate is; not so stimulating as the
American. It may be our monarchical form of government does not excite
us so much as the Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not
read Sartor Resartus so zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I
believe it was our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a
necessity to recognise and enforce constant self-repression; but
whatever may be the explanation, without taking into account long years
of discipline in self-control, none can be correct.
Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress
the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into
distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy, or
hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart
and counterfeit. We must recognise in each virtue its own positive
excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of
self-restraint is to keep the mind level--as our expression is--or, to
borrow a Greek term, attain the state of euthymia, which Democritus called the highest good.
The acme and pitch of self-control is reached and best illustrated in
the first of the two institutions which we shall now bring to view,
namely, the institutions of suicide and redress.
