Bushido, the Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobe, [1905], at sacred-texts.com
CHAPTER XVI
IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE?
HAS Western civilisation, in its march through our land, already
wiped out every trace of its ancient discipline? It were a sad thing if a
nation's soul could die so fast. That were a poor soul that could
succumb so easily to extraneous influences.
The aggregate of psychological elements which constitute a national
character is as tenacious as the "irreducible elements of species, of
the fins of the fish, of the beak of the bird, of the tooth of the
carnivorous animal." In his recent book, full of shallow asseverations
and brilliant generalisations, M. LeBon 1 says: "The discoveries due to the intelligence are the common patrimony of humanity; qualities or defects of character
constitute the exclusive patrimony of each people: they are the firm
rock which the waters must wash day by day for centuries before they can
wear away even its external asperities." These are strong words and
would be highly worth pondering over, provided there were qualities and
defects of character which constitute the exclusive patrimony of
each people. Schematising theories of this sort had been advanced long
before LeBon began to write his book, and they were exploded long ago by
Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In studying the various virtues
instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon European sources for comparison
and illustrations, and we have seen that no one quality of character
was its exclusive patrimony. It is true the aggregate of moral
qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is this aggregate which
Emerson names a "compound result into which every great force enters as
an ingredient." But, instead of making it, as LeBon does, an exclusive
patrimony of a race or people, the Concord philosopher
calls it "an element which unites the most forcible persons of every
country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other; and is
somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack the
Masonic sign."
The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai
in particular, cannot be said to form "an irreducible element of
species," but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is
no doubt. Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained
in the last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it
transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely
widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has
calculated, that, supposing there be three generations in a century,
"each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty
millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D." The merest peasant
that grubs the soil, "bowed by the weight of centuries," has in his
veins the blood of ages, and is thus brother to us as much as "to the
ox."
An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the
nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when
Yoshida Shōin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote
on the eve of his execution the following stanza:
"Full well I knew this course must end in death;
It was Yamato spirit urged me on
To dare whate'er betide."
It was Yamato spirit urged me on
To dare whate'er betide."
Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor force of our country.
Mr. Ransome says that "there are three distinct Japans in existence
side by side today,--the old, which has not wholly died out; the new,
hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now
through its most critical throes." While this is very true in most
respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete
institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions,
requires some modification; for
[paragraph continues]
Bushido, the maker and product of Old Japan, is still the guiding
principle of the transition and will prove the formative force of the
new era.
The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the
hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation,
were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of
Knighthood. Some writers 1
have lately tried to prove that the Christian missionaries contributed
an appreciable quota to the making of New Japan. I would fain render
honour to whom honour is due; but this honour can as yet hardly be
accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it will be to their
profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of preferring one
another in honour, than to advance a claim in which they have no proofs
to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian missionaries are
doing great things
for Japan--in the domain of education, and especially of moral
education:--only, the mysterious though not the less certain working of
the Spirit is still hidden in divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still
of indirect effect. No, as yet Christian missions have effected but
little visible in moulding the character of New Japan. No, it was
Bushido, pure and simple, that urged us on for weal or woe. Open the
biographies of the makers of Modern Japan--of Sakuma, of Saigo, of
Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the reminiscences of living men such as
Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.,--and you will find that it was under the
impetus of samuraihood that they thought and wrought. When Mr. Henry
Norman declared, after his study and observation of the Far East, that
the only respect in which Japan differed from other oriental despotisms
lay in "the ruling influence among her people of the strictest,
loftiest, and the most punctilious codes of honour that man has ever
devised," he touched the mainspring which has made New Japan what
she is, and which will make her what she is destined to be. 1
The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. Into
a work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one
were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When
we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the
latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study
Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the
development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much
less was it a blind imitation of Western customs.
A close observer of oriental institutions and peoples has written:
"We are told every day how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget
that the change in those islands was entirely self-generated, that
Europeans did not teach Japan, but that Japan of herself chose to learn
from Europe methods of organisation, civil and military, which have so
far proved successful. She imported European mechanical science, as the
[paragraph continues]
Turks years before imported European artillery. That is not exactly
influence," continues Mr. Townsend, "unless, indeed, England is
influenced by purchasing tea in China. Where is the European apostle,"
asks our author, "or philosopher or statesman or agitator, who has
re-made Japan?" 1
Mr. Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which
brought about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves;
and if he had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of
observation would easily have convinced him that this spring was no
other than Bushido. The sense of honour which cannot bear being looked
down upon as an inferior power,--that was the strongest of motives.
Pecuniary or industrial considerations were awakened later in the
process of transformation.
The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may
read. A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn,
the most eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you
see the working of that mind to be an example of the
working of Bushido. The universal politeness of the people, which is
the legacy of knightly ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The
physical endurance, fortitude, and bravery that "the little Jap"
possesses, were sufficiently proved in the Chino-Japanese war. 1
"Is there any nation more loyal and patriotic?" is a question asked by
many; and for the proud answer, "There is not," we must thank the
Precepts of Knighthood.
On the other hand, it is fair to recognise that for the very faults
and defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack
of abstruse philosophy--while some of our young men have already gained
international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved
anything in philosophical lines--is traceable to the neglect of
metaphysical training under Bushido's regimen of education. Our sense of
honour is responsible
for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness; and if there is the
conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us, that, too, is a
pathological outcome of honour.
Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt
hair, dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a
book, stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to
mundane things? He is the shoéi (student), to whom the earth is
too small and the heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories
of the universe and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on
ethereal words of wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his
mind is athirst for knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him
onward; worldly goods are in his sight shackles to his character. He is
the repository of loyalty and patriotism. He is the self-imposed
guardian of national honour. With all his virtues and his faults, he is
the last fragment of Bushido.
Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the
effect of Bushido, I have said that it is an unconscious and mute
influence. The heart of the people responds, without knowing a reason
why, to any appeal made to what it has inherited, and hence the same
moral idea expressed in a newly translated term and in an old Bushido
term, has a vastly different degree of efficacy. A backsliding
Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion could help from downward
tendency, was reverted from his course by an appeal made to his loyalty,
the fidelity he once swore to his Master. The word "Loyalty" revived
all the noble sentiments that were permitted to grow lukewarm. A party
of unruly youths engaged in a long-continued "students' strike" in a
college, on account of their dissatisfaction with a certain teacher,
disbanded at two simple questions put by the Director,--"Is your
professor a worthy character? If so, you ought to respect him and keep
him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is not manly to push a falling
man." The scientific incapacity of the professor, which was the
beginning of the
trouble, dwindled into insignificance in comparison with the moral
issues hinted at. By arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral
renovation of great magnitude can be accomplished.
One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the
missionaries are entirely ignorant of our history--"What do we care for
heathen records?" some say--and consequently estrange their religion
from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed
to for centuries past. Mocking a nation's history?--as though the career
of any people even of the lowest African savages possessing no
record--were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by
the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be
deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind the races
themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and
white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race
forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold!
[paragraph continues]
Ignoring the past career of a people, missionaries claim that
Christianity is a new religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an "old, old
story," which, if presented in intelligible words,--that is to say, if
expressed in the vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a
people,--will find easy lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race
or nationality. Christianity in its American or English form--with more
of Anglo-Saxon freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its
Founder--is a poor scion to graft on Bushido stock. Should the
propagator of the new faith uproot the entire stock, root, and branches,
and plant the seeds of the Gospel on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic
process may be possible--in Hawaii, where, it is alleged, the Church
militant had complete success in amassing spoils of wealth itself, and
in annihilating the aboriginal race; such a process is most decidedly
impossible in Japan--nay, it is a process which Jesus Himself would
never have adopted in founding His kingdom on earth.
It behooves us to take more to heart the
following words of a saintly man, devout Christian, and profound scholar:
"Men have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without
considering how much good may have been hidden in the one or how much
evil may have been mingled with the other. They have compared the best
part of themselves with the worst of their neighbours, the ideal of
Christianity with the corruption of Greece or of the East. They have not
aimed at impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate all that
could be said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of
religion." 1
But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is
little doubt that the fundamental principle of the religion they profess
is a power which we must take into account in reckoning the future of
Bushido, whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in
the air that betoken its future. Not only signs, but redoubtable forces
are at work to threaten it.
Footnotes
168:1 The Psychology of Peoples, p. 33.
172:1 Speer: Missions and Politics in Asia, Lecture IV., pp. 189-192; Dennis: Christian Missions and Social Progress, vol. i., p. 32, vol. ii., 70, etc.
174:1 The Far East, p. 375.
175:1 Meredith Townsend, Asia and Europe, p. 28.
176:1 Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and Yamada on Heroic Japan, and Diosy on The New Far East.
181:1 Jowett, Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, ii.
