—'How ridiculous,' I interrupted; 'but I cannot make out what the reviewer could have got into his head to make him translate the term Bushi as "executioner." It is an insult to Bushi, of whom we have the oft-quoted saying, "Hana wa sakura ni hitowa bushi": "As the cherry blossoms are the prime of the flowers, so the Bushi is the flower of man." We have a popular drama in which there is a scene where a female prisoner is brought out under the superintendence of a common Bushi; and there the phrase "Keigo-no-Bushi" occurs, meaning, the Bushi who guards. Perhaps the reviewer remembered it, and concluded that Bushi meant an executioner, because he had charge of a prisoner. If this is so, by the same analogy we might say the "Knight of the Garter" is a domestic servant who looks after his mistress's garter. Ah! there is another thing which occurs to me. In China, where military men are little thought of, they are often used for such duties as those of an executioner; some foreigners, who had seen the fact whereby those men were called Bushi, perhaps thought that the term meant "executioners" without knowing its primary meaning. By that analogy one might say that gentlemen belonging to the honourable guild known as "The Worshipful Company of Grocers of the City of London" were common dealers in tea and sugar, because they are called grocers, without knowing the origin of the term. The passages in that review accidentally caught my sight too, and out of curiosity I looked the matter up in a few books which I happened to have by me. It is a little technical, but if you do not mind, I will explain it to you in detail.'
—'Please do,' said the duke.
—'The word Bushi is a noun composed of two Chinese characters, bu and shi, both having a distinct meaning. Bu means military or martial when used as an adjective, but it is also very commonly used as a concrete noun; and in that case it may be translated as martialism. When used as a noun it is used in contradistinction to bun. The last word may be translated as "civil," but I am unable to find out an exact equivalent in the Western terms, because the Western term "civil," still less the term "civism," does not convey the true idea of the word. It may, however, be taken to signify things or affairs on civil lines, as contrasting with those on military lines. Shi means a man of position or a gentleman, which came by evolution to mean a military man rather than a civilian. These two words, bu and shi, were put together and made a compound noun, signifying professional military people. The term has been most commonly used in Japan for over ten centuries. There are two other terms, Bundo and Budo, the former means principle, or doctrine, or teaching, or ways of affairs on civil lines, and the latter means the same on martial lines. They are very antique terms, contradistinguishing each other. The term Bushido is not so ancient as those two, but still it is by no means modern. The term Budo is used when one wishes to refer the matter more to the system or the principle as a unit; and the term Bushido is used when one wishes to designate more the individuals. In China the term Bushi had existed, as is natural from the antiquity of her history, many centuries before it did in Japan; I have seen it used in the history of the Hung dynasty. The term of course signifies military men; nevertheless, it has not acquired so much prominence as it has done in Japan, because in China military men have never attained the same importance and organisation as in Japan, and naturally enough there exists in China no such term as Bushido in its concrete sense, Bushido being peculiarly unique to the Japanese. Bushido consists of three Chinese characters, as the reviewer says. In the colloquial Japanese it is read as Bushi-no-michi, do being the Chinese way of pronunciation, and michi being the colloquial Japanese pronunciation of the one and the same character; and therefore do and michi are both the same thing. In Hogen Monogatari, an historical record of the events which took place in the middle of the twelfth century A.D., and written not longer after that period, a great hero, Tametomo, is represented to have said, in the course of a speech, as follows:
'For a Bushi, an act of killing is inevitable. Nevertheless Bushi-no-michi [i.e. Bushido] forbids to kill an unfit object, and therefore, though I have fought more than twenty battles, and put an end to countless lives, I have always fought legitimate foes, and not illegitimate foes [in modern phraseology combatants and non-combatants]. And more! I have neither killed a deer nor fished a fish.
'In the fourteenth century A.D., a book called Chiku-ba-sho (the reminiscence of the bamboo-horse), which is ethical teaching for Bushi, was written by Shiwa Yoshimasa, a Japanese general, born 1349, died 1410 A.D.
'Within the last three hundred years, when Bushido has made a great systematic progress on its literary and intellectual side, many treatises on the subject have been written by eminent scholars and expounders of that doctrine. Nakaye-toju, born in 1608 A.D., wrote a book called Questions and Answers on Bun and Bu, in which the terms Bundo and Budo are used. In the collection of the epistles of Kumazawa Banzan, born 1619 A.D., the same terms are much used. In Lectures by Yamaga Soko, who was born in 1622, and was the founder of a school of our military science, there is one part called Shido. Shido and Bushido are one and the same thing, for the term bu is added to shi when one particularly wishes to denote the idea of the military profession. Thus, for instance, the old class of Samurai is now known as Shizoku, and not as Bushi-Zoku. Kaibara Yekken, born 1630 A.D., wrote a book called Bukum, namely, "Instructions on Bu," in which the term Bushi-no-michi is freely used. The Elementary Lessons on Budo is a book written by Daidoji Yiuzan, born 1639. In that book the term Bushido is freely used, and we see therein such phrases: "What is most important in Bushido is the three conceptions of loyalty, justice, and bravery"; and "if a Bushi comprehend the two opposing notions of justice and injustice, and endeavour to do justice and refrain from doing injustice, Bushido will be attained." Izawa Hanrioshi, born 1711 A.D., published a book called Bushikun, namely, "Instructions for Bushi." In that book, also, the term Bushi-no-michi is repeatedly used, and at the end of the fourth volume of it there is a short postscript in which he says:
'These four volumes have been written to record the outlines of Bushido, in order to supplement the points left untouched in books published in recent generations, such as ... so that one must not say after reading this book that it is not minute.
'I could mention several more books, but I might weary you. The names I have just cited are, in Japan, no less household words than Voltaire or Rousseau in France, and Johnson or Goldsmith in England. Satow, Aston, Chamberlain, or Brinkley might not have had time enough to touch upon the Bushido, but if one says that because they have not touched upon it there is no such thing as Bushido in Japan, it is tantamount to saying that there is no such thing as a diamond in South Africa because some travellers have not mentioned it in their diaries.'
—'You appear always to be making use of the names Bushi and Samurai indiscriminately. No doubt they signify one and the same category of people. But what is the difference?'
—'You are right in raising that question. The term Samurai is a pure and simple Japanese word, derived from a verb meaning "to wait" or "to serve." In ancient times military men on guard at the Imperial palace were called by that name; but when one wished to make the appellation more concise and appear more scholastic, the term Bushi was used. The Chinese character Shi is uniformly translated in Japanese as Samurai, but one preferred to employ the term Bushi more commonly because it gave more prominence to the military calling. At first the guards were recruited from ordinary people, but in course of time the recruiting became hereditary in certain families. They also began gradually to form a sort of class in different provinces, having their leaders, and at last formed a regular class of military men. Those men were universally called Bushi, and their families, when collectively spoken of, were called Buke namely, "Houses of Bu."'