This war for national independence also afforded proof of how the gentle virtue of Japanese knighthood, courteous generosity to the vanquished, has passed as a noble legacy to the nation at large; for as an eminent Japanese statesman affirms, “In the tender care bestowed upon our stricken adversary of the battlefield will be found the ancient courtesy of the samurai.”[214]
The moral standard of the samurai in competition with that of the plebeian trader
The second passage shows the morality of the samurai in competition with the morality of the common Japanese shopman. Now the morality of the plebeian Japanese trader is about on a level with that of the ancient Greek shopkeeper.[215] And a chief cause of his low moral standard is the same, namely, the general disesteem in which the trader’s business has been held. This social stigma has resulted in the mercantile business being left in the hands of the lowest class socially, intellectually, and morally.[216] The great mass of the people have from time immemorial been engaged in the honorable business of agriculture; while the samurai class, as we have seen, regarded it as degrading to engage in trade or even to handle money. In these circumstances it was inevitable that the mercantile class should evolve a very low code of business ethics; for, as the author of Bushido very justly observes, “put a stigma on a calling and its followers adjust their morals to it.”
The strictly class character of this loose commercial morality is shown by the experience of the samurai after the abolition of feudalism in 1868. Upon that event many of them engaged in mercantile business, carrying with them their high moral standard, with results pathetically depicted by Nitobé in these words: “Those who had eyes to see could not weep enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathize enough, with the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival.... It will be long before it will be recognized how many fortunes were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods, but it was soon apparent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth were not the ways of honor.”[217] About ninety-nine out of every hundred samurai who ventured into business are said to have failed.
This passage out of the history of New Japan carries with it various lessons, but particularly does it teach how unjust it is to judge the morality of a people by the morality of a class.[218]
Notwithstanding the disastrous outcome of their first venture into the mercantile field, the samurai still remain in business, so that there is going on to-day in Japan in the commercial domain a competition between two moral standards. The triumph of the standard of the samurai over that of the plebeian trader would mean the development in Japan of a matchless business morality, which, in the increasing closeness of commercial relations between the East and the West, might well act cleansingly on our own business ethics.[219]
Moral education in the schools; the Imperial Rescript
The rapid transformation in the institutions and ideas of Old Japan after the revolution of 1868 created a crisis in the moral life of the Japanese people. The old basis of the national morality was destroyed. Reverence for the Confucian teachings was lost. Respect for ancestral customs was seriously impaired. Moral anarchy impended. In this critical juncture some proposed that Buddhism, others that Christianity, should be made the basis of the moral code.
Especially in the schools was the urgency of the need of some new sanction for morality felt, because moral instruction and training have always formed an essential part of the education of the youth of Japan. The Japanese have ever believed that it is possible to mold the character of the nation by education. “With us,” says a native writer, “education has meant moral education more than anything else for centuries.”[220] “The object of teaching,” says the official regulations for teaching in elementary schools, “is to cultivate the moral nature of children and to guide them in the practice of virtues.”[221] Because of this central place assigned moral education in the work of the schools, the necessity for removing all uncertainty as to what should be inculcated was all the more exigent.
To meet the crisis the following imperial rescript was issued—certainly one of the most remarkable state papers ever promulgated: