Certain it is that a brilliant future awaits Japan. The land is rich, and its position, between Eastern Asia and Western America, most advantageous, both from an economic and from a strategic point of view. The people are healthy, strong, industrious, and possess in an extraordinary degree the faculty of assimilation. In this respect, indeed, Japan is unrivalled by any other race.
The primary cause of their present marvellous success must unquestionably be sought in this faculty of assimilation and in the power of discipline—in the wonderful ease wherewith they appropriate all the acquisitions of the West—the way in which they carry them out. The second cause of their success is their old military system of government, which has produced the present-day soldiers. But in order to grasp thoroughly the situation it is necessary to cast a cursory glance on the past history of Japan. In doing so we should remember in the first place that ancient Nippon was built upon the system of vassalage. The land was divided into principalities of various sizes, at the head of each of which was a Daimio, or vassal chieftain, just as the empires of the West were formerly protected and ruled over by baronial chiefs. Feudalism in Europe led to perpetual frontier quarrels and wars, and this was the case also in Japan. The Daimios were always at enmity with one another, and their government was a period of petty warfare.
The military element, therefore, naturally occupied a prominent position, and just as in Europe the knight became the founder of Chivalry, so in Japan the Samurais established the Bushido. And as the German knight of Chivalry created a legal system called Club-law, for the protection of his own interests, so the soldiers of Japan had their own military code. The military thus became the privileged class of society. This caste, with its rigorous rules and external organization, had a perfectly developed existence, a special moral standard, and to a certain extent a religion of its own. As the age of Chivalry was created by the knights of old, so "Bushido," the ethics of the Samurais, originated in the Land of the Rising Sun.
To give an exact definition of the word "Bushido" is impossible, because the conception of it is unknown to us. There are no analogous circumstances necessitating its existence with us. The idea of chivalry is the nearest approach to an interpretation of the word, although literally "Bushido" means "Military manner"—the manner and the way in which it is the duty of the armed nobility to fight, to live, and to die. We notice that according to this definition the word includes more than a mere title; it expresses a whole social system, and regulates the views and appreciations of life of all its members.
The description given by Dr. Nitobe enables us to form some idea of Bushido from a Japanese standpoint. "Bushido is the code of moral principles which the knights were required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it consists of a few maxims handed down by oral tradition or coming from the pen of some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten, but impressed on the fleshy tablets of the heart. It was founded, not on the creation of one brain, however able, or on the life of a single personage, however renowned. It was an organic growth of decades and centuries of military career. It perhaps fills the same position in the history of ethics that the English Constitution does in political history; yet it has nothing to compare with the Magna Carta or the Habeas Corpus Act. It is true that early in the seventeenth century Military Statutes (Buké Hatto) were promulgated, but their thirteen short articles were taken up mostly with marriages, castles, leagues, etc., and didactic regulations were but meagrely touched upon. We cannot, therefore, point out any definite time and place, and say, Here is its fountain-head. It is not till the feudal age that it attains consciousness. Its origin, in respect to time, may be identified with feudalism. But feudalism itself is woven of many threads, and Bushido shares its intricate nature. As in England the political institution of feudalism may be said to date from the Norman Conquest, so we may say that in Japan its rise was simultaneous with the ascendancy of Toritomo late in the twelfth century. As, however, in England we find the social elements of feudalism far back in the period previous to William the Conqueror, so, too, the germs of feudalism in Japan have been long existent before.
"Again, in Japan as in Europe, when feudalism was formally inaugurated, the professional class of warriors naturally came into prominence. These were known as samurai, meaning literally, like the old English cniht (knecht, knight), guards or attendants, resembling in character the soldurii, whom Caesar mentioned as existing in Aquitania. A Sinico-Japanese class, named Bu-Ké or Bu-Shi (fighting knights), was also adopted in common use. They were a privileged class, and must originally have been a rough breed who made fighting their vocation. Coming to profess great honour and great privileges, and correspondingly great responsibilities, they soon felt the need of a common standard of behaviour, especially as they were always on a belligerent footing and belonged to different clans.
"'Fair play in fight!' What fertile germs of morality lie in this primitive sense of savagery and childhood! Is it not the root of military and civic virtues? We smile (as if we had outgrown it!) at the boyish desire of the small Britisher, Tom Brown, 'to leave behind him the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy or turned his back on a big one.' And yet, who does not know that this desire is the cornerstone on which moral structures of mighty dimensions can be reared? May I not go even so far as to say that the gentlest and most peace-loving of religions endorses this aspiration? This desire of Tom's is the basis on which the greatness of England is largely built, and it will not take us long to discover that Bushido does not stand on a lower pedestal. If fighting in itself, be it offensive or defensive, is, as Quakers rightly testify, brutal and wrong, we can still say with Lessing, 'We know from what failings our virtue springs.' Sneaks and cowards are epithets of the worst opprobrium to healthy, simple natures. Childhood begins life with those notions, as does also knighthood; but as life grows larger and its relations become many-sided, the early faith seeks sanction from higher authority and more rational sources for its own justification, satisfaction, and development. If military systems had operated alone, without higher moral support, how far short of chivalry would the moral ideal have fallen! In Europe Christianity, interpreted with concessions convenient to chivalry, infused it nevertheless with a spiritual ideal. 'Religion, war, and glory were the three rules of a perfect Christian knight,' says Lamartine."
Bushido has no written laws; it has been handed down as a tradition from father to son. Its originator was not a sage like Confucius, not an ascetic like Buddha; it was the people itself. It is the immediate expression of past ages, and, as far as man's memory reaches, the interpreter of the sentiments of victorious warriors.
With the increasing power of the Samurais grew also the necessity, as was the case with knighthood, to purify the atmosphere of their fortresses by self-prescribed rules. And it lies in the natural order of things, embracing all national codes, that those points should be most carefully guarded on which the people felt themselves to be weakest.
The first principle, then, was, Justice to all. The Samurais despise above all things trickery and deceit, all unfairness. "Adhere inflexibly to thy principle,"—thus writes a Bushi—"and be ready to die for the sake of duty; but also be ready to strike and to kill if honour demand it of thee." And the more the general situation became degenerated, the more prominent became the letter of this law in the clash of swords.