Simple as the story is, it is very characteristic. A nobleman is betrayed by his adversary and put to death. Forty-seven of his followers become bandits and swear to revenge their lord. After many vicissitudes the object of their revenge falls into their hands and they kill him. When brought to justice all the forty-seven commit hara-kiri.
Their graves remain to this day in the grove of Siba, and it is one of the first places visited by country people who come to Tokio. Devout hands keep the modest little tombstones supplied with wreaths of fresh flowers. And thus the forty-seven Ronins have become the most popular heroes of the nation, because their offence and expiation interpret one of the most salient features characteristic of the race, which, judged from a national standard, shines in a different light as we can see from the following passage:—
"We have thus seen the Bushido institution of suicide; we will now see whether its sister institution of revenge has its mitigating features. I hope I can dispose of the question in a few words, since a similar institution—or call it custom, as you will—prevailed among all peoples, and has not yet become entirely obsolete, as attested by the continuance of duelling and lynching. Among a savage tribe which has no marriage, adultery is not a sin, so in a period which has no criminal court murder is not a crime, and only the vigilant vengeance of the victim's people preserves social order. 'What is the most beautiful thing on earth?' said Osiris to Horus. The reply was, 'To avenge a parent's wrongs.' To which a Japanese would have added 'and a nearer's.' In revenge there is something which satisfies one's sense of justice. The avenger reasons: 'My good father did not deserve death—he who killed him did great evil. My father, if he were alive, would not tolerate a deed like this. Heaven itself hates wrong-doing. It is the will of my father, it is the will of heaven, that the evil-doer should cease from his work. He must perish by my hand, because he shed my father's blood; I who am his flesh and blood must shed the murderer's. The same heaven shall not shelter him and me.' The logic is simple and childish, but it shows an innate sense of exact balance and equal justice. Our sense of revenge is as exact as our mathematical faculty, and until both terms of the equation are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something undone. Both of these institutions of suicide and revenge lost their raison d'être at the promulgation of the criminal code. The sense of justice satisfied, there is no need of Kataki-uchi. As to Hara-kiri, though it, too, has no existence de jure, we still hear of it from time to time, and shall continue to hear I am afraid, as long as the past is remembered."
In spite of his valour, his passion for war, his thirst for revenge, the Samurai always preserved in his demeanour the utmost calm. Bushido ordained that a knight was never to show either joy or anger. And while remarking that the foreigner in Japan is struck by the often exaggerated politeness of the people, I should have added that he is certainly no less impressed by the inexpressiveness of their faces. Whether sad or joyful, they always wear the same conventional smile, which is sometimes cold as ice, sometimes nervous, or in cases of strong emotion passes into subdued laughter; but traces of really deep emotion are never visible.
What a Baldasare Castiglione or a Lord Chesterfield attempted to exemplify in the West, was bred in the blood of these people as the highest form of good manners. I have seen weddings and witnessed funeral processions where the family on either occasion wore exactly the same expression. In emotions of any kind that conventional smile alone betrays their feelings.
That same smile is on every countenance at great national festivals. With that smile wives took leave of their husbands, children of their fathers, mothers of their sons, when the troops started for the battle-field. The outward form and expression of it remains the same always. The face, or rather the mask that is worn on the stage of life, as in the theatre of ancient Greece, never changes. No matter if the piece enacted change in its course to be a comedy, tragedy, or a drama. So it was ordained by the code of Bushido, which, very likely because it was an unwritten law, came to be all the more binding.
Bushido thus had its own ethical laws, its own religious tenets. As the knight of the Middle Ages created his own rules of life for use within his own turreted stronghold—a code which scarcely held good beyond the trenches of the castle, but which at the same time he magnified into a divine law, a "Gottesurtheil"—so also the Samurai created his own dogmas.
The basis of his creed is Buddhism mixed with the doctrines of Confucius and Shintoism, the primitive faith of the nation. Originally this was nature worship and the cult of the sun, but subsequently it came to be extended to the person of the Mikado. The Samurai thus elevated his emperor into a deity, or rather an idol, and the emperor, gradually more and more isolated from his people, passed his days within the walls of his palace in a series of ritualistic ceremonies, while the burden of the government was laid upon the Shogun, who acted at the same time as Regent and Generalissimo. Loyalty and devotion to their ruler were exalted into a cult. The person of the Mikado was sacred and inviolable. Land and people were, so to speak, his personal property, to do with as he liked. His smallest wish was a command, the blind fulfilment of which was incumbent upon every citizen of the state. The first petition in the prayers of the Samurai was always for his emperor, and the second for his country. And if with us the first gift a child receives is a little cross, in token of his Christian calling, so the Japanese mother of old would place a miniature sword by the side of her babe, to show that his purpose in life was to defend his emperor, his country, and his honour. At the age of five the soldier's boy would receive as a toy a small real sword, and at fifteen the Samurai was of age, and from that time he wore a sharp-bladed weapon.
The sword represented with them more than a weapon of defence. It was a precious and symbolic possession. The manner in which it should be worn was carefully prescribed, and whenever the warrior sat down to his meal or to rest, his weapon was placed on a tray by his side, and woe to the person who touched it with his foot! Such an offence could be wiped out only in blood.
As a mark of the highest reverence, the Samurai raised his sword to his brow, and this act, too, was made almost into a solemn rite. Cutlers and sword-makers occupied a privileged position among the tradespeople, and in welding the blade, every stroke of the hammer was accompanied by the repetition of appropriate sayings and heroic devices. And when the sword was finished, inlaid with gold and silver, in Damascene fashion, sharp as an arrow, and flexible as a Toledo stiletto, it was, of its kind, a masterpiece. We may safely assert that neither in painting nor in sculpture, nor in any branch of industrial art, has Japan ever reached such a high standard of perfection as in the manufacture of bronzes and armour.