8. Describe and explain the laws, in order to warn the ignorant and obstinate.
9. Exhibit clearly propriety and gentle courtesy, in order to improve manners and customs.
10. Labour diligently at your proper callings, in order to give well-defined aims to the people.
11. Instruct sons and younger brothers, in order to prevent them doing what is wrong.
12. Put a stop to false accusations, in order to protect the honest and the good.
Here too you see what an important place filial piety occupies, which Confucius himself prized so highly. The Hsiao King, or the 'Sacred Book of Filial Piety,' which is supposed to record conversations held between Confucius and his disciple Tsang Ts'an on that weighty subject, has the following passage: 'He who (properly) serves his parents in a high situation will be free from haughtiness; in a low situation he will be free from insubordination; whilst among his equals he will not be quarrelsome. In a high position haughtiness leads to ruin; among the lowly insubordination means punishment; among equals quarrelsomeness tends to the wielding of weapons.' These words, naïve as they are, express the exalted position filial affection occupies in the eyes of Confucianism. 'Dutiful subjects are to be found in the persons of filial sons,' and again, 'Filial piety is the source whence all other good actions take their rise,' are other sayings expressing its importance.
Along with this virtue, other forms of moral force, such as mercy, uprightness, courage, politeness, fidelity, and loyalty, have been duly considered and commended by the great teacher himself and his disciples. Among these, Mencius (373-289 B.C.) is most enterprising and attractive, digesting and systematising with a great deal of philosophic talent the rather fragmentary ideas of his great master. It is he who, among other things, informs us, on the assumed authority of a passage in the Shu-King, how the sage Shun made it a subject of his anxious solicitude to teach the five constituent relationships of society, viz., affection between father and son; relations of righteousness between ruler and subject; the assigning of their proper spheres to husband and wife; distinction of precedence between old and young; and fidelity between friend and friend—an idea which has played such an important part in the history of the development of the Oriental mind.
Such were the main features of Confucianism when it first reached Japan, some centuries after the Christian era. But it was not until some time after the introduction of Buddhism from Corea during the reign of the Emperor Kimmei, in 552 A.D., that Confucianism and Chinese learning began to take firm root and make their influence felt among us. Paradoxical as it looks, it is Buddhism that so greatly helped the teaching of the Chinese sage to establish itself as a ruling factor in Japanese society. This curious state of things came about in this way. The gospel of Shâkya-muni has, ever since its introduction into our country, been made accessible only through the Chinese translation, which demanded a considerable knowledge of the written language of the Middle Kingdom. The keen and far-reaching spiritual interest aroused by Buddhism gave a fresh and vigorous impulse to the study of Chinese literature, already increasingly cultivated for some centuries. Now, the knowledge of Chinese in its written form has, until quite recently, always been imparted by a painful perusal of the Chinese classics and Chinese books deeply imbued with Confucianism. It was only after a considerable amount of knowledge of this difficult language had been obtained in this unnatural way, that one came in contact with the works of authors not strictly orthodox. This way of teaching Chinese through Confucian texts, which we adopted from China's faithful agent, Corea, necessarily led from the very beginning to an intimate acquaintance with the main aspects of the Confucian morals in our upper classes, among whom alone the study was at first pursued with any seriousness. Although skilled in warlike arts, gentle and loyal in domestic life, our forefathers were simple in manners and thought in those olden days when book-learned reasons of duty had not yet superseded the naïve observance of the dictates of the heart and of responsibility to the ancestral spirits. They possessed no letters of their own, and consequently no literature, except in unwritten songs and legendary lore sung from mouth to mouth, telling of the gods and men who formed the glorious past of the Yamato race. So it is not difficult to imagine the dazzling effect which the Chinese learning, with its richness and its pedantry, with its elaborate system of civil government and its philosophy, produced upon our untrained eyes. Gradually but steadfastly it had been gaining ground, and making its slow way from the topmost rung to the bottom of the social ladder, when the introduction of Buddhism quickened the now resistless progress. The would-be priests and advocates of the Indian creed felt a fresh impulse and spiritual need to learn the Chinese language, for which they had long entertained a high estimation. Owing to the extremely secular character of the Confucian ethics on the one hand, and on the other, to the fact that Buddhists deny the existence of a personal god, and are eager to minister salvation through any adequate means so long as it does not contradict the Law of the Universe upon which the whole doctrine is based, Buddhism found in the teaching of the Chinese sage and his followers not only no enemy, but, on the contrary, a helpful friend. It found that the sacred books of Confucian doctrine contained only in a slightly different form the five commandments laid down by Shâkya-muni himself for the regulation of the conduct of a layman, viz.:—
1. Not to destroy life nor to cause its destruction.
2. Not to steal.