Bushido by Inazo Nitobe (bill gates books recommendations .TXT) 📕

These are strong words and would be highly worth pondering over,

provided there were qualities and defects of character which _constitute

the exclusive patrimony_ of each people. Schematizing theories of this

sort had been advanced long before LeBon began to write his book, and

they were exploded long ago by Theodor Waitz and Hugh Murray. In

studying the various virtues instilled by Bushido, we have drawn upon

European sources for comparison and illustrations, and we have seen that

no one quality of character was its exclusive patrimony. It is true

the aggregate of moral qualities presents a quite unique aspect. It is

this aggregate which Emerson names a “compound result into which every

great force enters as an ingredient.” But, instead of making it, as

LeBon does, an exclusive patrimony of a race or people, the Concord

philosopher calls it “an element which unites the most forcible persons

of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other;

and is somewhat so precise that it is at once felt if an individual lack

the Masonic sign.”

[Footnote 29: The Psychology of Peoples, p. 33.]

The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in

particular, cannot be said to form “an irreducible element of species,”

but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt.

Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the

last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it

transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely

widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has

calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century,

“each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty

millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D.” The merest peasant

that grubs the soil, “bowed by the weight of centuries,” has in his

veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as “to the

ox.”

An unconscious and irresistible power, Bushido has been moving the

nation and individuals. It was an honest confession of the race when

Yoshida Shoin, one of the most brilliant pioneers of Modern Japan, wrote

on the eve of his execution the following stanza;—

“Full well I knew this course must end in death;

It was Yamato spirit urged me on

To dare whate’er betide.”

Unformulated, Bushido was and still is the animating spirit, the motor

force of our country.

Mr. Ransome says that “there are three distinct Japans in existence

side by side to-day,—the old, which has not wholly died out; the new,

hardly yet born except in spirit; and the transition, passing now

through its most critical throes.” While this is very true in most

respects, and particularly as regards tangible and concrete

institutions, the statement, as applied to fundamental ethical notions,

requires some modification; for Bushido, the maker and product of Old

Japan, is still the guiding principle of the transition and will prove

the formative force of the new era.

The great statesmen who steered the ship of our state through the

hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation,

were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of

Knighthood. Some writers[30] have lately tried to prove that the

Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making

of New Japan. I would fain render honor to whom honor is due: but this

honor can hardly be accorded to the good missionaries. More fitting it

will be to their profession to stick to the scriptural injunction of

preferring one another in honor, than to advance a claim in which they

have no proofs to back them. For myself, I believe that Christian

missionaries are doing great things for Japan—in the domain of

education, and especially of moral education:—only, the mysterious

though not the less certain working of the Spirit is still hidden in

divine secrecy. Whatever they do is still of indirect effect. No, as yet

Christian missions have effected but little visible in moulding the

character of New Japan. No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged

us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern

Japan—of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the

reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.:—and you

will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought

and wrought. When Mr. Henry Norman declared, after his study and

observation of the Far East,[31] that only the respect in which Japan

differed from other oriental despotisms lay in “the ruling influence

among her people of the strictest, loftiest, and the most punctilious

codes of honor that man has ever devised,” he touched the main spring

which has made new Japan what she is and which will make her what she is

destined to be.

[Footnote 30: Speer; Missions and Politics in Asia, Lecture IV, pp.

189-190; Dennis: Christian Missions and Social Progress, Vol. I, p.

32, Vol. II, p. 70, etc.]

[Footnote 31: The Far East, p. 375.]

The transformation of Japan is a fact patent to the whole world. In a

work of such magnitude various motives naturally entered; but if one

were to name the principal, one would not hesitate to name Bushido. When

we opened the whole country to foreign trade, when we introduced the

latest improvements in every department of life, when we began to study

Western politics and sciences, our guiding motive was not the

development of our physical resources and the increase of wealth; much

less was it a blind imitation of Western customs. A close observer of

oriental institutions and peoples has written:—“We are told every day

how Europe has influenced Japan, and forget that the change in those

islands was entirely self-generated, that Europeans did not teach Japan,

but that Japan of herself chose to learn from Europe methods of

organization, civil and military, which have so far proved successful.

She imported European mechanical science, as the Turks years before

imported European artillery. That is not exactly influence,” continues

Mr. Townsend, “unless, indeed, England is influenced by purchasing tea

of China. Where is the European apostle,” asks our author, “or

philosopher or statesman or agitator who has re-made Japan?”[32] Mr.

Townsend has well perceived that the spring of action which brought

about the changes in Japan lay entirely within our own selves; and if he

had only probed into our psychology, his keen powers of observation

would easily have convinced him that that spring was no other than

Bushido. The sense of honor which cannot bear being looked down upon as

an inferior power,—that was the strongest of motives. Pecuniary or

industrial considerations were awakened later in the process of

transformation.

[Footnote 32: Meredith Townsend, Asia and Europe, N.Y., 1900, 28.]

The influence of Bushido is still so palpable that he who runs may read.

A glimpse into Japanese life will make it manifest. Read Hearn, the most

eloquent and truthful interpreter of the Japanese mind, and you see the

working of that mind to be an example of the working of Bushido. The

universal politeness of the people, which is the legacy of knightly

ways, is too well known to be repeated anew. The physical endurance,

fortitude and bravery that “the little Jap” possesses, were sufficiently

proved in the China-Japanese war.[33] “Is there any nation more loyal

and patriotic?” is a question asked by many; and for the proud answer,

“There is not,” we must thank the Precepts of Knighthood.

[Footnote 33: Among other works on the subject, read Eastlake and Yamada

on Heroic Japan, and Diosy on The New Far East.]

On the other hand, it is fair to recognize that for the very faults and

defects of our character, Bushido is largely responsible. Our lack of

abstruse philosophy—while some of our young men have already gained

international reputation in scientific researches, not one has achieved

anything in philosophical lines—is traceable to the neglect of

metaphysical training under Bushido’s regimen of education. Our sense of

honor is responsible for our exaggerated sensitiveness and touchiness;

and if there is the conceit in us with which some foreigners charge us,

that, too, is a pathological outcome of honor.

Have you seen in your tour of Japan many a young man with unkempt hair,

dressed in shabbiest garb, carrying in his hand a large cane or a book,

stalking about the streets with an air of utter indifference to mundane

things? He is the shosei (student), to whom the earth is too small and

the Heavens are not high enough. He has his own theories of the universe

and of life. He dwells in castles of air and feeds on ethereal words of

wisdom. In his eyes beams the fire of ambition; his mind is athirst for

knowledge. Penury is only a stimulus to drive him onward; worldly goods

are in his sight shackles to his character. He is the repository of

Loyalty and Patriotism. He is the self-imposed guardian of national

honor. With all his virtues and his faults, he is the last fragment of

Bushido.

Deep-rooted and powerful as is still the effect of Bushido, I have said

that it is an unconscious and mute influence. The heart of the people

responds, without knowing the reason why, to any appeal made to what it

has inherited, and hence the same moral idea expressed in a newly

translated term and in an old Bushido term, has a vastly different

degree of efficacy. A backsliding Christian, whom no pastoral persuasion

could help from downward tendency, was reverted from his course by an

appeal made to his loyalty, the fidelity he once swore to his Master.

The word “Loyalty” revived all the noble sentiments that were permitted

to grow lukewarm. A band of unruly youths engaged in a long continued

“students’ strike” in a college, on account of their dissatisfaction

with a certain teacher, disbanded at two simple questions put by the

Director,—“Is your professor a blameless character? If so, you ought

to respect him and keep him in the school. Is he weak? If so, it is not

manly to push a falling man.” The scientific incapacity of the

professor, which was the beginning of the trouble, dwindled into

insignificance in comparison with the moral issues hinted at. By

arousing the sentiments nurtured by Bushido, moral renovation of great

magnitude can be accomplished.

One cause of the failure of mission work is that most of the

missionaries are grossly ignorant of our history—“What do we care for

heathen records?” some say—and consequently estrange their religion

from the habits of thought we and our forefathers have been accustomed

to for centuries past. Mocking a nation’s history!—as though the career

of any people—even of the lowest African savages possessing no

record—were not a page in the general history of mankind, written by

the hand of God Himself. The very lost races are a palimpsest to be

deciphered by a seeing eye. To a philosophic and pious mind, the races

themselves are marks of Divine chirography clearly traced in black and

white as on their skin; and if this simile holds good, the yellow race

forms a precious page inscribed in hieroglyphics of gold! Ignoring the

past career of a people, missionaries claim that Christianity is a new

religion, whereas, to my mind, it is an “old, old story,” which, if

presented in intelligible words,—that is to say, if expressed in the

vocabulary familiar in the moral development of a people—will find easy

lodgment in their hearts, irrespective of race or nationality.

Christianity in its American or English form—with more of Anglo-Saxon

freaks and fancies than grace and purity of its founder—is a poor scion

to graft on Bushido stock. Should the propagator of the