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Bushi-Do - Way of the Warrior

In estimating the military capacity of the Japanese, it is essential to know something of the ethical code of the samurai, the bushido ("the way (do) of the warrior (bushi)") as it was called. These ideas were based on a fusion of Zen Buddhism and later Confucianism and were described in such works as the Hagakure written in 1716 and Inazo Nitobe's Bushido: The Soul of Japan, translated into English in 1900. This warrior code contained within it the provision for ritual suicide (seppuku) and made death preferable to the dishonor of being taken prisoner by enemy forces.

According to this doctrine, the samurai was bound to accept death in battle rather than flee or surrender and, if he saw corruption or disloyalty in another, was expected to slay the guilty party and then commit seppuku (see Glossary), lest his honorable intentions be questioned. As an ideal of conduct, the code emphasized personal honesty, reverence and respect for parents, willingness to sacrifice oneself for family honor, consideration for the feelings of others, indifference to pain, loyalty to one's superiors, and unquestioning obedience to duty in the face of any hardship or danger. Notwithstanding a reality that often fell short of the ideal, bushido had a profound and lasting impact on the nation.

A typical example of the rules of conduct prescribed by feudal chieftains is furnished in the code of Kato Kiyomasa (1562-1611), a celebrated general: Regulations for Samurai of every Rank; the Highest and Lowest alike.

"1. The routine of service must be strictly observed. From 6 a.m. military exercises shall be practised. Archery, gunnery and horsemanship must not be neglected. If any man shows exceptional proficiency he shall receive extra pay. 2. Those that desire recreation may engage in hawking, deer-hunting or wrestling. 3. With regard to dress, garments of cotton or pongee shall be worn. Any man incurring debts owing to extravagance of costume or living shall be considered a law-breaker. If, however, being zealous in the practice of military arts suitable to his rank, he desires to hire instructors, an allowance may be granted to him for that purpose. 4. The staple of diet shall be unhulled rice. At social entertainments one guest for one host is the proper limit. Only when men are assembled for military exercises shall many dine together. 5. It is the duty of every samurai to make himself acquainted with the principles of his craft. Extravagant displays of adornment are forbidden in battle. 6. Dancing or organizing dances is unlawful; it is likely to betray sword-carrying men into acts of violence. Whatever a man does should be done with his heart. Therefore for the soldier military amusements alone are suitable. The penalty for violating this provision is death by suicide. Learning shall be encouraged. Military books must be read. The spirit of loyalty and filial piety must be educated before all things. Poem-composing pastimes are not to be engaged in by samurai. To be addicted to such amusements is to resemble a woman. A man born a samurai should live and die sword in hand. Unless he is thus trained in time of peace, he will be useless in the hour of stress. To be brave and warlike must be his invariable condition. 8. Whosoever finds these rules too severe shall be relieved from service. Should investigation show that any one is so unfortunate as to lack manly qualities, he shall be singled out and dismissed forthwith."

The imperative character of these instructions must not be doubted. The plainly paramount purpose of these rules was to draw a sharp line of demarcation between the samurai and the courtiers living in Kyoto. The dancing, the couplet-composing, the sumptuous living and the fine costumes of the officials frequenting the imperial capital were strictly interdicted by the feudatories. Frugality, fealty and filial piety-these may be called the fundamental virtues of the samurai. Owing to the circumstances out of which his caste had grown, he regarded all bread-winning pursuits with contempt, and despised money. To be swayed in the smallest degree by mercenary motives was despicable in his eyes. Essentially a stoic, he made self-control the ideal of his existence, and practised the courageous endurance of suffering so thoroughly that he could without hesitation inflict on his own body pain of the most horrible description. Nor can the courage of the samurai justly be ascribed to bluntness of moral sensibility resulting from semi-savage conditions of life. From the 8th century onwards the current of existence in Japan set with general steadiness in the direction of artistic refinement and voluptuous luxury, amidst which men could scarcely fail to acquire habits and tastes inconsistent with acts of high courage and great endurance.

The samurai's mood was not a product of semi-barbarism, but rather a protest against emasculating civilization. He schooled himself to regard death by his own hand as a normal eventuality. The story of other nations shows epochs when death was welcomed as a relief and deliberately invited as a refuge from the mere weariness of living. But wherever there has been liberty to choose, and leisure to employ, a painless mode of exit from the world, men have invariably selected it. The samurai, however, adopted in harakiri (disembowelment) a mode of suicide so painful and so shocking that to school the mind to regard it with indifference and perform it without flinching was a feat not easy to conceive. Assistance was often rendered by a friend who stood ready to decapitate the victim immediately after the stomach had been gashed; but there were innumerable examples of men who consummated the tragedy without aid, especially when the sacrifice of life was by way of protest against the excesses of a feudal chief or the crimes of a ruler, or when some motive for secrecy existed.

It must be observed that the suicide of the samurai was never inspired by any doctrine like that of Hegesias. Death did not present itself to him as a legitimate means of escaping from the cares and disappointments of life. Self-destruction had only one consolatory aspect, that it was the soldier's privilege to expiate a crime with his own sword, not under the hand of the executioner. It rested with his feudal chief to determine his guilt, and his peremptory duty was never to question the justice of an order to commit suicide, but to obey without murmur or protest. For the rest, the general motives for suicide were to escape falling into the hands of a victorious enemy, to remonstrate against some official abuse which no ordinary complaint could reach, or, by means of a dying protest, to turn a liege lord from pursuing courses injurious to his reputation and his fortune. This last was the noblest and by no means the most infrequent reason for suicide. Scores of examples are recorded of men who, with everything to make existence desirable, deliberately laid down their lives at the prompting of loyalty. Thus the samurai rose to a remarkable height of moral nobility.

He had no assurance that his death might not be wholly fruitless, as indeed it often proved. If the sacrifice achieved its purpose, if it turned a liege lord from evil courses, the samurai could hope that his memory would be honored. But if the lord resented such a violent and conspicuous mode of reproving his excesses, then the faithful vassal's retribution would be an execrated memory and, perhaps, suffering for his family and relatives. Yet the deed was performed again and again. It remains to be noted that the samurai entertained a high respect for the obligations of truth; "A bushi has no second word," was one of his favourite mottoes. However, a reservation is necessary here. The samurai's doctrine was not truth for truth's sake, but truth for the sake of the spirit of uncompromising manliness on which he based all his code of morality. A pledge or a promise must never be broken, but the duty of veracity did not override the interests or the welfare of others.

Generosity to a defeated foe was also one of the tenets of the samurai's ethics. History contains many instances of the exercise of that quality. Something more, however, than a profound conception of duty was needed to nerve the samurai for sacrifices such as he seems to have been always ready to make. It is true that Japanese parents of the military class took pains to familiarize their children of both sexes from very tender years with the idea of self-destruction at any time. But superadded to the force of education and the incentive of tradition there was a transcendental influence. Buddhism supplied it.

The tenets of that creed divided themselves, broadly speaking, into two doctrines, salvation by faith and salvation by works, and the chief exponent of the latter principle is the sect which prescribes meditation as the vehicle of enlightenment. Whatever be the mental processes induced by this rite, those who have practised it insist that it leads finally to a state of absorption, in which the mind is flooded by an illumination revealing the universe in a new ,aspect, absolutely free from all traces of passion, interest or affection, and showing, written across everything in flaming letters, the truth that for him who has found Buddha there is neither birth nor death, growth nor decay. Lifted high above his surroundings, he is prepared to meet every fate with indifference. The attainment of that state seems to have been a fact in the case both of the samurai of the military epoch and of the Japanese soldier of the early 20th Century.

The code was Japanese chivalry in practice, with members of the Japanese army and navy its greatest followers, particularly officers. Emphasizing discipline, loyalty, courage and death before dishonor, the Bushido ethic of the samurai of feudal Japan was entrenched in the mind and in the soul of the 20th century Japanese soldier. So many would give their lives in suicidal charges thought to be honorable, their lives given in sacrifice for the Emperor and Japan. With Bushido at the heart of Japanese culture - in the home, in the schools, in the military, in general society - the Japanese soldier was a tremendous and fearsome opponent no matter the odds, the superiority of force brought up to face him, no matter the enemy to go before him.