Bushido: The Soul of Japan

by Nitobe Inazo

The other day I thought to myself: one of the reasons why you’re constantly feeling so anxious is because you keep backlogging these things you want to do. So buck up and start finishing them too.

Like, my reading history with this book was utterly ridiculous:

*starts reading it*

*drops it*

*starts re-reading it*

*drops it*

*reads my notes on it to remind myself of what was going on*

*drops it again*

And then finally, when I told myself to stop being such a loser, I just rushed through the rest of it in three days.

But as I started it again that third time, I remembered why I was so unenthusiastic about reading it in the first place. Even though this book is relatively short, the language is just — really cumbersome to read. Especially if I was tired, at which point I’d just squint at the text and be like, “I understand each individual word but I literally don’t understand what it’s saying?”

And honestly? The man should’ve just stuck to talking about Japan instead of adding his opinions about Europe and christianism.

But that’s one thing out of the way! So hurray for me! Now I just have *starts counting* loads. Loads and loads of things I’ve started and haven’t yet finished, ha ha. *makes a distressed, dying noise*

The Future of Bushido

The most improved guns and cannon do not shoot of their own accord; the most modern educational system does not make a coward a hero.

∞

They are not dead, those ghosts, the spirits of our warlike ancestors.

Is Bushido Still Alive?

It were a sad thing if a nation’s soul could die so fast. That were a poor soul that could succumb so easily to extraneous influences.

The Influence of Bushido

Virtues are no less contagious than vices.

∞

The Yamato spirit is not a tame, tender plant, but a wild — in the sense of natural — growth; it is indigenous to the soil; its accidental qualities it may share with the flowers of other lands, but in its essence it remains the original, spontaneous outgrowth of our clime. But its nativity is not its sole claim to our affection. The refinement and grace of its beauty appeal to our aesthetic sense as no other flower can. We cannot share the admiration of the Europeans for their roses, which lack the simplicity of our flower. Then, too, the thorns that are hidden beneath the sweetness of the rose, the tenacity with which she clings to life, as though loth or afraid to die rather than drop untimely, preferring to rot on her stem; her showy colors and heavy odors — all these are traits so unlike our flower, which carries no dagger or poison under its beauty, which is every ready to depart life at the call of nature, whose colors are never gorgeous, and whose light fragrance never palls.

The Training and Position of Woman

I do not hesitate to state that she was not treated as man’s equal; but until we learn to discriminate between difference and inequalities, there will always be misunderstandings upon this subject.

Honor

. . . for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being closely bound up with strong family consciousness.

∞

They knew that honor won in youth grows with age.

Veracity or Truthfulness

. . . it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth were not the ways of honor.

Politeness

Much less do I consider elaborate ceremony as altogether trivial; for it denotes the result of long observation as to the most appropriate method of achieving a certain result. If there is anything to do, there is certainly a best way to do it, and the best way is both the most economical and the most graceful.

∞

If the premise is true that gracefulness means economy of force, then it follows as a logical sequence that a constant practice of graceful deportment must bring with it a reserve and storage of force. Fine manners, therefore, mean power in repose.

Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress

. . . not that the mercy of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse, but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with power to save or kill.

Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing

Courage was scarcely deemed worthy to be counted among virtues, unless it was exercised in the cause of Righteousness. In his “Analects” Confucius defines Courage by explaining, as is often his wont, what its negative is. “Perceiving what is right,” he says, “and doing it not, argues lack of courage.” Put this epigram into a positive statement, and it runs, “Courage is doing what is right.” To run all kinds of hazards, to jeopardize one’s self, to rush into the jaws of death—these are too often identified with Valor, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct—what Shakespeare calls, “valor misbegot”—is unjustly applauded; but not so in the Precepts of Knighthood. Death for a cause unworthy of dying for, was called a “dog’s death.” “To rush into the thick of battle and to be slain in it,” says a Prince of Mito, “is easy enough, and the merest churl is equal to the task; but,” he continues, “it is true courage to live when it is right to live, and to die only when it is right to die,” and yet the Prince had not even heard of the name of Plato, who defines courage as “the knowledge of things that a man should fear and that he should not fear.”

Sources of Bushido

A common proverb ridicules one who has only an intellectual knowledge of Confucius, as a man ever studious but ignorant of Analects. A typical samurai calls a literary savant a book-smelling sot. Another compares learning to an ill-smelling vegetable that must be boiled and boiled before it is fit for use. A man who has read a little smells a little pedantic, and a man who has read much smells yet more so; both are alike unpleasant. The writer meant thereby that knowledge becomes really such only when it is assimilated in the mind of the learner and shows in his character. An intellectual specialist was considered a machine.

∞

Bushido made light of knowledge as such. It was not pursued as an end in itself, but as a means to the attainment of wisdom.

∞

Thus, knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in life.

Sources of Bushido

Its nature-worship endeared the country to our inmost souls, while its ancestor-worship, tracing from lineage to lineage, made the Imperial family the fountain-head of the whole nation. To us the country is more than land and soil from which to mine gold or to reap grain—it is the sacred abode of the gods, the spirits of our forefathers.

⋅ Nota Bene ⋅

(He’s talking about Shintoism.)

Preface

But one who speaks in a borrowed tongue should be thankful if he can just make himself intelligible.

That’s Not Love

There is this trope in romance stories that the main character has to hurt their love interest to “protect them” — usually by breaking up in the worst kind of way. This usually happens at a time when the love interest would need them the most for maximum dramaramara.

I’m not sure if this happens in European stories but I’ve seen Koreans use it regularly. The only story I’ve seen so far that did it well, though, was a drama named You Are the Best! or alternatively The Best Lee Soon-shin.

It’s been a couple of years since I saw it but basically Shin Joon-ho broke up with Lee Soon-shin because her bitch of a mother blackmailed him and right at a time when she needed him the most. She later found out the truth, and was rightfully angry and devastated. She did forgive him — because, obviously — but what I liked the most was when she cried: “That’s not love.”

Because it’s really not.

You know, Inazo Nitobe talked about this, too, in Bushido: The Soul of Japan. He mentions giri which in its original sense simply meant duty because if love did not motivate towards virtue then intellect and reason had to be used to convince someone to act right.

Incrementally, though, giri was used to justify all manner of nonvirtue — such as a mother sacrificing her other children to save the first-born or a daughter selling her chastity to pay for her father’s dissipation.

Remember to always strive towards honour and virtue, not some artificial sense of love. Because you can’t wriggle honour or virtue as justification for all sorts of dishonourable behaviour. And do keep in mind, if your honour is dependent on exposure then it’s not honour. It’s shame.