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Inazo Nitobe "Bushido"

I don't know if Kumarajiva should be Indian or Chinese, Buddhism at least in Japan was greatly influenced by his "original" teaching.
There has been the longlasting dispute Mahayana/Hinayana dispute, but I I don't know why people killed each other on the Christ's divinity. I forgot the right term for it, though.

And I don't know why you don't post your threads something like ﾋ?δ坂?｢ﾂ坂?倪?ｰﾃ??愿ｺ窶怒ﾂ in ﾂ「ﾋ?ｪ窶敕岩?廬窶堙鞍稚ﾆ辿ﾂーﾆ停?ｰﾆ停ぎﾂ」 here. I bet this forum will get the most players than other Japan-related forums.

Google "Hirata Atsutane". He's said to be influeced by Christianity.
 
pipokun said:
Google "Hirata Atsutane". He's said to be influeced by Christianity.
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Do you mean that the concept of State Shinto was influenced by Christianity ? If that is true, then Christianity was again the cause of great evil. :erm:
 
Chapter 4 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 leopard one's self, to rush into the jaws of death--these are too often identified with Valour, and in the profession of arms such rashness of conduct--what Shakespeare calls "valour 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."

A distinction which is made in the West between moral and physical courage has long been recognised among us.
What samurai youth has not heard of "Great Valour" and the "Valour of a Villian?"
Valour, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness Courage, being the qualities of soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular virtues, early emulated among the youth.
Stories of military exploits were repeated almost before boys left their mother's breast.

Anecdotes of fortitude and bravery abound in nursery tales, though stories of this kind are not by any means the only method of imbuing the spirit with daring and fearlessness.
Parents, with sternness sometimes verging on cruelty, set their children to tasks that called forth all the pluck that was in them.

-Next, Chapter 4 Continued-
 
Chapter 4 Courage, The Spirit of Daring and Bearing continued

Occasional deprivation of food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for inuring them to endurance.
Children of tender age were sent among utter stangers with some message to deliver, were made to rise before the sun, and before breakfast attend to their reading exercises, walking to their teachers with bare feet in the cold of winter; they frequently--once or twice a month, as on the festival of a god of learning,--came together in small groups and passed the night without sleep, in reading aloud by turns.
Pilgrimages to all sorts of uncanny places--to execution grounds, to graveyards, to houses reputed of being haunted, were favourite pastimes of the young.

The spiritual aspect of valour is evidenced by composure--calm presence of mind.
Tranquility is courage in repose.
It is a statical manifestation of valour, as daring deeds are a dynamical.
A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken my surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit.
In the heat of battle he remains cool; in the midst of catastrophes he keeps level his mind.

We admire him as truly great, who, in the menacing presence of danger or death, retains his self-possession; whoe, for instance, can compose a poem under impending peril, or hum a strain in the face of death.
Such indulgence betraying no tremor in the writing or in the voice is taken as an infallible index of a large nature--of what we call a capacious mind (yoyu), which, far from being pressed or crowded, has always room for something more.

Indeed, valour and honour alike required that we should own as enemies in war only such as prove worthy of being friends in peace.
When valour attains this height, it becomes akin to Benevolence.

-Next, Chapter 5 Benevolence, The Feeling of Distress-
 
Mikawa Ossan said:
Occasional deprivation of food or exposure to cold, was considered a highly efficacious test for inuring them to endurance.
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I think that such treatment does indeed make people tougher, but also reduce their general sensitivity, and thus make them "dumber". It's not a coicidence that "tough guys" are usually the "brainless" type.

The spiritual aspect of valour is evidenced by composure--calm presence of mind.
Tranquility is courage in repose.
Click to expand...

I can't help thinking about the masses of exciting young girls who stomp their feet when they see something cute or can't get something they want. I also remember the elderly shop keepers or the young combini employee, both freezing and unable to speak at the sight of a foreigner. Then, there are those noisy drunk salarymen shouting and laughing at the top of their voice in izakayas and in the streets every evening. Without mentioned all those laugh-out variety programmes on Japanese TV. Indeed calm and tranquility must be a rare and sought-after value in a country like Japan.

A truly brave man is ever serene; he is never taken my surprise; nothing ruffles the equanimity of his spirit.
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Such men are becoming an even rarer breed. He is the one that does not vocalize long 'eeeeeeeeeh' or 'oooooooh' of surprise for every little trivial fact revealed on TV. These values seem all but lost in modern Japanese society.
 
Maciamo said:
I think that such treatment does indeed make people tougher, but also reduce their general sensitivity, and thus make them "dumber". It's not a coicidence that "tough guys" are usually the "brainless" type.
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Could you perhaps be more subjective and generalising?
 
Index said:
Could you perhaps be more subjective and generalising?
Click to expand...

If I remember well, some studies have shown that boxing champions tend to have an IQ below average (under 100), and so did quite a few famous gangsters (mafiosi, yakuza...). Of course, that doesn't mean that anybody with muscles is necessarily stupid, and even less the reverse.

Usually people born in tough conditions, lacking food and forced to adapt to a harsh environment (e.g. poor people in developing countries) tend not to be as intelligent. That's partly why (very) poor people perform less well at school and at IQ tests. One of the reasons is that a lack of proper nutrition during pregnancy and infancy can cause irreversible damage to the brain. The passage I quoted from the Bushido involved "deprivation of food" for "children of a tender age" so as to toughen them. It is certainly a good way to damage their brain, which in turns does have for effect a lessen sensitivity to physical and emotional pain and hardship.
 
Chapter 5: Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress

Love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy and pity, were ever recognized to be supreme virtues, the highest of all the attributes of the human soul.
It was deemed a princely virtue in a twofold sense: princely among the manifold attributes of a noble spirit; princely as particularly befitting a princely profession.

How often both Confucius and Mencius repeat the highest requirement of a ruler of men to consist in benevolence.

Both defined this indispensable requirement in a ruler by saying, "Benevolence--benevolence is Man."

We knew benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like.
If upright Rectitude and sern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature.
We were warned against in indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with justice and rectitude.
Masamune expressed it wel in his oft-quoted aphorism--"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness."
Fortunately mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, forit is universally true that "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring."
"Bushido no nasake"--the tenderness of a warrior--had a sound which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; 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.
As economists speak of demand as being effectual or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of Bushi effectual, since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the recipient.

-to be continued-
 
Masamune expressed it wel in his oft-quoted aphorism--"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness;
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I was wondering if it was not Munemasa he was talking about... :sorry:

Sorry, I will behave from now on; I promise.
 
I double-checked, and the text I have in front of me does say, "Masamune". Could be a mistake.
 
Mikawa Ossan said:
I double-checked, and the text I have in front of me does say, "Masamune". Could be a mistake.
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Have you checked my link ? I was just kidding.
 
Honestly, no I didn't check it. Sorry, I didn't realize you were kidding. I'm a little tired and slow on the take today.

But Munemasa is not bad, either! (I just checked!)
 
Maciamo said:
I was wondering if it was not Munemasa he was talking about... :sorry:

Sorry, I will behave from now on; I promise.
Click to expand...

Ha ha. Maciamo I didn't know you had it in you
 
Chapter 5 Benevolence, The Feeling of Distress continued

Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and priviledges to turn it into account, the samurai gave full consent to what Mencius taught conceding the power of love.
"Benevolence," he says, "brings under its sway whatever hinders its power, just as water subdues fire: they only doubt the power of water to quench flames who try to extinguish with a cupful a whole burning waggon-load of faggots."
He also says that "the feeling of distress is the root of benevolence," therefore a benevolent man is ever mindful of those who are suffering and in distress.
Thus did Mencius long anticipate Adam Smith who founds his ethical philosophy on sympathy.

It was an old maxim among them that "It becomes not the fowler to slay the bird which takes refuge in his bosom."
This in a large measure explains why the Red Cross movement, considered so peculiarly Christian, so readily found a firm footing among us.
Decades before we heard of the Geneva Convention, Bakin, our greatest novelist, had familiarized us with the medical treatment of a fallen foe.

It was ostensibly to express, but actually to cultivate, these gentler emotions that the writing of verses was encouraged.
Our poetry has therefore a strong undercurrent of pathos and tenderness.

Our pithy, epigrammatic poems were particularly well suited to the improvisation of a single sentiment.
Everybody of any education was either a poet or a poetaster.
Not infrequently a marching soldier might be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an ode,--and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the breast plates when these were removed from their lifeless wearers.
What Christianity had done in Europe toward rousing compassion in the midst of belligerent horrors, love of music and letters has done in Japan.
The cultivation of tender feelings breeds considerate regard for the sufferings of others.
Modesty and complaisance, actuated by respect for others' feelings, are at the root of politeness.

-Next Chapter 6 Politeness-
 
Chapter 6 Politeness

Courtesy and urbanity of manners have been noticed by every foreign tourist as a marked Japanese trait.
Courtesy is a poor virtue, if it is actuated only be a fear of offending good taste, whereas it should be the outward manifestation of a sympathetic regard for the feelings of others.
It also implies a due regard for the fitness of things, therefore due respect to social positions; for these latter express no plutocractic distinctions, but were originally distinctions for actual merit.

In its highest form, politeness almost approaches love.
We may reverently say, politeness "suffers long, and is kind; envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, takes not account of evil."

While thus extolling politeness, far be it from me to put it in the front rank of virtues.
If we analyse it, we shall find it correlated with other virtues of a higher order; for what virtue stands alone?
While--or rather because--it was exalted as peculiar to the profession of arms, and as such esteemed in a degree higher than its deserts, there came into existence its counterfeits.
Confucius himself has repeatedly taught that external appurtenances are as little a part of propriety as sounds are of music.

Mr. Spencer defines grace as the most economical manner of motion.

I might follow the example of Mr. Spencer and trace in our ceremonial institutions their origins and the moral motives that gave rise to them; but that is not what I shall endeavour to do in this book.
It is the moral training involved in strict observance of propriety, that I wish to emphasise.

I have said that etiquette was elaborated into the finest niceties, so much so that different schools, advocating different systems, came into existence.
But they all united in the ultimate essential, and this was put by a great exponent of the best known school of ettiquette, the Ogasawara, in the following terms: "The end of all etiquette is to so cultivate your mind that even when you are quietly seated, not the roughest ruffian can dare make onset on your person."

-To Be Continued-
 
Chapter 6 Politeness continued

It means, in other words, that by constant exercise in correct manners, one brings all the parts and faculties of his body into perfect order and into such harmony with itself and its environment as to express the mastery of spirit over the flesh.

If the promise 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.

Is lofty spiritual attainment really possible through ettiquette?
Why not?--All roads lead to Rome!
As an example of how the simplest thing can be made into an art and then become spiritual culture, I may take Cha-no-yu, the tea ceremony.

That calmness of mind, that serenity of temper, that composure and quietness of demeanour which are the first essentials of Cha-no-yu, are without doubt the first conditions of right thinking and right feelin.

The very fact that it was invented by a contemplative recluse, in a time when wars and the rumor of wars were incessant, is well calculated to show that this institution was more than a pastime.
Before entering the quiet precincts of the tea-room, the company assembling to partake of the ceremony laid aside, together with their swords, the ferocity of battle-field or the cares of gevernment, there to find peace and friendship.

Cha-no-yu is more than a ceremony--it is a fine art; it is poetry, with articulate gestures for rhythms: it is a modus operandi of soul discipline.
Its greatest value lies in this last phase.

Politeness will be a great acquisition, if it does no more than impart grace to manners; but its function does not stop here.
For propriety, springing as it does from motives of benevolence and modesty, and actuated by tender feelings toward the sensibilities of others, is ever a graceful expression of sympathy.
Its requirement is that we should weep with those that weep and rejoice with those that rejoice.

-Next: Chapter 7 Veracity and Sincerity-
 
Chapter 7 Veracity and Sincerity

Without veracity and sincerity, politeness is a farce and a show.
"Propriety carried beyond right bounds," says Masamune, "becomes a lie."

The apotheosis of Sincerity to which Confucius gives espression in the Doctrine of the Mean, attributes to it trancendental powers, almost identifying them with the Divine.
"Sincerity is the end and the beginning of all things; without Sincerity there would be nothing."
He then dwells with eloquence on its far-reaching and long-enduring nature, its power to produce changes without movement and by its mere presence to accomplish its purpose without effort.

From the Chinese ideogram for Sincerity, which is a combination of "Word" and "Perfect," one is tempted to draw a parallel between it and the Neo-Platonic doctrine of Logos--to such height does the sage soar in his unwonted mystic flight.
Lying or equivocation were deemed equally cowardly.
The bushi held that his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than that of the tradesman and peasant.
Bushi no ichi-gon--the word of a samurai, or in exact German equivalent, Ritterwort--was sufficient guaranty for the truthfulness of an assertion.
His word carriedsuch weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity.
Many thrilling anecdotes were told of those who atoned by death for ni-gon, a double-tongue.
The regard for veracity was so high that, unlike the generality of Christians who persistently violate the plain commands of the Teacher not to swear, the best of samurai looked upon an oath as derogatory to their honour.

Those who are well acquainted with our history will remember that only a few years after our treaty ports were opened to foreign trade, feudalism was abolished, and when with it the samurai's fiefs were taken and bonds issued to them in compensation, they were given liberty to invest them in mercantile transactions.

Now you may ask, "Why could they not bring their much boasted veracity into their new business relations and so reform the old abuses?"

-Next Chapter 7 Veracity and Sincerity continued-
 
Sorry it's been a while!

Chapter 7 Veracity and Sincerity continued

Those who had eyes to see could not weep enough, those who had hearts to feel could not sympathise enough, with the fate of many a noble and honest samurai who signally and irrevocably failed in his new and unfamiliar field of trade and industry, through sheer lack of shrewdness in coping with his artful plebeian rival.

It will be long before it will be recognised how many fortunes were wrecked in the attempt to apply Bushido ethics to business methods; but it was soon patent to every observing mind that the ways of wealth were not the ways of honour.

Of the three incentives to veracity that Lecky enumerates, viz., the industrial, the political, and the philosophical, the first was altogether lacking in Bushido.
As to the second, it could develop little in a political community under a feudal system.
It is in its philosophical and, as Lecky says, in its highest aspect, that honesty attained elevated rank in our catalogue of virtues.
With all my sincere regard for the high commercial integrity of the Anglo-Saxon race, when I ask for the ultimate ground, I am told that "honesty is the best policy,"--that it pays to be honest.
Is not this virtue, then, its own reward?
If it is followed because it brings in more cash than falsehood, I am afraid Bushido would rather indulge in lies!
If Bushido rejects a doctrine of quid pro quo rewards, the shrewder tradesman will readily accept it.

Often have I wondered whether the veracity of Bushido had any motive higher than courage.
In the absence of any positive commandment against bearing false witness, lying was not condemned as a sin, but simply denounced as weakness, and, as such, highly dishonourable.
As a matter of fact, the idea of honesty is so intimately blended, and its Latin and its German etymology so identified with honour, that it is high time I should pause a few moments for the consideration of this feature of the Precepts of Knighthood.

-Next Chapter 8 Honour-
 
-Chapter 8 Honour-

The sense of honour, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth, could not fail to characterise the samurai, born and bred to value the duties and priveledges of their profession.
Though the word ordinarily given nowadays as the translation of honour was not used freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as na (name) menmoku (countenance), guaibun (outside hearing), reminding us respectively of the biblical use of "name," of the evolution of the term "personality" from the Greek mask, and of "fame."
A good name--one's reputation, "the immortal part of one's self, wha remains being bestial"--assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its integrity was felf as shame, and the sense of shame (Renchishin) was one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education.
"You will be laughed at," "It will disgrace you," "Are you not ashamed?" were the last appeal to correct behaviour on the part of a youthful delinquent.
Such a recourse to his honour touched the most sensitive spot in the child's heart, as though it had been nursed on honour while he was in his mother's womb; for most truly is honour a pre-natal influence, being closely bound up with strong family consciousness.

The popular adage said: "To hear what you think you cannot bear is really to bear."
The great Iyeyasu left to posterity a few maxims, among which are the following:--"The life of man is like going a long distance with a heavy load upon the shoulders. Haste not... Reproach none, but be forever watchful of thine own shortcomings... Forbearance is the basis of length of days."

Patience and long-suffering were also highly commended by Mencius.
In one place he writes to this effect: "Though you denude yourself and insult me, what is that to me? You cannot defile my sould by your outrage."

Elsewhere he teaches that anger at a petty offence is unworthy a superior man, but indignation for a great cause is righteous wrath.
To what height of unmartial and unresisting meekness Bushido could reach in some of its votaries, may be seen in their utterances.

-Next Chapter 8 continued-
 
-Chapter 8 Honour- continued

It must be admitted that very few attained this sublime height of magnanimity, patience and forgiveness.
It was a great pity that nathing clear and general was expressed as to what constitutes honour, only a few enlightened minds being aware that it "from no condition rises," but that it lies in each acting well his part; for nothing was easier than for youths to forget in the heat of action what they had learned in Mencius in their calmer moments.

Said this sage: "`Tis in every man's mind to love honour; but little doth he dream that what is truly honourable lies within himself and not elsewhere. The honour which men confer is not good honour. Those whom Chao the Great ennobles, he can make mean again."
For the most part, an insult was quickly resented and repaid by death, as we shall see later, while honour--to often nothing higher than vainglory or worldly approbation--was prized as the sunnum bonum of earthly existence.
Fame, and not wealth or knowledge, was the goal toward which youths had to strive.
Many a lad swore within himself as he crossed the threshold of his paternal home, that he would not recross it until he had made a name in the world; and many an ambitious mother refused to see her sons again unless they could "return home," as the expression is, "caparisoned in brocade."
To shun shame or win a name, samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals of bodily or mental suffering.
They knew that honour won in youth grows with age.

Life itself was thought cheap if honour and fame could be attained therewith: hence, whenever a cause presented itself which was considered dearer than life, with utmost serenity and celerity was life laid down.

-Next Chapter 9 The Duty of Loyalty-
 
-Chapter 9 The Duty of Loyalty-

Feudal morality shares other virtues in common with other systems of ethics, with other classes of people, but this virtue--homage and fealty to a superior--is its distinctive feature.
I am aware that personal fidelity is a moral adhesion existing among all sorts and conditions of men,--a gang of pickpockets owe allegiance to a Fagin; but it is only in the code of chivalrous honour that loyalty assumes paramount importance.

Similarly, loyalty as we conceive it may find few admirers elsewhere, not because out conception is wrong, but because it is, I am afraid, forgotten, and also because we carry it to a degree not reached in any other country.

Griffis was quite right in stating that whereas in China Confucian ethics made obedience to parents the primary human duty, in Japan precedence was given to loyalty.

The individualism of the West, which recognises separate interests for father and son, husband and wife, necessarily brings into strong relief the duties owed by one to the other; but Bushido held that the interest of the family and of the members thereof is intact,--one and inseparable.
This interest is bound up with affection--natural, instinctive, irresistible; hence, if we die for one we love with natural love (which animals themselves possess), what is that?

"For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?"
In his great history, Sanyo relates in touching language the heart struggle of Shigemori concerning his father's rebellious conduct. "If I be loyal, my father must be undone; if I obey my father, my duty to my sovereign must go amiss."
Poor Shigemori! We see him afterward praying with all his soul that kind Heaven may visit him with death, that he may be released from this world where it is hard for purity and righteousness to dwell.
Many a Shigemori has his heart torn by the conflict between duty and affection.
Indeed, neither Shakespeare nor the Old Testament itself contains an adequate redering of ko, our conception of filial piety, and yet in such conflicts Bushido never wavered in its choice of loyalty.

-next Chapter 9 The Duty of Loyalty continued-
 
Modern Bushido

I just want to add a comment on the book you are reading and quoting. It does have many interesting aspects to it, but you should be aware that Nitobe wrote this book after the day of the samurai. In other words, it is written in hindsight, and not OF the era. Bushido was not a formal study during most of the samurai history, but rather became formalized when the day of the warrior was in eclipse. The advent of the Tokugawa Shogunate basically began this slow decline by largely stabilizing Japan and ending broad-based warefare. As warriors found themselves with fewer wars to fight and jobs to occupy themselves, they began to question how their warrior training was to guide them and prove useful in a progressively more peaceful society. From this examination slowly emerged formal "Bushido".
The reason I take the time to note the above is simply that to more deeply understand Budo and have a greater perspective on it, one really should go back much farther in history than just reading Nitobe. It isn't that he is not valuable, but that he is just one aspect of the Way of the Warrior, a sort of late-comer and almost the tip of the proverbial iceberg. His writing are most idealized and modern, and just need to be seen in that light.
Sincerely, David Terrell
 

The Sigemori example pin points a very important and core value of Japanese that is unique to Japanese themselves. Confucius thinking regards family as the basic building block of the society and family matter should be taken care of as priority before extending one's care to the sovereign and then society.
Samurai regards loyal to sovereign(society/country) should come first and family second. This idea of putting society and country first can still be observed in modern day Japan. Evident from Japan's national flag presence at school and company induction ceremony.
 
Thank you for your comments!

-Chapter 9 The Duty of Loyalty- continued

Women, too, envouraged their offspring to sacrifice all for the king.
Even as resolute as Widow Windham and her illustrious consort, the samurai matron stood ready to give up her boys for the cause of loyalty.
Since Bushido, like Aristotle and some modern sociologists, conceived the state as antedating the individual,--the latter being born into the former as part and parcel thereof,--he must live and die for it or for the incumbent of its legitimate authority.
Readers of Crito will remember the argument with which Socrates represents the laws of the city as pleading with him on the subject of his escape.
Among others he makes them (the laws or the state) say: "Since you were begotten and nurtured and educated under us, dare you once to say you are not our offspring and servant, you and your fathers before you?"
These are words which do not impress us as any thing extraordinary; for the same thing has long been on the lips of Bushido, with this modification, that the laws and the state were represented with us by a personal being.
Loyalty is an ethical outcome of this political theory.

Bushido did not require us to make our conscience the slave of any lord or king.

A man who sacrificed his own conscience to the capricious win or freak or fancy of a sovereign was accorded a low place in the estimate of the Precepts.
Such as one was despised as nei-shin, a cringling, who makes court by unscrupulous fawning, or as cho-shin, a favourite who steals his master's affections by means of servile compliance;

When a subject differed from his master, the loyal path for him to pursue was to use every available means to persuade him of his error, as Kent did to King Lear.
Failing in this, let the master deal with him as he wills. In cases of this kind, it was quite a usual course for the samurai to make the last appeal to the intelligence and conscience of his lord by demonstrating the sincerity of his words with the shedding of his own blood.
Life being regarded as the means whereby he serves his master, and its ideal being set upon honour, the whole education and training of a samurai were conducted accordingly.

next -Chapter 10 The Education and Training of a Samurai-
 
-Chapter 10 The Education and Training of a Samurai-

The first point to observe in knightly pedagogics was to build up character, leaving in the shade the subtler faculties of prudence, intelligence and dialectics.
We have seen the important part aesthetic accomplishments played in his education.

Indispensable as they were to a man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai training.
Intellectual superiority was, of course, esteemed; but the word Chi, which was employed to denote intellectuality, meant wisdom in the first instance and gave knowledge only a very subordinate place.
The tripod which supported the framwork of Bushido was said to be Chi, Jin, Yu, respectively, Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage.
A samurai was essentially a man of action.
Science was without the pale of his activity.
He took advantage of it in so far as it concerned his profession of arms.
Religion and theology were relegated to the priests; he concerned himself with them in so far as they helped to nourish courage.
Like and English poet the samurai believed "'tis not the creed that saves the man; but it is the man that justifies the creed."
Philosophy and literature formed the chief part of his intellectual training; but even in the pursuit of these, it was not objective truth that he strove after,--literature was pursued madly as a pastime, and philosophy as a practical aid in the formation of character, if not for the exposition of some military or political problem.
From what has been said, it will not be surprising to note that the curriculum of studies, according to the pedagogics of Bushido, consisted of mainly the following:--fencing, archery, jiujutsu or yawara, horsmanship, the use of the spear, tactics, calligraphy, ethics, literature, and history.

Next -Chapter 10 The Education and Training of a Samurai- continued
 
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