Bushido: Lessons for the West

K R Bolton

Review
Bushido: The Code of the Samurai
By Inazo Nitobe, first ed. 1899. Reprinted 2006 by Sweetwater Press, USA.

Despite the time lapse between the republication of this book Bushido, and its last
publication in 1905 in its tenth edition, the English prose has remained immensely
readable for the contemporary audience.

Inanzo Nitobe was during his day one of Japan’s leading scholars and one of the best
known in the Western world, having married an American Quaker. While it might
seem a paradox that a man of peace such as Nitobe would write about a martial way
of life, this is more due to the misunderstanding by the Westerner of what Bushido is,
clouded by Japan’s role as an adversary during World War II, whilst shortly before
Japan had been considered an ally of the English-speaking world1.

For the ethos of Bushido is far deeper than merely a ‘soldiers creed’. It is the Japanese
equivalent to the Medieval Knightly ethos at its point of highest mystical idealism.
Like the Western chivalrous ideal, the Bushido ideal might not have always been
upheld at its most sublime, but Bushido is analogous to the knightly ethos of the West
and the chivalric codes of other cultures in their prime.

Bushido the book will therefore be of interest to the ‘perennial traditionalist’ and to
the cultural morphologist. The chivalric ethos of Medieval Japan, like the chivalric
ethos among the Christian Crusaders and their Islamic adversaries, is another example
of a similarity of outlook common to certain castes (as distinct form their debased
forms as ‘classes’) at the cycles of their particular cultures when those cultures are
still a reflection of the metaphysical and have not succumbed to the materialistic. It is
what the Hindu ksyatraya2 call dharma3, the cosmic duty of the warrior, and this
Hindu equivalent is described in the Bagavadh Gita.4

As for Bushido, the word literally translates as ‘Way of the Warrior’, the code of life
developed among the Samurai. With Nitobe’s cogent description of the inner meaning
of this to the West, one is also reminded of the cogency by which Yukio Mishima
described the Samurai doctrine of Hagakure, although Nitobe the scholar is not
possessed of the angst of Mishima the alienated militarist in post-World War II
Japan.5

Nitobe himself was born into the Samurai caste in 1862. Although his grandfather and
father were rice farmers, both practiced the martial arts, which were imparted to
Nitobe as a youngster6. Educated in Japan, Germany and the USA, Nitobe became an
international scholar of note, garnering five doctorates. Nitobe converted to
1
Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902.
2
The warrior caste in Hindu society.
3
Cosmic duty; also reflecting one’s place in the divine social order, an attitude with analogues in both
Vedic India and the guilds of Medieval Europe, for example.
4
A dialogue between Arjuna the Divine Archer and Lord Krsna on the eve of battle, regarding the
divine duty of the warrior.
5
Yukio Mishima on Hagakure: the Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan (New York: Basic Books), 1977.
Quakerism after marrying an American Quaker, and considered the ethics of
Christianity and the samurai to be similar, advocating that Christianity be ‘grafted
onto the trunk of Bushido’. He sought to be a ‘bridge between Japan and the West’,
and it was in the USA and in English that his book on Bushido was written, and
thereafter translated into Japanese and many other languages.

The 200 plus page book is divided into chapters each explaining concisely an aspect
of Bushido, including Bushido as an ethical system its sources, attitudes towards
justice, courage, benevolence, politeness, truthfulness, honour, loyalty, education and
training of a Samurai, self-control, suicide and redress, the metaphysics of the sword,
the position of women, and the contemporary and possible future course of Bushido.

The first sentence of the first chapter begins with a reference to chivalry as ‘a flower
no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its emblem, the cherry blossom.’ Nitobe
considered Bushido to be of continuing relevance and not a relic from the past. ‘It is
still a living object of power and beauty’ amongst he Japanese. While its feudal
origins had gone, the spirit of Bushido had not. (45).

The Western word chivalry Nitobe identifies with Bushido, the latter translating
literally as ‘Military-Knight-Ways’. (46); what Nitobe says is the noblesse oblige of
the Japanese warrior caste.

“Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were
required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code; at best it consists of a
few maxims handed down from mouth to mouth or coming from the pen of
some well-known warrior or savant. More frequently it is a code unuttered and
unwritten, possessing all the more the powerful sanction of veritable deed, and
of a law written on the fleshly tablets of the heart…. It was an organic growth
of decades and centuries of military career…” (47).

What the perennial traditionalist and cultural morphologist will note is Nitobe’s
comparison of the Samurai with the Old English cniht (knecht, knight), guards, or
attendants; the soldurii of Aquitania, or the comitati of the Germanic tribes, and the
milites medii of Medieval Europe; the Japanese name being Bu-shi (Fighting
Knights). (48-49).

Westerners since World War II have been nurtured on wartime propaganda which,
like the German adversary, has depicted the Japanese soldier as the epitome of
cruelty, without a moral code in any humane or chivalric sense. This is often
explained by the contempt the Bushido or Samurai code allegedly held for those who
surrendered, supposedly a dishonourable act under any circumstances, rather than to
commit suicide and avoid the shame of defeat.

However there is much in Nitobe’s volume which gives cause for doubting this
wartime stereotype.

Nitobe compares the Bushido code to that of the traditional Anglo-Saxon distaste for
the bully. (49). He states that such attitudes lie at the root of ‘all military and civic
6
As will be explained tilling the soil was an honourable occupation for Samurai in contrast to
commerce.
virtues’. Certainly, as the traditionalist and cultural morphologist will realise, Western
Medieval knightly ‘chivalry’ has its analogues in many, perhaps all High Cultures,
and Northcote Parkinson makes the point in his East and West that much that came to
be regarded as the Western chivalric ethos was adapted from Crusader contact with
the Muslims knights.7

Nitobe addresses the English speaking reader with idealistic notions that were in his
day imbued into every English schoolboy, when duty to Monarch and Empire were as
much part of the young imagination as pop idols, movie stars and sports-people are
today the focus of the young mind. The disgust of the bully and the coward starting
from boyhood was the basis of ‘the greatness of England… and it will not take us
long to discover that Bushido does not stand on a lesser pedestal.’ However while
these basic feelings seem to have been innate in a healthy culture, they are moulded
by that country’s religion, Bushido in Japan, and Gothic Christianity in the West, to
which we might add again Islam for the Arabic culture, and the ksyatriya ethos
outlined in the Gita. The foundation of the chivalric code was the ‘spiritual idea’ (51).

The religious impetus for Bushido is Shintoism (55). Loyalty to sovereign, reverence
for ancestral memory, and filial piety, as integral to Shintoism tempered the character
of the Samurai. The doctrine believes in ‘the innate goodness and Godlike purity of
the human soul’, as a manifestation of the divine. It demands introspection of the
individual, without dogma. Confucianism provided the ethical doctrine, establishing
the relations between master and servant, those within the family bond, and between
friends. Intellectualism was looked down upon by the Samurai. Learning was valued
not as an intellectual exercise but as a matter of character formation. Intellect was
considered subordinate to ethos. Man and the universe were both spiritual and ethical.
The cosmos had a moral imperative. (59).

Rectitude or justice is “the most cogent code of the Samurai.” (65). Underhanded
dealings and crookedness are most loathsome. (65). Here again we can recognise the
antithetical ethos that contrasts the knight-priest-noble from the merchant in the
Spring of a High Culture, why across cultures through history the ‘heroic’ epoch of a
culture relegates merchant to the lowest position amongst the castes, as distinct from
the Late Civilisation or Winter cycle (such as the present-day West) which places the
merchant, to the contrary, at the apex of the class system8. The merchant devoid of
any loyalty beyond money, regards the underhanded and the crooked as good business
practice, and few can survive who insist on ethics in business. The Medieval era of
Western Christendom assured the commerce was based on ethos via the guilds. The
guildsmen were craftsmen who considered that they were fulfilling a divinely
ordained calling, like the individual in every other caste, not merely pursuing their
own self-interest.

In the Japanese era corresponding to the West’s Medieval era, where Bushido and
Shinto were the cornerstones of society, in the same way by which Chivalry and
Gothic Christianity were the foundations of the West, there could be no deviation

7
C Northcote Parkinson, East and West (London: John Murray, 1963), 151.
8
The Vsnu Purana describes the conditions of a civilisation in its final ‘Winter’ (Spengler) cycle or
Kali Yuga: “….Property alone will confer rank, material wealth will be the only source of devotion. He
who gives away much money will be the master of men, and family descent will no longer be a title of
supremacy… Men will fix their desires upon riches, even though dishonestly acquired.”
from the Righteous path in the knight’s undertakings. Hence even in war craftiness in
the pursuit of victory was not to be admitted, but to the contrary ‘mainly virtue, frank
and honest’. “Rectitude is a twin bother to Valour, another martial virtue.” (66). Gi-ri
means duty and duty is based on ‘Right Reason’, the knight’s ‘categorical imperative’
in all he undertakes. (67).

In describing the qualities of ‘love, magnanimity, affection for others, sympathy, and
pity,’ as the ‘supreme virtues’, Nitobe contradicts all those stereotypes prevalent in
the post-War War II West which universally perceive the Japanese warrior as the
epitome of the sadist. It is surely then debateable whether such a perception is mainly
the result of lingering war-time propaganda, a degeneration of the Japanese ethos by
the time of World War II, in the same way that many civilisation throughout history
have degenerated, including the contemporary West, or the result of both. At any rate,
the Bushido ethos at its ideal, Nitobe tells us, is based on virtues that are equivalent to
the Christian ethos at its best and, as noted, Nitobe saw a kinship between both which
he sought to bridge. Benevolence was expected to be a virtue exercised by the
Emperor himself towards his subjects. (79-80). Benevolence, Nitobe says, prevented
the Japanese feudal era from degenerating into despotism. As in the divine order
around which the Medieval West was based, the feudal prince in Japan was tempered
in his relations towards his subjects by his awareness of his own subordination and
duty to his ancestors and to Heaven. ‘He was the father of his subjects, whom Heaven
entrusted to his care.’ (80). That also will be recognised as the concept of ‘noblesse
oblige’ in Medieval Europe at its best.

Balance of yin and yang were sought: mercy and gentleness tempered Rectitude and
‘stern Justice’, and vice versa. Nitobe quotes a common aphorism:

“Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; Benevolence

indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness.” (82).

“Bushi no nasake” means ‘the tenderness of a warrior’. (83). Mercy was thus a noble
virtue to be exercised towards one’s defeated enemy in realising that the victor had
the power over life and death. A benevolent man is mindful of those in suffering and
distress. (83). “Benevolence to the weak, the downtrodden, for the vanquished, was
ever extolled as peculiarly becoming to a samurai”. In single combat, the one who
prevailed would not spill the blood of the weaker, unless the adversary showed that he
was of equal strength. (84). This was the ethos taught to the Samurai in aphorisms,
and in historical legends.

Like the Western ethos, the Samurai held that one’s word was one’s bond. Lying was
deemed cowardly. What Nitobe says in regard to the Samurai ethos in contrast to that
of the merchant is of interest as to what I have previously written on the distinction
between the chivalric ethos and the merchant ethos:
“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, ein Ritterwort – was
sufficient guarantee for the truthfulness of an assertion.” (101-102).

Nitobe next elaborates on this distinction between merchant and knight:

 “Of all the great occupations in life, none was further removed from
the profession of arms than commerce. The merchant was placed lowest in the
category of vocations – the knight, the tiller of the soil, the mechanic, the
merchant. The samurai derived his income from the land and could even
indulge, if he had a mind to, in amateur farming; but the counter and abacus
were abhorred.” (104).

Again the perennial traditionalist and cultural morphologist will see the analogous
attitude of the Japanese in its High Culture to that of other High Cultures, whether
Medieval Christendom, Norse Heathenism, or Indo-Aryan Vedic society, etc. Nitobe
points to the similarity in the West, and the common attitude was to keep wealth from
accumulating in the hands of the powerful. Nitobe quotes the example of the Roman
Empire that went into decay partly due to the sanction allowing the nobility to begin
engaging in commerce. Here again one can profitably resort to Spengler in seeing the
cycle of “Money” in this situation coming to dominate Late Civilisation, or what we
might call the rise of plutocracy, the aristocracy of wealth rather than that of chivalry.
“Money wills” in all Late Civilisations, as Spengler observed9.

Nitobe explains that when Japan opened to foreign commerce feudalism was
abolished, the Samurai’s fiefs were taken and he was compensated with bonds, with
the right to invest in commerce. Hence the Samurai was degraded to that of a
merchant in order to survive. (105). That pretty much reflects the same situation
endured by the noble families of the West. Here again is an analogue between an
Asian society and a European, showing the parallel symptoms of decline. Trying to
apply Bushido ethics to business was impossible – the Samurai would face economic
destruction; hence the eclipse of the Bushido ethos, like the Western chivalric ethos,
and the exaltation of money, or what the Christian would call the love of money as the
root of al evil driving men to perdition.10

What can be drawn from Nitobe by the contemporary Westerner is that Bushido is an
aspect of the perennial tradition, and that this Japanese manifestation was subjected to
the same forces and cycles of decadence as undergone by the Indian, the Roman, the
Greek, the Western, the Chinese, the Egyptian and others: when merchant values
replace the traditional metaphysical foundations of society, then that culture is on the
path of destruction, whether one calls in Armageddon, Ragnarok, or Kali Yuga.
Nitobe can therefore be profitably read in conjunction with Evola, Spengler and
others who have written of the West’s spiritual and cultural predicament, and in
conjunction with the metaphysical revelations of other cultures: The Revelation,
Voluspa and Visnu Purana.

(K R Bolton, Ph.D., Th.D., is a Fellow of the Academy of Social and Political Research:
http://www.academy-of-social-and-political-research.com. Published works include: Thinkers
of the Right, England, 2003; “Russia and China: An Approaching Conflict?”, Journal of
Social, Political and Economic Studies, Washington, Summer 2009; “Multiculturalism as a
Process of Globalisation”, Ab Aeterno, Issue No. 1, November 2009. This Review originally
appeared in Primordial Traditions #16, December 2009).

9
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), 469-587.
10
I Timothy 6:10.