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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 new faith uproot
the entire stock, root and branches, and plant the seeds of the Gospel on the ravaged soil? Such a heroic
process may be possible in Hawaii, where, it is alleged, the church militant had complete success in
amassing spoils of wealth itself, and in annihilating the aboriginal race: such a process is most decidedly
impossible in Japan nay, it is a process which Jesus himself would never have employed in founding his
IS BUSHIDO STILL ALIVE? 43
Bushido, the Soul of Japan
kingdom on earth. It behooves us to take more to heart the following words of a saintly man, devout Christian
and profound scholar:  Men have divided the world into heathen and Christian, without considering how
much good may have been hidden in the one, or how much evil may have been mingled with the other. They
have compared the best part of themselves with the worst of their neighbors, the ideal of Christianity with the
corruption of Greece or the East. They have not aimed at impartiality, but have been contented to accumulate
all that could be said in praise of their own, and in dispraise of other forms of religion. [34]
[Footnote 34: Jowett, Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, II.]
But, whatever may be the error committed by individuals, there is little doubt that the fundamental principle
of the religion they profess is a power which we must take into account in reckoning
THE FUTURE OF BUSHIDO,
whose days seem to be already numbered. Ominous signs are in the air, that betoken its future. Not only signs, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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