A point of moment in the education of the samurai youth wa4 the inculcation of courage, bravery and fortitude. The arts of war and the technique of warfare were of much less importance than the mental and moral apti tude of the fighters. When two combatants confronted each other on the field, the ques tion was not which party should win, but who would prove himself the braver — even though defeated. Children were therefore taught to admire daring deeds and deeds of endurance. In the pedagogics of Bushido, children were often subjected to severe tasks, in order to inure them to hardships. The pangs of cold, of hunger, of fear or dread, were almost sys tematically imposed upon them. They dared not shirk sorrow or pain. How could they when honor might at any time require them to commit sepfrukts,— disembowelment? In Japanese anatomy, the hero, which is the comprehensive region between the breast and pelvis—including the stomach, gall-bladder, spleen, liver and intestines, was believed to be the seat of the soul. This view was shared by the Greeks who used the terms Mimics and phren for the same part of the body, and also by the Hebrews, who looked upon the bowels as the seat of passion and compassion. We know that there are important ganglia in the abdomen and how susceptible they are to any emotion. The custom of splitting the ab domen, though it may at first seem ridiculous, came from the idea that if one's spirit re sides there, one can show by disemboweling himself his innermost thoughts and the motives which actuated him. Seppuku was thus thought the most honorable mode of ending one's life and was therefore confined to the samurai class. It is a great mistake to look upon it merely as a process of committing suicide. It was sometimes imposed as a legal punishment in which case there was no actual cutting of the abdomen, but decapitation by a kaishaku, who was often the friend of the condemned. Disgrace of the father, that is of the family, name, is of all things the hardest for a samurai to endure.
The training of a samurai was no light work. Indeed his whole career was far from being smooth and easy. Constant vigilance was the price of his status. If fighting had been his only vocation, we might have had a quarrelsome, bloodthirsty animal, and such a type was not wholly wanting, though it was despised as that of a Thoie-sumurai. When
it existed it was chiefly found among the young, and it was exactly this rude type with its haughty, swaggering manners, which at tracted the notice of foreigners. But this low type was far from the ideal of Bushido. In tellectual culture combined with a strong will, refinement of manners that would not sink into effeminate mannerism or obsequious con ventionality, superiority in the two accomplish ments of war and peace, of military and liter ary arts. (Bun-bu Ryo-do), was the goal aimed at. In speaking of the ideals of Bushido one cannot help calling to mind the guardians of Plato. It is not by accident or jest that Mr. Wells has chosen the name of samurai for an ideal social class in his 'Modern Utopia) Striving after an ideal, imperfect as it may have been, the life of a conscientious samurai was a strenuous one, and so in popular liter ature his lot was often bewailed; for, like all wholesome moral systems, Bushido taught more of duties than of rights. The samurai had few rights above the commonalty, and what rights they enjoyed did not amount to any sub stantial benefit. If he had a desire for wealth, a merchant's lot could better secure this. If his inclination were for mere pleasures, he might well envy a tradesman. If his taste lay in literary ease, religious retirement would as sure him that. Luxuries he had to forego and even his pleasures were regulated. In spite of some degree of laxity which public sen timent tolerated, the strict regime allotted him only a certain kind of dance, of music and of pastime. The two swords which it was the privilege of the samurai to carry served more as a reminder of the dignity and responsibility of his calling than of its privileges.
Mitford, 'Tales of Old Japan' ; Norman, 'The Fighting Man of Ja pan' ; Knapp, 'Feudal and Modern Japan' ; Maclay, 'Mito Yashiki' ; Nitobe, 'Bushido, the Soul of Japan'; Nitobe, 'Bushido, the Moral Ideas of the Japanese> in Alfred Stead's 'Ja pan by the Japanese' ; Alfred Stead's 'Great Japan' (Chs. II, III, IV, VII); Greey, 'The Loyal Ronins' ; Griffis, 'Honda, the Samurai); Dickens, 'The Loyal League' ; Okakura, 'The Spirit of Japan.' i? WOG, Director of the First Higher School, Tokio.