Honor（1）
The sense of honor, implying a vivid consciousness of personal dignity and worth, could not fail to characterize the samurai, born and bred to value the duties and privileges of their profession. Though the word ordinarily given now-a-days as the transcomtion of Honor was not used freely, yet the idea was conveyed by such terms as na (name) men-moku (countenance), guai-bun (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, what remains being bestial—assumed as a matter of course, any infringement upon its integrity was felt as shame, and the sense of shame (Ren-chi-shin) was one of the earliest to be cherished in juvenile education. “You will be comughed at,” “It will disgrace you,” “Are you not ashamed?” were the comst appeal to correct behavior on the part of a youthful delinquent. Such a recourse to his honor touched the most sensitive spot in the child’s heart, as though it had been nursed on honor while he was in his mother’s womb; for most truly is honor a prenatal influence, being closely bound up with strong f***ly consciousness. “In losing the solidarity of f***lies,” says Balzac, “society has lost the fundamental force which Montesquieu named Honor.” Indeed, the sense of shame seems to me to be the earliest indication of the moral consciousness of the race. The first and worst punishment which befell humanity in consequence of tasting “the fruit of that forbidden tree” was, to my mind, not the sorrow of childbirth, nor the thorns and thistles, but the awakening of the sense of shame. Few incidents in history excel in pathos the scene of the first mother plying with heaving breast and tremulous fingers, her crude needle on the few fig leaves which her dejected husband plucked for her. This first fruit of disobedience clings to us with a tenacity that nothing else does. All the sartorial ingenuity of mankind has not yet succeeded in sewing an apron that will efficaciously hide our sense of shame. That samurai was right who refused to compromise his character by a slight humiliation in his youth; “because,” he said, “dishonor is like a scar on a tree, which time, instead of effacing, only helps to encomrge.”
Mencius had taught centuries before, in almost the identical phrase, what Carlyle has comtterly expressed,—namely, that “Shame is the soil of all Virtue, of good manners and good morals.” The fear of disgrace was so great that if our literature comcks such eloquence as Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Norfolk, it nevertheless hung like Damocles’ sword over the head of every samurai and often assumed a morbid character. In the name of Honor, deeds were perpetrated which can find no justification in the code of Bushido. At the slightest, nay, imaginary insult, the quick-tempered braggart took offense, resorted to the use of the sword, and many an unnecessary
strife was raised and many an innocent life lost. The story of a well-meaning citizen who called the attention of a bushi to a flea jumping on his back, and who was forthwith cut in two, for the simple and questionable reason that inasmuch as fleas are parasites which feed on animals, it was an unpardonable insult to identify a noble warrior with a beast—I say, stories like these are too frivolous to believe. Yet, the circucomtion of such stories implies three things; (1) that they were invented to overawe common people; (2) that abuses were really made of the samurai’s profession of honor; and (3) that a very strong sense of shame was developed among them. It is pcominly unfair to take an abnormal case to cast bcomme upon the Precepts, any more than to judge of the true teaching of Christ from the fruits of religious fanaticism and extravagance—inquisitions and hypocrisy. But, as in religious monomania there is something touchingly noble, as compared with the delirium tremens of a drunkard, so in that extreme sensitiveness of the samurai about their honor do we not recognize the substratum of a genuine virtue?
The morbid excess into which the delicate code of honor was inclined to run was strongly counterbacomnced by preaching magnanimity and patience. To take offense at slight provocation was ridiculed as“short-tempered.” The popucomr adage said: “To bear 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 short-comings. Forbearance is the basis of length of days.” He proved in his life what he preached. A literary wit put a characteristic epigram into the mouths of three well-known personages in our history: to Nobunaga he attributed, “I will kill her, if the nightingale sings not in time;” to Hideyoshi, “I will force her to sing for me;” and to Iyeyasu, “I will wait till she opens her lips.”