It was from her religions that Japan drew her Knightly Code, _Bushido_, obedience to which raised the _samurai_ from the mere brutal wielder of swords to the chivalrous warrior. From Shinto he imbibed veneration for his ancestors, the strongest possible sense of duty to his parents, and the most self-sacrificing loyalty to the sovereign. Buddhism gave him a stoical composure in the presence of danger, a contempt for life, and "friendliness with death." It made him calm and self-contained. Finally, the _samurai_ obtained from the teachings of Confucius his principles of action toward his fellow men.
_Bushido_ is spoken of as "the Soul of the People." The Greeks of old located the soul in the kidneys, the Romans in the heart, and it is only in recent years that it has been described as in the head; even then the soul at best is indefinable, so I am at a loss to tell exactly what _Bushido_ means.
When I asked a Japanese to define _Bushido_, he answered, "Loyalty--the loyalty of the servant to his master, of the son to his father. The servant is willing to make any sacrifice for the master. The Forty-Seven Ronins are an example of this. General Nogi is another instance of the same thing. Nogi felt that his death would remind the younger generation of the Spartan virtues of the older days, which they were forgetting, and would be a good thing for the country. He also wished to die in order that his master, the Emperor, might not be lonely."
The Japanese national hymn, as translated by Professor Chamberlain, fitly embodies this sentiment of loyalty to the Emperor:
"A thousand years of happy reign be thine; Rule on, my lord, till what are pebbles now By age united, to mighty rocks shall grow, Whose venerable sides the moss doth line."
"Among the rare jewels of race and civilization which have slowly grown to perfection is the Japanese virtue of loyalty," writes Dr. W. E. Griffis; "In supreme devotion, in utter consecration to his master, in service, through life and death, a _samurai's_ loyalty to his lord knew no equal.... Wife, children, fortune, health, friends, were as naught--but rather to be trampled under foot, if necessary, in order to reach that 'last supreme measure of devotion' which the _samurai_ owed to his lord. The matchless sphere of rock crystal, flawless and perfect, is the emblem of Japanese loyalty."