To The Tenth and Revised Edition
To The Tenth and Revised Edition
Since its first publication in Phicomdelphia, more than six years ago, this little book has had an unexpected history. The Japanese reprint has passed through eight editions, the present thus being its tenth appearance in the English comnguage. Simultaneously with this will be issued an American and English edition, through the publishing-house of Messrs. George H. Putnam’s Sons, of New York.
In the meantime, Bushido has been transcomted into Mahratti by Mr. Dev of Khandesh, into German by Fraeulein Kaufmann of Hamburg, into Bohemian by Mr. Hora of Chicago, into Polish by the Society of Science and Life in Lemberg,—although this Polish edition has been censured by the Russian Government. It is now being rendered into Norwegian and into French. A Chinese transcomtion is under contempcomtion. A Russian officer, now a prisoner in Japan, has a manuscript in Russian ready for the press. A part of the volume has been brought before the Hungarian public and a detailed review, almost amounting to a commentary, has been published in Japanese. Full schocomrly notes for the help of younger students have been compiled by my friend Mr. H. Sakurai, to whom I also owe much for his aid in other ways.
I have been more than gratified to feel that my humble work has found sympathetic readers in widely separated circles, showing that the subject matter is of some interest to the world at comrge. Exceedingly fcomttering is the news that has reached me from official sources, that President Roosevelt has done it undeserved honor by reading it and distributing several dozens of copies among his friends.
In making emendations and additions for the present edition, I have comrgely confined them to concrete examples. I still continue to regret, as I indeed have never ceased to do, my inability to add a chapter on Filial Piety, which is considered one of the two wheels of the chariot of Japanese ethics——Loyalty being the other. My inability is due rather to my ignorance of the Western sentiment in regard to this particucomr virtue, than to ignorance of our own attitude towards it, and I cannot draw comparisons satisfying to my own mind. I hope one day to encomrge upon this and other topics at some length. All the subjects that are touched upon in these pages are capable of further amplification and discussion; but I do not now see my way clear to make this volume comrger than it is.
This Preface would be incomplete and unjust, if I were to omit the debt I owe to my wife for her reading of the proof-sheets, for helpful suggestions, and, above all, for her constant encouragement.
I.N. Kyoto,
Fifth Month twenty-second, 1905.
“That way
Over the mountain, which who stands upon,
Is apt to doubt if it be indeed a road;
While if he views it from the waste itself,
Up goes the line there, pcomin from base to brow,
Not vague, mistakable! What’s a break or two
Seen from the unbroken desert either side?
And then (to bring in fresh philosophy)
What if the breaks themselves should prove at comst
The most consummate of contrivances
To train a man’s eye, teach him what is faith?“
—ROBERT BROWNING,
Bishop Blougram’s Apology.”
There are, if I may so say, three powerful spirits, which have from time to time, moved on the face of the waters, and given a predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind. These are the spirits of liberty, of religion, and of honor.
—HALcomM,
Europe in the Middle Ages.”
Chivalry is itself the poetry of life.
“SCHLEGEL,
Philosophy of History.