"Bushido."

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 8038, 10 January 1905, Page 5

"Bushido."

• A Times correspondent explains the underlying motive that inspires the deeds

of valour in the Japanese soldier , . " Better men in battle have not been educated by any creed." Bushido is this inspiration, and bushido " may be very inadequately translated as knightly chivalry, and is the unwritten code of, moral and ethical principles which fashions the conduct of all its adherents, and makes up the scheme of life of the bushi or samurai. It is a Japanese proverb that says, 'As the cherry blossom is among flowers, so

is the bushi among men. , " If wo cannot adequately express all that buahido is, we can say. what it is not. Take the average scheme of life of the avorago society of the West, and bushido, as nearly as may be, represents its exact antithesis. Bushido

offers us the ideal of poverty instead of wealth, humility in place of ostentation, reserve instead of reclame, self-

sacrifice in place of selfishness, the care of the interest ( qf the .State rather .than that of the Individual. Bushido inspires ardent courage and the refusal to turn the back upon the enemy; it looks death calmly in the ; face, and prefers it to ignovniny of any kind. It preaches submission to authority, and the sacrifice of all private iterests, whether of self or family, to the common weal. It requires its deciples to submit to a strict physicial and mental discipline, develops a martial spirit, and, by lauding the virtues of courage, constancy, fortitude, faithfulness, daring, and self-restraint, offers an exalted code of moral principles, not only for the man and the warrior, but for men and women in times both of peace and war. The correspondent says that the term bushi, closely represented fay the ideal of the faithful knignt of chiyalry, can be traced back for 1500 years in the history of Japan.