Books with author Inazō Nitobe

Inazo Nitobe’s Bushido the Soul of Japan is a classic work on warrior culture. Nitobe examines the moral and ethical qualities which makes a Samurai -- such as rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor, loyalty and self-control. Other chapters are devoted to the education and training of samurai, their weapons and Bushido as a philosophy and system of ethics. A short but powerful book, Bushido the Soul of Japan is considered essential reading for military historians and students of strategy.This new 2018 revised edition of the standard English translation of Bushido updates some of the more archaic spelling and phraseology into modern American English.

"Bushido: the Soul of Japan" book has a beautiful glossy cover and a blank page for the dedication. The character which Bushido stamped on our nation and on the samurai in particular, cannot be said to form "an irreducible element of species," but nevertheless as to the vitality which it retains there is no doubt. Were Bushido a mere physical force, the momentum it has gained in the last seven hundred years could not stop so abruptly. Were it transmitted only by heredity, its influence must be immensely widespread. Just think, as M. Cheysson, a French economist, has calculated, that supposing there be three generations in a century, "each of us would have in his veins the blood of at least twenty millions of the people living in the year 1000 A.D." The merest peasant that grubs the soil, "bowed by the weight of centuries," has in his veins the blood of ages, and is thus a brother to us as much as "to the ox."

A century ago, when Japan was transforming itself from an isolated feudal society into a modern nation, a Japanese educator queried about the ethos of his people composed this seminal work, which with his numerous other writings in English made him the best, known Japanese writer in the West during his lifetime. He found in Bushido, the Way of the Warrior, the sources of the virtues most admired by his people: rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor, loyalty and self-control. His approach to his task was eclectic and far-reaching. On the one hand, he delved into the indigenous traditions, into Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism and the moral guidelines handed down over hundreds of years by Japan's samurai and sages. On the other hand, he sought similarities and contrasts by citing not only Western philosophers and statesmen, but also the shapers of European and American thought and civilization going back to the Romans, the Greeks and Biblical times. This book is a classic to which generations of scholars and laymen alike have long referred for insights into the character of the Japanese people. And all of its many readers in the past have been amply rewarded, as will be all those who turn to its pages in the next and future decades.

Bushido, often translated as Way of the Warrior, came from the Samurai way of life and moral code. It emphasized loyalty, skill, moderation and honor, and became a widespread influence throughout Japan. In Shogakukan Kokugo Daijiten, the Japanese dictionary, "Bushido is defined as a unique philosophy (ronri) that spread through the warrior class from the Muromachi (chusei) period." Nitobe Inazo, in his book Bushido: The Soul of Japan, described it in this way. "...Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the samurai were required or instructed to observe...More frequently it is a code unuttered and unwritten...It was an organic growth of decades and centuries of military career."

Nitobe Inazo's Bushido: The Soul of Japan is historically important, representing one of several efforts by intellectuals in modernizing Japan to explain the country to themselves as well as westerners. It should NOT be taken as a factual account of widespread ethics or philosophy before the Meiji Restoration of 1867. On the contrary, Nitobe was looking for an ethical system to make the basis of the new Japan, and specifically wanted something that would be as effective a base as Christianity in Europe and the United States. Bushido was not a unified ethical system until Nitobe made it so. There were samurai codes in the Tokugawa period, but no nationwide system, and in any case it did not apply to non-samurai Japanese. To the extent that there was a society-wide ethical system in Tokugawa Japan, it was that of Confucius and especially the two neo-confucian thinkers Zhu Xi and Wang Yangming. It's better to read Nitobe's book as a prescription for what came after, rather than as an explanation of what came before. It is particularly interesting that this text, elevating the values of warriors above all else, was written by a Christian--Nitobe was actually a Quaker--yet the nationalism over-rides any desire he might have felt to argue for the evangelization of his country. Nitobe's construction of the way of the samurai has now thoroughly penetrated popular culture inside and outside Japan, which makes this still a very important book. All one has to do is look at how many Japanese anime popular worldwide revolve around the themes in his book to see that. Nitobe had a moment of genius here in synthesizing a variety of pre-modern Japanese ideas and practices with those of modern nation-state ideologies, and the results were very useful to the expanding Japanese empire. The same could be said of Okakura Kakzuo's Book of Tea: important to subsequent historical events, but unreliable as a guide to earlier times.

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This book looks at the history and culture of the Japanese over the centuries. From the preface: “About ten years ago, while spending a few days under the hospitable roof of the distinguished Belgian jurist, the lamented M. de Laveleye, our conversation turned, during one of our rambles, to the subject of religion. "Do you mean to say," asked the venerable professor, "that you have no religious instruction in your schools?" On my replying in the negative he suddenly halted in astonishment, and in a voice which I shall not easily forget, he repeated "No religion! How do you impart moral education?" The question stunned me at the time. I could give no ready answer, for the moral precepts I learned in my childhood days, were not given in schools; and not until I began to analyze the different elements that formed my notions of right and wrong, did I find that it was Bushido that breathed them into my nostrils. The direct inception of this little book is due to the frequent queries put by my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs prevail in Japan. In my attempts to give satisfactory replies to M. de Laveleye and to my wife, I found that without understanding Feudalism and Bushido,[1] the moral ideas of present Japan are a sealed volume.”

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular virtues, early emulated among the youth. Stories of military exploits were repeated almost before boys left their mother's breast. Does a little booby cry for any ache? The mother scolds him in this fashion: "What a coward to cry for a trifling pain! What will you do when your arm is cut off in battle? What when you are called upon to commit harakiri? " We all know the pathetic fortitude of a famished little boy-prince of Sendai, who in the drama is made to say to his little page, "Seest thou those tiny sparrows in the nest, how their yellow bills are opened wide, and now see! There comes their mother with worms to feed them. How eagerly and happily the little ones eat! But for a samurai, when his stomach is empty, it is a disgrace to feel hunger." -Bushido, The Soul of Japan 1899

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.