Other editions of book Bushido: The Spirit of the Samurai

Nitobe Inazo (1862 - 1933) was a Japanese author, agricultural economist, educator and diplomat during the Meiji period in Japan. Nitobe published many scholarly books, novels and articles for magazines. Bushibo: The Soul of Japan is his most famous work. Published in 1900 this work was one of the first samurai ethics books. Nitobe found in Buchibo the qualities he most admired in his country, those of rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor, loyalty and self-control. The book also discusses the values brought down through the centuries by the samurai and sages of Japan. Nitobe used examples form several religions and historic periods to develop his theories. He compared the samurai philosophy with that of chivalry in Medieval England and the ancient Romans and Greeks.

Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape or form, it not the less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware that we are still under its potent spell. The conditions of society which brought it forth and nourished it have long disappeared; but as those far-off stars which once were and are not, still continue to shed their rays upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was a child of feudalism, still illuminates our moral path, surviving its mother institution. It is a pleasure to me to reflect upon this subject in the language of Burke, who uttered the well-known touching eulogy over the neglected bier of its European prototype.

Bushido which literally means "Way of the Warrior" is a code that has greatly influenced the culture and people of Japan. Developed in Japan between the Heian and Tokugawa ages (9th - 12th century) Bushido was the code of the Samurai. In "Bushido: The Soul of Japan" Inazo Nitobe explores how the influence of the ancient code of Bushido has had such a lasting effect on the culture and traditions of Japan.

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, The Soul of Japan is, along with the classic text Hagakure by Tsunetomo Yamamoto, a study of the way of the samurai. A best-seller in its day, it was read by many influential foreigners, among them President Theodore Roosevelt, President John F. Kennedy and Robert Baden-Powell. It may well have shaped Baden-Powell's ideas on the Boy Scout movement he founded. As Japan underwent deep transformations of its traditional lifestyle while forging into a modern nation, Nitobe engaged in an inquiry into the ethos of his nation, and the result of his meditations was this seminal work. A fine stylist in English, he wrote many books in that language, which earned him a place among the best known Japanese writers of his age. 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. Nitobe Inazō was a Japanese agricultural economist, author, educator, diplomat, politician, and Christian during Meiji and Taishō period Japan.

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."

“Bushido: The Soul of Japan” was written in English for a Western audience by Inazo Nitobe, a career diplomat and scholar in his native Japan. First published in 1900, Bushido has enjoyed great popularity ever since, and has been reprinted many times. The current edition, however, is the first to preserve the content and voice of Nitobe's original while bringing the text into the 21st century and including explanations of obscure references. The samurai warriors of Japan have fascinated generations of people worldwide. Simultaneously well-known and misunderstood, the samurai's existence is popularly depicted as one dominated by violence -- a life and death ruled by the sword. But there is much more to this elite class of warriors, and Nitobe thoroughly explores the samurai themselves -- their military traditions, their reverence for the sword, and how they lived their daily lives. Nitobe discusses samurai values and beliefs, and explains how they translated into actions. He explores the lasting influence of Bushido and the samurai, whose legacy is perhaps most obvious to us today in Japanese martial arts. Not only did the samurai refine the technical aspects of the arts, they infused them with the spirit of Zen Buddhism, teaching that the highest mastery was attainable only by becoming one with yourself, your weapon and your opponent. Inazo Nitobe was dedicated to a greater understanding between East and West at a time when Japan’s engagement with the Western world was in its adolescence. Though his primary subject is the moral code upon which the samurai built and wielded their power, Nitobe quickly broadens his scope into an examination of nothing less than what the title of the book suggests -- the soul of Japan itself. New to this edition are a short essay about the author, illustrations showing the samurai in their waning years, and an index.

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.