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10：徳目と徳目の板ばさみ

池田光穂

10


                         The Dilemma of Virtue

The Japanese View of life is just what their formulas of chu and ko and
giri and jin and human feelings say it is. They see the ‘whole duty of
man’ as if it were parceled out into separate provinces on a map. In
their phrase, one’s life consists of ‘the circle of chu’ and ‘the circle
of ko’ and ‘the circle of giri’ and ‘the circle of jin’ and ‘the circle
of human feelings’ and many more. Each circle has its special detailed
code and a man judges his fellows, not by ascribing to them integrated
personalities, but by saying of them that ‘they do not know ko’ or ‘they
do not know giri.’ Instead of accusing a man of being unjust, as an
American would, they specify the circle of behavior he has not lived up
to. Instead of accusing a man of being selfish or unkind, the Japanese
specify the particular province within which he violated the code. They
do not invoke a categorical imperative or a golden rule. Approved
behavior is relative to the circle within which it appears. When a man
acts ‘for ko,’ he is acting in one way; when he acts ‘merely for giri’
or ‘in the circle of jin,’ he is acting—so Westerners would judge—in
quite different character. The codes, even for each ‘circle,’ are set up
in such a way that, when conditions change within it, the most different
behavior may be properly called for. Giri to one’s lord demanded utmost
loyalty until the lord insulted his retainer; afterward no treachery was
too great. Until August, 1945, chu demanded of the Japanese people that
they fight to the last man against the enemy. When the Emperor changed
the requirements of chu by broadcasting Japan’s capitulation, the
Japanese outdid themselves in expressing their co-operation with the
visitors.

This is baffling to Westerners. According to our experience, people act
‘in character.’ We separate the sheep from the goats by whether they are
loyal or whether they are treacherous, whether they are co-operative or
whether they are stiff-necked. We label people and expect their next
behavior to be like their last. They are generous or stingy, willing or
suspicious, conservative or liberal. We expect them to believe in one
particular political ideology and consistently to fight the opposite
ideology. In our war experience in Europe there were collaborationists
and there were resistance people, and we doubted, quite rightly, that
after VE-Day collaborationists would have changed their spots. In
domestic controversies in the United States, we recognize, for instance,
New Dealers and anti-New Dealers, and we judge that as new situations
arise these two camps will continue to act in character. If individuals
move from one side of the fence to the other—as when an unbeliever
becomes a Catholic or a ‘red’ becomes a conservative—such a change has
to be duly labeled as a conversion and a new personality built up to
fit.

This Western faith in integrated behavior is of course not always
justified, but it is no illusion. In most cultures, primitive or
civilized, men and women picture themselves as acting as particular
kinds of persons. If they are interested in power, they reckon their
failures and successes in terms of others’ submission to their will. If
they are interested in being loved, they are frustrated in impersonal
situations. They fancy themselves as sternly just or as having an
‘artistic temperament’ or as being a good homebody. They generally
achieve a _Gestalt_ in their own characters. It brings order into human
existence.

Occidentals cannot easily credit the ability of the Japanese to swing
from one behavior to another without psychic cost. Such extreme
possibilities are not included in our experience. Yet in Japanese life
the contradictions, as they seem to us, are as deeply based in their
view of life as our uniformities are in ours. It is especially important
for Occidentals to recognize that the ‘circles’ into which the Japanese
divide life do not include any ‘circle of evil.’ This is not to say that
the Japanese do not recognize bad behavior, but they do not see human
life as a stage on which forces of good contend with forces of evil.
They see existence as a drama which calls for careful balancing of the
claims of one ‘circle’ against another and of one course of procedure
against another, each circle and each course of procedure being in
itself good. If everyone followed his true instincts, everyone would be
good. As we saw, they regard even Chinese moral precepts as proving that
the Chinese need that kind of thing. It proves the inferiority of the
Chinese. Japanese, they say, have no need of over-all ethical
commandments. In Sir George Sansom’s phrase which we have already
quoted, they ‘do not grapple with the problem of evil.’ According to
their view, they adequately account for bad behavior by less cosmic
means. Though every soul originally shines with virtue like a new sword,
nevertheless, if it is not kept polished, it gets tarnished. This ‘rust
of my body,’ as they phrase it, is as bad as it is on a sword. A man
must give his character the same care that he would give a sword. But
his bright and gleaming soul is still there under the rust and all that
is necessary is to polish it up again.

This Japanese view of life makes their folktales and novels and plays
seem particularly inconclusive to Westerners—unless we are able, as
often happens, to recast the plot to fit our demands for consistency of
character and for conflict of good and evil. But that is not the way the
Japanese look at these plots. Their comment is that the hero is caught
in a conflict of ‘gin against human feelings,’ ‘chu against ko,’ ‘giri
against gimu.’ A hero fails because he is allowing his human feelings to
obscure his obligations of giri, or he cannot pay both the debt he owes
as chu and the debt he owes as ko. He cannot do right (gi) because of
giri. He is cornered by giri and sacrifices his family. The conflicts so
portrayed are still between obligations both of which are in themselves
binding. They are both ‘good.’ The choice between them is like the
choice that faces a debtor who owes too many debts. He must pay some and
ignore others for the time being, but the fact that he pays one debt
does not free him of the rest of his debts.

This way of viewing the hero’s life is in great contrast to the Western
view. Our heroes are good precisely in that they have ‘chosen the better
part,’ and are pitted against opponents who are bad. ‘Virtue triumphs,’
as we say. There should be a happy ending. The good should be rewarded.
The Japanese, however, have an insatiable appetite for the story of the
‘flagrant case’ of the hero who finally settles incompatible debts to
the world and to his name by choosing death as a solution. Such tales
would in many cultures be stories teaching resignation to a bitter fate.
But in Japan that is exactly what they are not. They are tales of
initiative and ruthless determination. The heroes put forth every effort
to pay some one obligation incumbent upon them, and, in so doing, they
flout another obligation. But in the end they settle with the ‘circle’
they flouted.

The true national epic of Japan is the _Tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin_.
It is not a tale that rates high in the world’s literature but the hold
it has on the Japanese is incomparable. Every Japanese boy knows not
only the main story but the subordinate plots of the tale. Its stories
are constantly told and printed and they are retold in a popular modern
movie series. The graves of the forty-seven have been for generations a
favorite pilgrimage where thousands went to pay tribute. They left their
visiting cards, too, and the ground around the graves was often white
with them.

The theme of the _Forty-Seven Ronin_ centers around giri to one’s lord.
As the Japanese see it, it portrays the conflicts of giri with chu, of
giri with righteousness—in which giri is of course virtuously
triumphant,—and of ‘merely giri’ with limitless giri. It is an
historical tale of 1703, the great days of feudalism when men were men,
according to the modern Japanese daydream, and there was no
‘unwillingness’ in giri. The forty-seven heroes offer up everything to
it, their reputations, their fathers, their wives, their sisters, their
righteousness (gi). Finally they offer up to chu their own lives, dying
by their own hands.

The Lord Asano was appointed by the Shogunate as one of two daimyo in
charge of the ceremony at which all the daimyo made their periodical
obeisance to the Shogun. The two masters of ceremonies were provincial
lords and therefore they had to apply for instructions in required
etiquette to a very great daimyo of the Court, the Lord Kira.
Unfortunately Lord Asano’s wisest retainer, Oishi—the hero of the
tale—who would have counseled him prudently, was away in the home
province and Asano was naïve enough not to arrange to pay a sufficient
‘gift’ to his great instructor. The retainers of the other daimyo who
was being instructed by Kira were men of the world and showered the
teacher with rich gifts. The Lord Kira therefore instructed Lord Asano
with bad grace and purposely described to him an entirely wrong costume
for his wear at the ceremony. The Lord Asano appeared thus clad on the
great day and when he realized the insult put upon him he drew his sword
and wounded Kira on the forehead before they could be separated. It was
his virtue as a man of honor—his giri to his name—to avenge Kira’s
insult but it was against his chu to draw his sword in the Shogun’s
palace. The Lord Asano had conducted himself virtuously in giri to his
name but he could only come to terms with chu by killing himself
according to the rules of seppuku. He retired to his house and dressed
himself for the ordeal, waiting only for the return of his wisest and
most faithful retainer Oishi. When they had exchanged a long look of
farewell, Lord Asano, having seated himself in required fashion, thrust
his sword into his belly and died by his own hand. No relative being
willing to succeed to the place of the dead lord who had violated chu
and incurred the displeasure of the Shogunate, Asano’s fief was
confiscated and his retainers became masterless ronin.

According to the obligations of giri, Asano’s samurai retainers owed it
to their dead master to commit seppuku as he had done. If in giri to
their lord they did what he had done in giri to his name, this would
voice their protest against Kira’s insult to their lord. But Oishi was
secretly determined that seppuku was too small an act by which to
express their giri. They must complete the vengeance their own lord had
been unable to carry through when retainers separated him from his
high-placed enemy. They must kill Lord Kira. But this could only be
accomplished by violating chu. Lord Kira was too near to the Shogunate
to make it possible for the ronin to get official permission from the
State to carry out their revenge. In more usual cases, any group
contemplating vengeance registered their plan with the Shogunate,
stating the final date before which they would complete the act or
abandon the enterprise. This arrangement allowed certain fortunate
people to reconcile chu and giri. Oishi knew that this course was not
open to him and his fellows. He therefore called together the ronin who
had been Asano’s samurai retainers but he spoke no word of his plan of
killing Kira. There were more than three hundred of these ronin and, as
the story was taught in Japanese schools in 1940, they all agreed to
commit seppuku. Oishi knew, however, that not all of them had unlimited
giri—in the Japanese phrase, ‘giri plus sincerity’—and could therefore
be trusted in the dangerous exploit of a vendetta against Kira. To
separate those with ‘merely’ giri from those with giri plus sincerity he
used the test of how they were to divide their lord’s personal income.
In Japanese eyes this was as much of a test as if they had not already
agreed to commit suicide; their families would benefit. There was
violent disagreement among the ronin about the basis of the division of
property. The chief steward was the highest paid of the retainers and he
led the faction which wanted the income divided according to previous
salary. Oishi led the faction which wanted it divided equally among them
all. As soon as it was well established which ones of the ronin had
‘merely’ giri, Oishi agreed to the chief steward’s plan for partition of
the estate and allowed those who had won to leave the company. The chief
steward left and has earned thereby the fame of being a ‘dog samurai,’ a
‘man who did not know giri,’ and a reprobate. Oishi judged only
forty-seven to be strong enough in giri to be made privy to his plan of
vendetta. These forty-seven who joined him pledged by that act that no
good faith, no affection, no gimu should stand in the way of the
completion of their vow. Giri was to be their supreme law. The
forty-seven cut their fingers and joined in a blood compact.

Their first task was to throw Kira off the scent. They disbanded and
pretended to be lost to all honor. Oishi frequented the lowest
public-houses and engaged in undignified brawls. Under cover of this
abandoned life he divorced his wife—a usual and thoroughly justified
step for any Japanese who was about to run foul of the law since it kept
his wife and children from being held accountable along with him in the
final act. Oishi’s wife parted from him in great grief, but his son
joined the ronin.

All Tokyo was speculating on the vendetta. All who respected the ronin
were of course convinced that they would attempt to kill Lord Kira. But
the forty-seven disclaimed any such intention. They pretended to be men
who ‘did not know giri.’ Their fathers-in-law, outraged at such
dishonorable conduct, turned them out of their homes and dissolved their
marriages. Their friends ridiculed them. One day a close friend met
Oishi drunk and reveling with women, and even to him Oishi denied his
giri to his lord. ‘Revenge?’ he said. ‘It is silly. One should enjoy
life. Nothing is better than to drink and play around.’ His friend
disbelieved him, and pulled Oishi’s sword out of its sheath, expecting
its shining brilliance to disprove what its owner had said. But the
sword was rusted. He was forced to believe and in the open street he
kicked and spat upon the drunken Oishi.

One of the ronin, needing money to cover his part in the vendetta, had
his wife sold as a prostitute. Her brother, also one of the ronin,
discovered that knowledge of the vendetta had come into her hands and
proposed to kill her with his own sword, arguing that with this proof of
his loyalty Oishi would enroll him among the avengers. Another ronin
killed his father-in-law. Another sent his sister to serve as maid and
concubine to Lord Kira himself so that the ronin might have advice from
inside the palace telling them when to attack; this act made it
inevitable that she should commit suicide when vengeance was
accomplished, for she had to clear herself by death of the fault of
having appeared to be on the side of Lord Kira.

On a snowy night, December fourteenth, Kira held a _sake_ party and the
guards were drunk. The ronin raided the stronghold, overcame the guards,
and went straight to Lord Kira’s bedroom. He was not there, but his bed
was still warm. The ronin knew he was hiding somewhere in the enclosure.
At last they discovered a man crouched in an outhouse used for storing
charcoal. One of the ronin drove his spear through a wall of the hut,
but when he withdrew it there was no blood upon it. The spear had indeed
pierced Kira, but as it was withdrawn he had wiped off the blood with
his kimono sleeve. His trick was of no avail. The ronin forced him to
come out. He claimed, however, that he was not Kira; he was only the
chief steward. At this point one of the forty-seven remembered the wound
their Lord Asano had given Kira in the Shogun’s palace. By this scar
they identified him and demanded his immediate seppuku. He
refused—which proved of course that he was a coward. With the sword
their own Lord Asano had used in his seppuku, they cut off his head,
ceremonially washed it, and having finished their work, set off in
procession to carry the doubly bloodied sword and the severed head to
Asano’s grave.

All Tokyo was filled with enthusiasm for the deed of the ronin. Their
families and fathers-in-law who had doubted them rushed to embrace them
and to do obeisance. Great lords urged hospitality upon them along the
way. They proceeded to the grave and placed there not only the head and
the sword but a written address to their lord which is still preserved.

    We have come this day to do homage here. . . . We could not have
    dared to present ourselves before you unless we had carried out
    the vengeance which you began. Every day that we waited seemed
    three autumns to us. . . . We have escorted my Lord Kira hither
    to your tomb. This sword you valued so greatly last year and
    entrusted to us we now bring back. We pray you to take it and
    strike the head of your enemy a second time and dispel your
    hatred forever. This is the respectful statement of forty-seven
    men.

Their giri was paid. They had still to pay their chu. Only in their
death could the two coincide. They had broken the State rule against
undeclared vendetta but they were not in revolt against chu. Whatever
was demanded of them in the name of chu they must fulfill. The Shogunate
ruled that the forty-seven should commit seppuku. As fifth-grade
children’s Japanese Readers say:

    Since they acted to avenge their lord, their unswerving giri had
    to be regarded as an example for ages eternal. . . . Therefore
    the Shogunate after deliberation commanded seppuku, a plan which
    killed two birds with one stone.

That is, in killing themselves with their own hands the ronin paid the
supreme debt both to giri and to gimu.

This national epic of Japan varies somewhat in different versions. In
the modern movie version, the bribery theme at the outset is changed to
a sex theme: Lord Kira is discovered making advances to Asano’s wife,
and because of his attraction to her he humiliates Asano by giving him
false instructions. Bribery is thus eliminated. But all the obligations
of giri are told in blood-curdling detail. ‘For giri they forsook their
wives, parted with their children and lost (killed) their parents.’

The theme of the conflict between gimu and giri is the basis of many
other tales and movies. One of the best historical movies is placed in
the time of the third Tokugawa Shogun. This Shogun had been named to his
office when he was a young and untried man, and his courtiers were
divided among themselves about the succession, some of them supporting a
near relative of the same age. One of the defeated daimyo nursed this
‘insult’ in his bosom in spite of the capable administration of the
Third Shogun. He bided his time. At last the Shogun and his entourage
notified him that they were to make a tour of certain fiefs. It was
incumbent upon this daimyo to entertain the party and he seized the
opportunity to even all scores and fulfill his giri to his name. His
home was already a stronghold and he prepared it for the coming event so
that all egress could be blocked and the stronghold sealed. Then he
provided means by which the walls and ceilings could be knocked down on
the heads of the Shogun and his party. His plot was staged in the grand
style. His entertainment was meticulous. For the enjoyment of the Shogun
he had one of his samurai dance before him and this samurai was under
instructions to plunge his sword into the Shogun at the climax of the
dance. In giri to his daimyo the samurai could in no wise refuse his
lord’s order. His chu, however, forbade him to lift his hand against the
Shogun. The dance on the screen fully portrays the conflict. He must and
he must not. He almost brings himself to strike the blow but he cannot.
In spite of giri, chu is too strong. The dance degenerates and the
Shogun’s party becomes suspicious. They rise from their seats just as
the desperate daimyo orders the demolition of the house. There is danger
that the Shogun, though he has escaped the dancer’s sword, will be
killed in the ruins of the stronghold. At this point the sword dancer
comes forward and guides the Shogun’s party through underground passages
so that they escape safely into the open. Chu has conquered giri. The
Shogun’s spokesman in gratitude urges their guide to go with them in
honor to Tokyo. The guide, however, looks back into the falling house.
‘It is impossible,’ he says. ‘I stay. It is my gimu and my giri.’ He
turns from them and dies in the ruins. ‘In his death he satisfied both
chu and giri. In death they coincided.’

The tales of olden times do not give central place to the conflict
between obligations and ‘human feelings.’ In recent years it has become
a principal theme. Modern novels tell of love and human kindness which
have to be discarded because of gimu or giri, and this theme is played
up instead of being minimized. Like their war movies, which readily seem
to Westerners to be good pacifist propaganda, these novels often seem to
us a plea for greater latitude to live according to the dictates of
one’s own heart. They are certainly testimony to this impulse. But over
and over Japanese who discuss the plot of novels or movies see a
different meaning. The hero we sympathize with because he is in love or
cherishes some personal ambition, they condemn as weak because he has
allowed these feelings to come between him and his gimu or his giri.
Westerners are likely to feel it is a sign of strength to rebel against
conventions and seize happiness in spite of obstacles. But the strong,
according to Japanese verdict, are those who disregard personal
happiness and fulfill their obligations. Strength of character, they
think, is shown in conforming not in rebelling. The plots of their
novels and movies, consequently, often have quite a different meaning in
Japan from that which we give to them when we see them through Western
eyes.

Japanese make the same kind of appraisal when they pass judgment on
their own lives or on those of people they have known. They judge that a
man is weak if he pays attention to his personal desires when they
conflict with the code of obligations. All kinds of situations are
judged in this way, but the one which is most opposite to Western ethics
concerns a man’s attitude toward his wife. His wife is only tangential
to ‘the circle of ko’ but his parents are central. Therefore his duty is
clear. A man of strong moral character obeys ko and accepts his mother’s
decision to divorce his wife. It only makes the man ‘stronger’ if he
loves his wife and if she has borne him a child. In the Japanese phrase,
‘ko may make you put your wife and children in the category of
strangers.’ Then your treatment of them belongs at best in ‘the circle
of jin.’ At worst they become people who have no claims upon you. Even
when a marriage is happy, a wife is not centrally placed in the circles
of obligations. A man should therefore not elevate his relation to her
so that it seems to be on a level with his feelings toward his parents
or his country. It was a popular scandal in the nineteen-thirties when a
prominent liberal spoke publicly about how happy he was in returning to
Japan, and mentioned reunion with his wife as one of the reasons for his
pleasure. He should have spoken of his parents, of Fujiyama, of his
dedication to the national mission of Japan. His wife did not belong on
this level.

The Japanese themselves have shown in the modern era that they were not
satisfied to leave their code of morals so heavy with emphasis on
keeping different levels separate and different ‘circles’ distinct. A
great part of Japanese indoctrination has been devoted to making chu
supreme. Just as statesmen simplified the hierarchy by putting the
Emperor at the apex and eliminating the Shogun and the feudal lords, so
in the moral realm they worked to simplify the system of obligations by
bringing all lower virtues under the category of chu. By this means they
sought not only to unify the country under ‘Emperor worship,’ but to
lessen the atomism of Japanese morals. They sought to teach that in
fulfilling chu one fulfilled all other duties. They sought to make it,
not one circle on a chart, but the keystone of a moral arch.

The best and most authoritative statement of this program is the
Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors given by the Emperor Meiji in
1882. This Rescript and the one on Education are the true Holy Writ of
Japan. Neither of the Japanese religions makes a place for holy books.
Shinto has none and the cults of Japanese Buddhism either make a dogma
out of disillusion with textual scriptures or substitute for them the
repetition of phrases like ‘Glory to Amida’ or ‘Glory to the Lotus of
the Book.’ The Meiji Rescripts of admonition, however, are true Holy
Writ. They are read as sacred rituals before hushed audiences formally
bowed in reverence. They are treated as _torah_, taken from a shrine for
reading and returned with obeisance before the audience is dismissed.
Men appointed to read them have killed themselves because they misread a
sentence. The Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors was primarily for men in
the service. They were the ones who learned it verbatim and meditated
upon it quietly for ten minutes each morning. It was read to them
ritually on important national holidays, when the new conscripts entered
the barracks, when those left who had finished their period of training
and on similar occasions. It was also taught to all boys in middle
schools and continuation classes.

The Rescript for Soldiers and Sailors is a document of several pages. It
is carefully arranged under headings and is clear and specific.
Nevertheless, it is a strange puzzle to a Westerner. Its precepts seem
to him contradictory. Goodness and virtue are held up as true goals and
described in ways Westerners can appreciate. And then the Rescript warns
its hearers not to be like heroes of old who died in dishonor because,
‘losing sight of the true path of public duty, _they kept faith in
private relations_.’ This is the official translation and though it is
not literal it fairly represents the words of the original. ‘You should,
then,’ the Rescript continues, ‘take serious warning by these examples’
of old-time heroes.

The ‘warning’ conveyed is not intelligible without a knowledge of the
Japanese map of obligations. The whole Rescript shows an official
attempt to minimize giri and to elevate chu. Not once in the whole text
does the word giri appear in the sense in which it is a household word
in Japan. Instead of naming giri, it emphasizes that there is a Higher
Law, which is chu, and a Lower Law which is ‘keeping faith in private
relations.’ The Higher Law, the Rescript is at pains to prove, is
sufficient to validate all the virtues. ‘Righteousness,’ it says, ‘is
the fulfillment of gimu.’ A soldier filled with chu inevitably has ‘true
valor’ which means ‘in daily intercourse to set gentleness first and to
aim to win the love and esteem of others.’ Such precepts, if followed,
the Rescript argues by implication, will suffice without invoking giri.
Obligations other than gimu are Lesser Law and a man should not
acknowledge them without the most careful consideration.

    If you wish . . . to keep your word (in private relations) and
    (also) to fulfill your gimu . . . you must carefully consider at
    the outset whether you can accomplish it or not. If you . . .
    tie yourself to unwise obligations, you may find yourself in a
    position where you can neither go forwards nor backwards. If you
    are convinced that you cannot possibly keep your word and
    maintain righteousness (which the Rescript has just defined as
    the fulfillment of gimu), you had better abandon your (private)
    engagement at once. Ever since the ancient times there have been
    repeated instances of great men and heroes who, overwhelmed by
    misfortune, have perished and left a tarnished name to
    posterity, simply because in their effort to be faithful in
    small matters they failed to discern right and wrong with
    reference to fundamental principles, or because, losing sight of
    the true path of public duty, they kept faith in private
    relations.

All this instruction about the superiority of chu to giri is written, as
we have said, without mentioning giri, but every Japanese knows the
phrase, ‘I could not do righteousness (gi) because of giri,’ and the
Rescript paraphrases it in the words, ‘If you are convinced you cannot
keep your word (your personal obligations) and fulfill righteousness
. . .’ With Imperial authority it says that in such a situation a man
should abandon giri, remembering that it is a Lesser Law. The Higher
Law, if he obeys its precepts, will still keep him virtuous.

This Holy Writ exalting chu is a basic document in Japan. It is
difficult to say, however, whether its oblique detraction of giri
weakened the popular hold of this obligation. Japanese frequently quote
other parts of the Rescript—‘Righteousness is the fulfillment of gimu,’
‘If only the heart be sincere, anything can be accomplished’—to explain
and justify their own and others’ acts. But, though they would often be
appropriate, the admonitions against keeping faith in private relations
seem seldom to come to their lips. Giri remains today a virtue with
great authority and to say of a man that ‘he does not know giri’ is one
of the most drastic condemnations in Japan.

Japanese ethics are not easily simplified by introducing a Higher Law.
As they have so often boasted, the Japanese do not have at hand a
generalized virtue to use as a touchstone of good behavior. In most
cultures individuals respect themselves in proportion as they attain
some virtue like good will or good husbandry or success in their
enterprises. They set up as a goal some life objective like happiness or
power over others or liberty or social mobility. The Japanese follow
more particularistic codes. Even when they talk about Higher Law, _tai
setsu_, whether in feudal times or in the Rescript to Soldiers and
Sailors, it is only in the sense that obligations to someone high in the
hierarchy should overrule obligations to someone who is lower down. They
are still particularistic. To them Higher Law is not, as it has
generally been to Westerners, a loyalty to loyalty, as against a loyalty
to a particular person or a particular cause.

When modern Japanese have attempted to make some one moral virtue
supreme over all the ‘circles,’ they have usually selected ‘sincerity.’
Count Okuma, in discussing Japanese ethics, said that sincerity
(_makoto_) ‘is the precept of all precepts; the foundation of moral
teachings can be implied in that one word. Our ancient vocabulary is
void of ethical terms except for one solitary word, makoto.’[1] Modern
novelists, too, who in the early years of this century celebrated the
new Western individualism, became dissatisfied with the Occidental
formulas and tried to celebrate sincerity (usually _magokoro_) as the
only true ‘doctrine.’

This moral stress on sincerity has the backing of the Rescript for
Soldiers and Sailors itself. The Rescript begins with an historical
prologue, a Japanese equivalent to American prologues which name
Washington, Jefferson, and the Founding Fathers. In Japan this section
reaches a climax by invoking _on_ and chu:

    We (the Emperor) are the head and you are the body. We depend on
    you as our arms and legs. Whether we shall be able to protect
    our country, and repay the _on_ of our ancestors, depends upon
    your fulfilling your obligations.

Then follow the precepts: (1) The supreme virtue is to fulfill the
obligations of chu. A soldier or sailor, however skilled, in whom chu is
not strong, is a mere puppet; a body of soldiers wanting in chu is in
crisis a mere rabble. ‘Therefore, neither be led astray by current
opinions _nor meddle in politics_, but with singleness do chu,
remembering that _gi_ (righteousness) is weightier than a mountain while
death is lighter than a feather.’ (2) The second injunction is to
observe outward appearance and behavior, i.e., in reference to rank in
the Army. ‘Regard the orders of superiors as issuing directly from Us’
and treat inferiors with consideration. (3) The third is valor. True
valor is contrasted with ‘burn-blood barbaric acts’ and is defined as
‘never despising an inferior or fearing a superior. Those who thus
appreciate true valor should in their daily intercourse set gentleness
first and aim to win the love and esteem of others.’ (4) The fourth
injunction is the warning against ‘keeping faith in private relations,’
and (5) the fifth is an admonition to be frugal. ‘If you do not make
simplicity your aim, you will become effeminate and frivolous and
acquire fondness for luxurious and extravagant ways; you will finally
grow selfish and sordid and sink to the last degree of baseness, so that
neither loyalty nor valour will avail to save you from the contempt of
the world. . . . Being harassed with anxiety lest it should break out,
We hereby reiterate Our warning.’

The final paragraph of the Rescript calls these five precepts ‘the Grand
Way of Heaven and Earth and the universal law of humanity.’ They are
‘the soul of Our soldiers and sailors.’ And, in turn, ‘the soul’ of
these five precepts ‘is sincerity. If the heart be not sincere, words
and deeds, however good, are all mere outward show and all avail
nothing. If only the heart be sincere, anything can be accomplished.’
The five precepts will thus be ‘easy to observe and practice.’ It is
characteristically Japanese that sincerity should be tacked on at the
end after all the virtues and obligations have been spelled out. The
Japanese do not, as the Chinese do, base all virtues on the promptings
of the benevolent heart; they first set up the code of duties and then
add, at the end, the requirement that one carry these out with all one’s
heart and with all one’s soul and with all one’s strength and with all
one’s mind.

Sincerity has the same kind of meaning in the teachings of the great
Buddhist sect of Zen. In Suzuki’s great compendium of Zen he gives a
dialogue between the pupil and the Master:

    _Monk_: I understand that when a lion seizes upon his opponent,
    whether it is a hare or an elephant, he makes an exhaustive use
    of his power; pray tell me what is this power?

    _Master_: The spirit of sincerity (literally, the power of
    not-deceiving).
    Sincerity, that is, not-deceiving, means ‘putting forth one’s
    whole being,’ technically known as ‘the whole being in action’
    . . . in which nothing is kept in reserve, nothing is expressed
    under disguise, nothing goes into waste. When a person lives
    like this, he is said to be a golden-haired lion; he is the
    symbol of virility, sincerity, whole-heartedness; he is divinely
    human.

Special Japanese meanings of this word ‘sincerity’ have already been
referred to in passing. _Makoto_ does not mean what sincerity does in
English usage. It means both far less and far more. Westerners have
always been quick to see that it means far less than it does in their
language, and they have often said that when a Japanese says anyone is
insincere, he means only that the other person doesn’t agree with him.
There is a certain truth in this, for calling a man ‘sincere’ in Japan
has no reference to whether he is acting ‘genuinely’ according to the
love or hate, determination or amazement which is uppermost in his soul.
The kind of approval Americans express by saying, ‘He was sincerely glad
to see me,’ ‘He was sincerely pleased,’ is alien in Japan. They have a
whole series of proverbial expressions casting scorn on such a
‘sincerity.’ They say derisively, ‘Behold the frog who when he opens his
mouth displays his whole inside’; ‘Like a pomegranate who when it gapes
its mouth shows all that’s in its heart’; it is a shame to any man to
‘blurt out his feelings’; it ‘exposes’ him. These associations with
‘sincerity’ which are so important in the United States have no place in
the meaning of the word ‘sincerity’ in Japan. When the Japanese boy
accused the American missionary of insincerity, it never occurred to him
to consider whether the American ‘genuinely’ felt amazement at the poor
lad’s plan to go to America without even a shoestring. When Japanese
statesmen in the last decade accused the United States and England of
insincerity—as they constantly did—they did not even think whether the
Western nations were acting in ways they did not in reality feel. They
were not even accusing them of being hypocrites—which would have been a
minor accusation. Similarly when the Rescript for Soldiers and Sailors
says ‘sincerity is the soul of these precepts,’ it does not mean that
the virtue that will put all other virtues into effect is a genuineness
in the soul which will make a man act and speak in conformity to his own
inner promptings. It certainly does not mean that he is enjoined to be
genuine, no matter how much his convictions may differ from others’.

Nevertheless makoto has its positive meanings in Japan, and since the
Japanese so strongly stress the ethical rôle of this concept it is
urgently necessary for Westerners to grasp the sense in which they use
it. The basic Japanese sense of makoto is well illustrated in the _Tale
of the Forty-Seven Ronin_. ‘Sincerity’ in that story is a plus sign
added on to giri. ‘Giri plus makoto’ is contrasted with ‘merely giri,’
and means ‘giri as an example for ages eternal.’ In the contemporary
Japanese phrase, ‘makoto is what makes it stick.’ The ‘it’ in this
phrase refers, according to context, to any precept of the Japanese code
or any attitude stipulated in the Japanese Spirit.

Usage in the Japanese Relocation Camps during the war was exactly
parallel to that in _The Forty-Seven Ronin_, and it shows clearly how
far the logic is extended and how opposite to American usage the meaning
can become. The stock accusation of the pro-Japan Issei (American
immigrants born in Japan) against the pro-United States Nisei
(second-generation immigrants) was that they lacked makoto. What the
Issei were saying was that these Nisei did not have that quality of the
soul which made the Japanese Spirit—as officially defined in Japan
during the war—‘stick.’ The Issei did not mean at all that their
children’s pro-Americanism was hypocritical. Far from it, for their
accusations of insincerity were only the more convinced when the Nisei
volunteered for the United States Army and it was quite apparent to
anybody that their support of their adopted country was prompted by a
genuine enthusiasm.

A basic meaning of ‘sincerity’ as the Japanese use it, is that it is the
zeal to follow the ‘road’ mapped out by the Japanese code and the
Japanese Spirit. Whatever special meanings _makoto_ has in particular
contexts can always be read off as praise of some agreed-on aspects of
Japanese Spirit and well-accepted guide posts on the map of virtues.
Once one has accepted the fact that ‘sincerity’ does not have the
American meaning it is a most useful word to note in all Japanese texts.
For it almost unfailingly identifies those positive virtues the Japanese
actually stress. Makoto is constantly used to praise a person who is not
self-seeking. This is a reflection of the great condemnation Japanese
ethics pronounces on profit-making. Profit—when it is not a natural
consequence of hierarchy—is judged to be the result of exploitation,
and the go-between who has turned aside to make a profit out of his job
becomes the hated moneylender. He is always declared to ‘lack
sincerity.’ Makoto, too, is constantly used as a term of praise for the
man who is free of passion, and this mirrors Japanese ideas of
self-discipline. A Japanese worthy of being called sincere, too, never
verges on the danger of insulting a person he does not mean to provoke
to aggression, and this mirrors their dogma that a man is responsible
for the marginal consequences of his acts as well as for the act itself.
Finally, only one who is makoto can ‘lead his people,’ put his skills to
effective use and be free of psychic conflict. These three meanings, and
a host of others, state quite simply the homogeneity of Japanese ethics;
they reflect the fact that a man can be effective and unconflicted in
Japan only when he is carrying out the code.

Since these are the meanings of Japanese ‘sincerity,’ this virtue, in
spite of the Rescript and of Count Okuma, does not simplify Japanese
ethics. It does not put a ‘foundation’ under their morality, nor give it
a ‘soul.’ It is an exponent which, properly placed after any number,
raises it to a higher power. A ^{2} will square 9 or 159 or _b_ or _x_,
quite indifferently. And likewise _makoto_ raises to a higher power any
article in the Japanese code. It is not, as it were, a separate virtue
but the enthusiasm of the zealot for his creed.

Whatever the Japanese have tried to do to their code, it remains
atomistic, and the principle of virtue remains that of balancing one
play, in itself good, against another play which is also in itself good.
It is as if they had set up their ethics like a bridge game. The good
player is the one who accepts the rules and plays within them. He
distinguishes himself from the bad player because of the fact that he is
disciplined in his calculations and can follow other players’ leads with
full knowledge of what they mean under the rules of the game. He plays,
as we say, according to Hoyle, and there are endless minutiae of which
he must take account at every move. Contingencies that may come up are
covered in the rules of the game and the score is agreed upon in
advance. Good intentions, in the American sense, become irrelevancies.

In any language the contexts in which people speak of losing or gaining
self-respect throw a flood of light on their view of life. In Japan
‘respecting yourself’ is always to show yourself the careful player. It
does not mean, as it does in English usage, consciously conforming to a
worthy standard of conduct—not truckling to another, not lying, not
giving false testimony. In Japan self-respect (_jicho_) is literally ‘a
self that is weighty,’ and its opposite is ‘a self that is light and
floating.’ When a man says ‘You must respect yourself,’ it means, ‘You
must be shrewd in estimating all the factors involved in the situation
and do nothing that will arouse criticism or lessen your chances of
success.’ ‘Respecting yourself’ often implies exactly the opposite
behavior from that which it means in the United States. An employee
says, ‘I must respect myself (jicho),’ and it means, not that he must
stand on his rights, but that he must say nothing to his employers that
will get him into trouble. ‘You must respect yourself’ had this same
meaning, too, in political usage. It meant that a ‘person of weight’
could not respect himself if he indulged in anything so rash as
‘dangerous thoughts.’ It had no implication, as it would in the United
States, that even if thoughts are dangerous a man’s self-respect
requires that he think according to his own lights and his own
conscience.

‘You must respect yourself’ is constantly on parents’ lips in
admonishing their adolescent children, and it refers to observing
proprieties and living up to other people’s expectation. A girl is thus
admonished to sit without moving, her legs properly placed, and a boy to
train himself and learn to watch for cues from others ‘because now is
the time that will decide your future.’ When a parent says to them, ‘You
did not behave as a self-respecting person should,’ it means that they
are accused of an impropriety rather than of lack of courage to stand up
for the right as they saw it.

A farmer who cannot meet his debt to the moneylender says of himself ‘I
should have had self-respect,’ but that does not mean that he accuses
himself of laziness or of fawning upon his creditor. It means that he
should have foreseen the emergency and been more circumspect. A man of
standing in the community says, ‘My self-respect requires this,’ and he
does not mean that he must live up to certain principles of truthfulness
and probity but that he must manipulate the affair with full
consideration for the position of his family; he must throw the whole
weight of his status into the matter.

A business executive who says of his firm ‘We must show self-respect’
means that prudence and watchfulness must be redoubled. A man discussing
a necessity to avenge himself speaks of ‘revenging with self-respect,’
and this has no reference to heaping coals of fire upon the head of his
enemy or to any moral rules he intends to follow; it is equivalent to
saying ‘I shall exact a perfect revenge,’ i.e., one meticulously planned
and taking into account every factor in the situation. Strongest phrase
of all in Japanese is ‘to double self-respect with self-respect’ and
that means to be circumspect to the _n_th degree. It means never to jump
to a hasty conclusion. It means to calculate ways and means so that no
more and no less effort is used than is strictly necessary to attain the
goal.

All these meanings of self-respect fit the Japanese view of life as a
world in which you move with great care ‘according to Hoyle.’ This way
of defining self-respect does not allow a man to claim an alibi for his
failure on the ground of good intentions. Each move has its consequences
and one should not act without estimating them. It is quite proper to be
generous, but you must foresee that the recipient of your favors will
feel that he has been made ‘to wear an _on_.’ You must be wary. It is
quite allowable to criticize another, but you must do so only if you
intend to take on all the consequences of his resentment. A sneer such
as the American missionary was accused of by the young artist is out of
the question precisely because the missionary’s intentions were good; he
did not take account of the full meaning of his move on the chessboard.
It was in the Japanese view completely undisciplined.

The strong identification of circumspection with self-respect includes,
therefore, watchfulness of all the cues one observes in other people’s
acts, and a strong sense that other people are sitting in judgment. ‘One
cultivates self-respect (one must jicho),’ they say, ‘because of
society.’ ‘If there were no society one would not need to respect
oneself (cultivate jicho).’ These are extreme statements of an external
sanction for self-respect. They are statements which take no account of
internal sanctions for proper behavior. Like the popular sayings of many
nations, they exaggerate the case, for Japanese sometimes react as
strongly as any Puritan to a private accumulation of guilt. But their
extreme statements nevertheless point out correctly where the emphasis
falls in Japan. It falls on the importance of shame rather than on the
importance of guilt.

In anthropological studies of different cultures the distinction between
those which rely heavily on shame and those that rely heavily on guilt
is an important one. A society that inculcates absolute standards of
morality and relies on men’s developing a conscience is a guilt culture
by definition, but a man in such a society may, as in the United States,
suffer in addition from shame when he accuses himself of gaucheries
which are in no way sins. He may be exceedingly chagrined about not
dressing appropriately for the occasion or about a slip of the tongue.
In a culture where shame is a major sanction, people are chagrined about
acts which we expect people to feel guilty about. This chagrin can be
very intense and it cannot be relieved, as guilt can be, by confession
and atonement. A man who has sinned can get relief by unburdening
himself. This device of confession is used in our secular therapy and by
many religious groups which have otherwise little in common. We know it
brings relief. Where shame is the major sanction, a man does not
experience relief when he makes his fault public even to a confessor. So
long as his bad behavior does not ‘get out into the world’ he need not
be troubled and confession appears to him merely a way of courting
trouble. Shame cultures therefore do not provide for confessions, even
to the gods. They have ceremonies for good luck rather than for
expiation.

True shame cultures rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not,
as true guilt cultures do, on an internalized conviction of sin. Shame
is a reaction to other people’s criticism. A man is shamed either by
being openly ridiculed and rejected or by fantasying to himself that he
has been made ridiculous. In either case it is a potent sanction. But it
requires an audience or at least a man’s fantasy of an audience. Guilt
does not. In a nation where honor means living up to one’s own picture
of oneself, a man may suffer from guilt though no man knows of his
misdeed and a man’s feeling of guilt may actually be relieved by
confessing his sin.

The early Puritans who settled in the United States tried to base their
whole morality on guilt and all psychiatrists know what trouble
contemporary Americans have with their consciences. But shame is an
increasingly heavy burden in the United States and guilt is less
extremely felt than in earlier generations. In the United States this is
interpreted as a relaxation of morals. There is much truth in this, but
that is because we do not expect shame to do the heavy work of morality.
We do not harness the acute personal chagrin which accompanies shame to
our fundamental system of morality.

The Japanese do. A failure to follow their explicit signposts of good
behavior, a failure to balance obligations or to foresee contingencies
is a shame (_haji_). Shame, they say, is the root of virtue. A man who
is sensitive to it will carry out all the rules of good behavior. ‘A man
who knows shame’ is sometimes translated ‘virtuous man,’ sometimes ‘man
of honor.’ Shame has the same place of authority in Japanese ethics that
‘a clear conscience,’ ‘being right with God,’ and the avoidance of sin
have in Western ethics. Logically enough, therefore, a man will not be
punished in the afterlife. The Japanese—except for priests who know the
Indian sutras—are quite unacquainted with the idea of reincarnation
dependent upon one’s merit in this life, and—except for some
well-instructed Christian converts—they do not recognize post-death
reward and punishment or a heaven and a hell.

The primacy of shame in Japanese life means, as it does in any tribe or
nation where shame is deeply felt, that any man watches the judgment of
the public upon his deeds. He need only fantasy what their verdict will
be, but he orients himself toward the verdict of others. When everybody
is playing the game by the same rules and mutually supporting each
other, the Japanese can be light-hearted and easy. They can play the
game with fanaticism when they feel it is one which carries out the
‘mission’ of Japan. They are most vulnerable when they attempt to export
their virtues into foreign lands where their own formal signposts of
good behavior do not hold. They failed in their ‘good will’ mission to
Greater East Asia, and the resentment many of them felt at the attitudes
of Chinese and Filipinos toward them was genuine enough.

Individual Japanese, too, who have come to the United States for study
or business and have not been motivated by nationalistic sentiments have
often felt deeply the ‘failure’ of their careful education when they
tried to live in a less rigidly charted world. Their virtues, they felt,
did not export well. The point they try to make is not the universal one
that it is hard for any man to change cultures. They try to say
something more and they sometimes contrast the difficulties of their own
adjustment to American life with the lesser difficulties of Chinese or
Siamese they have known. The specific Japanese problem, as they see it,
is that they have been brought up to trust in a security which depends
on others’ recognition of the nuances of their observance of a code.
When foreigners are oblivious of all these proprieties, the Japanese are
at a loss. They cast about to find similar meticulous proprieties
according to which Westerners live and when they do not find them, some
speak of the anger they feel and some of how frightened they are.

No one has described these experiences in a less exacting culture better
than Miss Mishima in her autobiography, _My Narrow Isle_.[2] She had
sought eagerly to come to an American college and she had fought down
her conservative family’s unwillingness to accept the _on_ of an
American fellowship. She went to Wellesley. The teachers and the girls,
she says, were wonderfully kind, but that made it, so she felt, all the
more difficult. ‘My pride in perfect manneredness, a universal
characteristic of the Japanese, was bitterly wounded. I was angry at
myself for not knowing how to behave properly here and also at the
surroundings which seemed to mock at my past training. Except for this
vague but deep-rooted feeling of anger there was no emotion left in me.’
She felt herself ‘a being fallen from some other planet with senses and
feelings that have no use in this other world. My Japanese training,
requiring every physical movement to be elegant and every word uttered
to be according to etiquette, made me extremely sensitive and
self-conscious in this environment, where I was completely blind,
socially speaking.’ It was two or three years before she relaxed and
began to accept the kindness offered her. Americans, she decided, lived
with what she calls ‘refined familiarity.’ But ‘familiarity had been
killed in me as sauciness when I was three.’

Miss Mishima contrasts the Japanese girls she knew in America with the
Chinese girls and her comments show how differently the United States
affected them. The Chinese girls had ‘self-composure and sociableness
quite absent in most Japanese girls. These upper-class Chinese girls
seemed to me the most urbane creatures on earth, every one of them
having a graciousness nearing regal dignity and looking as if they were
the true mistresses of the world. Their fearlessness and superb
self-composure, not at all disturbed even in this great civilization of
machinery and speed, made a great contrast with the timidity and
oversensitiveness of us Japanese girls, showing some fundamental
difference in social background.’

Miss Mishima, like many other Japanese, felt as if she were an expert
tennis player entered in a croquet tournament. Her own expertness just
didn’t count. She felt that what she had learned did not carry over into
the new environment. The discipline to which she had submitted was
useless. Americans got along without it.

Once Japanese have accepted, to however small a degree, the less
codified rules that govern behavior in the United States they find it
difficult to imagine their being able to manage again the restrictions
of their old life in Japan. Sometimes they refer to it as a lost
paradise, sometimes as a ‘harness,’ sometimes as a ‘prison,’ sometimes
as a ‘little pot’ that holds a dwarfed tree. As long as the roots of the
miniature pine were kept to the confines of the flower pot, the result
was a work of art that graced a charming garden. But once planted out in
open soil, the dwarfed pine could never be put back again. They feel
that they themselves are no longer possible ornaments in that Japanese
garden. They could not again meet the requirements. They have
experienced in its most acute form the Japanese dilemma of virtue.

-----

[1] Count Shinenobu Okuma, _Fifty Years of New Japan_. English version
edited by Marcus B. Huish, London, 1909, II:37.

[2] Mishima, Sumie Seo, _My Narrow Isle_, 1941, p. 107.


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