BUSHIDŌ. — The name means “the way of the knights.” Knighthood was honored in Japan from earliest times. Even by the Middle Ages, under the diverse influences of national and religious traditions, such a code of honor and knightly customs had formed, more through practice than through written precepts.
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shinto all contributed to the formation of the “way of the knights.” From Confucianism, Shinto took loyalty to superiors and sovereigns, as well as the duties corresponding to the five relationships (*gorin*), namely: 1) between sovereign and subjects, 2) between parents and children, 3) between husband and wife, 4) between elder and younger brothers, and 5) between friend and friend. To Buddhism, bushidō owes certain teachings, above all the exercises of internal abstraction (meditative exercises, etc., *zen*). The knights were pleased by the idea that life and death form a unity, that death is the fulfillment of life rather than a cruel end by which life is destroyed. In practical life, these teachings led to stoic endurance of hardship and pain, as well as to heroic contempt for death. Shinto gave bushidō the religious conception and veneration for the emperor and for the fatherland. Even the heroism of Christianity, absolute fidelity to God, deep respect for authority, and the necessity that life and teaching correspond, made a great impression on the knights of the 16th and 17th centuries, and many followed it, finding in Christianity the realization of their ideals.
Special virtues of bushidō, which have been demanded of every Japanese who has a sense of nationalism up to the present day, are above all absolute loyalty to the emperor, constant readiness to serve the people and the fatherland, courage, contempt for death, respect and obedience toward superiors, courtesy and self-control, esteem and veneration for the sacred, mercy toward the weak, respect for the enemy, and sobriety.