BUSHIDŌ. - The name means "the way of the knights." Chivalry was held in honor in Japan from the earliest times. Already from the Middle Ages, under the various national and religious influences, such a code of honor and of the customs of chivalry gradually took shape more through practice than through the effect of written prescriptions.
Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintoism cooperated more than anything else in the formation of the "way of the knights." From Confucianism, Shinto took fidelity to superiors and to 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. From Buddhism, the B. [Bushidô] derives certain teachings and above all the exercises of inner abstraction (exercises of contemplation, etc., zen). The knights were pleased by the concept that life and death form a unity, that death is the fulfillment of life, but not a cruel end by which life is destroyed. In practical life such teachings led to the stoic endurance of privations and of pain, as well as to a heroic contempt for death. Shintoism gave the B. its religious conception and its veneration for the emperor and for the fatherland. Even the heroism of Christianity, the absolute fidelity toward God, the high respect for authority and the necessity that life and teaching must correspond to each other, made a great impression on the knights of the 16th and 17th centuries, and many followed it, having found in Christianity the realization of their ideals.
The special virtues of the B. that have been demanded down to today of every Japanese who has a sense of nationalism are above all absolute fidelity to the emperor, being always ready to serve the people and the fatherland, courage, contempt for death, respect and obedience toward superiors, courtesy and demeanor, esteem and veneration for the sacred, mercy toward the weak, respect for the enemy and sobriety.
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Doroteo Schilling