更新日 ２００１．１１．０８．木
新渡戸稲造 「武士道」 The Soul of Japan
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BUSHIDO
CHAPTER I
BUSHIDO AS AN ETHCAL SYSTEM
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 atmospherel and makes us aware that
we are still under its potent spell. The
conditions of society which brought it forth
andl nourished it have long disappeared;
but as those far-off stars which once were
and are notI still continue to shed their rays
upon us, so the light of chivalry, which was
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a child of feudalism，still illuminates our
moral path，surviving its mother institution．
It argues 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.
It argues a sad defect of information concerning
the Far East, when so erudite a
scholar as
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rendered Chivalry, is, in the original, more
expressive than Horsemanship. Bu-ski-do
means literally Military - Knight - Ways-
the ways which fighting nobles should observe
in their daily life as well as in their vocation;
in a word, the "Precepts of Knighthood,"
the noblesse oblige of the warrior class. Having
thus given its literal significance, I may be
allowed henceforth to use the word in the
original. The use of the original term is also
advisable for this reason, that a teaching so
circumscribed and unique, engendering a
cast of mind and character so peculiar, so
local, must wear the badge of its singularity
on its face; then, some words have a national
timbre so expressive of race characteristics
that the best of translators can do them but
scant justice, not to say positive injustice
and grievance. Who can improve by translation
what the German " Gemuth " signifies, or
who does not feel the difference between the
two words verbally so closely allied as the English
gentleman and the French gentilhomme?
Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles
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