page_title: Bushido
section_title: Meiji Bushido
hierarchical_section_title: Bushido / Historical development / 19th to 21st centuries / Meiji Bushido
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of The "Shame" Album, showing the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Nanjing Massacre. It was one of the 16 photos preserved by a Chinese working in a photostudio at that time.
context_page_description: Bushidō was the set of codes of honour and ideals that dictated the samurai way of life, loosely analogous to the European concept of chivalry.
  The "way" originates from the samurai moral values, most commonly stressing some combination of sincerity, frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and honour until death. Born from Neo-Confucianism during times of peace in the Edo period and following Confucian texts, while also being influenced by Shinto and Zen Buddhism, allowing the violent existence of the samurai to be tempered by wisdom, patience and serenity. Bushidō developed between the 16th and 20th centuries, debated by pundits who believed they were building on a legacy dating back to the 10th century, although the term bushidō itself is "rarely attested in pre-modern literature". This ethical code took shape with the rise of the warrior caste to power and the establishment of the first military government of the Kamakura period, the Muromachi period and formally defined and applied in law by Tokugawa shogunates in the Edo period. There is no strict definition, and even if the times are the same, the interpretation varies greatly depending on the person.
context_section_description: Prominent scholars consider the type of bushido that was prevalent since the Meiji period (1868–1912) as “Meiji bushidō” (明治武士道). Such as University of Tokyo professor of ethics Kanno
  Kakumyō (菅野覚明) wrote a book that supports it: Bushidō no gyakushū (武士道の逆襲), 2004. Meiji Bushido simplified the primary attributes that it ignored the actual samurai (bushi). The samurai originally fought for personal matters, honor of their family and clan. When Japan was unified the samurai's raison 'd'etre changed from personal to public as bureaucrats with administrative functions. When the samurai class abolished itself, their public function became national to form a modern nation-state. With the disappearance of the separate social classes, some values were transferred to the whole population, such as the feeling of loyalty, which was addressed to the emperor. The author Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) asserted that “invasionism or militarism had nothing to do with bushidō from the outset.” According to Mishima a man of bushidō is someone who has a firm sense of self-respect, takes responsibility for his action, and sacrifices himself to embody that responsibility. 
  Bushidō was used as a propaganda tool by the government and military, who doctored it to suit their needs. The original Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors of 1882 has the word hōkoku (報国) which means that you are indebted to your nation due to your birth in it and therefore you must return the debt through your exertion (physical or mental effort). This idea did not exist in earlier Bushido. Scholars of Japanese history agree that the bushidō that spread throughout modern Japan was not simply a continuation of earlier traditions.
  "If, during the Middle Ages, letters became the cultural preserve of the aristocrats of the Imperial Court, in the Edo period, they were that of Confucian scholars. If letters are the sign of the teaching of Confucianism, it is that is to say of Chinese culture, the profession of arms embodies truly Japanese values. (...) The Opium War (1839–1842) was a trauma for Japan" since it ended with the invasion of China by the British. Along with the sense of urgency, one of the consequences created by the crisis has been the rise of nationalism, voices are raised in favor of the need to re-value the profession of arms. "The revival of bushidô was thus linked to nationalism. (...) The term becomes very frequent and with a positive connotation by the thinkers of the xenophobic movement of the years 1853–1867 favorable to the imperial restoration and takes a nationalist coloring absent at the end of the Middle Ages ". It disappeared again during the Meiji summer until it reappeared from the 1880s to symbolically express the loss of traditional values during the rapid introduction of Western civilization from 1868 and the feeling of urgency, again, to defend the magnificent Japanese tradition. "Confucianism and Buddhism are embedded, then, in the traditional values to be defended against the West while in the Edo period bushido as a Japanese tradition was rather used as an alternative to Confucianism."
  The victory of Japan over China in 1895 "changes the paradigm, it is no longer the urgency but the pride of the tradition of bushido which is at the origin of military success (...) abnegation and surpassing oneself" are put forward by forgetting "the moral hesitations of the warrior on the means of victory"
  Nitobe Inazo (1862–1933) published Bushido: The Soul of Japan in the United States in 1900 as a result of encountering a lack of religious education in Japan in a conversation with local educators. In addition to politicians such as Theodore Roosevelt and President John F. Kennedy, the book also found many overseas readers such as Boy Scout founder Robert Baden-Powell, and in 1908, "Bushido" as Sakurai Oson ([:ja:櫻井鴎村]) published a Japanese translation. Additionally, in 1938 (Showa 13) Nitobe's pupil Tadao Yanaihara published a translated paperback edition. In Nitobe's Soul of Japan, "this was a discourse although different from that which the nationalist
caption: Japanese war crimes against Chinese POWs in Nanjing, c. 1937
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