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bushido (dict)
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BushidoFor other uses of the term bushido see bushido (disambiguation) History Bushido (Japanese lit. "way of the warrior", 武士道, bushidō), was an ethical code of conduct, developed in the 17th century during the opening years of the Tokugawa shogunate for the members of the Samurai class. This development corresponds to a period of peace and stability in Japan, and reflects the need for an idle warrior class to redefine their role in society. Bushido expanded and formalized the earlier code of the samurai, and stressed frugality, loyalty, mastery of martial arts, and honor to the death. Under the Bushido ideal, if a samurai failed to uphold his honor he could regain it by performing seppuku (ritual suicide). Bushido ethics were tightly connected to the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, which promoted austerity, detachment and "no-mind" concentration as an ultimate approach to combat situations as well as daily life, and considered martial arts as a way to self-realization and to the expression of one's Buddha-nature. Whether Bushido was actually widely practiced is disputed. It may have been rather elitist and largely ignored by the majority of the samurai, who represented a wide populace numbering between 7 to 10% of the Japanese population (The first Meiji era census at the end of the 19th century counted 1,282,000 members of the "high samurais", allowed to ride a horse, and 492,000 members of the "low samurais", allowed to wear two swords but not to ride a horse, in a country of about 25 million ("Japan. A historical survey" Mikiso Hane)). The modern sport of kendo takes its basic philosophy from Bushido, in particular, the theory that the entire purpose of the sport is "one cut, one kill". Unlike in other martial arts, extended contact, or multiple strikes, tends to be discouraged in favor of clean single strokes on the body or the head. Bushido ethics enjoyed a revival during World War 2 as a way to build up Japanese fighting spirit. It was particularly reinforced among the fighting forces as a means of portraying the value of self-sacrifice and loyalty, and culminated with the self-sacrifice of the kamikaze pilots. Seven virtues associated with bushido Major figures associated with bushido See also Further reading - Eiko Ikegami, The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan (Harvard, 1997)
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