Every age breeds its own morality. One era¡¯s good is another¡¯s evil. Today¡¯s virtue is tomorrow¡¯s vice, today¡¯s wisdom tomorrow¡¯s stupidity, today¡¯s sanity tomorrow¡¯s madness.
For 700 years, from the late 12th to the mid-19th centuries, Japan¡¯s highest ideals were embodied in the samurai. Unflinching courage, unshakeable loyalty, murderous proficiency with the sword, a serenity in the face of death that to a modern eye can seem macabre, with its culminating ideal of agonizing self-disembowelment ¡ª such are the distinctive features of what came to be known as Bushido, the ¡°way of the warrior.¡±
One doesn¡¯t know whether to be awed or appalled by the following story, told by Nitobe Inazo in his English-language classic ¡°Bushido: The Soul of Japan¡± (1900):
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