Two Japanese dictionaries, the デジタル大辞泉 and the 日本国語大辞典, give the samurai's spirit its own word, 士魂 (shikon), and define it so. JMdict, the open Japanese–English dictionary, gives 士魂 as manly spirit; soul of a samurai. 武士魂 has no headword of its own in them, nor in JMdict; they hold its parts. The dictionaries also call the sword the samurai's soul, 武士の魂, a different phrase from this word.
武士 (bushi) is the samurai. One dictionary defines them as those who, in former times, mastered the martial arts and took part in war. In the medieval and early modern periods they were the ruling class. 魂 (tamashii), soul or spirit, is often read damashii at the close of a word, as in 負けじ魂, the spirit that will not lose. In that use one dictionary also gives it as resolve.
In Santō Kyōden's novel 双蝶記, one man sets a hundred ryō before another. At once the other bends his 武士魂, his pride as a samurai, and changes his words. The print of 1813 rubies 魂 たましひ, with no voicing mark.
In the fourth part of Kyokutei Bakin's novel 南総里見八犬伝, a part dated 1820, 房八 lies with a deep wound. Bakin uses the word of the resolve that urges 小文吾 to give him the mercy stroke, for that too is compassion. He rubies it with もののふ, a word for a man of arms, and a typeset of 1885–86 prints it mononofu-tamashii. Where 武士 stands alone on the same leaf, he rubies it ぶし. The voiced reading, ぶしだましい, is in a book of 1917 read for the history.
A translated history of Washington's war, of about 1870, uses 武士魂 of an American army. Of Washington's orders to his soldiers it says that their aim was to make soldiers of true 武士魂. A notebook of Masaoka Shiki, catalogued 1882–91, sets 武士魂 beside the katakana for knight and chivalry. On the next page it writes of the 武士魂 proper to Japan.
In a talk of 1905, Natsume Sōseki said the Japanese had long spoken of 武士魂, though they had been losing to the Westerners. Even the 武士魂 they prided themselves on, he said, had barely been kept alive in the midst of losing. He asked whether the Japanese, himself among them, had talked of it so recklessly from a certain need.
English has samurai spirit in Lafcadio Hearn's prose by 1895, in a sentence that gives no Japanese word for the spirit. Hepburn's dictionary, in a printing dated 1903, has no entry for the compound. In the full-text indexes searched, the romanized word reaches a dated English book in 1985, in a glossary that renders it as warrior spirit.
Whether you take it as the samurai's pride or as the samurai's resolve is yours.
武士魂 has no known maker: its earliest use known here is in a novel of Santō Kyōden printed in 1813, and it is built like 大和魂, with 魂 closing the compound as the spirit proper to a thing.
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 武士魂.
