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武士道 bushidō Way of the Warrior

武士道 (bushidō), the way of the warrior, is a Japanese word for the conduct proper to a samurai. It is in the 甲陽軍鑑, a military chronicle of the early seventeenth century, and Meiji writers made it the name of a national ethic. This study follows both lives through Edo fiction and the stage into English, where Nitobe rendered it chivalry in 1900.

Japanese Scroll of Way of the Warrior (bushidō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Way of the Warrior武士道bushidō

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Abstract

武士道 (bushidō), the way of the warrior, is first known from the 甲陽軍鑑, the military chronicle of the Takeda house, written in the early seventeenth century and printed in 1656; there, and in the moral essays of 可笑記 of 1636, it names the conduct proper to a samurai, a thing a man could know or neglect. Through the Edo period it lived in fiction and on the stage as an idiom in which a samurai's honor stands or falls, 武士道が立たぬ, while the warriors' own writings used it rarely, and it became common in the Library's digitized books only in the 1880s, when that literature was set in type and when Meiji writers made the word the name of a national ethic. Nitobe Inazō 新渡戸稲造 carried the second sense into English in 1900 as chivalry, a comparison Japanese and English writers had drawn through the 1890s, and Basil Hall Chamberlain wrote in 1912 that bushidō, as a code, had been invented. Both lives are on the word, and this history holds them side by side.

Overview

The sense. A standard word, historical and ethical. デジタル大辞泉 defines it as 《日本の武士階級に発達した道徳。鎌倉時代から発達し、江戸時代に儒学思想と結合して完成した。忠誠・勇敢・犠牲・信義・廉恥・礼節・名誉・質素・情愛などを尊重した》, the morality that grew up among Japan's warrior class, developing from the Kamakura period and completed in the Edo period in union with Confucian thought; it honored loyalty, courage, sacrifice, good faith, a sense of shame, courtesy, honor, frugality and affection; 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives its earliest example 《本より武士道不案内なれば》 from the 甲陽軍鑑, and 山川 日本史小辞典 adds that it became general as the word for samurai morality itself 《近代に入ってから》, only in the modern period [1]. The English word bushido is defined by Merriam-Webster as a feudal-military Japanese code of behavior valuing honor above life [2]. The word it was set beside in 1900, chivalry, has more senses than 武士道 covers: mounted men-at-arms, martial valor, gallant or distinguished gentlemen, the system, spirit, or customs of medieval knighthood, the qualities of the ideal knight [3]. 武士道 covers only the last two, and only by analogy; for the knights themselves and their service of God and of women Japanese has 騎士道 (kishidō), and an example of 1907 in the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 draws the line: 《日本人の武士道は西洋の騎士道の如く婦人を崇拝せぬ代りに》, the Japanese bushidō, instead of worshipping women as the chivalry of the West does [4].

The words. 武士 (bushi) is the warrior of the samurai class; 道 (dō, michi) is a way, as in 茶道 and 書道, the practice and the conduct proper to a calling. The reading is ぶしどう, in the old kana ぶしだう, as the Meiji dictionary heads it [5] and as an Edo print glosses it beside the characters [6]. The older word is 武道 (budō), and in the 甲陽軍鑑 it is also the more common: Saeki Shin'ichi 佐伯真一, counting from an indexed edition of the whole work, finds 39 uses of 武士道 against 65 of 武道, as Oleg Benesch reports [7]. The dictionaries name the older ways of saying the thing, もののふの道, 弓矢とる身の習, 侍道 [1], and the Confucian counter-term of the Edo period, 士道, which grounds the warrior's duty in the moral way rather than in readiness to die [1].

The text in English. Of the bilingual dictionaries read for this history, the earliest to carry the word is the third edition of Satow and Ishibashi's English-Japanese dictionary, of 1904, which gives it as the Japanese for duty of the samurai [8]; its editions of 1876 and 1879 were not seen. Inoue Jūkichi 井上十吉's Japanese-English dictionary of 1909 heads it The way of knighthood; chivalry; bushido [9], and Kenkyūsha's, edited by Takenobu Yoshitarō, keeps two senses apart, the Japanese code of the warrior and the Western knighthood and chivalry [10]. JMdict gives Bushido; samurai code of chivalry [11], and Merriam-Webster the feudal-military … code of behavior [2]. What each keeps and loses is the subject of the English section below.

The historical record

Early seventeenth century, printed 1656, the 甲陽軍鑑, the military chronicle of the Takeda house. Attributed to Kōsaka Masanobu 高坂昌信 and compiled by Obata Kagenori 小幡景憲, it circulated in manuscript and was first printed in 1656 [12]; the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 dates it to the early seventeenth century [1], and among its manuscripts the union catalogue records a privately held transcript of a copy whose colophon is dated 1621, which was not seen for this history [12]. The line the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 cites as the word's earliest use stands in chapter 29, on the samurai the commander sends from his headquarters to carry orders to the front: the ones unversed in war, finding the enemy still far off, swagger and ride about where there is no need, 本より武士道不案内なれは, being ignorant of bushidō to begin with [13][1]. In this book the word names what a warrior knows or does not know about fighting and conduct, and it is the rarer of two words for it: 武道, which the same dictionary attests in that sense from the 太平記 of the late fourteenth century, is older, and here more common [14][7]. Kasaya Kazuhiko 笠谷和比古 counts thirty uses of 武士道 in the work, thirty-four in the print of 1699 [15].

1636, Joraishi 如儡子, 可笑記, moral essays. Dated by its author in 1636 and in print by 1642, it looks back on the age of war: 此五十年以前まてハ日本国中が合戦乃時分にて人乃子共芸学文せされとも。武士道かんようと心かけし故に, until fifty years ago the whole country was at war, and though children learned neither the arts nor letters, they set their hearts on bushidō as the one thing needful, and so [16]. The essayist sets the word in the age of war, half a century behind him.

1685, Hishikawa Moronobu 菱川師宣, 〈大和絵〉古今武士道絵づくし, a picture book. Published in Edo by Urokogataya Sanzaemon 鱗形屋三左衛門, it is a book of scenes of famous warriors, Kiso Yoshinaka and Kumagai Naozane among them, and its title calls them bushidō past and present [17]. The word stands on the cover of a popular illustrated book.

1716, 葉隠, the dictated sayings of Yamamoto Tsunetomo 山本常朝. Taken down by Tashiro Tsuramoto 田代陣基 and finished about 1716, it holds the most quoted sentence in which the word appears, 武士道と云は、死ぬ事と見付たり, I have found that bushidō is dying [18][1]. The book was kept within the Saga domain, forbidden to be made public, and became widely read only from the middle of Meiji [18].

1744, Ejima Kiseki 江島其磧, 其磧諸国物語, a book of popular fiction. Printed in 1744, after its author's death in 1735 or 1736, so that the year is the printing's and not the writing's [6][19], it tells of a man whose wife was killed: 妻女の敵をとらねば立ず。今夜中に右内が居る所をさがし討とめておきくに手向ずしては武士道たゝずと覚悟きはめ, unless he avenged his wife he could not stand; he made up his mind that unless he found where 右内 was that very night, cut him down and offered him to Okiku, his bushidō would not stand, the word glossed ぶしだう [6]. Here it is the idiom of the fiction and the stage: a samurai's honor, which a wrong leaves standing or fallen.

1817 and 1825, Tsuruya Nanboku 鶴屋南北, plays for the Edo stage. In his plays as the collected edition 大南北全集 prints them in 1925, the word is the same idiom. In 桜姫東文章, first played in 1817, the samurai Inanoya Hanbei 稲野谷半兵衛 says that unless he speaks, 武士道が立ちませぬ, my bushidō would not stand [20]. 東海道四谷怪談 opened at the 中村座 in 1825 on a double bill with 仮名手本忠臣蔵 [21]; in the text the edition prints under that title, the retainer 又之丞, about to cut his belly, turns on the ghost of his servant Kohei 小平 who holds him back: 猶も武士道捨てさするか, would you make me throw away my bushidō as well?, glossed ぶしだう [22]. The version played in Osaka the next year, under the title いろは仮名四谷怪談, was rewritten for that city by the 角座's playwrights [21][22]. In it, as printed in 1922, Iemon declines a new marriage while his wife's father lies unavenged, since if people said he had divorced her because he was afraid to face her father's killer, 拙者武士道は相立たず, my bushidō would not stand, glossed ぶしだう [23].

1878, Obata Tokujirō 小幡篤次郎, preface to his translation of Mill's essays on religion. Signed 22 July 1878, it argues that Mill proved a morality could stand outside religion from one example only, ancient Greece, and that had Mill lived a few years longer he would have learned of teachings 漢土孔孟ノ教我武士道ノ如キ宗教外ニ大振シ世ヲ化シ人ヲ動スノ教, like the teaching of Confucius and Mencius in China and our bushidō, teachings outside religion that flourished, transformed the world and moved men [24]. In the sources read it is the earliest sentence to set the word beside a foreign ethical system and call it a morality of its own. It is the argument of Nitobe's preface, where a Belgian jurist's No religion! How do you impart moral education? is answered with bushidō [25], twenty-two years before Nitobe.

1882–1900, Edo literature in type. Among the books in the National Diet Library's digital collection, those carrying the word number between none and four a year from 1868 to 1881, sixteen in 1882, fifty-six in 1886, and eighty-five in 1896; against the books carrying 日本 in the same year, read by the same machine, that is under one in a thousand in 1880, one in a hundred and twenty-five in 1882, about one in forty in 1886 and about one in twenty in 1896 [26]. By their titles, most of the books of 1882 to 1886 that carry the word are Edo tales and plays newly set in type, beginning with the 今古実録 series, and in at least twenty-six of those hundred and forty-four the search's short window shows the idiom of honor standing or falling [26]. The editors of such series may have reworded what they set, so these books date the typesetting, not the wording. Benesch names the cause without the word: a surge in the popularity of Edo-period works such as the heroic epics A Treasury of Loyal Retainers and Nansō satomi hakkenden in the 1880s [27].

1888, Ozaki Yukio 尾崎行雄, dispatches from England. Benesch finds the modern discourse beginning with Ozaki's comments on bushidō as a potential counterpart to English chivalry and the English 'gentlemanship' that he idealized, in his dispatch to the Chōya shinbun of September 1888 [27]. From 1889 the army's draft field regulations call the soldier's spirit the nation's own bushidō, and from 1890 the history textbooks use the word to name a morality of the warriors of the past [26].

1896 and 1898, the Japanese dictionaries. 帝国大辞典 of 1896 uses the word to define another, under 弓箭: 「きゆうせんの道」といへば、武士道といふに同じく, to say the way of bow and arrow is the same as to say bushidō [28]. Ochiai Naobumi 落合直文's ことばの泉, whose preface is dated 25 June 1898, heads it ぶしだう: 武士道。臣の、君に對する道、又、士の、將に對する道、又、士と、士と對する道などの總稱。義を重んずる道德。, the way of a retainer toward his lord, of a warrior toward his general, and of warrior toward warrior, taken together; a morality that values righteousness [5].

What is not a source. 士道, the Confucian way of the warrior associated with Yamaga Sokō 山鹿素行, is a counter-term, not an earlier form [1]. The older expressions もののふの道 and 弓矢とる身の習 are other words for the warrior's way, not the word's ancestors [1]. European chivalry is Nitobe's comparison, and the Japanese for it is 騎士道 [4].

The word in English

1896, Nitobe, The Far East. In an English-language monthly published in Tokyo, February 1896: We cannot deny that we are a sensitive people. We have been so trained. Sensitiveness is a trait of samuraism, of bushidō, as Benesch quotes it [27]. Takenobu's English article The Bushido or 'Ways of Samurai' followed in the magazine 太陽 that August [27].

1898, Inoue Jūkichi, 普通和文英訳, a textbook of translation. A model passage has retainers answer their lord, ending 武士道立たず, and the English beside it reads The retainers unanimously answered: "It is really as you say. It would then be a blot upon our military honour." [29]. It is the earliest English for the idiom in the sources read, and it is military honour, not a code. The same year Inoue Utarō 井上歌郎's book of exercises in the other direction, 英文和訳例題集, sets a couplet from Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake, But, not for clan, nor kindred's cause, / Will I depart from honor's laws, beside 名譽ノ法(武士道), the laws of honor (bushidō) [30][31].

1900, Nitobe Inazō, Bushido: The Soul of Japan. The Japanese word, which I have roughly rendered Chivalry, is, in the original, more expressive than Horsemanship. Bu-shi-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. And a page later: Bushido, then, is the code of moral principles which the knights were required or instructed to observe. It is not a written code [25]. Nitobe sets the word itself equal to chivalry, a comparison Ozaki had drawn in 1888 and English observers of Japan by the end of the decade [27]; he adds the word code, and says himself that no code was written.

1904, Satow and Ishibashi, An English-Japanese Dictionary of the Spoken Language, third edition. Under Duty, the line …… of the samurai, bushidō (武士道)., the dots standing for the headword: the dictionary gives 武士道 as the Japanese for the English duty of the samurai [8]. The equivalent it chooses is the samurai's duty, not his chivalry.

1909, Inoue Jūkichi, Inouye's Comprehensive Japanese-English Dictionary. Eleven years after he rendered the idiom as military honour, the same author heads the word Bushidō (武士道), n. The way of knighthood; chivalry; bushido., with the example 彼は武士道の鼓吹を以て畢生の事業とす, He is making it his life-work to stimulate bushido [9]. The idiom's military honour is not among the senses, and chivalry stands second.

1912, Chamberlain, The Invention of a New Religion. The pamphlet is aimed at the official religion of loyalty to the throne and does not name Nitobe: As for Bushido, so modern a thing is it that neither Kaempfer, Siebold, Satow, nor Rein--all men knowing their Japan by heart--ever once allude to it in their voluminous writings. The cause of their silence is not far to seek: Bushido was unknown until a decade or two ago! THE VERY WORD APPEARS IN NO DICTIONARY, NATIVE OR FOREIGN, BEFORE THE YEAR 1900. [32]. The last sentence is an error: the Japanese dictionaries of 1896 and 1898 carry the word, one in a definition and one as a headword [28][5]. What Chamberlain says of the code, that it was not an institution of old Japan, is another matter, and the reading below takes it up.

1939, Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, edited by Takenobu Yoshitarō. In the printing of 1939, reproduced in America in 1942: bushidō (武士道) n., under the label 日本の, Japanese, Bushidō; the code of the warrior, and under 西洋の, Western, the precepts of knighthood; the way of knighthood; chivalry, the words the precepts of set in the book's own brackets [10]. The editor, who had written the English article of 1896 [33][27], keeps the Japanese word and the European one apart.

Today. JMdict gives Bushido; samurai code of chivalry [11].

A reading

The word has two lives, and the scholarship divides according to which one it looks at. Chamberlain saw only the second and called it invented [32]. Kasaya reads the first as the mainstream of samurai thought: for him the 甲陽軍鑑 is the word's first occurrence, agreed by all [15], and until the middle of the eighteenth century bushidō existed in a form that struggled for supremacy with Confucianism, in Benesch's translation of him [7]; by the end of the Edo period, he grants, the word may have lost its place in everyday use while it lived on in books [15][7]. Benesch reads the same texts as a handful: in the 118 pre-Meiji texts gathered in the 武士道全書 of 1942 he finds the word in thirteen, ten of them written after 1700 and seven of those leaning on an earlier text for it [7]. He calls the word an obscure literary term before the 1890s, and cites for its absence from Edo-period popular culture his own search of six of the most popular samurai stories, which found it in none, while granting that this does not preclude the appearance of the term bushidō in other, lesser-known works [27][7]. Saeki reads the 甲陽軍鑑's bushidō as holding, among other things, a drive toward an anarchic freedom, the freedom to kill for revenge [34].

I read the first life as plainer than Kasaya's and wider than Benesch's. In the seventeenth century the word names the conduct proper to a samurai and his honor, beside 武道, the older word [14]. By the early eighteenth century, in 葉隠, it names a position, the warrior's readiness to die, which the Confucian writers' 士道 opposed [18][1]. In the warriors' own writings it stayed rare, as Benesch's census shows [7]. But it was not confined to a few learned texts. It stood on the cover of Moronobu's picture book [17], and it was the idiom of Kiseki's fiction and of Nanboku's stage, where a man's bushidō stands or falls [6][20][22]. 東海道四谷怪談, which carries it, was first played on a double bill with 忠臣蔵, the play in which Benesch found no trace of the word [21][22][7]. His census answers the question of the warriors' writings; his absence from Edo-period popular culture is the claim these plays answer, and absence is too strong. Obscure is right for the word as the name of a code, because that is the second life, and it begins in Meiji. Obata's preface of 1878 already makes bushidō a morality to set beside Confucius and outside religion [24]; Ozaki sets it beside the English gentleman in 1888 [27]; the dictionaries take it up in 1896 and 1898 [28][5]; Nitobe gives it to English as chivalry in 1900 [25]. Chamberlain was wrong about the dictionaries and right that no code of that name had governed old Japan.

Whoever hangs these three characters has both lives, and neither is false. Read as code of chivalry, the scroll carries the reading of 1900 and of the Meiji nation. Read as the way a warrior must keep, or his honor that must not fall, it carries the word as the Edo stage spoke it. I read it the second way, because that is what the word meant for the longer part of its history.

Notes

References

  1. 「武士道」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, 日本大百科全書 (ニッポニカ), 山川 日本史小辞典 改訂新版, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/武士道-124463
  2. "bushido", Merriam-Webster Dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bushido
  3. "chivalry", Merriam-Webster Dictionary, senses 1–5. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chivalry
  4. 「騎士道」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/騎士道-473536
  5. 落合直文『ことばの泉 : 日本大辞典』, 大倉書店, 1898, preface dated 明治三十一年六月廿五日 (scan 4), the entry at scan 618; the copy carries no colophon, and the Library dates it by the preface. National Diet Library pid 862875. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862875/1/618
  6. 江島其磧『其磧諸国物語』, 5 vols., 菊屋喜兵衛, printed 延享元年 (1744), scan 49. National Diet Library pid 2533877. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533877/1/49 · the work record at the 国書データベース: https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/149326
  7. Oleg Benesch, Bushido: The Creation of a Martial Ethic in Late Meiji Japan, PhD dissertation, University of British Columbia, 2011, pp. 6, 7 n. 20, 8–11. https://scholar.archive.org/work/skh5bg7rbvbspff33xgcvffige/access/wayback/https://open.library.ubc.ca/media/download/pdf/24/1.0071589/2
  8. Ernest Mason Satow and Ishibashi Masakata, An English-Japanese Dictionary of the Spoken Language, third edition, revised by E. M. Hobart-Hampden and H. G. Parlett, 1904, p. 262, s.v. Duty. Internet Archive englishjapanesed00satouoft. https://archive.org/details/englishjapanesed00satouoft
  9. Jukichi Inouye, Inouye's Comprehensive Japanese-English Dictionary, 三省堂, 1909, p. 130. Internet Archive inouyesjapanesee00inou. https://archive.org/details/inouyesjapanesee00inou
  10. Takenobu Yoshitarō, ed., Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, American edition, Harvard University Press, 1942, photolithographed from the printing of 1939, p. 128.
  11. 武士道, JMdict, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/word/武士道
  12. 「甲陽軍鑑」, the work record, 国書データベース, 国文学研究資料館, with the 国書総目録 holdings (元和七奥書本; 明暦二版). https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/26528
  13. 『甲陽軍鑑』, 明暦二年 (1656) print, 巻十上, leaf 20 recto, the copy of the 鵜飼文庫, 国文学研究資料館, canvas 484. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/200019217/484
  14. 「武道」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/武道-125374
  15. 笠谷和比古「武士道概念の史的展開」, 『日本研究』 35, 国際日本文化研究センター, 2007, pp. 231–274, pp. 235, 236, 271. https://nichibun.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/574/files/nk35010.pdf
  16. 如儡子『可笑記』, the author's colophon 寛永十三年 (1636), the copy of 関西大学, 国書データベース, canvases 156 and 245. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100388739/156 · the same passage in the National Diet Library copy, vol. 4, scan 22: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2554536/1/22
  17. Hishikawa Moronobu, 〈大和絵〉古今武士道絵づくし, Urokogataya Sanzaemon, Edo, 1685, British Museum 1929,1001,0.4. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1929-1001-0-4 · the work record at the 国書データベース: https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/1104934
  18. 「葉隠」, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, 日本大百科全書 (ニッポニカ), デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/葉隠-113466
  19. 「江島其磧」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 日本大百科全書 (ニッポニカ), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/江島其磧-36421
  20. 鶴屋南北 著, 坪内逍遥, 渥美清太郎 編『大南北全集』 第8巻, 春陽堂, 1925, 桜姫東文章, p. 131, scan 89; the 解説, scan 10. National Diet Library pid 1017144. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1017144/1/89
  21. 「東海道四谷怪談」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/東海道四谷怪談-103199
  22. 鶴屋南北 著, 坪内逍遥, 渥美清太郎 編『大南北全集』 第12巻, 春陽堂, 1925, 東海道四谷怪談, p. 744, scan 412; the 解説 on the Osaka version, scan 16. National Diet Library pid 1017182. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1017182/1/412
  23. 塚本哲三 編『脚本集』 下, 有朋堂書店, 1922, いろは仮名四谷怪談, scan 115. National Diet Library pid 970249. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/970249/1/115
  24. ミル 著, 小幡篤次郎 訳『弥児氏宗教三論』, 丸家善七, translator's preface signed 明治十一年七月廿二日 (1878), scans 2–3. National Diet Library pid 815044. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/815044/1/2
  25. Nitobe Inazō, Bushido: The Soul of Japan: An Exposition of Japanese Thought, first edition, Leeds & Biddle, Philadelphia, 1900, copyright 1899, preface pp. v–vi, pp. 3–4. Internet Archive bushidosouljapa00nitogoog. https://archive.org/details/bushidosouljapa00nitogoog
  26. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search for 武士道 by year of publication, 1868–1900. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/fulltext?keyword=武士道
  27. Oleg Benesch, Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushidō in Modern Japan, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 4 and n. 8, 5, 44, 51, 83–84 and n. 31.
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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 武士道 (bushidō)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/bushido.