忠義礼誠名誉仁勇義 chūgi rei makoto meiyo jin yū gi Seven Virtues of Bushido
This is a philological study of the nine-character phrase 忠義礼誠名誉仁勇義, the seven virtues of bushidō. It traces the string's own compositional history — from Nitobe Inazō's English chapter titles of 1900, through two Japanese translations of 1908 and 1938, to the order this house first sold in 2000 — and shows that no Japanese book printed before 1945 lists these seven characters together.
Abstract
忠義礼誠名誉仁勇義, chūgi rei makoto meiyo jin yū gi, is a modern composite: nine characters read as seven virtue-words, one of them, 義, appearing twice. Its source is an English book, Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900) by Nitobe Inazō 新渡戸稲造, which never gives the seven a Japanese form; the single-character reduction is the 1938 Iwanami translation by Yanaihara Tadao 矢内原忠雄, and no Japanese book printed before 1945 lists these seven characters together as a set. The phrase seven virtues of bushido enters English print only in 1998, and the order read here was first set by the house in August 2000 — before any English book on record used the Japanese names.
Overview
The sense. Nine characters read as seven virtue-words: 忠義・礼・誠・名誉・仁・勇・義, with 義 appearing twice, bound in 忠義 at the head and alone at the foot. They are the seven virtues a Japanese scholar chose to explain his country to the West, given their Japanese names afterward by his translators.
The words. 忠義 chūgi, loyalty: the dictionaries say 私欲をさしはさまないで、まごころを尽くして主君や国家に仕えること, to serve one's lord or country wholeheartedly, without self-interest, first attested in the 続日本紀 for the year 783 [1]. 礼 rei, propriety, the modern form of 禮. 誠 makoto, sincerity. 名誉 meiyo, honor, the modern form of 名譽. 仁 jin, benevolence. 勇 yū, courage. 義 gi, rectitude: 五常の一, one of the five constant virtues of Confucian ethics, 仁・義・礼・智・信 [1]. Two of the seven are compounds and five are single characters, so 義 stands twice. The reading follows the order of the head; Nitobe's order, which is also Yanaihara's, is gi, yū, jin, rei, makoto, meiyo, chūgi.
The text in English. Nitobe's own chapter titles — Rectitude or Justice, Courage, Benevolence, Politeness, Veracity or Truthfulness, Honor, The Duty of Loyalty — are the English original; every later list translates back and forth from them [2][3]. The house's own English keeps two of his words, Rectitude and Benevolence, and chooses Valor, Respect, Honesty, Honor, Loyalty for the rest.
The historical record
1899 to 1900, Nitobe Inazō, Bushido: The Soul of Japan, an English book. Nitobe signed his preface at Malvern, Pennsylvania, in the Twelfth Month of 1899, and the Leeds & Biddle Company of Philadelphia printed Bushido: The Soul of Japan: An Exposition of Japanese Thought in 1900, copyright 1899. Its contents, from the first edition's own page: Bushido as an Ethical System · Sources of Bushido · Rectitude or Justice · Courage, the Spirit of Daring and Bearing · Benevolence, the Feeling of Distress · Politeness · Veracity or Truthfulness · Honor · The Duty of Loyalty · Education and Training of Samurai · Self-Control · The Institutions of Suicide and Revenge · The Sword, the Soul of the Samurai · The Training and Position of Woman · The Influence of Bushido · Is Bushido Still Alive? · The Future of Bushido [2]. The book prints no Japanese script. Where Nitobe gives a Japanese word he romanizes it, and the one list of virtues he does give is not this one, in the chapter titled Education and Training of Samurai in the first edition and Education and Training of a Samurai in the tenth, revised edition — the sentence is the same in both [2][3]:
The tripod that supported the framework of Bushido was said to be Chi, Jin, Yu, respectively Wisdom, Benevolence, and Courage.
That is the Confucian triad 智仁勇, and it has three members. The seven are the chapters, and the chapters are Nitobe's plan for a Western reader: rectitude first, then the courage to act on it, benevolence to temper it, politeness as its form, veracity, honor, and loyalty last, as the virtue that binds the rest to a lord.
1908, Sakurai Ōson 櫻井鷗村, 『武士道』, the first Japanese translation. 丁未出版社 gave the seven chapters Japanese titles, two characters each, with small-type subheads:
第三章 正義 · 第四章 勇氣 ⟨敢爲堅忍の精神⟩ · 第五章 仁愛 ⟨不忍の心⟩ · 第六章 禮儀 · 第七章 至誠 ⟨信實⟩ · 第八章 名譽 · 第九章 忠節
Two-character words, every one, and for loyalty 忠節, not 忠義. The body of the translation uses both words, 忠義 twenty-four times and 忠節 thirty [4]. The design's seven are not yet here.
1938, Yanaihara Tadao, the translation Japan reads. Yanaihara's translation appeared as 岩波文庫 1795 in 1938, 148 pages. Its contents, as the National Diet Library catalogues its digitized copy of that printing:
第三章 義 · 第四章 勇・敢爲堅忍の精神 · 第五章 仁・惻隱の心 · 第六章 禮 · 第七章 誠 · 第八章 名譽 · 第九章 忠義
Here the seven become the seven of the design: single characters for five of them, 名譽 and 忠義 for the other two, in Nitobe's order. The list 義勇仁礼誠名誉忠義 that Japanese web pages today credit to Nitobe is Yanaihara's table of contents. The Iwanami edition was revised, the Japanese Wikipedia reports, by his son Yanaihara Isaku in 1974, and it is in print as 岩波文庫 青118-1 [5].
Japanese print to 1945. The National Diet Library's full-text search, run on eleven spellings, finds no Japanese book before 1945 that prints these seven as a list: 忠義礼誠名誉仁勇義 in the design's order, none; 義勇仁礼誠名誉忠義 in Nitobe's, none, in either character form [6]. What the search does find is a homonym: 七徳, the seven virtues, appears in 9,531 books, and it means the seven martial virtues of the Zuo zhuan, 武の七つの徳, which the dictionaries spell out: 暴を禁じ、兵を治め、大を保ち、功を定め、民を安んじ、衆を和せしめ、財を豊かにすること, to forbid violence, lay up arms, keep the great, fix merit, settle the people, harmonize the many, and enrich the treasury [7]. That list has nothing to do with Nitobe, and a Japanese reader who meets 武士道の七徳 hears it first.
1998 to 2011, the phrase in English print. The Internet Archive's full-text index finds the phrase seven virtues of bushido first in a 1998 novel, where a character promises to bore his listener with them later, and its first appearances with the Japanese names in two children's series of 2008: Sandy Fussell's Samurai Kids, which prints the list GI YU JIN REI MAKOTO MEIYO CHUSEI, with 忠誠 for the seventh, and Chris Bradford's Young Samurai, where a master recites rectitude, courage, benevolence, respect and the rest [8]. After 2008 the phrase is a commonplace of martial-arts writing, self-help and fiction. The English Wikipedia article on bushidō counts eight virtues as defined by Nitobe Inazō, adding 自制 jisei, self-control, the title of his eleventh chapter, and its list otherwise matches Yanaihara's seven [9].
2000 to 2011, this house's own pages. The Wayback Machine has the house's martial-arts gallery from February 1999 with no seven in it, and a page titled Bushido: Seven Virtues from August 2000: There are seven virtues associated with Bushido (the way of the Warrior). These are depicted in Block Script below, then Gi, The Right Decision, Rectitude · Yu, Valor · Jin, Benevolence · Rei, The Proper Behavior, Courtesy, Respect · Makoto, Complete Honesty · Meiyo, Honor and Glory · Chugi, Devotion and Loyalty — Nitobe's order [10]. The 2004 page adds a credit carried to 2011, For an excellent book on the subject see Bushido, The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe, with the wrong year, 1908; the book is 1900. A round design image from September 2000 sets the seven in a circle, 仁 at the top, 忠義 and 名誉 in the center, and writes 真 for makoto, a form later dropped for 誠 [10]. By 2006 the seven were tattoo designs, four of them the whole set; by 2011 the single designs were listed loyalty first, and the designs themselves set the seven in two columns or a ring, not in a line. Today's pages give Loyalty, Respect, Honesty, Honor, Benevolence, Valor, Rectitude and do not name Nitobe.
What is not a source. The 七徳 of the Chinese classics is a homonym, seven martial virtues from a speech in the Zuo zhuan, and the Meiji dictionaries define only that [7]. Nitobe's own triad 智仁勇 is a different list with three members [2][3]. The five constants 仁義礼智信 give the design its 仁, 義 and 礼, but as members of a list of five [1]. The Hagakure and Yamaga Sokō, whom the Japanese dictionaries name as the two poles of the word 武士道, are not behind the list. Nothing older than 1899 carries these seven together.
Today. The house's seven English words — Rectitude, Valor, Benevolence, Respect, Honesty, Honor, Loyalty — keep two of Nitobe's own words, Rectitude and Benevolence, and choose new words for the rest; the 2008 children's books and Wikipedia's list use the same set, with Righteousness and Heroic Courage for the first two [8][9]. A rendering has one job: seven English words that match one to one against the seven Japanese, in the design's order.
A reading
The nine characters are Yanaihara's seven, in an order set in 2000 that is not Nitobe's — seven virtues drawn from the chapters of Nitobe Inazō's Bushido (1900), in the Japanese of its 1938 translation.
Nitobe's order carries an argument, and this one does not follow it: he ends on loyalty because everything before it is what loyalty is owed with, and this order puts loyalty first instead.
Nine characters, seven labels, one character repeated — 義 bound in 忠義 at the head and standing alone at the foot — for virtues a Japanese scholar first wrote for a Western reader, in words that were his translators', not his own.
Notes
The 1938 contents are known from the National Diet Library's catalogue record of the digitized copy; the copy itself is reading-room only. Whether the 1974 revision changed a chapter title is unknown.
Fussell's 2008 Samurai Kids prints CHUSEI, 忠誠, where Nitobe's chapter is The Duty of Loyalty and Yanaihara's is 忠義. Both words mean loyalty; 忠義 is Yanaihara's, not Nitobe's own.
The Japanese Wikipedia article reports a 1900 Japanese reprint by 裳華房 selling fifteen thousand copies, citing the publisher's own history page.
References
- 「忠義」・「義」, 精選版日本国語大辞典 · デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/忠義-567299
- Nitobe Inazō, Bushido: The Soul of Japan: An Exposition of Japanese Thought, first edition, Leeds & Biddle, Philadelphia, 1900, copyright 1899, at the Internet Archive text layer. https://archive.org/download/bushidosouljapa00nitogoog/bushidosouljapa00nitogoog_djvu.txt
- Nitobe Inazō, Bushido: The Soul of Japan, tenth revised edition, at Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12096/12096-h/12096-h.htm
- 新渡戸稲造著・櫻井鷗村訳, 『武士道』, 丁未出版社, 1908, scan 12–13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/758905/1/12
- 新渡戸稲造著・矢内原忠雄訳, 『武士道』, 岩波文庫, 1938, National Diet Library catalogue record (contents field; copy reading-room only). https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/books/R100000002-I000000706001
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search on eleven spellings of the design's seven and Nitobe's order, zero hits before 1945 for either. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- 「七徳」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank · 辞林, 1907, scan 341. https://kotobank.jp/word/七徳-520881
- Internet Archive full-text search, "seven virtues of bushido", 74 hits, earliest 1998; Sandy Fussell, Samurai Kids, 2008; Chris Bradford, Young Samurai: The Way of the Warrior, 2008. https://be-api.us.archive.org/fts/v1/search
- "Bushido", English Wikipedia, § Eight virtues of bushido. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushido
- Takase Studios,
MartialArts/Bushido/Bushido.htmandTattooDesign/images/SevenVirtues_00A.gif, at the Wayback Machine, captures 17 August 2000, 2 September 2000, 5 June 2002, 4 December 2004, 15 August 2006, 16 September 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20000817201004/www.takase.com/MartialArts/Bushido/Bushido.htm