Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/246

230 duty which honourably distinguish the descendants of the former Samurai.

Next after loyalty in the Japanese scale of virtues stands filial piety. The State being composed of families, if the family is badly managed, the State cannot be well governed. If the child is disobedient to his parents, he is not likely to prove a loyal and obedient subject when he grows to manhood. Hence the necessity, from a political point of view, of filial piety. On the extreme importance attached to this virtue both in China and Japan it is needless to dilate.

Among the chief duties of a Samurai to his lord, or of a child towards his parent, was that of revenge. The forgiveness of injuries had no place in the moral code of the Japanese of this time. No more stern obligation rested on them than to execute dire vengeance for the unmerited death or disgrace of a parent or lord. That this was not in theory only, there are many well-authenticated instances in real life to show. It applied to women as well as to men, though in their case, as in that of the lower classes of society, it was regarded more or less as a counsel of perfection. If they did rise to the occasion, all the more honour was paid them. The drama and fiction of modern Japan are full of stories of revenge (kataki-uchi), and this passion occupies the same place of honour with their novelists that love does in European fiction.

In presence of the obligations imposed by loyalty and filial duty, life was regarded as of no account. When we remember the humane Buddhist influences to which Japan was so long subjected, and the ancient national character reflected in the mildly sentimental Heian literature, the disregard of human life which pervades history