Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/190

 blossom" of the spring; the "first note of the nightingale." So in war, the "first to ride up to the foe," or the "wielder of the first spear," was held in high honour, and the bushi strove for that distinction as his principal duty. It necessarily resulted, too, not only from the nature of the weapons employed, but also from the immense labour devoted by the true bushi to perfecting himself in their use, that displays of individual prowess were deemed the chief object in a battle. Some tactical formations borrowed from China were, indeed, familiar to the Japanese, but the intelligent use of these and their modification to suit the circumstances of the time belonged to the Ashikaga epoch and to the great generals of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Prior to that time a battle resembled a monster fencing match. Men fought as individuals, not as units of a tactical formation, and the engagement consisted of a number of personal duels, all in simultaneous progress. It was the bushi's habit to proclaim his name and titles in the presence of the enemy, sometimes adding from his own record or his father's any details that might tend to dispirit his foes. Then some one advancing to cross weapons with him, would perform the same ceremony of self-introduction, and if either found anything to upbraid in the other's antecedents or family history, he did not fail to make loud reference to it, such a device being counted efficacious as a means of disturbing the hearer's sang-froid. The duel- 162