Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/222

 Stand fast." As he uttered the last word the spears clashed in his body.

There is scarcely any limit to the number of historical incidents illustrating this phase of the bushi's character. They seem to indicate that heroic loyalty was the rudimentary virtue of the Military epoch. Before formulating any general conclusion of that kind, however, it will be wise to consider some of the other attributes revealed by the records of the bushi's acts.

The history of humanity shows that moral principles have never been allowed to interfere greatly with the consummation of ambitious designs. No contradiction of that experience is to be found in the story of the samurai. If loyalty and fidelity were conspicuously displayed by him in a subordinate position, he sometimes violated both without hesitation for the sake of grasping power or climbing to social eminence. When Ashikaga Takauji, one of the principal Kamakura generals, was about to march from Kamakura to Kyōtō at a crisis in the history of the Hōjō's supremacy, suspicions were cast upon his loyalty, and the Hōjō Vicegerent asked him to sign an oath of fidelity. He did so without hesitation, and, a few days later, accepted the Emperor's commission to destroy the Hōjō. It would not be easy to find many instances of treachery following so close on the heels of asseverations of loyalty, but there are almost innumerable examples of men plotting against those