Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/224

 punishment instead of leaving it to the wronged person. The passion of revenge has always and everywhere shown itself one of the most durable of human motives. In Japan it inspired untiring, implacable tenacity of deadly purpose. Men devoted long years to pursuing the slayer of a father or some less intimate relative; abandoned fortune and position in order to carry out the quest, and did not allow extreme hardships to divert them from their aim. But if these displays of resolution and endurance elicit applause, there is generally to be found in the circumstances that gave rise to the vendetta some revolting exhibition of treachery, vindictiveness, or ferocity. A man defeated in a fencing-match to which he has himself challenged his opponent, subsequently waylays the latter, and shoots him from behind, or hires assassins to destroy him, or contrives his disgrace by preferring false charges officially against him. A samurai, with the aid of his paramour, inveigles a rival to a drinking-bout and slays him as he lies unconscious under the influence of wine. A soldier who sees another promoted over his head, devises an elaborate scheme to convict him of conspiracy which he has never contemplated. Such acts, forming the prelude to vengeance achieved in despite of great difficulties and lengthy delays, are almost sufficiently numerous to lower the general standard of the bushi's morality; but when the spirit they displayed is balanced against the spirit they