Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/250

 that his loyalty was not a principle observed for its own sake, but only a form of reverence or affection, primarily for his father, and secondarily for his feudal chief, whom he regarded as his father. According to that theory the Bushi-dō is an outcome of the doctrine of filial piety. But the river cannot rise higher than its source. If, as has been already shown, the parental tie was unhesitatingly sacrificed on the altar of feudal fealty, it is plainly unreasonable to suppose that the latter derived its inspiration from the former. History proves, by example after example, that not the occupant of the Throne but the Throne itself was an object of veneration in Japan. It proves also, and even less scrutiny is needed to detect the fact, that not the representative of a great house but the house itself commanded the leal services of the bushi. Again and again the individual was stripped of all authority and reduced to the position of a mere figure-head by men who were nevertheless willing to give their lives for the honour of the name he bore and the support of the family he represented. Every page of Japanese annals reveals the same spectacle,—the institution preserved, the individual ignored. And looking a little closer, it is found that the imagination of the noblest type of bushi fixed itself ultimately neither on the person of the chief he followed nor on the preservation of the house he served, but upon his own duty as a soldier, upon the way of the warrior (Bushi-dō). If he