Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/253

 the Japanese samurai derived a rule from his own ancient custom of self-sacrifice. The moral principle was Chinese; the heroic practice, Japanese. Confucius further taught contempt for money, and that part of his teaching, taken in conjunction with Mencius' doctrine that extravagance is fatal to discipline, appealed strongly to the bushi. It was from these two philosophers, also, that the Japanese learned to set the institution above the individual. What Confucius had drafted in outline, Mencius compiled in detail; namely, that while the right to rule is of divine origin, the title of the ruler depends on his personal character and his conduct of affairs; and that if he fail to establish such a title, he should be removed by a member of his own family, or by one of his chief officials, or by a "minister of heaven." The guiding principles of the bushi's practice are here easily recognised. The nobler portion of those principles commanded little obedience amid the usurpations and extravagances of the Court nobility, but when the foundations of military feudalism began to be laid, the five relationships and the duties connected with them acquired a new value from the strength and security they conferred on the provincial organisations. Then, again, the old custom of "associated death" was revived. Men sacrificed themselves, sometimes singly, sometimes in hundreds, in order to accompany a liege lord beyond the grave to continue in the other world the