Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/168

 As the commencement of the Kamakura epoch, so in the early days of the Yedo era, frugality of life and simplicity of costume were held to be characteristic of the true samurai, though on his arms, his armour, and his war-horse no expenditure seemed extravagant. Indifference to money or material gain of any kind marked all his transactions, and borrowing or lending was also eschewed, on the ground that no to-morrow existed for the soldier (bushi), since, holding his life always at the command of duty or of his lord, he could not logically enter into any engagement relating to a future date. Evidently that extreme view of the uncertainty of life was not likely to commend itself to the civilian, who incurred no such risks, and there is little reason to think that the samurai's contempt for money in any and every shape ever found many imitators among the people at large, or indeed that it continued to be a conspicuous trait of soldiers themselves after the middle of the seventeenth century. Some customs born of the time when the sway of the sword was complete, did survive, however. Thus, if a husband detected his wife in the commission of an act of infidelity, he was empowered to kill the woman and her paramour forthwith, and if two samurai quarrelled, both were punished without distinction, the principle being that lack of sufficient moral decision to refrain from fighting disgraced a soldier no less than intemperate truculence. It is not just, perhaps, to include this