Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/428

416 divine,—obedience even unto death. With them, as with us, it was birth and breeding that counted, not money. The Samurai's word was his bond, and he was taught to be gentle as well as brave. Doubtless, some well-marked shades of local colour distinguished Japanese chivalry from that of the West. The practice of suicide (harakiri) as part of the code of honour, where our own ancestors had the duel, at once occurs to the mind as a special feature. Even more so does the absence of gallantry towards the fair sex. No Japanese Ariosto would have dreamt of beginning his epic of chivalry with the words

"God and the ladies!" was the motto of the European knight. But neither God nor the ladies inspired any enthusiasm in the Samurai's breast. Still, it is impossible not to see that, despite varying details, the same general trend of conditions produced kindred results on the two opposite sides of the globe. It is to be observed, too, that in Japan as in Europe the living reality of the earlier chivalry faded at last, under a centralised absolutism, into pageant and etiquette, though in the East as in the West a strong tinge of chivalrous feeling has survived in the upper class even to the present day.

The Japanese craze for altering names was exemplified in 1878, by the change of the historical and genuinely native word Samurai to that of Shizoku, a Chinese term of precisely the same meaning. Under this new designation, the Samurai still continue to exist, as one of the three classes into which Japanese society is divided.

In the feudal times, which lasted till A. D. 1871, the Samurai lived in his Daimyō's castle, attended his Daimyō on all occasions, and received from him rations for himself and his family,—rations which were calculated in so many koku, that is, bags of rice, annually. One of the early measures of the new Imperial administration was to commute these incomes for a lump sum, to be paid in government bonds. Optional at first, in