ity just as warriors (bushi [24]) of earlier times had relied on Confucian-
ism. He lamented what he saw as the decline of public morality and cited
the Bible and European history to show how Christianity not only endorses
heroic deeds but also ennobles them. Uemura’s theme of Christian and
Confucian compatibility reappeared in Bushidô: The Soul of Japan(1900)
by Nitobe Inazô [25] (1862–1933), a Quaker. Writing in English for a
Western audience, however, Nitobe’s goals differed from those of Uemura.
Nitobe sought to introduce the newly victorious Japan to the court of
world opinion as a civilized nation with a sound system of moral education
compatible with but not dependent on Christianity. He asserted that just as
“fair play” is the basis on which England’s greatness is built, “bushido does
not stand on a lesser pedestal” (Hanai 1994, 8–9). Although Nitobe con-
cluded his book by asserting that bushidô is dying and needs to be revived
by Christianity, it was his inspirational and idealized account of traditional
virtues that most impressed readers. His work was an instant bestseller in
New York and London. Soon it was translated into German, French, Pol-
ish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Russian, Rumanian, Chinese, and finally (in
1909) into Japanese.
Ironically, whereas Uemura and Nitobe had conceived of bushidô as
a bridge linking Japan to Christianity and to the games ethic of fair play,
once the term bushidôentered the popular vocabulary it tended to be de-
fined in ethnocentric terms as a unique and unchanging ethos that opposed
Christian teachings and distinguished Japanese martial arts from European
sports. Nowhere was this ethnocentric vision of bushidô emphasized more
strongly than at the Dainippon Butokukai [26] (Greater Japan Martial
Virtue Association), a quasi-governmental institution founded in 1895 to
unify various martial arts under the control of a single national organiza-
tion. The Butokukai appeared just when Europeans and Americans also
were establishing nationalistic athletic associations, and it shared many
characteristics with those counterparts. From its very inception the Bu-
tokukai’s publications touted martial arts as the best method of inculcating
traditional national values (i.e., bushidô) in a modern citizenry. In 1906 the
Butokukai defined bushidô as the Japanese spirit (wakon or yamato-
damashii [27]) expressed as service to the emperor, strict obedience to au-
thority, and a willingness to regard the sacrifice of one’s own life as lightly
as a feather. It asserted that modern citizens (kokumin [28]) must follow a
“citizen way” (kokumindô [29]) based on the bushidô of old (Hayashi).
As seen in the above example, the suffix dô of “bushidô” soon ac-
quired specific connotations of duty to the emperor (i.e., imperial way,
kôdô [30]), an ideal that grew stronger as Japanese society became ever
more militaristic. Because martial arts constituted the prime method for in-
stilling this ideology, they too became ever more frequently called “some-480 Religion and Spiritual Development: Japan