Hence to a conscientious Samurai there is nothing in this world better than obedience, in the ideal of a true man.  What he fears most and hates most is that his memory may perish, that he shall have no seed, that he shall be forgotten or die under a cloud and be thought treacherous or cowardly or base, when in reality his life was pure and his motives high.  “Better,” sang Yoshida Shoin, the dying martyr for his principles, “to be a crystal and to be broken, than to be a tile upon the housetop and remain.”

So, indeed, on a hundred curtained execution grounds, with the dirk of the suicide firmly grasped and about to shed their own life-blood, have sung the martyrs who died willingly for their faith in their idea of Yamato Damashii.[19] In untold instances in the national history, men have died willingly and cheerfully, and women also by thousands, as brave, as unflinching as the men, so that the story of Japanese chivalry is almost incredible in its awful suicides.  History reveals a state of society in which cool determination, desperate courage and fearlessness of death in the face of duty were quite unique, and which must have had their base in some powerful though abnormal code of ethics.

This leads us to consider again the things emphasized by Japanese as distinct from Chinese and Korean[20] Confucianism, and to call attention to its fruits, while at the same time we note its defects, and show wherein it failed.  We shall then show how this old system has already waxed old and is passing away.  Christ has come to Japan, and behold a new heaven and a new earth!

New Japan Makes Revision.

First.  For sovereign and minister, there are coming into vogue new interpretations.  This relation, if it is to remain as the first, will become that of the ruler and the ruled.  Constitutional government has begun; and codes of law have been framed which are recognizing the rights of the individual and of the people.  Even a woman has rights before the law, in relation to husband, parents, brothers, sisters and children.  It is even beginning to be thought that children have rights.  Let us hope that as the rights are better understood the duties will be equally clear.

It is coming to pass in Japan that even in government, the sovereign must consult with his people on all questions pertaining to their welfare.  Although, thus far the constitutional government makes the ministers responsible to the Sovereign instead of to the Diet, yet the contention of the enlightened men and the liberal parties is, that the ministers shall be responsible to the Diet.  The time seems at hand when the sovereign’s power over his people will not rest on traditions more or less uncertain, on history manufactured by governmental order, on mythological claims based upon the so-called “eternal ages,” on prerogatives upheld by the sword, or on the supposed grace of the gods, but will be “broad-based upon the people’s will.”  The power of the rulers will be derived from the consent of the governed.  The Emperor will become the first and chief servant of the nation.