Loyalty

Along with these virtues, Bushido also holds the utmost respect for justice, benevolence, love, sincerity, honesty, and self-control. Justice is one of the main factors in the Code of the Samurai. Illegal ways and unjust actions are thought to be lowly and inhumane. Love and benevolence are supreme virtues and princely acts. Samurai followed a specific etiquette in everyday life as well as in war. Sincerity and honesty were as valued as their lives. Bushi no ichi-gon, or "the word of a Samuari," forms a pact of complete faithfulness and trust. With such pacts, there was no need for a written pledge; it was thought beneath one's dignity. To be fully honored, the Samurai also needed self-control and stoicism. He showed no sign of pain or joy. He held a calmness of behavior and composure of the mind, neither of which could be bothered by passion of any kind. He was a true and complete warrior.

The final rationalization of Bushido thought occurred during the Tokugawa period (17th century), when Yamaga Soko (1622-1685) equated the Samurai with the Confucian "superior man" and taught that the Samurai's essential function was to exemplify virtue to the lower classes. Without disregarding the basic Confucian virtue of benevolence, Soko emphasized the second virtue, righteousness, which he interpreted as "obligation" or "duty." This strict code of honordemanded conscious choice, and so it fostered individual initiative while yet reasserting the obligations of loyalty and filial piety. Obedience to authority was stressed, but duty came first, even if it entailed violation of law. In such an instance, the true samurai would prove his sincerity and expiate his crime against the government by subsequently taking his own life.

By the mid-19th century, Bushido standards had become the general ideal, and the legal abolition of the Samurai class, in 1871, made Bushido even more the property of the entire nation. In the public educational system, the emperor replaced the feudal lord as the object of loyalty and sacrifice. Bushido became the foundation of ethical training.