Under
this state of things the ethical system of the sage of China suffered a
change, as does almost everything that is imported into Japan and
borrowed by the islanders, but whether for the better or for the worse
we shall not inquire too carefully. The point upon which we now lay
emphasis is this: that, although the Chinese teacher had made filial
piety the basis of his system, the Japanese gradually but surely made
loyalty (Kun-Shin), that is, the allied relations of sovereign and
minister, of lord and retainer, and of master and servant, not only
first in order but the chief of all. They also infused into this term
ideas and associations which are foreign to the Chinese mind. In the
place of filial piety was Kun-shin, that new growth in the garden of
Japanese ethics, out of which arose the white flower of loyalty that
blooms perennial in history.
In Japan, Loyalty Displaces Filial Piety.
This slow but sure adaptation of the exotic to its new environment, took
place during the centuries previous to the seventeenth of the Christian
era. The completed product presented a growth so strikingly different
from the original as to compel the wonder of those Chinese refugee
scholars, who, at Mito[9] and Yedo, taught the later dogmas which are
orthodox but not historically Confucian.
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