In this way man is in
harmony with the original principle of all things. He outlasts the
universe itself.
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.
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