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Intermediate Japanese - Free Online Course
BUSHIDOO
武士道
"the way of the warrior; bushido"
Bushido was the samurai code of ethics. The core pillars of bushido were loyalty, bravery in battle, and self-control. The word is derived from the term bushi 武士--which is an older Japanese word for samurai, or “warrior”. The final kanji character in the word is 道, which means “path” or “road.”
Atonement through Suicide
One of the more extreme doctrines of bushido was the idea that serious failure should be atoned for with suicide. The code of bushido was revived among the Japanese military during World War II. As a result, when faced with defeat at the hands of Allied troops, many Japanese soldiers committed suicide rather than surrender.
The samurai are long gone, but the bushido ultimatum of victory or death has been perpetuated through countless stories of heroic warriors who took their own lives when faced with defeat. The notion of suicide as an atonement for failure regrettably has been popularized to a certain extent in Japan. The idea is accepted by many individuals who would by no means consider themselves adherents of the samurai code of bushido. Teenage suicides have been a problem in Japan for decades. Low grades or failure on an entrance exam is often a primary factor in these tragedies.
Suicides following conspicuous shame or failure are not unheard of even business and political circles. In 1976, Japan was reeling from the Lockheed scandal, in which a number of prominent politicians were suspected of accepting bribes in exchange for fixing government contracts. In early August, Japanese police grilled Kasahara Masanori, the chauffeur of ex-Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei, for information about the affair. Kasahara finally broke down and gave the police testimony that implicated his boss.
The police released Kasahara, as he had no personal role in the scandal. Kasahara then drove to a wooded area and asphyxiated himself by running a hose from his car’s exhaust into the vehicle’s interior. Suicides also followed the Recruit scandal of 1988-1989, in which business and political leaders were indicted for colluding on illegal stock transactions.
More recently, a prominent business leader committed suicide after experiencing public shame resulting from the LiveDoor scandal of early 2006. The LiveDoor scandal, which became known as “Japan’s Enron,” involved the fraudulent securities and reporting activities of an internet firm. Like the American Enron scandal, it resulted in heavy losses for innumerable small investors.
Shortly after the scandal came to light, police in Okinawa found the body of 38-year-old securities company executive Noguchi Hideaki in a hotel room. Noguchi was a former employee of LiveDoor’s original parent company. He was also the vice president of another securities firm raided by Japanese police because of its connections to LiveDoor. Noguchi had apparently slit his own wrists and bled to death.
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It is doubtful that either Noguchi or Kasahara were consciously thinking of bushido when they took their own lives. Nevertheless, suicide as atonement for shame or failure is an old paradigm in Japan. It would therefore not be too much of a stretch to suggest that these deaths were at least in part legacies of the old samurai code of ethics.