WEAPONS AND OPERATIONS
jected a little beyond the forehead on either side. There are several instances of victories won with a "war-fan" against a naked sword, and many examples of men killed by a blow from it. The bushi had to be prepared for every emergency. Were he caught weapon-less by a number of assailants, his art of yawara was supposed to supply him with expedients for emerging unscathed. Nothing counted but the issue. The methods of gaining victory or the circumstances attending defeat were scarcely taken into consideration. The true bushi had to rise superior to all contingencies. Out of this perpetual effort on the part of hundreds of experts to discover and perfect novel developments of swordsmanship, there grew a habit which held its vogue down to modern times; namely, that when a man had mastered one style of sword-play in the school of a teacher, he set himself to study all others, and for that purpose undertook a tour through- out the provinces, fencing whenever he found an expert, and in the event of defeat, constituting himself the victor's pupil. For the true bushi was expected to accept defeat as simply an evidence of his own inferiority, not at all as an event to be resented or avenged. Of course this rule of self-restraint did not obtain universal observance. Occasionally there were men who resorted to any villany in order to compass the destruction of a vanquisher. It is true that defeat often meant ruin. A fencing-master with
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