JAPAN
vices rendered in this. Everywhere in Japan the cemeteries bear witness to that extraordinary spirit of devotion: the tomb of the chieftain stands surrounded by humbler sepulchres of faithful vassals who refused to survive him. The practice remained in vogue until the middle of the seventeenth century, and would probably have survived until the Meiji Restoration had not the Tokugawa Viceregents employed all their influence and authority to check it. Iyeyasu, and after him Iyetsuna, issued proclamations embodying the doctrine that the duty of the samurai required him not to court death for the sake of ministering to a departed chief, but to remain in life for the sake of serving his successor." Sorrow for the dead, service for the living," — that was the new creed.[1]
Something more, however, than a profound conception of duty was needed to nerve the bushi for sacrifices such as he seems to have been always ready to make. It is true that parents took pains to familiarise their children of both sexes from very tender years with the idea of self-destruction at any time. The little boy was taught how the sword should be directed against his bosom; the little girl how the dagger must be held so as to pierce the throat; both grew up in constant fellowship with the conviction that suicide must be reckoned among the natural incidents of every-day existence. But superadded
- ↑ See Appendix, note 39.
226
