The Japanese derive their aggression in a different way. They need terribly to be respected in the world. They saw that military might had earned respect for great nations and they embarked on a course to equal them. They had to out-Herod Herod because their resources were slight and their technology was primitive. When they failed in their great effort, it meant to them that aggression was not the road to honor after all. Giri had always meant equally the use of aggression or the observance of respect relations, and in defeat the Japanese turned from one to the other, apparently with no sense of psychic violence to themselves. The goal is still their good name.
Japan has behaved in similar fashion on other occasions in her history and it has always been confusing to Westerners. The curtain had hardly risen after Japan’s long feudal isolation when in 1862 an Englishman named Richardson was murdered in Satsuma. The fief of Satsuma was a hotbed of agitation against the white barbarians, and Satsuma samurai were known as the most arrogant and warlike of all Japan. The British sent a punitive expedition and bombarded Kagoshima, an important Satsuma port. The Japanese had made firearms all through the Tokugawa Era, but they were copied from antique Portuguese guns, and Kagoshima was of course no match for British warships. The consequences of this bombardment, however, were surprising. Satsuma, instead of vowing eternal vengeance upon the British, sought British friendship. They had seen the greatness of their opponents and they sought to learn from them. They entered into trade relations with them and in the following year they established a college in Satsuma where, as a contemporary Japanese wrote, ‘The mysteries of Occidental science and learning were taught . The friendship which had sprung out of the Namamuga Affair continued to grow.’ The Namamuga Affair was Britain’s punitive expedition against them and the bombardment of their port.
This was not an isolated case. The other fief which vied with Satsuma as the most warlike and virulent haters of foreigners was Choshu. Both fiefs were leaders in fomenting the restoration of the Emperor. The officially powerless court of the Emperor issued an imperial rescript naming the date of May 11, 1863, at which time the Shogun was directed to have expelled all barbarians from the soil of Japan. The Shogunate ignored the order but not Choshu. It opened fire from its forts upon Western merchant ships passing off its coast through the Strait of Shimonoseki. The Japanese guns and ammunition were too primitive to injure the ships but to teach Choshu a lesson an international Western war squadron soon demolished the forts. The same strange consequences of bombardment followed as in Satsuma, and this in spite of the fact that the Western powers demanded an indemnity of three million dollars. As Norman says of the Satsuma and Choshu incidents, ‘Whatever the complexity of motive behind the volte-face executed by these leading anti-foreign clans, one cannot but respect the realism and equanimity which this action attests.’
This kind of situational realism is the bright face of Japanese giri to one’s name. Like the moon, girl has its bright face and its dark face. It was its dark aspect which made Japan take events like the American Exclusion Act and the Naval Parity Treaty as such extravagant national insults and which goaded her to her disastrous war program. It is its bright aspect which made possible the good will with which she accepted the consequences of surrender in 1945. Japan is still acting in character.
Modern Japanese writers and publicists have made a selection from among the obligations of giri and presented them to Westerners as the cult of bushido, literally The Way of the Samurai. This has been misleading for several reasons. Bushido is a modern official term which has not the deep folk-feeling behind it that ‘cornered with giri,’ ‘merely for giri,’ ‘working strongly for giri’ have in Japan. Nor does it cover the complexities and the ambivalences of girl. It is a publicist’s inspiration. Besides, it became a slogan of the nationalists and militarists and the concept is discredited with the discrediting of those leaders. That will by no means mean that the Japanese will no longer ‘know giri.’ It is more important than ever for Westerners to understand what giri means in Japan. The identification of bushido with the Samurai was also a source of misunderstanding. Giri is a virtue common to all classes. Like all other obligations and disciplines in Japan giri is ‘heavier’ as one goes up the social scale but it is required at all levels of society. At least the Japanese think it is heavier for the samurai. A non-Japanese observer is just as likely to feel that giri requires most of the common people because the rewards for conforming seem to him less. To the Japanese it is sufficient reward to be respected in his world and ‘a man who does not know giri’ is still a ‘miserable wretch.’ He is scorned and ostracized by his fellows.