The ‘warning’ conveyed is not intelligible without a knowledge of the Japanese map of obligations. The whole Rescript shows an official attempt to minimize giri and to elevate chu. Not once in the whole text does the word giri appear in the sense in which it is a household word in Japan. Instead of naming giri, it emphasizes that there is a Higher Law, which is chu, and a Lower Law which is ‘keeping faith in private relations.’ The Higher Law, the Rescript is at pains to prove, is sufficient to validate all the virtues. ‘Righteousness,’ it says, ‘is the fulfillment of gimu.’ A soldier filled with chu inevitably has ‘true valor’ which means ‘in daily intercourse to set gentleness first and to aim to win the love and esteem of others.’ Such precepts, if followed, the Rescript argues by implication, will suffice without invoking giri. Obligations other than gimu are Lesser Law and a man should not acknowledge them without the most careful consideration.
If you wish . to keep your word (in private relations) and (also) to fulfill your gim . you must carefully consider at the outset whether you can accomplish it or not. If yo . tie yourself to unwise obligations, you may find yourself in a position where you can neither go forwards nor backwards. If you are convinced that you cannot possibly keep your word and maintain righteousness (which the Rescript has just defined as the fulfillment of gimu), you had better abandon your (private) engagement at once. Ever since the ancient times there have been repeated instances of great men and heroes who, overwhelmed by misfortune, have perished and left a tarnished name to posterity, simply because in their effort to be faithful in small matters they failed to discern right and wrong with reference to fundamental principles, or because, losing sight of the true path of public duty, they kept faith in private relations.
All this instruction about the superiority of chu to giri is written, as we have said, without mentioning giri, but every Japanese knows the phrase, ‘I could not do righteousness (gi) because of giri,’ and the Rescript paraphrases it in the words, ‘If you are convinced you cannot keep your word (your personal obligations) and fulfill righteousness .’ With Imperial authority it says that in such a situation a man should abandon giri, remembering that it is a Lesser Law. The Higher Law, if he obeys its precepts, will still keep him virtuous.
This Holy Writ exalting chu is a basic document in Japan. It is difficult to say, however, whether its oblique detraction of giri weakened the popular hold of this obligation. Japanese frequently quote other parts of the Rescript – ’Righteousness is the fulfillment of gimu,’ ‘If only the heart be sincere, anything can be accomplished’ – to explain and justify their own and others’ acts. But, though they would often be appropriate, the admonitions against keeping faith in private relations seem seldom to come to their lips. Giri remains today a virtue with great authority and to say of a man that ‘he does not know giri’ is one of the most drastic condemnations in Japan.
Japanese ethics are not easily simplified by introducing a Higher Law. As they have so often boasted, the Japanese do not have at hand a generalized virtue to use as a touchstone of good behavior. In most cultures individuals respect themselves in proportion as they attain some virtue like good will or good husbandry or success in their enterprises. They set up as a goal some life objective like happiness or power over others or liberty or social mobility. The Japanese follow more particularistic codes. Even when they talk about Higher Law, tai setsu, whether in feudal times or in the Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, it is only in the sense that obligations to someone high in the hierarchy should overrule obligations to someone who is lower down. They are still particularistic. To them Higher Law is not, as it has generally been to Westerners, a loyalty to loyalty, as against a loyalty to a particular person or a particular cause.
When modern Japanese have attempted to make some one moral virtue supreme over all the ‘circles,’ they have usually selected ‘sincerity.’ Count Okuma, in discussing Japanese ethics, said that sincerity (makoto) ‘is the precept of all precepts; the foundation of moral teachings can be implied in that one word. Our ancient vocabulary is void of ethical terms except for one solitary word, makoto.’ Modern novelists, too, who in the early years of this century celebrated the new Western individualism, became dissatisfied with the Occidental formulas and tried to celebrate sincerity (usually magokoro) as the only true ‘doctrine.’
This moral stress on sincerity has the backing of the Rescript for Soldiers and Sailors itself. The Rescript begins with an historical prologue, a Japanese equivalent to American prologues which name Washington, Jefferson, and the Founding Fathers. In Japan this section reaches a climax by invoking on and chu:
We (the Emperor) are the head and you are the body. We depend on you as our arms and legs. Whether we shall be able to protect our country, and repay the on of our ancestors, depends upon your fulfilling your obligations.