JAPAN
tary epoch. "The untruth of convenience" (hōben no uso), the "white lie," is not counted an offence against morality. What the bushi meant when he announced his creed, "no second word," was that a pledge or promise must never be broken; that if a military man engaged himself to do a certain thing, he must do it at whatever cost to himself. That was not truth for truth's sake: it was truth for the sake of the spirit of uncompromising manliness on which the samurai based all his code of morality. His doctrine gradually permeated society at large. In the seventeenth century written security for a debt took the form, not of the hypothecation of property, but of an avowal that failure to pay would be to forfeit the debtor's title of manhood, or to confer on the creditor the right of publicly ridiculing him. Had such a principle continued to grow in reverence, it would have served as an excellent substitute for industrial veracity. But the development of luxurious and effeminate habits during the long reign of peace under the Tokugawa administration, undermined the virile morality of the bushi. His ideals deteriorated and his example ceased to be a wholesome incentive. At the commencement of Japan's resumed intercourse with foreign nations in the middle of the nineteenth century, samurai visited the open ports to transact business for their liege lords, and the foreign merchant soon learned that their word was as good as their bond. Pride of
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