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In the days of the samurai, a code of conduct
known as bushido, emerged in Japan. The samurai lived by it every day, and
everything they did revolved around the code of bushido. It was not an exact
code that was written down on paper, but a spiritual respect that the samurais
felt for one another (Hall, p.37). People lived by many different ways of
bushido, for everyone learned it a different way. The code affected everything
in their daily lives: how they ate, how they greeted each other, how they
talked, and how they acted in various situations. The code of bushido was
passed on from parent to child or from teacher to student (Jansen, pp. 160-161).
The purpose of this paper is to explain the basic precepts of bushido, its
importance to the Japanese, and how and why it is still used today in Japan.
