y did Japan alone among non-Western countries make a
rapid transition to industrial society? . . . Scholars
found the answer by pointing to the unique cultural
tradition of its leadership. The spirit of bushido--
the warrior's code--inspired elements of the samurai
class to selfless devotion to their nation, led others
to invest . . . in the new national banks, and so
fueled Japan's industrialization (86).
Bushido defined the way that Japanese culture worked. It also made possible a rapid adaptation to new viewpoints and ways of doing things. The period of the Meiji Restoration, especially during the final decades of the nineteenth century, was marked by radical cultural reforms throughout Japanese society, with the full blessing of the emperor.
However, the character of Japan's culture remained a mystery to Westerners. To outsiders, the Japanese seemed sometimes to be an unnecessarily cruel, unemotional, and not devoutly religious people. Practices such as ritual suicide and the exacting tea ceremony looked especially alien to outsiders.
Inazo Nitobe attempted to change this. He writes, "This little book is due to the frequent queries put to me and my wife as to the reasons why such and such ideas and customs prevail" (xii). Nitobe writes to explain The Soul of Japan to Western friends and colleagues. He begins by defining bushido, a term that roughly corresponds to what the West calls the code of chivalry. The term is literally defined as "military-knight- ways," and it is "a code unuttered and unwritten" (5), impressed on the culture primarily through stories wh
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