Rating: 
Summary: Fundamental Cornerstone on the Driving Force of Japan
Review: Nitobe's book is an excellent read for anyone who wants a comprehensive look at the pulse of what drives the Japanese to produce and achieve in war and economics. His writing style is clean and practical rather than sophisticated or complicated. He emphasizes the virtues and concepts that make up the Bushido ethnic.This book is a superb companion piece to Ruth Benedict's sociological analysis on Japanese culture (The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, printed near or after the Second World War). I strongly encourage anyone interested in the formative aspects of Japanese thought to read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good material, but a peculiar rendering
Review: The Bushido - the Warrior's Way - is one of the wonderful, unique features of Japanese culture, still important in the modern world. It has inspired many books, spanning several centuries. This book, written around 1905, is distinctive for being addressed to a Western audience.
It was written by a Japanese scholar in Europe, educated (possibly over-educated) in Western ways. As a reader of my own era, I would say that bushido can only be understood in the terms that it sets out. The reader must knock down the Western tradition, from medieval mythos forward, and accept wholly Asian premises for the bushido to make sense. This author, instead, tries to describe the bushido in Western terms. The result is paltry and grotesque.
Nitobe is a product of the bushido, and I am not. He is also a product of the late 19th century, writing in the first few years of the 20th, and writing with English learned at the end of the Victorian era. He explains the bushido in terms of the Old Testament, Shakespeare, Aristotle, and Cervantes. He speaks eloquently to his audience, men who are rigidly Christian and just plain rigid.
I find an unhappy desperation in this book, where the author tries to justify a profoundly Japanese culture in un-Japanese terms. This was the era just after Legge, Hearn, Burton, and FitzGerald. There was an influx of Eastern culture, but it was filtered so that proper English could disuss in their own terms. I am afraid that the filter stopped out all that was truly Japanese.
The serious sudent should read this book, but not to understand Japanese culture. Instead, the reader should try to understand the Western culture that this book addresses. Even now, we are afflicted by Victorian translations of Eastern classics. This book, working from East to West instead, shows just how dire that affliction had become.
//wiredweird
Rating: 
Summary: Bushido or Tokugawa fascism???
Review: The Bushido code was a death cult embued with a Zen like spirit
of masochistic self-denial and repression of self in slave
like devotion to one's Master, usually a greedy, self-serving
daimyo who cared for nothing but personal power and the ruthless
control of those under him. Women were mere chattel in the
Bushido tradition, objects for gratification. The true
Samurai consorted only with attractive boys and thought that
homosexual devotion was the greatest form of erotic pleasure
and romantic involvement, similar to the Spartans of ancient
Greece.
When you strip away all the faux spiritualism you get
the age old need for domination and contempt for those who
were weaker. Japan had a long history of civil war when
different Bushido tribes fought for regional control, ultimately
resulting in the Edo era when the Tokugawa family finally
unified the nation in what was a medieval straitjacket from
which no one would escape. It was an era of 'peace' and
isolation during which the nation was held in a totalitarian
grip of feudalistic hegemony. Pity that this system is
gradually taking root in Japan again today!!
Rating:
Summary: Clear definitions and insight on bushido
Review: This book is great for those who are unfamiliar, with the way of life of the samurai, and the population as a whole in fuedal Japan. Siting similarities with other cultures great histories, it provides a contrast which brings better understanding to the subject. I would also suggest Zen and Japanese Culture by Daisetz T.Suzuki, for an even deeper look into the culture of Japan and its roots.
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