Edited by Scott Westerfeld - Teen Libris

Bushid Bear 17
for their fighting elite. Give a warrior a cause and it justifies war. Teach him
that death is honorable and it normalizes the killing. Give him an ideal and
it elevates his actions from barbarism to heroism.
Most codes of honor not only spell out how warriors are supposed to
act when they’re fighting each other, but define the warrior’s role in society
(French). This makes sense. Out on the battlefield he’s got to be
tough. Brutal. Powerful. But polite society prefers a kinder, gentler heman,
not someone who might be tempted to use his might to intimidate
or control anyone weaker than himself. Without some kind of guideline
to define what’s honorable and what’s not, societies could get stuck with
a bunch of fighter types running amok.
Take a look at Japan, for instance. Their early feudal years saw a lot of
battles between clans as families jockeyed for territory. Amid all the fighting,
a kind of proto-samurai warrior class developed. This warrior class
was made up of rustic, brutish farmer types, and each clan’s warriors followed
their own set of rules. It was chaos until someone got brilliant and
decided to get philosophical about how all this fighting should be done.
The concept of bud emerged. Translated literally, bud means the
way (d ) of war (bu). What’s interesting is that if you look at the Chinese
characters for bud , you see that bu actually means “stop conflict”
(Kesshin No Rekishi). War, ironically, was defined as keeping the peace,
and as such, it became an honorable institution.
From the bud “way of war” came the philosophy of bushid , the
samurai “way of the warrior.” Beyond requiring mastery of specialized
fighting techniques, the samurai established strict codes of conduct and
assigned virtues that were meant to elevate warriors to an elite status.
These early samurai were much like the panserbjørne-feared and
respected, fierce and armor-clad. Both were bound by a strict code of conduct,
the violation of which could mean exile, or more honorably, death.
Meanwhile, oceans away, the concept of chivalry, or knightly virtue
(or nightly virtue for those knights who had taken a vow of chastity),
emerged. Like bushid , chivalry embraced the ideals of honesty, loyalty,
and courage.
In fact, across the globe, each culture logically adapted codes that
would work within the framework of their unique society. Even the
Mongols under the leadership of Genghis Khan, who many consider to
be barbarians, lived by a strict honor code called the great Yasa. Sure,