8 Clearing One's Name
第八章 洗雪污名
GIRI to one's name is the duty to keep one's reputation unspotted. It is a series of virtues—some of which seem to an Occidental to be opposites, but which to the Japanese have a sufficient unity because they are those duties which are not repayments on benefits received; they are ‘outside the circle of on.' They are those acts which keep one's reputation bright without reference to a specific previous indebtedness to another person. They include therefore maintaining all the miscellaneous etiquette requirements of ‘proper station,' showing stoicism in pain and defending one's reputation in profession or craft. Giri to one's name also demands acts which remove a slur or an insult; the slur darkens one's good name and should be got rid of. It may be necessary to take vengeance upon one's detractor or it may be necessary to commit suicide, and there are all sorts of possible courses of action between these two extremes. But one does not shrug off lightly anything that is compromising.
所谓维护声誉的“义理”，是使自己的名声不致遭到玷污的义务，它由各种各样的道德构成。这些道德有的恰好与西方人的背道而驰，但是，在日本人眼里，这些义务都不是为了报答别人的恩情，全都在“恩的范围之外”。它与以往受到的恩无关，是为自己的名声增添光彩的种种作为。因此，它包含着遵守“适当的地位”所要求的各种繁杂的礼法，表现出面对痛苦而泰然自若的态度，以及维护自己在专门的职业和技能中的声誉等内容。维护名声的“义理”，还要求采取消除诽谤或侮辱的行动。诽谤会给自己的名誉投下阴影，非消除不可。因此，对于诋毁名誉者，有时要进行报复，有时则必须自杀。当然，在这两个极端的引力中间，还会有各式各样的行动方针。但是，日本人对于有损于自己名声的行为，决不简单地皱皱眉头放任不管。
The Japanese do not have a separate term for what I call here ‘giri to one's name.' They describe it simply as giri outside the circle of on. That is the basis of classification, and not the fact that giri to the world is an obligation to return kindnesses and that giri to one's name prominently includes revenge. The fact that Western languages separate the two into categories as opposite as gratitude and revenge does not impress the Japanese. Why should one virtue not cover a man's behavior when he reacts to another's benevolence and when he reacts to his scorn or malevolence?
日本人对于我在此称为“维护名声的义理”的一些事情，并没有特别的叫法，只是称之为“恩”范围之外的“义理”。这一点成了分类的基础，而不是根据对社会的“义理”有义务报之以善意，而对名声的“义理”则以复仇为主要内容这一事实来区分的。西方各国将二者区分为感谢与复仇这两个完全不同的范畴，这完全不适用于日本人。对别人的善意作出的反应与对别人的轻蔑和恶意采取的行动，为什么不可以统一在一个道德的范畴之内呢？
In Japan it does. A good man feels as strongly about insults as he does about the benefits he has received. Either way it is virtuous to repay. He does not separate the two, as we do, and call one aggression and one non-aggression. To him aggression only begins outside ‘the circle of giri'; so long as one is maintaining giri and clearing one's name of slurs, one is not guilty of aggression. One is evening scores. ‘The world tips,' they say, so long as an insult or slur or defeat is not requited or eliminated. A good man must try to get the world back into balance again. It is human virtue, not an all-too-human vice. Giri to one's name, and even the way it is linguistically combined in Japan with gratitude and loyalty, has been a Western virtue in certain periods of European history. It flourished mightily in the Renaissance, especially in Italy, and it has much in common with el valor Espa?ol in classic Spain and with die Ehre in Germany. Something very like it underlay dueling in Europe a hundred years ago. Wherever this virtue of wiping out stains on one's honor has been in the ascendant, in Japan or in Western nations, the very core of it has always been that it transcended profit in any material sense. One was virtuous in proportion as one offered up to ‘honor' one's possessions, one's family, and one's own life. This is a part of its very definition and is the basis of the claim that these countries always put forward that it is a ‘spiritual' value. It certainly involves them in great material losses and can hardly be justified on a profit-and-loss basis. In this lies the great contrast between this version of honor and the cut-throat competition and overt hostility that crops up in life in the United States; in America it may be that no holds are barred in some political or financial deal but it is a war to get or to hold some material advantage. It is only in exceptional cases, as, for instance, in the feuds of the Kentucky Mountains, where codes of honor prevail which fall in the category of giri to one's name.
在日本正是这样做的。有德之人，对他受到的恩惠自不必说，就连受到的侮辱也同样反应强烈。对它们作出不同的反应，正是道德上光明正大的表现。他不像我们将二者严加区别，称一方为侵害行为，另一方为非侵害行为。在他看来，只有在“义理的世界”之外发生的行为才算得上侵害行为。只要人们是去维护“义理”，洗刷污名，就谈不上构成侵害罪，只不过是在偿还欠款、清算账目、履行道义上的义务而已。日本人说，侮辱、诽谤或失败，只要得不到报复或消除，“社会就会天翻地覆”，有德之人必须努力使社会再次恢复到平衡的状态。报复是人们的一种德行，并不是由于人们本质的弱点所引起的不可避免的邪恶。在欧洲历史上曾有过这样一个时代，维护名声的“义理”，包括在日语里同感谢和忠诚联系在一起的部分，也被西方人当成了道德的行为。它在文艺复兴时期，特别是在意大利极其昌盛，并且与顶峰时期西班牙的“西班牙人的勇气”及德国的“名誉”有许多共同之处。直到一百年之前，在欧洲风靡一时的决斗习惯，也潜藏着与此十分类似的动机。不论是日本还是西方各国，凡是在洗刷自己名誉上的污点，在道德上都是得势方，这一道德的核心经常超越一切物质意义上的利益。人们为了名誉，越是敢于牺牲财产、家庭及自己的性命，就越被看做是德高望重的人。这一点形成了这一道德定义本身的一部分，同时也是这些国家经常提倡的强调“精神”价值这一主张的基础。诚然，它会给他们带来莫大的物质损失，倘若只权衡利害得失，他们是无论如何也不会同意的。在这一点上，这种名誉观同美国人生活中常见的激烈的竞争和公然的敌对之间，存在着非常鲜明的差异。第八章洗雪污名在美国，在某些政治或经济交往中，对于拥有不作任何限制，但是，要想取得或者保持某种物质利益，则有可能导致战争。实行维护名声的“义理”，只有在肯塔基山区这样的地方才会有，实属例外。
Giri to one's name and all the hostility and watchful waiting that accompany it in any culture, however, is not a virtue that is characteristic of the Asiatic mainland. It is not, as the phrase goes, Oriental. The Chinese do not have it, nor the Siamese, nor the Indians. The Chinese regard all such sensitivity to insults and aspersions as a trait of ‘small' people—morally small. It is no part of their ideal of nobility, as it is in Japan. Violence which is wrong when a man starts it out of the blue does not become right in Chinese ethics when a man indulges in it to requite an insult. They think it is rather ridiculous to be so sensitive. Nor do they react to a slur by resolving by all that is good and great to prove the aspersion baseless. The Siamese have no place at all for this kind of sensitivity to insult. Like the Chinese they set store by making their detractor ridiculous but they do not imagine that their honor has been impugned. They say ‘The best way to show an opponent up for a brute is to give in to him.'
但是，维护名声的“义理”同在任何文化上都会随之而来的敌意以及毫不松懈地等候时机的态度，决不是亚洲大陆特有的道德。它不是人们常说的东方式的。中国人、暹罗人、印度人不具备这些东西。中国人认为对侮辱和诽谤那么神经过敏，耿耿于怀，是“小人”，即道德卑下的人的特征。它不像日本那样，成了他们清高的理想的一部分。按照中国人的伦理，人们无缘无故地大打出手，被视为非法的暴力；即使用以对侮辱进行报复，也不可能被视为正确的行为。他们对那样的神经过敏感到滑稽可笑。他们在受到别人恶言恶语的伤害时，也不想祈求上帝证明这些诽谤纯属无中生有。在暹罗人身上，丝毫也看不到对侮辱的这种敏感。他们和中国人一样，喜欢愚弄诽谤者，但是，并不认为自己的名誉受到了损害。他们说：“暴露对方人面兽心的最好方法，是有意地败给对方。”
The full significance of giri to one's name cannot be understood without placing in context all the non-aggressive virtues which are included in it in Japan. Vengeance is only one of the virtues it may require upon occasion. It includes also plenty of quiet and temperate behavior. The stoicism, the self-control that is required of a self-respecting Japanese is part of his giri to his name. A woman may not cry out in childbirth and a man should rise above pain and danger. When floods sweep down upon the Japanese village each self-respecting person gathers up the necessities he is to take with him and seeks higher ground. There is no outcry, no running hither and thither, no panic. When the equinoctial winds and rain come in hurricane strength there is similar self-control. Such behavior is a part of the respect a person has for himself in Japan even granted he may not live up to it. They think American self-respect does not require self-control. There is noblesse oblige in this self-control in Japan and in feudal times more was therefore required of the samurai than of the common people but the virtue, though less exigent, was a rule of life among all classes. If the samurai were required to go to extremes in rising above bodily pain, the common people had to go to extremes in accepting the aggressions of the armed samurai.
在日本，对于维护名声的“义理”的完整含义，如果不将其中包括的种种非攻击性的道德全都考虑在内，就无法理解。复仇不过是有关名声的“义理”所要求的道德之一。在有关名声的“义理”中，除复仇之外，还包括许多平静、温和的行动。要求注意体面的日本人的禁欲主义或自制，就是有关他名声的“义理”的一部分。女人在分娩时不得大喊大叫，男人面对痛苦或危险要超然处之。当洪水向村庄袭来时，注重体面的人们，各自携带着必需的物品，秩序井然地向高处走去。在那儿，听不到狂呼乱叫，看不到东奔西窜和狼狈不堪。在秋分前后，强烈的暴风雨袭来时，也同样十分克制。这种态度，有时也许无法完全达到，但是，它构成了日本人各自具有的自尊心的一部分。他们认为美国人的自尊心不要求自制。日本人的这种自制，身价越高，责任越重，因而在封建时代对武士的要求比庶民要高。这一道德虽然不像对武士那样严格，但是，它是适用于所有阶级的生活原理。既然极严格地要求武士超越肉体的痛苦，那么，庶民也必须极端顺从地甘心忍受携带武器的武士的攻击。
The tales of samurai stoicism are famous. They were forbidden to give way to hunger but that was too trivial to mention. They were enjoined when they were starving to pretend they had just eaten: they must pick their teeth with a toothpick. ‘Baby birds,' the maxim went, ‘cry for their food but a samurai holds a toothpick between his teeth.' In the past war this became an Army maxim for the enlisted soldier. Nor must they give way to pain. The Japanese attitude was like the boy soldier's rejoinder to Napoleon: ‘Wounded? Nay, sire, I'm killed.' A samurai should give no sign of suffering till he fell dead and he must bear pain without wincing. It is told of Count Katsu who died in 1899 that when he was a boy his testicles were torn by a dog. He was of samurai family but his family had been reduced to beggary. While the doctor operated upon him, his father held a sword to his nose. ‘If you utter one cry,' he told him, ‘you will die in a way that at least will not be shameful.'
关于武士的禁欲主义，流传着许多有名的传说。不许向饥饿屈服，这是不言而喻的，没有必要特别提及。他们在濒于饿死的边缘，依然要装出一副刚刚用过饭的样子，用牙签剔着牙齿。有句格言说：“雏鸟求食而鸣，武士口衔牙签。”在这次战争中，它成了军队要求士兵的格言。此外，还不许向痛苦低头。日本人的态度同那个少年兵对拿破仑的回答十分相似。少年兵答道：“您问我受没受伤吗？不，陛下，我已经被杀了。”武士在临死之前，不得流露出半点苦闷的表情，必须眉毛一动不动地忍受住痛苦。一八九九年（明治三十二年）去世的胜伯爵（海舟），出身在武士世家，但一贫如洗。小时候让狗咬了睾丸，在医生为他手术时，他的父亲把钢刀顶在他的鼻尖上对他说：“你敢哭一声，我就叫你死，至少让你死得不愧于一个武士。”
Giri to one's name also requires that one live according to one's station in life. If a man fails in this giri he has no right to respect himself. This meant in Tokugawa times that he accepted as part of his self-respect the detailed sumptuary laws which regulated practically everything he wore or had or used. Americans are shocked to the core by laws which define these things by inherited class position. self-respect in America is bound up with improving one's status and fixed sumptuary laws are a denial of the very basis of our society. We are horrified by Tokugawa laws which stated that a farmer of one class could buy such and such a doll for his child and the farmer of another class could buy a different doll. In America, however, we get the same results by invoking a different sanction. We accept with no criticism the fact that the factory owner's child has a set of electric trains and that the sharecropper's child contents itself with a corncob doll. We accept differences in income and justify them. To earn a good salary is a part of our system of self-respect. If dolls are regulated by income that is no violation of our moral ideas. The person who has got rich buys better dolls for his children. In Japan getting rich is under suspicion and maintaining proper station is not. Even today the poor as well as the rich invest their self-respect in observing the conventions of hierarchy. It is a virtue alien to America, and the Frenchman, de Tocqueville, pointed this out in the eighteen-thirties in his book already quoted. Born himself in eighteenth-century France, he knew and loved the aristocratic way of life in spite of his generous comments about the egalitarian United States. America, he said, in spite of its virtues, lacked true dignity. ‘True dignity consists in always taking one's proper station, neither too high nor too low. And this is as much within the reach of the peasant as of the prince.' De Tocqueville would have understood the Japanese attitude that class differences are not themselves humiliating.
对名声的“义理”，还要求适合身份的生活。如果人们缺少这种“义理”，他便丧失了自尊。德川时代，制定了取缔奢侈令，对每个人穿的、有的、用的所有物品，几乎全都详细作出了规定。这意味着作为自尊的一部分接受了这一规定。美国人对于按照世袭的阶级地位，做出种种规定的法律，十分震惊。在美国，自尊是和提高自己的地位紧密相联的。因而，固定的节俭令是在否定我们社会的根基本身。德川时代法律规定某一阶级的农民可以为孩子买这种娃娃，而另一阶级的农民则只能买另外的娃娃，对此我们感到不寒而栗。但是，在美国，我们根据另外的规定，也收到了同样的效果。我们不加批判地承认工厂主的孩子可以有成套的电气大车玩具，而佃农的孩子只能满足于用苞米心做的娃娃。我们承认收入的差异，并认为这种差异是天经地义的。领取高额的薪金是我们自尊体系的一部分。娃娃的种类虽然受着收入的制约，但它并不违反我们的道德观念。因为有钱人总是要给孩子买高级娃娃的。在日本，要想当财主，总有些愧疚之感。但是，维护适合于自己的地位却是正大光明的。至今，富人自不消说，穷人也是靠着遵循等级制的惯例来维持其自尊心的。这种道德在美国是见不到的，法国人德·特克维尔十九世纪三十年代在他的前引著作中就曾指出过这一点。德·特克维尔生在十八世纪的法国，对坚持平等原则的美国，做了宽容的批评，他照常每日热爱着贵族制度的生活。他说，美国有各种美德，但缺少真正的尊严。“所谓真正的尊严，就是要经常既不过高也不过低地保持其恰如其分的地位。而且，不论王侯，还是百姓，任何人都是可以做到的。”德·特克维尔大概理解了日本人的态度，他们认为阶级差别，就其本身来说，并不是不光彩的。
‘True dignity,' in this day of objective study of cultures, is recognized as something which different peoples can define differently, just as they always define for themselves what is humiliating. Americans who cry out today that Japan cannot be given self-respect until we enforce our egalitarianism are guilty of ethnocentrism. If what these Americans want is, as they say, a self-respecting Japan they will have to recognize her bases for self-respect. We can recognize, as de Tocqueville did, that this aristocratic ‘true dignity' is passing from the modern world and that a different and, we believe, a finer dignity is taking its place. It will no doubt happen in Japan too. Meantime Japan will have to rebuild her self-respect today on her own basis, not on ours. And she will have to purify it in her own way.
在客观地研究各民族文化的今天，“真正的尊严”可以因民族的不同而规定其不同的内容。正像他们经常用自己独特的方法规定了不光彩的事项一样。今天，在美国人中有人叫喊要给日本人以自尊心，就非要采用美国式的平等主义的原则不可。这是犯了民族性的自我中心主义的错误。倘若这些美国人所希望的是让日本人按照他们的意愿拥有自尊心，他们就必须把日本人自尊心的根底研究明白。我们可以像德·特克维尔曾经肯定的那样，承认这种贵族制度的“真正的尊严”，正在从近代世界上逐步消亡；我们相信一种另外的，比它优越的尊严将代之而出现。日本也必将如此，但是，在尚未达到这一地步的今天，日本必须在自己的而不是在我们的基础上，重建它的自尊心，并以日本独特的方法使其不断地趋于纯洁化。
Giri to one's name is also living up to many sorts of commitments besides those of proper station. A borrower may pledge his giri to his name when he asks for a loan; a generation ago it was common to phrase it that ‘I agree to be publicly laughed at if I fail to repay this sum.' If he failed, he was not literally made a laughingstock; there were no public pillories in Japan. But when the New Year came around, the date on which debts must be paid off, the insolvent debtor might commit suicide to ‘clear his name.' New Year's Eve still has its crop of suicides who have taken this means to redeem their reputations.
有关名声的“义理”，还包括承担相应的地位所要求的责任以外的各种责任。借债人有时要以维护名誉的“义理”向债主担保。二三十年前通常的做法是，要表现自己“在万一无力偿还债务时，宁愿在公众面前受人嘲笑”。不过，实际上，即使还不起借款，也不会真正地遭人嘲笑。因为日本不存在在人前受人嘲笑的制度。但是，在必须偿还欠债的期限——年关——到来之际，无力偿还的债务人，为了“不毁坏名声”，有的会自杀身死。直到今天，在除夕这一天为了保证自己的名声，采取这一手段的自杀者，仍然层出不穷。
All kinds of professional commitments involve giri to one's name. The Japanese requirements are often fantastic when particular circumstances bring one into the public eye and criticism might be general. There are for instance the long list of school principals who committed suicide because fires in their schools—with which they had nothing to do—threatened the picture of the Emperor which was hung in every school. Teachers too have been burned to death dashing into burning schools to rescue these pictures. By their deaths they showed how high they held their giri to their names and their chu to the Emperor. There are also famous stories of persons who were guilty of a slip of the tongue in ceremonious public readings of one of the Imperial Rescripts, either the one on Education or the one for Soldiers and Sailors, and who have cleared their names by committing suicide. Within the reign of the present Emperor, a man who had inadvertently named his son Hirohito—the given name of the Emperor was never spoken in Japan—killed himself and his child.
各种职业上的责任也都伴之以维护名声“义理”。由于某种特殊情况，某人成了众矢之的，陷入了遭受众人谴责的困境时，日本人常常提出毫无道理的要求。例如，由于自己的学校发生火灾，即使失火的责任完全不在自己，但由于每个学校都要悬挂的天皇的肖像受到损坏，因而自杀的校长不在少数。教师中，为了抢救天皇肖像而跳进熊熊燃烧的校舍之中被烧死的也大有人在。这些人以死来证明他们是多么重视维护名声“义理”，对天皇又是何等的忠诚。至于在读《教育诏书》和《军人敕谕》时，因为读错了便以自杀来洗刷污名的故事，至今还广为流传。在现今天皇在位的情况下，天皇的名字是绝对需要避讳的，有人因为一时疏忽，为孩子取名为“裕仁”，结果与其孩子一起自杀身亡。
Giri to one's name as a professional person is very exigent in Japan but it need not be maintained by what an American understands as high professional standards. The teacher says, ‘I cannot in giri to my name as a teacher admit ignorance of it,' and he means that if he does not know to what species a frog belongs nevertheless he has to pretend he does. If he teaches English on the basis of only a few years' school instruction, nevertheless he cannot admit that anyone might be able to correct him. It is specifically to this kind of defensiveness that ‘giri to one's name as a teacher' refers. The business man too, in giri to his name as a business man, cannot let anyone know that his assets are seriously depleted or that the plans he made for his organization have failed. And the diplomat cannot in giri admit the failure of his policy. In all such giri usages there is extreme identification of a man with his work and any criticism of one's acts or one's competence becomes automatically a criticism of one's self.
在日本，维护专家名声的“义理”，是十分严格的，但是，它不需要像美国那样，靠着高度的专门的技能来维护。教师说：“考虑到教师的名声，表面上决不能说不懂。”这句话的意是说，即使他不了解青蛙属于什么类，也必须装出一副懂得的样子。假如这位教师，仅仅基于在校几年里学到的知识来教授英语，他也不会承认有人也许能够纠正他的错误。“维护教师名誉的义理”尤其指的就是这种自我防御的态度。实业家出于实业家名声的“义理”，也从不向任何人透露他的资产现已枯竭，正面临着危机，或者他为自己公司制订的计划，未能如愿以偿。外交官考虑到体面，也不承认自己外交方针的失误。从上述“义理”的用法上可以看出一种共同的，人与工作被等价齐观的观点。于是，对某个人行为或能力的批评，就自然而然地成了对他本人的人身攻击。
These Japanese reactions to imputations of failure and inadequacy can be duplicated over and over again in the United States. We all know persons who are maddened by detraction. But we are seldom so defensive as the Japanese. If a teacher does not know to what species a frog belongs, he thinks it is better behavior to say so than to claim knowledge, even though he might succumb to the temptation to hide his ignorance. If a business man is dissatisfied with a policy he has promoted he thinks he can put out a new and different directive. He does not consider that his self-respect is conditional upon his maintaining that he was right all along and that if he admitted he was wrong he should either resign or retire. In Japan, however, this defensiveness goes very deep and it is the part of wisdom—as it is also universal etiquette—not to tell a person to his face in so many words that he has made a professional error.
在美国也时常看到这种对失败或无能的污名，但美国人的反应完全相反。我们都知道，有人在受到别人恶语伤害时会勃然大怒，但是，我们美国人很少像日本人那样，为自我防御而苦恼。倘若有位教师不知道青蛙属于什么类，即便有时他也可能掩饰自己的无知，但是，他也会认识到与其装懂，不如老实承认自己无知，倒更光明磊落。实业家如果对以前下达的方针未能令人满意，他可以另外发出新的指令。他不会认为，不咬定自己以前的所作所为正确，就会有失自尊。而且，他也不会想到承认了自己的错误，就非要辞职或隐退不可。然而，在日本这种自我防御却根深蒂固。因此，不当着某个人的面，指责他职业上的过失，是一般的礼节，也被看做是聪明人应取的态度。
This sensitivity is especially conspicuous in situations where one person has lost out to another. It may be only that another person has been preferred for a job or that the person concerned has failed in a competitive examination. The loser ‘wears a shame' for such failures, and, though this shame is in some cases a strong incentive to greater efforts, in many others it is a dangerous depressant. He loses confidence and becomes melancholy or angry or both. His efforts are stymied. It is especially important for Americans to recognize that competition in Japan thus does not have the same degree of socially desirable effects that it does in our own scheme of life. We rely strongly on competition as a ‘good thing.' Psychological tests show that competition stimulates us to our best work. Performance goes up under this stimulus; when we are given something to do all by ourselves we fall short of the record we make when there are competitors present. In Japan, however, their tests show just the opposite. It is especially marked after childhood is ended, for Japanese children are more playful about competition and not so worried about it. With young men and adults, however, performance deteriorated with competition. Subjects who had made good progress, reduced their mistakes and gained speed when they were working by themselves, began to make mistakes and were far slower when a competitor was introduced. They did best when they were measuring their improvement against their own Tecord, not when they were measuring themselves against others. The Japanese experimenters rightly analyzed the reason for this poor record in competitive situations. Their subjects, they said, when the project became competitive, became principally interested in the danger that they might be defeated, and the work suffered. They felt the competition so keenly as an aggression that they turned their attention to their relation to the aggressor instead of concentrating on the job in hand.*
这样的神经过敏，在与人竞争失败时表现得尤为明显。譬如在就业时，别人被录用了，或者去竞争考试中落榜了等。由于这种失败，失败者会感到“耻辱”。这种羞耻之心有时会成为发奋的强烈刺激，但更多的成了引起不安心理的诱因。他丧失了信心，或者忧郁或者气愤，或者二者兼而有之。他的努力因此受阻。对美国人来说，特别重要的是，要认识到这种竞争在日本不可能收到我们在自身的生活机构中所收到的那种可喜的社会效果。我们视竞争为“动力”，大加利用。心理试验证明，竞争可以刺激我们做出最好的努力；有这种刺激时，工作效率会大大提高。我们独自工作时，无法达到有竞争对手时取得的成绩。可是，在日本，试验结果恰好相反。特别是在刚过少年期的一段时间里，表现得更为明显。日本的孩子多半把竞争看做儿戏，不太介意；可是青年人或成年人，在竞争中工作效率明显下降。一个单独工作时表现出良好的进步、错误数量逐步减少、速度不断增加的被试验者，一旦让他同竞争对手在一起，便错误百出，速度也明显减慢。他们在自己与自己相比测试进步时，成绩最好，可是，在同别人进行比较测试时，却不能令人满意。有几名做过这一实验的日本学者正确地分析了在竞争状态下成绩为什么会如此不理想的原因。按照他们的说法，当要互相竞争时，应试者们的注意力完全集中在担心落在别人后面的危险上，反而把工作疏忽了。他们过分锐敏地把竞争看做是外部加在自己身上的攻击，因此，不能专心致志地、从容地投入到自己工作中，反而将注意力放在了自己和攻击者的关系上。 关于这一试验的概要，引自《日本的道德与信念》，腾写版印刷。该书系拉迪斯拉斯·法拉戈为美国道德委员会（位于纽约89号街东9号）所作。
The students examined in these tests tended to be influenced most by the possible shame of failing. Like a teacher ox a business man living up to his giri to his professional name they are stung by their giri to their name as students. Student teams who lost in competitive games, too, went to great lengths in abandoning themselves to this shame of failure. Crews might throw themselves down in their boats beside their oars and weep and bewail themselves. Defeated baseball teams might gather in a huddle and cry aloud. In the United States we would say they were bad losers. We have an etiquette that expects them to say that the better team won. It is proper for the defeated to shake hands with the victors. No matter how much we hate to be beaten we scorn people who make an emotional crisis out of it.
接受这种试验的学生们，由于预料到失败时的耻辱，受到的影响最为强烈。正如教师和实业家均按照各自维护专家名声的“义理”行事一样，学生们的行动也受他们对名声的“义理”观念的支配。比赛失败了的学生，会因这一失败的耻辱，采取极端的行动。赛艇选手会在赛艇上伏在划浆旁，日夜悲叹。赛输了的棒球队，会聚在一起大放悲声。如在美国，我们准会说这些家伙多么输不起！因为按照我们的规矩，败者承认实力占优势的队获胜是理所当然的，败者同胜者握手是礼节，不论输掉怎样可惜，为失败而大哭大闹的人，是受人蔑视的。
The Japanese have always been inventive in devising ways of avoiding direct competition. Their elementary schools minimize it beyond what Americans would think possible. Their teachers are instructed that each child must be taught to better his own record and that he should not be given opportunities to compare himself with others. In their grade schools they do not even keep any students back to repeat a grade and all children who enter together go through their entire elementary education together. Their report cards grade children in elementary schools on marks for conduct but not on their school work: when really competitive situations are unavoidable, as in entrance examinations to the middle schools, the tension is understandably great. Every teacher has stories of the boys who when they know they have failed commit suicide.
日本人经常想出种种巧妙的方法，极力避免直接的竞争。在日本小学里，竞争的机会缩小到了让美国人难以想象的最低限度。日本的教师们得到的提示是，教育儿童自己提高自己的成绩，不得给他们自己与其他儿童比较的机会。在日本小学里，不及格的学生也不用留级。同时入学的儿童，一起学完小学教育的全部课程一起毕业。成绩通知书里记载的小学儿童的成绩名次不是按照学业成绩，而是以操行分为基准。当升学考试之类真正的竞争再也无法避免时，孩子们的紧张程度是可想而知的。每个教师都能说出一些因得知自己不及格后企图自杀的孩子的名字。
This minimizing of direct competition goes all through Japanese life. An ethic that is based on on has small place for competition whereas the American categorical imperative is upon making good in competition with one's fellows. Their whole system of hierarchy with all its detailed rules of class minimizes direct competition. The family system minimizes it too for the father and son are not institutionally in competition as they are in America: it is possible for them to reject each other but not for them to compete. Japanese comment with amazement on the American family where the father and the son compete both for the use of the family car and for the attention of the mother-wife.
这种把直接竞争缩小到最低限度的努力，遍及日本人生活的个个方面。美国人的最高命令是在同辈之间的竞争上取得良好的成绩，但是，在立足于“恩义”的伦理上，容许竞争的余地就极小。细致规定了各阶级应遵守的规则的日本的整个等级制度，就将直接的竞争限在了最小的限度之内。家族制度也同样如此。因为在制度上，父子不像美国那样，处在竞争关系之中。他们即使相互排斥，也不会有竞争。日本人看到美国人家里，父亲与儿子争着使用家用轿车，争着引起妻子或母亲的注意，无不以惊讶的口吻对此加以评论。
The ubiquitous institution of the go-between is one of the more conspicuous ways in which the Japanese prevent direct confrontation of two persons who are in competition with each other. An intermediary is required in any situation where a man might feel shame if he fell short and consequently go-betweens serve on a great number of occasions—negotiating marriage, offering one's services for hire, leaving a job and arranging countless everyday matters. This go-between reports to both parties, or in case of an important deal like a marriage each side employs its own intermediary and they negotiate the details between themselves before reporting to their side. By dealing in this way at second hand the principals need take no cognizance of claims and charges that would have to be resented in giri to their names if they were in direct communication. The go-between too gains prestige by acting in this official capacity, and gets the respect of the community by his successful manipulation. The chances of a peaceful arrangement are the greater because the go-between has an ego investment in smooth negotiations. The intermediary acts in the same way in feeling out an employer about a job for his client or in relaying to the employer the employee's decision to leave his job.
到处出面的中间人的制度，也是日本人防止互相竞争的两个人直接见面的有效方法之一。只要是失败后有可能感到耻辱的场合，就都需要中间人。因而，中间人在婚姻、就业、退职以及无数日常事务上都承担着斡旋的责任。中间人向当事双方传达对方的意图。在婚姻之类重要的交涉上，双方都为自己请来中间人，经过中间人之间详细的接洽之后，再向双方分别报告。这样间接地进行交涉，当事者可以不致听到如果直接交谈，出于维护名声的“义理”难免会提出的有伤和气的要求或指责。中间人因为完成了这一光荣使命，会享有信誉，斡旋成功了还会受到社会的尊敬。由于把事情办妥关系到中间人的体面，因而他们更加努力，成功地达成协议的机会更多。同样，中间人还为前来要求帮助就业的人，摸清雇主的意向，或者将工人的退职意愿转达给雇主。
Etiquette of all kinds is organized to obviate shame-causing situations which might call in question one's giri to one's name. These situations which are thus minimized go far beyond direct competition. The host, they think, should greet his guest with certain ritual welcoming and in his good clothes. Therefore anyone who finds a farmer in his work clothes at home may have to wait a bit. The farmer gives no sign of recognition until he has put on suitable clothes and arranged the proper courtesies. It makes no difference even if the host has to change his clothes in the room where the guest is waiting. He simply is not present until he is there in the proper guise. In the rural areas, too, boys may visit girls at night after the household is asleep and the girl is in bed. Girls can either accept or reject their advances, but the boy wears a towel bound about his face so that if he is rejected he need feel no shame next day. The disguise is not to prevent the girl from recognizing him; it is purely an ostrich technique so that he will not have to admit that he was shamed in his proper person. Etiquette requires too that as little cognizance as possible be taken of any project until success is assured. It is part of the duties of go-betweens arranging a marriage to bring the prospective bride and groom together before the contract is completed. Everything is done to make this a casual meeting for if the purpose of the introduction were avowed at this stage any breaking-off of the negotiations would threaten the honor of one family or of both. Since the young couple must each be escorted by one or both of their parents, and the go-betweens must be the hosts or hostesses, it is most properly arranged when they all ‘run into each other' casually at the annual chrysanthemum show or at a cherry-blossom viewing or in a well-known park or place of recreation.
为了避免引起丑闻，以及维护名声“义理”而出现问题之类的事态发生，形成了各种类型的礼法。这些将事态控制在最低限度内的礼法，不仅体现在直接竞争方面，而且涉及的范围更加广泛。按照日本人的想法，宾客来访时，必须更衣，按一定的礼法相迎。因而，在访问农户时，遇上农民正穿着作业服，就得稍候片刻。农民在换上适当的服装，准备好适当的礼仪之前，会对你做出一副素不相识的面孔。即使主人必须在客人等候的房间里更换衣服时也是一样。在他收拾打扮停当之前，仿佛你根本就不在场。在农村，还有一个习俗，夜晚在家人们都已进入梦乡，姑娘也睡下之后，青年人去访问姑娘，姑娘可以答应或者拒绝青年的要求。青年人用手巾蒙着脸，即使遭到拒绝，第二天也可以不致丢丑。这种化装当然不是为了让姑娘认不出他是何人。这种把头钻进沙子里的鸵鸟式的做法，只不过是为了日后不致陷入不得不承认是自己受到了侮辱这一窘境的一种手段。日本的礼法还要求，不论任何计划，在确有成功的把握之前，尽量不让别人知道。媒人的任务之一，就是在婚约签订之前，介绍未来的新郎和新娘见面。但是，为了将这次会见安排成一次偶然的巧遇，就要研究出种种方案。因为假如在这一阶段就暴露介绍的目的，万一成功不了会有伤其中的一家或者双方家庭的名誉。会见时青年男女由各自的父母中的一位或者双方陪着，由媒人做东道主。最适当的做法是，利用一年中例行的菊花展览和赏花的机会，或者在著名的公园和娱乐场所，故意安排大家偶然“相会”。
In all such ways, and in many more, the Japanese avoid occasions in which failure might be shameful. Though they lay such emphasis on the duty to clear one's name of insult, in actual practice this leads them to arrange events so that insult need be felt as seldom as possible. This is in great contrast to many tribes of the Pacific Islands where clearing one's name holds much the same pre-eminent place that it does in Japan.
通过上述方法或者除此之外的其他方法，日本人避免了因失败招来耻辱的机会。他们非常强调洗刷受人侮辱的污名的义务。但是，实际上这一做法使他们处理事情得以尽可能地减少了受侮辱的机会。这一点同几乎与日本一样重视洗刷污名的太平洋群岛上的许多部族相比，有着明显的不同。
Among these primitive gardening peoples of New Guinea and Melanesia the mainspring of tribal or personal action is the insult which it is necessary to resent. They cannot have a tribal feast without one village's setting it in motion by saying that another village is so poor it cannot feed ten guests, it is so stingy it hides its taro and its coconuts, its leaders are so stupid they could not organize a feast if they tried. Then the challenged village clears its name by overwhelming all comers with its lavish display and hospitality. Marriage arrangements and financial transactions are set going in the same way. When they go on the warpath too the two sides have a tremendous insult exchange before they set their arrows to their bows. They handle the smallest matter as if it were an occasion that called for mortal fight. It is a great incentive to action and such tribes often have a great deal of vitality. But nobody has ever described them as courteous.
在以园艺为生计的新几内亚及美拉尼西亚等未开化的民族之间，令人难以容忍的侮辱成了部族及个人行动的主要动力。即使在举行部族庆祝宴会的时候，也得靠这一动力才能进行。他们的做法是，由一个村子将另一个村子痛骂一顿，诸如，你们穷得连十个客人也招待不起啦；你们这些吝啬鬼，把青芋和椰子都藏了起来啦；你们头人是个大笨蛋，想办宴会也办不起来啦等。这样一来，受到挑战的村子就用豪华的炫耀款待，使全体与会者为之大吃一惊，借以洗刷其污名。婚姻和经济上的交涉也同样如此。同样，在即将交战时，敌我双方在搭箭上弦之前，也要狠狠地对骂一通。他们对待任何琐碎的小事，也都像是非要决一死战。这是他们行动的强有力的动力，因而这样的部族具有极大的生命力。但是，从来没有人称这些部族为文明礼貌的民族。
The Japanese on the contrary are paragons of politeness and this pre-eminent politeness is a measure of the lengths to which they have gone in limiting the occasions when it is necessary to clear one's name. They retain as an incomparable goad to achievement the resentment insult occasions but they limit the situations where it is called for. It should occur only in specified situations or when traditional arrangements to eliminate it break down under pressure. Unquestionably the use of this goad in Japan contributed to the dominant position she was able to attain in the Far East and to her policy of Anglo-American war in the last decade. Many Occidental discussions of Japan's sensitivity to insult and her eagerness to avenge herself, however, would be more appropriate to the insult-using tribes of New Guinea than they are to Japan, and many Westerners' forecasts of how Japan would behave after defeat in this war were wide of the mark because they did not recognize the special Japanese limitations upon giri to one's name.
日本人与他们相反，是注重礼仪的模范。而且，这种显而易见的尚礼成了测定他们是如何极力限制必须洗刷污名事端的尺度。他们虽然把侮辱引起的愤怒，当做促使成功的独一无二的刺激，但是，却限制此类事态的发生。只在特定的场合，或者传统的消除手段迫于压力未能奏效时，才会发生。对这一刺激的利用，为日本在远东得到的统治地位以及最近十年间对英美作战的政策作出了贡献。这是不容置疑的事实。然而，西方人有关日本人对侮辱的敏感以及强烈的复仇心之类的议论，并不适用于日本，而是更适用于新几内亚等任何事情都要利用侮辱的部族。而且，西方人有关日本在此次战争失败后，将采取何种行动的预言之所以多数未能实现，是由于没有认识到日本人对维护名声的“义理”作出了特殊的限制。
The politeness of the Japanese should not lead Americans to minimize their sensitivity to slurs. Americans bandy personal remarks very lightly; it is a kind of game. It is hard for us to realize the deadly seriousness that attaches to light remarks in Japan. In his autobiography, published in America just as he wrote it in English, a Japanese artist, Yoshio Markino, has described vividly a perfectly proper Japanese reaction to what he interpreted as a sneer. When he wrote the book he had already lived most of his adult life in the United States and in Europe but he felt as strongly as if he were still living in his home town in rural Aichi. He was the youngest child of a landowner of good standing and had been most lovingly reared in a charming home. Toward the end of his childhood his mother died, and, not long after, his father became bankrupt and sold all his property to pay his debts. The family was broken up and Markino had not a sen to help him in realizing his ambitions. One of these ambitions was to learn English. He attached himself to a near-by mission school and did janitor work in order to learn the language. At eighteen he had still never been outside the round of a few provincial towns but he had made up his mind to go to America.
日本人的确是注重礼仪的国民，但是，美国人不能因此而轻视他们对诽谤的敏感。美国人说起别人的坏话来十分随便，仿佛是在做游戏。我们难以理解日本人为什么会对一些不屑一顾的言辞，感受得那么深刻。日本画家牧野善雄在他那部用英文写成的，在美国出版的自传中引自牧野善雄：《当我是个孩子时》，1912年，第159～160页。，生动地描述了他对一件自认为受人嘲笑的事所作出的典型的日本人的反应。在他写这部书之前，也就是他成年后的大部分生活是在美国和欧洲度过的。但是，就像生活在故乡爱知县的乡村小孩一样，他对这一事件感受得十分强烈。他是有相当身份的地主的小儿子，在快乐的家庭里，受到了无与伦比的宠爱。在他幼年时期即将结束的时候，母亲去世，不久父亲破产，为了支付欠债，变卖了全部家产。一家人从此四分五裂。牧野要实现自己的理想，却连一分钱也没有。他的理想之一便是学习英语。他寄宿在附近的一所教会学校里，为学英语当了守门人。到他十八岁时，他的生活范围还只限于两三个乡村小孩，但他却下定决心要去美国。
I visited upon one of the missionaries to whom I had more confidence than any other. I told him my intention to go to America in hope that he might be able to give me some useful information. To my great disappointment he exclaimed, ‘What, You are intending to go to America? His wife was in the same room, and they both sneered at me! At the moment I felt as if all the blood in my head went down to my feet! I stood on the same point for a few seconds in silence, then came back to my room without saying ‘goodbye.' I said to myself, ‘Everything is quite finished.'
我访问了我最信赖的一位传教士，向他吐露了要去美国的愿望。期望从他那里得到某些有益的知识。可是，令人失望的是，那位传教士竟叫道：“什么？就你这个样还要去美国？”传教士的妻子也在同一房间里，他们两人一起嘲笑我。霎时间，我仿佛觉得脑子里的血全部沉到了脚底。我一言不发地站在那儿两三秒钟，之后，连句“再见”也没说，便回到了我的房间。我自言自语地说：“一切就到此为止吧！”
On the next morning I ran away. Now I want to write the reason. I always believe that insincerity is the greatest crime in this world, and nothing could be more insincere than to sneer!
第二天清晨，我逃了出来。这儿我想简单地说说原因。我经常相信，世上最大的罪恶是不诚实，而最不诚实的莫过于嘲笑。
I always forgive the other's anger, because it is the human nature to get into bad temper. I generally forgive if one tells me a he, because the human nature is very weak and very often one cannot have a steady mind to face the difficulty and tell all the truth. I also forgive if one makes any foundless rumor or gossip against me, because it is a very easy temptation when some others persuade in that way.
我能够原谅对方向我发火，因为发火是人的本性。我也能够原谅别人对我撒谎，因为人的天性极其软弱，许多时候，缺乏正视困难、坚持说真话的勇气。人们对我捉风捕影地说三道四或者造谣中伤，我也能够原谅。因为当有人在旁劝说鼓惑时，人们很容易陷进去，信以为真。
Even murderers I may forgive according to their condition. But about sneering, there is no excuse. Because one cannot sneer at innocent people without intentional insincerity.
甚至对于杀人者，有时视情况也可以宽恕。但是，唯独嘲笑，全然没有辩解的余地。因为如果不是故意的不诚实，就不可能嘲笑清白无辜的人。
Let me give you my own definition of two words. Murderer: one who assassinates some human flesh. Sneerer: one who assassinates others' SOUL and heart.
我告诉诸位，我给两个词所下的定义，杀人者，是杀害别人肉体的人；嘲笑者，则是杀害他人心灵的人。
Soul and heart are far dearer than the flesh, therefore sneering is the worst crime. Indeed, that missionary and his wife tried to assassinate my soul and heart, and I had a great pain in my heart, which cried out, ‘Why you?'*
心灵远比肉体更宝贵。因而，嘲笑是最大的罪恶。实际上，那对传教士夫妇正是要杀害我的心灵。我心中感到莫大的痛苦，我的心在呼喊：“为什么要说，就你这个样！”
The next morning he departed with his entire possessions tied in a handkerchief.
翌晨，他将全部物品包在一起，愤然离去。
He had been ‘assassinated,' as he felt, by the missionary's incredulity about a penniless provincial boy's going to the United States to become an artist. His name was besmirched until he had cleared it by carrying out his purpose and after the missionary's ‘sneer' he had no alternative but to leave the place and prove his ability to get to America. In English it reads curiously that he charges the missionary with ‘insincerity'; the American's exclamation seems to us quite ‘sincere' in our sense of the word. But he is using the word in its Japanese meaning and they regularly deny sincerity to anyone who belittles any person whom he does not wish to provoke to aggression. Such a sneer is wanton and proves ‘insincerity.'
他感到那位传教士对一个不名一文的农村少年为了成为画家要去美国的愿望采取的不信任态度，“杀害”了他。他的名声在他尚未达到目的之前，蒙上了无法洗清的污点。既然受到了传教士的“嘲笑”，他就又要离开这块土地，用行动证明他自己完全有能力去美国。除此之外，别无他途。他用“不诚实”这个英语单词谴责传教士，使我们感到奇怪。因为按照我们的理解，那个美国人惊奇时说的话完全是“诚实的”、 “坦率的”。然而，他却按照日本人理解的意思使用了这个词。日本人通常不爱找碴儿打架，但是，他们认为蔑视人的人是缺乏诚意的人，那种嘲笑完全是无缘无故的，是“不诚实”的证据。
‘Even murderers I may forgive according to their condition. But about sneering there is no excuse.' Since it is not proper to ‘forgive,' one possible reaction to a slur is revenge. Markino cleared his name by getting to America but revenge ranks high in Japanese tradition as a ‘good thing' under circumstances of insult or defeat. Japanese who write books for Western readers have sometimes used vivid figures of speech to describe the Japanese attitudes about revenge. Inazo Nitobe, one of the most benevolent men in Japan, writing in 1900, says: ‘In revenge there is something that satisfies one's sense of justice. Our sense of revenge is as exact as our mathematical faculty and until both terms of the equation are satisfied we cannot get over the sense of something left undone.'* Yoshisaburo Okakura in a book on The Life and Thought of Japan uses a particularly Japanese custom as a parallel:
“甚至对于杀人者，有时视情况也可以宽恕。但是，唯独嘲笑，全然没有辩解的余地”。既然“宽恕”不是正确的态度，那么，对待诽谤，惟一可能的办法就是复仇。牧野是通过去美国清洗了他的污名。但是，在蒙受了侮辱或者失败的情况下，复仇作为一种“有效的方法”，在日本的传统中，占着极其重要的地位。在日本人写的以西方读者为对象的书籍中，时常使用精彩的比喻来描写日本人对复仇的态度。新渡户稻造是日本最富于博爱之心的人物之一，在他一九○○年所写的著作中写道：“复仇中包含着某些可以满足我们正义感的东西。我们的复仇观念与我们的数学能力同样严密，方程式两边尚未得出令人满意的结果之前，总感到心意未了。”引自新渡户稻造：《日本的精神》，1900年，第83页。冈仓由三郎在他题为《日本人的生活与思想》的著作中，将复仇同日本的一个独特的习惯作了对比，他写道：
Many of the so-called mental peculiarities of the Japanese owe their origin to the love of purity and its complementary hatred of defilement. But, pray, how could it be otherwise, being trained, as we actually are, to look upon slights inflicted, either on our family honour or on the national pride, as so many defilements and wounds that would not be clean and heal up again, unless by a thorough washing through vindication? You may consider the cases of vendetta so often met with in the public and private life of Japan, merely as a kind of morning tub which a people take with whom love of cleanliness has grown into a passion.*
日本人心理上的所谓的特异性，多起因于喜好洁净以及与此互为表里的厌恶污秽的态度。除此之外，无法加以解释。实际上，我们受到的教育是，如果不通过申辩将家庭的名声和国民的荣誉蒙受的侮辱彻底洗刷干净，就将留下无法洗净的污秽或没有希望治愈的创伤。在日本的公私生活中屡见不鲜的那些复仇的事例，可以认为它们无非是类似讲究洁净、以清洁为癖好的国民的晨浴。 引自冈仓由三郎：《日本人的生活与思想》，1913年，第17页。
And he continues, saying that thus the Japanese ‘live clean, undefiled lives which seem as serene and beautiful as a cherry tree in full bloom.' This ‘morning tub,' in other words, washes off dirt other people have thrown at you and you cannot be virtuous as long as any of it sticks to you. The Japanese have no ethic which teaches that a man cannot be insulted unless he thinks he is and that it is only ‘what comes out of a man' that defiles him, not what is said or done against him.
他接着写道，日本人的“生活宛如盛开的樱花，绚丽多姿，洁净而又纯美”。换句话说，这种“晨浴”是要洗净别人扔在你身上的污泥。你身上哪怕沾有一点的污泥，也称不上是个完美的人。日本人不具备这种伦理：人只要自己不认为受到了侮辱，就不存在侮辱；同样，侮辱人是由“本人造成的”，并不是别人对其说了或做了些什么。
Japanese tradition keeps constantly before the public this ideal of a ‘morning bath' of vendetta. Countless incidents and hero tales, of which the most popular is the historical Tale of the Forty-Seven Ronin, are known to everybody. They are read in their school books and played in the theater, made up into contemporary movies, and printed in popular publications. They are a part of the living culture of Japan today.
日本的传统不断地在一般民众面前宣扬这种复仇的“晨浴”的理想。数不胜数的事件及英雄故事——其中最受人欢迎的是《四十七武士》的故事——尽人皆知。这些故事，在学校的教科书里可以读到，在剧场里可以看到，它被编成现代电影，或者作为通俗出版物发行，成了今天日本文化的一部分。
Many of these tales are about sensitivity to casual failures. For instance, a daimyo called on three of his retainers to name the maker of a certain-fine sword. They disagreed and when experts were called in it was found that Nagoya Sanza had been the only one who had correctly identified it as a Muramasa blade. The ones who were wrong took it as an insult and set out to kill Sanza. One of them found Sanza asleep and stabbed him with Sanza's own sword. Sanza, however, lived, and his attacker thereafter dedicated himself to his revenge. In the end he succeeded in killing him and his giri was satisfied.
这些故事许多是关于对偶然的失败作出过敏反应的。例如有位大名让三名家臣鉴定一把名刀的制造者。三人的意见各不相同。于是请来精通此道的专家，结果证实只有名古屋山三一人猜出了这把刀的制造者是村正。鉴定错了的另外两个人感到受了侮辱，开始伺机谋害山三。其中有一个人乘山三熟睡之机，使用山三的刀向山三刺去。可是，山三死里逃生。于是，袭击山三的人从此舍弃了一切，专门图谋复仇，最后终于胜利地将山三杀死，他的“体面”因此得到了保全。
Other tales are about the necessity of avenging oneself upon one's lord. Giri meant in Japanese ethics equally the retainer's loyalty to his lord to the death, and his right-about-face of extravagant enmity when he felt himself insulted. A good example is from the stories about Ieyasu, the first Tokugawa Shogun. It was reported to one of his retainers that Ieyasu had said of him, ‘He is the sort of fellow who will die of a fishbone stuck in his throat.' The imputation that he would die in an undignified manner was not to be borne, and the retainer vowed that this was something he would not forget in life or death. Ieyasu was at the time unifying the country from the new capital Yedo (Tokyo) and was not yet secure from his enemies. The retainer made overtures to the hostile lords, offering to set fire to Yedo from within and lay it waste. Thus his giri would be satisfied and he would be avenged upon Ieyasu. Most Occidental discussions of Japanese loyalty are thoroughly unrealistic because they do not recognize that giri is not merely loyalty; it is also a virtue that under certain circumstances enjoins treachery. As they say, ‘A man who is beaten becomes a rebel.' So does a man who is insulted.
其他故事是有关必须向自己的主君进行报复的。按照日本的逻辑，“义理”意味着家臣要终生忠于主君；同时，在家臣感到蒙受了主君的侮辱时，可以转变为惊人的憎恶。在流传的有关第一代将军德川家康的故事中，有个恰当的例子。家康的一个家臣听说家康说他是个“会让鱼刺卡在嗓子里卡死的人”。这种关系到武士面子的说法，是绝对不能容忍的诽谤。这位家臣发誓至死不忘这一耻辱。当时家康新定江户（东京）为首府，正处在推进国内统一大业的时候，敌人尚未完全扫荡干净。这个家臣勾结敌方的诸侯，提出要从内部火烧江户。他认为只有这样才算维护了他的“义理”，对家康报了仇。西方人有关日本人忠诚的议论，之所以大部分流为泛泛的空论，是因为没有看到“义理”不仅停留在忠诚上，有时还是一种促使反叛的道德。他们说“挨打的人谋反”，其实受辱的人也同样。
These two themes from the historical tales—revenge upon someone who has been right when you were wrongs and revenge for a slur, even from one's lord—are commonplaces in the best-known literature of Japan, and they have many variations. When one examines contemporary life-histories and novels and events, it is clear that, however much the Japanese appreciate revenge in their traditions, stories of vengeance are today certainly as rare as in Western nations, perhaps rarer. This does not mean that obsessions about one's honor have grown less but rather that the reaction to failures and slurs is more and more often defensive instead of offensive. People take the shame as seriously as ever, but it more and more often paralyzes their energies instead of starting a fight. The direct attack of vengeance was more possible in lawless pre-Meiji days. In the modern era law and order and the difficulties of managing a more interdependent economy have sent revenge underground or directed it against one's own breast. A man may take a private revenge against his enemy by playing a trick upon him which he never avows—somewhat after the fashion of the old story of the host who served his enemy with excrement which could not be detected in the delicious food and asked no more than to know he had done it. The guest never knew. But even this kind of underground aggression is rarer today than turning it against oneself. There one has two choices: to use it as a goad to drive oneself to the ‘impossible,' or to let it eat out one's heart.
历史故事中常见的两个主题——一是自己错了，却向正确的人复仇；一是即使对方是自己的主君，既然受到了侮辱，也要报仇——是日本最流行的老套的文学主题，通过各种各样的形式作了描写。但是，调查一下现代的经验谈、小说及实际的事件，可以看出，虽然日本人在历史故事里极力称赞复仇，但是，今天实际上真正复仇的，确实与西方各国没有什么两样，说不定还会更少一些。这并不意味着他们不再像以往那样看重名誉了，相反，它意味着对于失败和侮辱的反应，由进攻型转为防御型的情况越来越多了。日本人依然感受到严重的耻辱，但是，他们并不因此而开始争斗，而是越来越多地让自己的活动能力麻痹起来。为了复仇的目的直接展开进攻，这在明治以前没有法律的时代为数不少。进入近代之后，由于法律和秩序以及处理具有更大相互依存性的经济时的困难，复仇变得更加秘密了，或者指向了自己本身。譬如，那个在仇人饭菜中放进粪便的传说，就是企图悄悄地不露声色地通过荒唐的恶作剧，达到暗中复仇的目的。这个故事的主人公背着敌人，巧妙地在美味佳肴中放进了粪便，观察对方能否发觉，结果客人全然没有觉察到。但是，今天就连这种秘密的攻击也已十分罕见，多是将攻击指向自己。将攻击指向自己有两种目的：一是利用它作为一种刺激，强迫自己去做不可能实现的事情；一是让它腐蚀自己的心灵。
The vulnerability of the Japanese to failures and slurs and rejections makes it all too easy for them to harry themselves instead of others. Their novels describe over and over again the dead end of melancholy alternating with outbursts of anger in which educated Japanese have so often lost themselves in the last decades. The protagonists of these stories are bored—bored with the round of life, bored with their families, bored with the city, bored with the country. But it is not the boredom of reaching for the stars, where all effort seems trivial compared with a great goal pictured in their mind's eye. It is not a boredom born of the contrast between reality and the ideal. When the Japanese have a vision of a great mission they lose their boredom. They lose it completely and absolutely, no matter how distant the goal. Their particular kind of ennui is the sickness of an over-vulnerable people. They turn inward upon themselves their fear of rejection and they are stymied. The picture of boredom in the Japanese novel is quite a different state of mind from that with which we are familiar in the Russian novel where the contrast between the real and the ideal worlds is basic in all the tedium their heroes experience. Sir George Sansom has said that the Japanese lack this sense of a contrast between the real and the ideal. He is not speaking of how this underlies their boredom but of how they formulate their philosophy and their general attitude toward life. Certainly this contrast with basic Occidental notions goes far beyond the particular case in point here, but it has special relevance to their besetting depressions. Japan ranks with Russia as a nation given to depicting boredom in her novels and the contrast with the United States is marked. American novels do not do much with the theme. Our novelists trace the misery of their characters to a character-deficiency or to the buffets of a cruel world; they very seldom depict pure and simple ennui. Personal maladjustment must have a cause, a build-up, and rouse the reader's moral condemnation of some flaw in the hero or heroine, or of some evil in the social order. Japan also has her proletarian novels protesting desperate economic conditions in the cities and terrible happenings on commercial fishing boats, but their character novels uncover a world where people's emotions most often come to them, so one author says, like drifting chlorine gas. Neither the character nor the author thinks it necessary to analyze the circumstances or the hero's life history to account for the cloud. It goes and it comes. People are vulnerable. They have turned inward the aggression their old heroes used to visit upon their enemies and their depression appears to them to have no explicit causes. They may seize upon some incident as its source, but the incident leaves a curious impression of being hardly more than a symbol.
日本人容易为失败、诽谤和摈弃所伤害。因而也非常容易使自己——不是别人——烦恼。在日本小说里，最近几十年来，经常看到有教养的日本人，常常刚想不顾一切地发泄怒气，便马上陷入了极端的忧郁之中。这些小说的主要人物充满了厌倦情绪。他们厌倦日常生活，厌倦家庭、城市及农村。但是，这种厌倦并不是因为无法达到理想，与理想的伟大相比，一切努力都微不足道，渺小无力而产生；也不是由于现实与理想的脱节而产生的。日本人在虚幻地描绘重大的使命时不感到厌倦。不论其目标如何遥远，他们也会完全不留痕迹地将厌倦的性情抛弃掉。日本人这种特有的厌倦，是特别容易受到伤害的国民的一种病态。他们将担心受人摈弃的恐惧引向内心，在这一恐惧的影响下，一筹莫展，手足无措。日本小说中描写的厌倦，与在俄国小说中我们所熟悉的厌倦，是完全不同的心理状态。在俄国小说里现实世界与理想世界之间的严重差异，成了主人公所经历的一切厌倦的基础。萨·乔治·桑塞姆曾经说过，日本人缺乏现实与理想的对立感。但是，他的目的不是在说明日本人厌倦的根底，而是在说明日本人所具备的哲学以及他对人生的一般态度。的确，他们同西方人的根本思想存在的这种严重差异，在此超越了引人注意的特殊的场合，涉及了更加广泛的范围。但是，它与日本人往往容易陷入的抑郁，有着特别深刻的联系。日本人同俄国人都是喜欢在他们的小说中描写厌倦的民族，这一点与美国人形成鲜明的对比。美国的小说家不爱写这一主题。美国的小说家认为，作品中人物的不幸是由于性格的缺陷或严酷的社会的艰辛造成的；他们探索这种原因，但很少写纯粹的厌倦。在写到某个人与周围格格不入时，会详尽地写出其原因，让读者对主人公性格上的某些缺点或者社会秩序中存在的某种弊病进行道德的谴责。日本也存在着无产阶级小说，对城市里悲惨的经济状况和发生在渔船上的惊人的事件提出抗议。但是，日本的性格小说所揭露的世界正如一位作者所提出的那样，是一个人们的感情大多像是随风飘荡的毒气似的滚滚翻腾的世界。不论作品中的人物，还是作家，都不认为有必要为了查明这种黑云的原因去分析周围的状况或者主人公的经历。这种黑云来去无常。人们都是脆弱的，他们会将过去故事中的主人公对敌人施加的攻击引向自己。而且，他们的忧郁在他们看来似乎并无特别的原因。当然，有时也可以捕捉到某种事件，但是，这一事件给人留下一个奇妙的印象，即事件本身不过是一种象征而已。
The most extreme aggressive action a modern Japanese takes against himself is suicide. Suicide, properly done, will, according to their tenets, clear his name and reinstate his memory. American condemnation of suicide makes self-destruction only a desperate submission to despair, but the Japanese respect for it allows it to be an honorable and purposeful act. In certain situations it is the most honorable course to take in giri to one's name. The defaulting debtor on New Year's Day, the official who kills himself to acknowledge that he assumes responsibility for some unfortunate occurrence, the lovers who seal their hopeless love in a double suicide, the patriot who protests the government's postponement of war with China are alL like the boy who fails in an examination or the soldier avoiding capture, turning upon themselves a final violence. Some Japanese authorities say that this liability to suicide is new in Japan. It is not easy to judge, and statistics show that observers in recent years have often overestimated its frequency. There were proportionately more suicides in Denmark in the last century and more in pre-Nazi Germany than there have ever been in Japan. But this much is certain: the Japanese love the theme. They play up suicide as Americans play up crime and they have the same vicarious enjoyment of it. They choose to dwell on events of self-destruction instead of on destruction of others. They make of it, in Bacon's phrase, their favorite ‘flagrant case.' It meets some need that cannot be filled by dwelling on other acts.
现代的日本人对自身采取的最极端的攻击行为是自杀。按照他们的信条，只要方法得当，自杀可以洗刷自己的污名，恢复死后的名誉。美国人视自杀为罪恶。在美国，自杀不过是对绝望的一种自暴自弃的屈服。但是，在尊重自杀的日本人中间，它成了具有明确目的的高尚行为。在某种情况下，自杀成了人们出于维护名声“义理”而必然要选择的最伟大行动。年关无法偿还所欠债务者、为某一不幸事件引咎自杀的官员、以殉情来实现终归没有成功希望的恋爱的情人、以死来抗议政府实行扩大对中国的战争政策的爱国志士，他们都与考试中落榜的少年以及为了免于做俘虏的士兵一样，将最后的余力指向了自身。有些日本权威人士在他们的著作中说，这一自杀的倾向在日本是新近发生的。是否果真如此，不易断定。但是，统计表明近年来观察家们往往容易将其频度估计得过高。上世纪的丹麦和纳粹前的德国，自杀的数量远比日本任何时代都要多。惟一准确的是，日本人喜欢自杀这一主题，日本人就像美国人描写犯罪一样喜欢描写自杀。他们从自杀中感受到的喜悦，如同美国人从犯罪中感受到的一样。比之杀害别人的事件，他们更喜欢杀死自己的事件。用培根的话来说，他们把这些看做是他们最喜欢的“罪恶事件”。他们借此获得了议论其他话题无法获得的某种需要。
Suicide is also more masochistic in modern Japan than it appears to have been in the historical tales of feudal times. In those stories a samurai committed suicide with his own hand at the command of the government to save himself from dishonorable execution, much as a Western enemy soldier would be shot instead of hanged, or he took this course to save himself the torture he expected if he fell into the enemy's hands. A warrior was allowed harakiri much as a Prussian officer in disgrace was sometimes allowed to shoot himself in private. Those in authority left a bottle of whiskey and a pistol on a table in his room after he knew that he had no hope of saving his honor otherwise. For the Japanese samurai, taking his own life under such circumstances was only a choice of means; death was certain. In modern times suicide is a choice to die. A man turns violence upon himself, often instead of assassinating someone else. The act of suicide, which in feudal times was the final statement of a man's courage and resolution, has become today a chosen self-destruction. During the last two generations, when Japanese have felt that ‘the world tips,' that ‘both terms of the equation' are not equivalent, that they need a ‘morning tub' to wipe off defilements, they have increasingly destroyed themselves instead of others.
同时，自杀在近代日本与封建时代历史故事中出现的自杀相比更有自虐的性质。在这些故事中出现的武士，为了使自己免受不体面的处决，遵照朝廷之命，自己结束了自己的生命。这相当于与西方敌国军人宁愿被枪毙也不愿受绞刑，或者在落入敌人手中时为使自己免受严刑拷问一样，宁愿用枪自杀。允许武士“剖腹”，同允许因犯罪而丧失名誉的普鲁士军官暗中用手枪自杀一样。对于普鲁士军官来说，一旦感觉到对他来说除此之外别无保全名誉之路时，便会在他居室的桌子上，放上一瓶威士忌和一支手枪。日本武士的情况也与此没有什么两样。在这种情况下，自己结束生命，不过是一种手段的选择而已。因为命运已经注定，不论走哪条道路，死是不可避免的。然而，在近代，自杀是一种选择。人们常常不是杀害别人而是将暴力转向自己。封建时代，自杀式勇气和决断的体现，在今天是一条自己选择的自我毁灭的道路。在上两代人中，当日本人感到“世界天翻地覆”，“方程式两边”不对等，或者为清洗污秽必须“晨浴”时，他们不是使别人丧生，而是越来越多的让自己毁灭。
Even suicide as a final argument to win victory for one's own side, though it occurs both in feudal and in modern times, has changed in this same direction. A famous story of Tokugawa days tells of the old tutor, high in the Shogunate council, who bared his body and placed his sword in readiness for immediate harakiri in the presence of the whole council and the Shogunate regent. The threat of suicide carried the day and he thereby insured the succession of his candidate to the position of Shogun. He got his way and there was no suicide. In Occidental terminology, the tutor had blackmailed the opposition. In modern times, however, such protest suicide is the act of a martyr not of a negotiator. It is carried out after one has failed or to put oneself on record as opposing some already signed agreement like the Naval Parity Act. It is staged so that only the completed act itself, and not the threat of suicide, can influence public opinion.
甚至用来当做自己获取胜利的最后证据的自杀——不仅封建时代，现代仍然如此——也在向上述方向转化。在德川时代有这样一个有名的故事，有位幕府的上了年纪的高级顾问官，将刀紧贴在赤露的肚皮上，面对着全体顾问官和代理将军，以随时准备切腹自杀的姿态，极力坚持自己的主张。结果，他的这一自杀的威吓奏效，他自己推举的候选人，得以继承了将军的职位，他由于成功地达到了目的，结果没有自杀。按照西方的说法，这位抚育官吓住了反对派。可是，在现代这类为抗议而进行的自杀，不是一种交易，而是为自己的主义而牺牲的行为。它是在为达到某一目的的努力失效之后，或者对已经缔结的协定，例如海军裁军条约，为了名留史册而采取的行为。它不是以自杀相威胁，而是通过断然的行动给舆论施加影响。
This growing tendency to strike at oneself when giri to one's name is threatened need not involve such extreme steps as suicide. Aggressions directed inward may merely produce depression and lassitude and that typical Japanese boredom that was so prevalent in the educated class. There are good sociological reasons why this mood should have been widespread among this particular class for the intelligentsia was overcrowded and very insecurely placed in the hierarchy. Only a small proportion of them could satisfy their ambitions. In the nineteen-thirties, too, they were doubly vulnerable because the authorities feared they were thinking ‘dangerous thoughts' and held them under suspicion. The Japanese intellectuals usually account for their frustration by complaints about the confusions of Westernization, but the explanation does not go far enough. The typical Japanese swing of mood is from intense dedication to intense boredom, and the psychic shipwreck which many intellectuals suffered was in the traditional Japanese manner. Many of them saved themselves from it, too, in the middle nineteen-thirties in traditional fashion: they embraced nationalistic goals and turned the attack outward again, away from their own breasts. In totalitarian aggression against outside nations they could ‘find themselves' again. They saved themselves from a bad mood and felt a great new strength within them. They could not do it in personal relationships but they believed they could as a conquering nation.
当维护名声的“义理”受到威胁时，虽然将攻击指向自己的倾向在逐步增强，但是，并不见得经常使用自杀这种极端的手段。有时会转向自身的攻击，只不过产生忧郁和消沉，以及曾经风靡日本知识阶级的日本人独有的倦怠。这种情绪为什么特别在这一阶层的人士中扩展，这在社会学中是有充分的原因的。就是说，知识分子过剩了，他们在等级制中所占的地位也开始极不稳定。他们之中，只有极少数人的狂妄得到了满足。另外，在三十年代，由于当局总以怀疑的目光将知识阶层看做是“危险思想”的持有者，因此，他们的心灵受到了双重的伤害。日本的知识分子通常将他们的抑郁解释为日本的欧化造成的混乱，因而抱怨这种混乱。但是，这种解释并不起太大作用，日本人特有的情绪的急剧变化表现为从积极的献身转化为极端的倦怠。多数知识分子心理上遇到的波折，是由于日本人的一套传统的作风造成的。在三十年代中期，他们中的多数人，得以从中获益，其方法也是传统的。他们抱着国家主义的目的，将攻击从自己的内心再次转向外部。他们从对外进行极权主义的侵略中，再次“发现了自己”。他们摆脱了不愉快的情绪，从自己身上感受到了新的巨大的力量。他们在个人关系上没能如愿，但相信用以征服别国的国民是可以如愿以偿的。
Now that the outcome of the war has proved this confidence mistaken, lassitude is again a great psychic threat in Japan. They cannot easily cope with it, whatever their intentions. It goes very deep. ‘No bombs any more,' one Japanese said in Tokyo; ‘the relief is wonderful. But we are not fighting any more and there is no purpose. Everyone is in a daze, not caring much how he does things. I am like that, my wife is like that and the people in the hospital. All very slow about everything we do, dazed. People complain now that the government is slow cleaning up after the war and in providing relief, but I think the reason is that all the government officials felt the same way as we did.' This listlessness is the kind of danger in Japan that it was in France after liberation. In Germany in the first six or eight months after surrender it was not a problem. In Japan it is. Americans can understand this reaction well enough but it seems almost unbelievable to us that it should go along with such friendliness to the conqueror. Almost immediately it was clear that the Japanese people accepted the defeat and all its consequences with extreme good will. Americans were welcomed with bows and smiles, with handwav-ings and shouts of greeting. These people were not sullen nor angry. They had, in the phrase the Emperor used in announcing surrender, ‘accepted the impossible.' Why then did these people not set their national house in order? Under the terms of occupation, they were given the opportunity to do it; there was no village-by-village foreign occupation and the administration of affairs was in their hands. The whole nation seemed to smile and wave greeting rather than to manage their affairs. Yet this was the same nation which had accomplished miracles of rehabilitation in the early days of Meiji, which had prepared for military conquest with such energy in the nineteen-thirties and whose soldiers had fought with such abandon, island by island, throughout the Pacific.
然而，今天战争的结果，证明了这一信念是错误的。因而消沉再次成了日本巨大的心理威胁。不管他们的意图如何，他们无法轻而易举地克服这种情绪。因为它根深蒂固。下面是一个在东京的日本人讲的话，他说：“再也不用担心炸弹掉下来了，的确放了心。可是战争结束后，仿佛完全失去了目标。大家干起活来，稀里糊涂，心不在焉。我这样，我的妻子也是这样。全体国民都像是住院的患者。我们无论干什么都慌乱乱的，茫然若失。人们现在埋怨政府战后的善后工作和救济事业进展缓慢。牢骚满腹。我认为全国官员们也同我一样，陷进了这种情绪之中。”这位日本人的虚脱状态，同在解放后的法国见到的一样，很危险。德国在投降后的最初六到八个月期间，没有出现这种状况，但在日本出现了。对于美国人来说，这种反应是完全可以理解的。但是令人难以相信的是，与这种态度产生的同时，是日本人对战胜国采取的那种亲善态度。几乎在战争结束的同时，就已看出日本人以极其亲善的态度接受了战败带来的一切结果。美国人到处受到鞠躬和笑脸喜迎，遇到人们招手致意。这些人没有闷闷不乐，也没有发火，用天皇宣告投降的诏书中的话说，他们“忍受了不堪忍受的一切”。那么，这些人为什么不投入重建国家的工作呢？在占领条件中，他们得到了这样做的机会，就是说，不是所有的村庄都由外国军队占领，行政权仍留在他们手里。看来他们把本应举国去做的事情扔在了一边，而去一味地向盟军做笑脸，挥手表示欢迎。而且，正是这些国民，明治初年，曾经做出了振兴国家的丰功伟绩；在三十年代，也曾倾注全力完成了武力征服的准备；它的士兵在太平洋各地，在每个岛屿上都勇猛果断地战斗过。
They are indeed the same people. They are reacting in character. The swing of mood that is natural to them is between intense effort and a lassitude that is sheer marking time. The Japanese at the present moment are chiefly conscious of defending their good name in defeat and they feel they can do this by being friendly. As a corollary, many feel they can do it most safely by being dependent. And it is an easy step to feeling that effort is suspect and that it is better to mark time. Lassitude spreads.
实际上，日本人确实也没有改变。他们的反应全是性格使然，在担任进攻和完全留滞不前之间情绪剧烈波动，正是日本人天生的性格。日本人眼下作为战败国将精力集中在维护名誉上。而且，他们认为，通过对同盟国表示友好，可以达到其目的。作为必然的结论，他们认为不论对任何事情，都采取言听计从的态度，是达到目的的最安全的途径。从这一想法出发，就很容易发展为既然做什么都不行，不如暂时停滞不前，对形势观望一下再说，于是便消沉起来。
Yet the Japanese do not enjoy ennui. To ‘rouse oneself from lassitude,' to ‘rouse others from lassitude' is a constant call to the better life in Japan, and it was often on the lips of their broadcasters even in wartime. They campaign against their passivity in their own way. Their newspapers in the spring of 1946 keep talking about what a blot it is on the honor of Japan that ‘with the eyes of the whole world upon us,' they have not cleaned up the shambles of bombing and have not got certain public utilities into operation. They complain about the lassitude of the homeless families who congregate to sleep at night in the railway stations where the Americans see them in their misery. The Japanese understand such appeals to their good name. They hope too that as a nation they will be able to put forward utmost efforts again in the future to work for a respected place in the United Nations Organization. That would be working for honor again, but in a new direction. If there is peace among the Great Powers in the future, Japan could take this road to self-respect.
但是，日本人并不喜欢消沉。“从消沉中振作起来！”“把人们从消沉中唤醒！”这是日本使用的争取生活更美好的口号。这在战争期间的电台广播中，也时常引用。他们以自己特有的方式，同无所作为、意志消沉作斗争。一九四六年春，日本报纸不时刊登这样的评论：“世界上人们的目光，都在关注我们。”可是，至今炸它的残迹尚未消除，某些公益事业停止了活动，这多么有损于日本的声誉啊！同时，对于流浪者家属们夜晚聚集在车站，和衣而卧，将这种可怜暴露在美国人眼前的意志消沉情况的行为，也备受指责。日本人对于这种唤起他们名誉的批语可以理解。他们希望全体国民为将来在联合国中取得重要地位而倾注最大的努力。这仍然是为了名誉而进行努力，只不过转向了新的方向而已。将来大国间如能实现和平，日本就能踏上这条恢复自尊心的道路。
For in Japan the constant goal is honor. It is necessary to command respect. The means one uses to that end are tools one takes up and then lays aside as circumstances dictate. When situations change, the Japanese can change their bearings and set themselves on a new course. Changing does not appear to them the moral issue that it does to Westerners. We go in for ‘principles,' for convictions on ideological matters. When we lose, we are still of the same mind. Defeated Europeans everywhere banded together in underground movements. Except for a few diehards, the Japanese do not need to organize resistance movements and underground opposition to the occupying forces of the American Army. They feel no moral necessity to hold to the old line. From the first months, single Americans traveled safely on the sardine-packed trains to out-of-the-way comers of the country and were greeted with courtesy by erstwhile nationalistic officials. There have been no vendettas. When our jeeps drive through the villages the roads are lined with children shouting ‘Hello' and ‘Good-bye,' and the mother waves her baby's hand to the American soldier when he is too small to do it by himself.
日本人永远不变的目标是名誉。博得多数人尊敬是必不可少的重要条件。为此目的而采用的手段，是根据当时的情况决定取舍的工具。情况变了，日本人也会改变态度，朝着新的方向前进。日本人不像西方人那样，把改变态度看做是道德问题。我们热衷于“主义”，热衷于有关意识形态上的信念。即使失败了，也继续坚持与以前相同的想法。战败后的欧洲人，不论在哪个国家都曾有人结党开展地下活动。日本人除了少数顽固的抵抗者之外，都认为没有必要对美国的占领开展不服从或者反抗的地下活动。他们感觉不到在道德上有坚持原来的主义的必要。从占领一开始，美国人单身搭乘拥挤的列车到日本边远的农村去旅行，从未感到任何危险，而且所到之处，还受到以往顽固的国家主义官员的隆重礼遇。迄今一次也没有发生过复仇的情况。当我们的吉普车穿过村庄时，孩子会站在路旁高喊“哈喽”、“再见”；遇到不会招手的婴儿，他们的母亲会举着他们的小手向美国兵挥动。
This right-about-face of the Japanese in defeat is hard for Americans to take at face value. It is nothing we could do. It is even harder for us to understand than the change of attitude in their prisoners of war in our internment camps. For the prisoners regarded themselves as dead to Japan, and we judged that we really did not know what ‘dead' men might be capable of. Very few of those Westerners who knew Japan predicted that the same change of front characteristic of the prisoners of war might be found in Japan, too, after the defeat. Most of them believed that Japan ‘knew only victory or defeat,' and that defeat would be in her eyes an insult to be avenged by continued desperate violence. Some believed that the national characteristics of the Japanese forbade their acceptance of any terms of peace. Such students of Japan had not understood giri. They had singled out, from among all the alternative procedures that give one an honorable name, the one conspicuous traditional technique of vengeance and aggression. They did not allow for the Japanese habit of taking another tack. They confused Japanese ethics of aggression with European forms, according to which any person or nation who fights has first to be convinced of the eternal righteousness of its cause and draw strength from reservoirs of hatred or of moral indignation.
日本人战败后这种一百八十度的大转变，使我们美国人很难不折不扣地信以为真，这是我们无论如何也无法办到的。对于我们来说，它比收容在战俘营里的日本俘虏态度的变化，更令人难以理解。因为俘虏认为他们自己对日本来说，已经死去。“死去的人”要干的事情，实际我们无从了解。在熟悉日本的西方人中，几乎没有一个人预见到，战败后的日本也将发生与俘虏表面上的性格变化相同的变化。他们大都相信日本是知道“不是玉碎便是瓦全”的，而且战败在日本人眼里，他们遭受的侮辱是应该用顽强的不顾任何死法的暴力进行报复的。有些人认为，日本人从他们的国民性格来看，恐怕不会接受任何媾和条件。这正是因为这些日本研究家对“义理”缺乏理解，他们从赢得名誉的种种非此即彼的程序中，只选取了复仇和攻击这一显著的传统的手段。他们没有把日本人同样还有采取另一方针的习惯也考虑进去。他们把日本人攻击的伦理与欧洲人的方式混为一谈。按照后者，任何国民，凡要进行战斗，就必须首先确认其主义主张永远正确，从积蓄在心头的憎恶或道德的义愤中获取力量。
The Japanese derive their aggression in a different way. They need terribly to be respected in the world. They saw that military might had earned respect for great nations and they embarked on a course to equal them. They had to out-Herod Herod because their resources were slight and their technology was primitive. When they failed in their great effort, it meant to them that aggression was not the road to honor after all. Giri had always meant equally the use of aggression or the observance of respect relations, and in defeat the Japanese turned from one to the other, apparently with no sense of psychic violence to themselves. The goal is still their good name.
日本人是从另外的方面寻求其侵略的依据的。他们绝对需要在世界上受到人们的尊敬。他们认为大国之所以赢得了尊敬，是依靠了武力，因而便采取了可与这些国家匹敌的国策。他们资源贫乏，技术不先进，因此，必须使用比西方各国更为恶劣的手段。然而，尽管他们集中了最大的努力，但是，终于以失败而告终。这对他们来说，意味着侵略归根结底不可能达到赢得荣誉的目的。“义理”经常意味着诉诸侵略行为与遵从敬让关系并存。显然日本在战败时没有打算给自己在心理上施加任何暴力，而是由前者转向了后者。他们的目标至今仍然会博得声誉。
Japan has behaved in similar fashion on other occasions in her history and it has always been confusing to Westerners. The curtain had hardly risen after Japan's long feudal isolation when in 1862 an Englishman named Richardson was murdered in Satsuma. The fief of Satsuma was a hotbed of agitation against the white barbarians, and Satsuma samurai were known as the most arrogant and warlike of all Japan. The British sent a punitive expedition and bombarded Kagoshima, an important Satsuma port. The Japanese had made firearms all through the Tokugawa Era, but they were copied from antique Portuguese guns, and Kagoshima was of course no match for British warships. The consequences of this bombardment, however, were surprising. Satsuma, instead of vowing eternal vengeance upon the British, sought British friendship. They had seen the greatness of their opponents and they sought to learn from them. They entered into trade relations with them and in the following year they established a college in Satsuma where, as a contemporary Japanese wrote, ‘The mysteries of Occidental science and learning were taught . . . The friendship which had sprung out of the Namamuga Affair continued to grow.'* The Namamuga Affair was Britain's punitive expedition against them and the bombardment of their port.
日本在历史上其他场合也同样如此，常使西方人迷惑不解。在日本长期封建式的孤立即将告终，近代日本的帷幕即要揭开的一八六二年，英国人理查森去萨摩被杀。 应是生麦，位于横滨市。著者误以为是在萨摩。——译注萨摩藩是攘夷运动的温床，萨摩武士在整个日本素以最傲慢、最好战著称。英国为了进行讨伐，派出了远征军，炮击了萨摩藩重要港口鹿儿岛。日本人在整个德川时代制造火器，但因是仿造旧式的葡萄牙火炮，因而鹿儿岛自不是英国军舰的敌手。可是，这次炮击却得到了意想不到的结果。萨摩藩不仅没有发誓永远向英国报仇，反而赢得了英国的友谊。他们看到了敌人的强大，因而期望得到敌人的教诲。他们与英国缔结了通商关系，几年后在萨摩开设了学校（开成所）。据当时一位日本人的记载，这个学校“讲授西方学术的精华……以生麦事件为机缘结成的友好关系，日益深化”。所谓“生麦事件”是指英国严惩萨摩和炮击鹿儿岛港。 引自诺曼：《日本近代国家的形式》，第44～45页，注85。
This was not an isolated case. The other fief which vied with Satsuma as the most warlike and virulent haters of foreigners was Choshu. Both fiefs were leaders in fomenting the restoration of the Emperor. The officially powerless court of the Emperor issued an imperial rescript naming the date of May 11, 1863, at which time the Shogun was directed to have expelled all barbarians from the soil of Japan. The Shogunate ignored the order but not Choshu. It opened fire from its forts upon Western merchant ships passing off its coast through the Strait of Shimonoseki. The Japanese guns and ammunition were too primitive to injure the ships but to teach Choshu a lesson an international Western war squadron soon demolished the forts. The same strange consequences of bombardment followed as in Satsuma, and this in spite of the fact that the Western powers demanded an indemnity of three million dollars. As Norman says of the Satsuma and Choshu incidents, ‘Whatever the complexity of motive behind the volte-face executed by these leading anti-foreign clans, one cannot but respect the realism and equanimity which this action attests.'*
这绝不是孤立事件。在最好战并且最强烈的厌恶外国人这一点上，同萨摩不相上下的另一个藩是长州藩。萨、长两藩都是培育“王政复古”领导者的温床。没有正式权力的朝廷发布诏书，命令将军在一八六三年五月十一日之前，将一切夷狄驱逐出日本国土。幕府对此命令不加理睬，但是长州藩开始了行动，他们用要塞炮袭击了航行在其近海、欲通过下关海峡的西方商船。由于日本的大炮和弹药十分落后，没有给外国船只造成伤害，但是，西方各国为了惩罚长州藩，联合派出了舰队，转瞬之间将要塞摧毁。与萨摩藩情况相同，炮击也带来了奇妙的结果。虽然，西方各国提出了赔偿三百万美元的要求。关于萨摩事件和长州事件，诺曼写道：“不论在这些攘夷急先锋的藩突然变化的背后，潜藏着怎样复杂的动机，对这一行动所证明的现实主义和冷静的态度也不能不表示敬意”。同前，第45页。
This kind of situational realism is the bright face of Japanese giri to one's name. Like the moon, giri has its bright face and its dark face. It was its dark aspect which made Japan take events like the American Exclusion Act and the Naval Parity Treaty as such extravagant national insults and which goaded her to her disastrous war program. It is its bright aspect which made possible the good will with which she accepted the consequences of surrender in 1945. Japan is still acting in character.
这种迅速随机应变的现实意义，是日本人维护名声的“义理”明朗的一面；如同月亮一样，“义理”有明暗两个方面。美国的排斥日法以及海军裁军条约使日本感到莫大耻辱，终于把他们推上了那场不幸的战争计划，这是阴暗的一面。一九四五年，促使他们善意地接受了投降的种种结果是明朗的一面。日本依然是按照自己独特的方式行动的。
Modern Japanese writers and publicists have made a selection from among the obligations of giri and presented them to Westerners as the cult of bushido, literally The Way of the Samurai. This has been misleading for several reasons. Bushido is a modern official term which has not the deep folk-feeling behind it that ‘cornered with giri,' ‘merely for giri,' ‘working strongly for giri' have in Japan. Nor does it cover the complexities and the ambivalences of giri. It is a publicist's inspiration. Besides, it became a slogan of the nationalists and militarists and the concept is discredited with the discrediting of those leaders. That will by no means mean that the Japanese will no longer ‘know giri.' It is more important than ever for Westerners to understand what giri means in Japan. The identification of bushido with the Samurai was also a source of misunderstanding. Giri is a virtue common to all classes. Like all other obligations and disciplines in Japan giri is ‘heavier' as one goes up the social scale but it is required at all levels of society. At least the Japanese think it is heavier for the samurai. A non-Japanese observer is just as likely to feel that giri requires most of the common people because the rewards for conforming seem to him less. To the Japanese it is sufficient reward to be respected in his world and ‘a man who does not know giri' is still a ‘miserable wretch.' He is scorned and ostracized by his fellows.
近代日本的著述家及评论家们，从种种“义理”的义务之中择其所需介绍给西方读者，称之为“武士道”即“武士之道”。由于某些原因，它有可能引起误解。武士道这一名称，是近代才有的官方用语，它不像“碍于义理”、“完全是为了义理”、“热心地尽义理”之类的词语那样，背后藏有深厚的民族情感，也不含有“义理”的复杂性和广义性。它是评论家的创作。同时，它成了国家主义者，军国主义的口号。因此武士道这一概念，随着这些领导人们的威信一落千丈，也被人怀疑起来。但是，这绝不意味着日本人今后将不再“顾及义理”。相反对西方人来说，理解“义理”在日本的意义，今天比任何时候都显得更加重要了。将武士道与武士阶级混为一谈，也是产生误解的原因。“义理”是一切阶级共同的道德。虽然它与日本的其他所有的义务和纪律一样，身份越高，“维护义理的责任就越重”。但是，它又不限身份高低，对一切阶层的人都有所要求。至少日本人认为武士比任何人都负有更重要的“义理”。非日裔观察家们恰好与此相反，他们往往认为“义理”要求庶民做出更大的牺牲。因为外国人觉得，庶民维护“义理”中得到的补偿最少。但在日本人看来，在自己所属的世界上能够受到尊敬，这就是最大的补偿。而且，“不懂义理的人”至今仍被看做是“可鄙的人”，受到朋友的鄙视和排斥。