Bushido: Code of the Samurai (Pocket Edition)

Beautiful illustrated pocket edition of a classic Japanese text

“Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than cherry blossom” are the opening words to Inazo Nitobe's Bushido. It was 1900 and Inazo, a Japanese academic living in the USA, had been prompted to write the book after an American professor had wondered how the Japanese imparted moral education on their children if schools didn't offer any religious instruction. The answer, Inazo realised, was through Bushido. Bushido is the chivalric code of moral principles that the Samurai followed: rectitude, courage, benevolence, respect, honesty, honour and loyalty. Influenced by Confucianism, Shinto and Zen Buddhism, it tempers the violence of a warrior with wisdom and serenity.