--'How ridiculous,' I interrupted; 'but I cannot make out what the reviewer could have got into his head to make him translate the term Bushi as "executioner." It is an insult to Bushi, of whom we have the oft-quoted saying, "Hana wa sakura ni hitowa bushi": "As the cherry blossoms are the prime of the flowers, so the Bushi is the flower of man." We have a popular drama in which there is a scene where a female prisoner is brought out under the superintendence of a common Bushi; and there the phrase "Keigo-no-Bushi" occurs, meaning, the Bushi who guards. Perhaps the reviewer remembered it, and concluded that Bushi meant an executioner, because he had charge of a prisoner. If this is so, by the same analogy we might say the "Knight of the Garter" is a domestic servant who looks after his mistress's garter. Ah! there is another thing which occurs to me. In China, where military men are little thought of, they are often used for such duties as those of an executioner; some foreigners, who had seen the fact whereby those men were called Bushi, perhaps thought that the term meant "executioners" without knowing its primary meaning. By that analogy one might say that gentlemen belonging to the honourable guild known as "The Worshipful Company of Grocers of the City of London" were common dealers in tea and sugar, because they are called grocers, without knowing the origin of the term. The passages in that review accidentally caught my sight too, and out of curiosity I looked the matter up in a few books which I happened to have by me. It is a little technical, but if you do not mind, I will explain it to you in detail.' --'Please do,' said the duke.