[211] Chamberlain, _Things Japanese_, 4th ed., p. 220. By “the ancient way” is meant _hara-kiri_, or disemboweling. The death by his own hand of General Nogi, the hero of Port Arthur, during the funeral of his departed sovereign Mutsuhito (September 13, 1912), reveals another motive for suicide which is wholly foreign to our modes of thought and feeling. “In very early, almost prehistoric, times the custom of _jun-shi_, or dying with the master, led to the interment of living Japanese retainers with their dead lord. The custom gradually died out, but voluntary suicide as a means of showing personal devotion or attachment to a master or superior persisted for many centuries” (George Kennan, “The Death of General Nogi,” New York _Outlook_ for October 5, 1912). It was this ancient custom that Count Nogi followed. “When all was over”--such is Mr. Kennan’s interpretation of his act--“he ended his own life as an expression of his boundless devotion to the man whom he had loved. It was in the spirit of Old Japan, but Nogi was a man of that era, and lived in the mental and moral atmosphere of that time.” [212] Japanese feudalism began about the eleventh century. The year 1868 saw its final downfall. [213] Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. 99. [214] Okakura-Kakuzo, _The Awakening of Japan_ (1904), p. 175. Count Okuma makes a similar assertion: “The humanitarian efforts which in the course of the recent war were so much in evidence, and which so much surprised Western nations, were not, as might have been thought, the products of the new civilization, but survivals of our ancient feudal chivalry” (_Fifty Years of New Japan_ (1909), vol. i, p. 124). By no people has the Red Cross movement been taken up with greater enthusiasm than by the Japanese. [215] Consult Count Okuma, _Fifty Years of New Japan_ (1909), vol. ii, pp. 566 f. [216] “The obloquy attached to the calling brought within its pale such as cared little for social repute” (Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. 66). “The trades-people,” writes Chamberlain, “stood at the very bottom of the scale. The hucksters or traders were a degraded class in old Japan, and degraded their business morals remain, which is the principal cause of the difficulties experienced by European merchants in dealing with them” (_Things Japanese_, 4th ed., p. 93). [217] Nitobé, _Bushido_, p. 67. [218] The statement has obtained wide currency that all the banks in Japan employ only Chinese as cashiers because they cannot find honest Japanese for these positions of trust. Chinese are sometimes employed in Japanese banks, but the true reason for their employment is not the one here assigned. One well qualified to speak authoritatively on this subject says: