Bushido Virtue #5 - Makoto - Honor

Honesty – makoto in Japanese is the 5^th virtue of Bushido.  Defining honesty is kind of like throwing jello on a wall and expecting it to stick.  So much of what the word means depends on the context and culture in which the word is used, unfortunately.

The quality of being honest; uprightness, fairness, truthfulness, sincerity, frankness.  This is what you see when you look up the word in a dictionary.  Looking up the word honest, though, you find a deeper attempt at definition: honorable in principles, intentions, and actions, upright and fair; gained or obtained fairly; genuine or unadulterated.

Nitobe relates that a samurai could not even comprehend living a life that entertained anything but honesty.  He writes in ‘Bushido: The Soul of Japan’, “The bushi held that his high social position demanded a loftier standard of veracity than that of the tradesman and peasant. Bushi no ichi-gon --the word of a samurai […] was sufficient guaranty of the truthfulness of an assertion. His word carried such weight with it that promises were generally made and fulfilled without a written pledge, which would have been deemed quite beneath his dignity.”

Can you imagine our world today if everyone could trust each other’s word to this degree?

Sadly, our Western culture accepts and even encourages dishonesty at certain times.  Little white lies, living in denial of reality, lying to protect yourself or others; these are all ok today.  Very few people bat an eye when adults tell stories of lying to a police officer to get away with speeding.  In fact, if a ticket isn’t given, the audience celebrates the person’s ability to twist the truth.

In opposition, the samurai strove to accept the reality of truth – truth of the world around them and truth of how they were seen by the world around them.  Likewise, accepting the reality of truth within was a battle samurai fought.  Being able to look at yourself in the mirror and truthfully accept who you are inside must happen before you can begin to accept the reality of the world.

Gi points the way for us, yu kicks us in the pants to move, jin keeps us mindful of others on the same journey, rei is how we act toward everyone on the same path (including ourselves) – and makoto keeps us on the path.

It is so easy for us to lie to ourselves and this is the first and bloodiest battle we fight.  Did we *really* cheat on cadence?  Did I *really* bow correctly?  Did I *really* do all of my pushups?  Does it matter if I screw up on cadence and have to drop and do pushups?  Especially as a black belt – how embarrassing!  BUT!  The damage done *inside* if we don’t honestly admit to ourselves that we cheated on cadence is a million times worse than what it looks like for a black belt to do pushups for cheating cadence.

We can justify and rationalize all we want and today we most likely will not get caught when we “cheat the system”.  This is one of those places within martial arts that “the rubber has to meet the road.”  Are you striving to live the virtues of Bushido?  Honesty is not up for negotiation.  Can you truthfully say that when you give your word that it means the same to you as it did to the samurai?