Dancing was taught (I am speaking of samurai girls and not of geisha) only to smooth the angularity of their movements.

Thus what Herbert Spencer gives as the characteristics of a militant type of society may be said to have been exclusively confined to the samurai class, while those of the industrial type were applicable to the classes above and below it.

It was a momentous occasion for him when at the age of five he was apparelled in the paraphernalia of samurai costume, placed upon a go-board and initiated into the rights of the military profession by having thrust into his girdle a real sword, instead of the toy dirk with which he had been playing.

" Nietzsche spoke for the samurai heart when he wrote, "You are to be proud of your enemy; then, the success of your enemy is your success also."

Indispensable as they were to a man of culture, they were accessories rather than essentials of samurai training.

On the contrary, chastity was a pre-eminent virtue of the samurai woman, held above life itself.

To shun shame or win a name, samurai boys would submit to any privations and undergo severest ordeals of bodily or mental suffering.

What samurai youth has not heard of "Great Valor" and the "Valor of a Villein?" Valor, Fortitude, Bravery, Fearlessness, Courage, being the qualities of soul which appeal most easily to juvenile minds, and which can be trained by exercise and example, were, so to speak, the most popular virtues, early emulated among the youth.