Bushido or Samurai Warrior Code was a strict code that demanded:
loyalty
devotion
and honor to the death.
Bushido is a way of the samurai life,loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. It originates from the samurai moral code and stresses frugality, loyalty, martial arts mastery, and honour unto death.
Under this code, if a samurai warrior failed to uphold his honor he could regain it by performing seppuku (ritual suicide).
The samurai bushido code is an internally-consistent ethical code, grounded in the spiritual approach of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism.
In its purest form, it demands of its practitioners that they look effectively backward at the present from the moment of their own death, as if they were already, in effect, dead.
The Bushido of the Samurai was also a spiritual basis for those who committed kamikaze attacks during World War II.
For this reason many of the martial arts that are rooted in Japanese Bushido were banned by the occupying Americans during the post-war occupation.
Bushido is still practiced today (in modified forms) and in many of today's modern martial arts. The most common forms of bushido martial arts, still practiced in Japan today, are:
judo
karate
jujutsu
aikido
kendo
There are seven virtues associated with the samurai bushido code:
Gi - Rectitude
Yu - Courage
Jin - Benevolence
Rei - Respect
Makoto - Honesty
Meiyo - Honor
Chugi - Loyalty
