Virtues

Meiyo (Honor)

Bushido Virtues

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Meiyo (Honor)." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/virtues/meiyo-honor.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Meiyo (Honor). Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/virtues/meiyo-honor

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-meiyo-honor,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Meiyo (Honor)},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/virtues/meiyo-honor},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The sixth of Inazo Nitobe's seven bushido virtues: honor, the vivid consciousness of personal and family dignity that a samurai was to guard even at the cost of his own life, with a shameful act held to stain not only the individual but his household's name. Nitobe treats seppuku, ritual self-disembowelment, as honor's most extreme expression, a death chosen and carried out according to strict form to restore a stained name rather than an act of simple despair.

Facts

Origins

Place of Origin

Japan; codified in Nitobe's English language text, written while he lived in the United States. 1

Origin of the Name

Japanese meiyo, honor or reputation, the sixth of the seven virtues Inazo Nitobe names in Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900). 1

Attributed Author / Compiler

Named and defined by Inazo Nitobe in Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900), who links it directly to the practice of seppuku as its most extreme ritual expression. 1

Language

Japanese 1

Status

Status Within the Tradition

Standard teaching, not formally defined 1

Doctrinal Status Detail

The sixth of Nitobe's seven bushido virtues; guarding one's own and one's family's name from shame is, in Nitobe's account, weighed as heavily as guarding one's life, with seppuku held as honor's formal and most extreme restoration. 1

Attestation

Meaning in the Attesting Source

The vivid consciousness of personal and family dignity, guarded even at the cost of life. 1

Disputed

Origin Period

Nitobe's codified seven-virtue scheme dates to his 1900 book; whether it reflects a continuous samurai ethic reaching back through Edo-period house codes and texts such as the Hagakure, or is substantially Nitobe's own Meiji-era synthesis for a Western readership, is a genuinely contested question among historians of Japan. 2

Cross-Tradition Connections