There is a short blade in my home – a wakizashi.

It was passed down as a symbol of lineage connected to Japan’s past. While our family traces its roots to the Heian period, one figure who represented our transition into the modern age is Ogawa Mataji (1848 – 1909), a general during Japan’s Meiji reforms1.

While I do not claim expertise in samurai philosophy, this heirloom has come to symbolize something important to our family: a reminder of how, in the post-Edo era, values like readiness and restraint were reinterpreted through the lens of reform and modernization.

Historically, the wakizashi was the companion blade to the katana, worn by samurai indoors or in formal settings2. In time, even in peace, it symbolized presence and accountability.

Of course, the sword does not represent Bushidō in itself, but it evokes a set of values: discipline, loyalty, and accountability, which Bushidō came to represent through a modern lens. I see Bushidō not as a strict doctrine, and more like a strategic lens to explore how inherited ideas of conduct and character can sharpen decision-making in today’s complex systems.

Bushidō: A decision-making framework rooted in stability

Bushidō (武士道), or “The Way of the Warrior,” is too often turned into pop-cultural representations of stoic honour or aestheticized martial aspirations3. Historically Bushidō was not a singular, codified system. It evolved through history’s uneven terrain, reflecting the political and philosophical needs of the time.

Heian and Kamakura periods (794 – 1333 AD)

During the Heian era, the imperial court remained the formal seat of power, but military authority increasingly shifted to regional elites. Early samurai (then known as bushi) served aristocratic households and temple estates. Their conduct was governed by kinship obligations and personal loyalty through the norms of its time – not yet a unified code.4

Sengoku period (1467 – 1600 AD)

Japan’s “Warring States” era saw constant military conflict among competing warlords (daimyō). Samurai culture emphasized overt values of tactical skill, ruthless pragmatism, personal bravery, and fealty to one’s lord.

Edo period (1603 – 1868 AD)

The Tokugawa shogunate established peace and centralized rule. When warfare receded and a period of relative peace took over, samurai roles shifted from warriors to bureaucrats. It was actually during this era that Bushidō was articulated as a moral code, shaped by Neo-Confucian values of loyalty, self-restraint, and order. Thinkers like Yamaga Sokō and Hayashi Razan formalized these ideals in treatises aimed at governing the elite class.5

Limitations of the framework

While Bushidō offers powerful language around duty and virtue, it was never a universally practiced code. It was an aspirational, ideological framework tailored to a feudal, hierarchical society. Its virtues such as loyalty and integrity could be used to support moral behaviour or suppress dissent.6

Much of what modern audiences associate with Bushidō came from Nitobe Inazō, whose 1899 book Bushidō: The Soul of Japan reimagined the samurai ethic through the lens of Victorian morality and ethics of the west7. His version helped globalize the term, but according to many critics, also distorted its historical roots.

Therefore, we must apply Bushidō with discernment – attuned to historical context and power.

The Seven Tenets of Bushidō (contemporary constructs)

The following virtues are often presented as a synthesis of Bushidō values. Historically, they were never codified in this exact form8, but as guiding ideas that can help inform modern decision-making:

1. Gi 義 (Integrity)

In the age of intelligent machines, clarity is leadership. Integrity today means committing to transparent systems and aligned intent even when faster, murkier paths exist.

What does it mean to design trust into how our teams and machines make decisions?

2. Rei 礼 (Respect)

Human-centered systems earn trust by ensuring that people across context, ability, and perspective are considered at every point of decision from interface design to enterprise-level integration. It means tailoring platforms and products that reduce friction between human intuition and machine logic.

Where in our process have we assumed instead of asked?

3. Yu 勇 (Courage)

True courage often means holding tension, conflicts, and calculated risk. In moments of uncertainty, courage is the discipline to stay clear when technology, ambiguity, and urgency collide.

Where do we mistake reaction for decisiveness?

4. Meiyo 名誉 (Honour)

In a world of brands and shifting missions, honour means alignment between what we say, how we scale, and what we leave behind.

What are the non-negotiables our systems will never compromise – no matter how smart they become?

5. Jin 仁 (Compassion)

Embedding the human margin at every decision point means treating empathy is a system principle. It asks whether our growth protects people’s energy and dignity.

How do we embed margins of care and humanity where machines cannot?

6. Makoto 誠 (Sincerity)

In an uncertain world influenced by cycles, automated responses, and performative branding, sincerity is a strategic advantage. It is about being consistent across moments of pressure, ambiguity, and scale. It’s the human margin of believability in a machine-driven world.

In a noisy world, how are we demonstrating commitment and character?

7. Chūgi 忠義 (Loyalty)

In modern businesses, loyalty is not blind allegiance. Instead, it’s the courage to be clear even when systems reward compliance or speed. It means defending the integrity of the mission and the work, even when that means challenging the loudest voice in the room.

Are we loyal to legacy processes, or to the future of our shared purpose?

A parting note

Bushidō is a framework forged in resilience and cultural evolution. It emerged in eras where clarity had to coexist with chaos, where leaders were accountable not just for outcomes, but for their restraint, and the impact of their choices on their legacies.

Bushidō doesn’t provide any answers to our modern challenges, and it definitely won’t build our systems for us.

But it might help us decide who we become while building them.

– From a strategist and translator between systems and the people they’re meant to serve.

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💬 Spot an error or have an insight to add? I’d love to hear from you, conversation is always welcome.

Hi, I’m Emi Linds, a strategist who works at the intersection of full-stack marketing and human-centered AI. This essay is part of my systems-thinking series, The Human Margin for AI. I write for leaders, high performers, and deep thinkers who know that trust is built in the margins where systems meet the self.

In early 2025, I made a personal commitment to practice visible thinking in public. These essays are part of that commitment – a humble offering for those building futures at the edge of complexity.

For a full list of my personal articles, please check out my Medium page or the blog page.

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Footnotes

1. Ogawa Mataji was a military general who played roles in the Boshin War and early Meiji military reforms, he represents the transformation of the samurai class from feudal retainers to modern nation-builders.
2. The wakizashi was traditionally paired with the katana as part of the daishō (大小) – “long and short” sword set worn by samurai, symbolizing their status.
3. Bushidō is often misrepresented in films, TV shows, or Western management books as a romanticized, inflexible honour code.
4. See Karl Friday’s Samurai, Warfare and the State in Early Medieval Japan for a nuanced discussion of early samurai ethos.
5. Neo-Confucianism, especially via Zhu Xi’s interpretation, heavily influenced Tokugawa ideology.
6. For example, the forty-seven rōnin incident (1701-03) is often idealized, it was often romanticized as an ideal of loyalty, and it was controversial in its own time because it violated Tokugawa law. The Tokugawa state executed the rōnin while also publishing their story for ideological purposes.
7. Nitobe’s Bushidō: The Soul of Japan (link to text) was written in English and aimed at explaining Japanese ethics to a Western audience. His work succeeded in framing Bushidō as a coherent moral system during a time when Japan was negotiating its place in the global order. While popularized, it alone is not sufficient for understanding Bushidō as an adaptive framework shaped by political, spiritual, and military realities across Japan’s history. If you’re curious, please read Karl Friday’s works for a deeper dive.
8. The “seven virtues” are a modern interpretive distillation, often used in martial arts or leadership literature. They don’t stem from a singular Bushidō text.