The seven virtues of Samurai: Revisiting a classic through computational language analysis

Abstract

Abstract The longstanding dominance of values rooted in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies has increasingly come under scrutiny across the social sciences. This has renewed interest in how value systems cultivated in less-WEIRD contexts are articulated and widely received by WEIRD audiences. Recent advances in natural language processing make it possible to examine how such values are articulated in classical texts, using psychologically grounded analytical frameworks. The present study focuses on Bushido: The Soul of Japan, a widely read classic written by Inazo Nitobe to introduce Japanese ethical ideals to Western audiences. Using contextualized construct representation (CCR), a theory-driven computational approach to psychological text analysis, we examined how moral concerns are structured and expressed in Bushido relative to other texts related to Japanese culture, Christianity, and the Bible. Results showed that Bushido exhibits a distinct and structured moral profile that corresponds to psychologically defined moral dimensions. Moreover, among the Japanese culture-related texts, greater similarity to Bushido in moral profile was associated with broader reception in Western contexts, as indexed by independent indicators of publication, translation, and scholarly attention. Analyses of virtue-level structure further identified Meiyo (名誉; honor) as the conceptual core of Bushido's moral framework, a form of honor distinct from Western pride-based conceptions. Together, these findings suggest that Bushido conveys moral values rooted in Japanese cultural traditions in forms that are psychologically intelligible to Western readers, illustrating how less-WEIRD cultural values can be communicated across cultural boundaries without losing their distinctive meaning.