武士道 · Bushidō
bushidō — “the way of the warrior”
The samurai code — honor, loyalty, courage and self-discipline, set as a way of life.
What it means
武士道 is literally the way (道) of the warrior (武士) — the code a samurai lived by: honor, loyalty, courage, and self-discipline. It is a phrase, not a single idea-character, and it carries the full weight of that ethic.
The pieces, and the near-misses, matter:
The warrior himself — the person, not the principle. People reach for it wanting the ethos and get the job title instead.
The code itself — honor and discipline as a way of life. The right choice when you mean the values, not the figure.
Watch for
As three characters, balance and vertical setting matter — a phrase is easier to get subtly wrong than a single glyph. Drop a character and the meaning shifts: 武道 (budō) is “martial arts,” not the moral code. Pulled from an image it gets mirror-reversed; built by a translation tool it drifts. Each of the three characters has to be right, and right together.
In different scripts
The character carries the meaning; the brush style carries the mood. 武士道 in three of the most common scripts:
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