From The Hagakure (the book of the samurai), by Yumamoto Tsunetomo
Reprimanding people and correcting their faults is important; it is actually an act of charity—the first requirement of a samurai service.
One must take pains to do it in the proper way. It is an easy matter to find strong points and shortcomings in another man's conduct; it is equally easy to criticize them. Most people seem to believe it is a kindness to tell people things they do not want to hear, and if their criticisms are not taken to heart, well, then nothing more can be done.
Such an approach is totally without merit. It produces results no better than if one had set out willfully to insult and embarrass the man. It is simply a way of getting things off one's chest.
Criticism must begin after one has discerned whether or not the person will accept it, after one has become his friend, shared his interests, and behaved in such a way as to earn his complete trust so that he will put faith in whatever one says.
And then there is the matter of tact: one must devise the proper way to say it, and the proper moment—perhaps in a letter, perhaps on the way home from a pleasant gathering. One might start by describing one's own failures, and make him see what one is getting at without a word more than is necessary. First one praises his strengths, taking pains to encourage him and put him in the right mood, make him as receptive to one's words as a thirsty man is to water. Then correct his faults.
To criticize well is extremely difficult.
Taken from Yukio Mishima's commentary on the Hagakure The Way of the Samurai, and translated by Kathryn Sparling. Mishima may have been nuts[1], but his commentary is well worth the read, as is the original text. Here is a free translation of selected passages.
Footnotes
1: If you don't know the name, look him up on Wikipedia. He wrote some good novels, but then lost his marbles, tried to overthrow the Japanese government in the 70s, then gutted himself (the traditional samurai way of killing themselves—seppuku) when it failed. Uhm...yeah. ↩
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