In the courtly life of Yvain the noble status of the knight is found everywhere. Despite the ambiguities of Yvain's ability to fulfill his knightly duties and the tendencies of the reader either to overlook these shortcomings and elevate him as a great warrior or focus on his faults and condemn the hero outright, Yvain is still capable of displaying many of the key qualities of the virtuous medieval knight. Yvain's place in the medieval court, his noble birth and proper bearing grant him tremendous power and a wealth of resources from which he can draw to perform valorous deeds. Because Yvain is suitably equipped, or blessed, with such position and wealth, it seems natural that the hero, due to his good lot in life, would naturally perform virtuous deeds. It is from the examples of truly valorous men that society as a whole draws inspiration, solace, and comfort. Nitobe identifies for us a Japanese parallel:

Chivalry is a flower no less indigenous to the soil of Japan than its emblem, the cherry blossom; nor is it a dried-up specimen of an antique virtue preserved in the herbarium of our history. It is still a living object of power and beauty among us; and if it assumes no tangible shape or form, it no less scents the moral atmosphere, and makes us aware that we are still under its potent spell. (1)

There is no doubt that when Nitobe uses “chivalry” he means “bushido.” His passion for his intangible subject has tangibility in the representations of samurai word and deed in Japan's literature, history, and even contemporary senses of self-identity. Powerful images of what are considered to be representations of this are readily found in the pages of the Heike Monogatari:

A cloudlike host of armored bowmen from Shikoku and Chinzei stood in ranks on archery platforms at the front of the stronghold, each of them reputed to be worth a thousand men. Ten or twenty rows of saddled horses waited below the platforms, and there was a constant din of beating drums and shouted battle cries. The full-drawn bows were like half-moons at the warriors' breasts; the glittering three-foot swords resembled streaks of autumn frost crossing their hips. The countless red banners unfurled on the heights danced like leaping flames in the spring breeze. (295-6)

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