Religion: Bushido

In Chicago last week, Rev. Horace E. Coleman, 64, his wife and his son, Horace Jr., 22, clasped hands on the rear seat of their automobile in a tightly closed garage until asphyxiated by carbon monoxide from the exhaust. For 32 years the Colemans had been Quaker missionaries in Japan. They had steeped themselves in Japanese Bushido, the ethical code of the samurai which prescribes harakiri for those facing shame. Learning that Clara B. McGill, a destitute young girl whom the Colemans had sheltered, had made a complaint that Horace Coleman Jr. had betrayed her, they left a note: “This way accords with our peculiar ideas in cases where conditions warrant it.” In Mrs. Coleman’s lap was an open Bible and directions that their ashes be scattered under the trees at their summer home in Karuizana, near Tokyo.