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Title: Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic

Author: Sidney L. Gulick

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EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE


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|                 THE GROWTH OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD               |
|                               By                               |
|                                                                |
|                     SIDNEY L. GULICK, M.A.                     |
|                                                                |
|  Illustrated with Twenty-six Diagrams _12 mo, Cloth, $1.50_    |
|                                                                |
| "Commends itself to thoughtful, earnest men of any nation as a |
|     most valuable missionary paper. Mr. Gulick traces the      |
|  Christian religion through history and up to now. The survey  |
|   is calm, patient, thoroughly honest, and quietly assured."   |
|   --_Evangelist_.                                              |
|                                                                |
|                   FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY                    |
|                                                                |
|                           Publishers                           |
|                                                                |
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EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE

_SOCIAL AND PSYCHIC_

BY

SIDNEY L. GULICK, M.A.

_Missionary of the American Board in Japan_


[Illustration]

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO

Fleming H. Revell Company

LONDON AND EDINBURGH


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 63 Washington Street Toronto: 27
Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 30 St.
Mary Street




PREFACE

The present work is an attempt to interpret the characteristics of
modern Japan in the light of social science. It also seeks to throw
some light on the vexed question as to the real character of so-called
race-nature, and the processes by which that nature is transformed. If
the principles of social science here set forth are correct, they
apply as well to China and India as to Japan, and thus will bear
directly on the entire problem of Occidental and Oriental social
intercourse and mutual influence.

The core of this work consists of addresses to American and English
audiences delivered by the writer during his recent furlough. Since
returning to Japan, he has been able to give but fragments of time to
the completion of the outlines then sketched, and though he would
gladly reserve the manuscript for further elaboration, he yields to
the urgency of friends who deem it wise that he delay no longer in
laying his thought before the wider public.

To Japanese readers the writer wishes to say that although he has not
hesitated to make statements painful to a lover of Japan, he has not
done it to condemn or needlessly to criticise, but simply to make
plain what seem to him to be the facts. If he has erred in his facts
or if his interpretations reflect unjustly on the history or spirit of
Japan, no one will be more glad than he for corrections. Let the
Japanese be assured that his ruling motive, both in writing about
Japan and in spending his life in this land, is profound love for the
Japanese people. The term "native" has been freely used because it is
the only natural correlative for "foreign." It may be well to say that
neither the one nor the other has any derogatory implication,
although anti-foreign natives, and anti-native foreigners, sometimes
so use them.

The indebtedness of the writer is too great to be acknowledged in
detail. But whenever he has been conscious of drawing directly from
any author for ideas or suggestions, effort has been made to indicate
the source.

Since the preparation of the larger part of this work several
important contributions to the literature on Japan have appeared which
would have been of help to the writer, could he have referred to them
during the progress of his undertaking. Rev. J.C.C. Newton's "Japan:
Country, Court, and People"; Rev. Otis Cary's "Japan and Its
Regeneration"; and Prof. J. Nitobe's "Bushido: The Soul of Japan,"
call for special mention. All are excellent works, interesting,
condensed, informative, and well-balanced. Had the last named come to
hand much earlier it would have received frequent reference and
quotation in the body of this volume, despite the fact that it sets
forth an ideal rather than the actual state of Old Japan.

Special acknowledgment should be made of the help rendered by my
brothers, Galen M. Fisher and Edward L. Gulick, and by my sister, Mrs.
F.F. Jewett, in reading and revising the manuscript. Acknowledgment
should also be made of the invaluable criticisms and suggestions in
regard to the general theory of social evolution advocated in these
pages made by my uncle, Rev. John T. Gulick, well known to the
scientific world for his contributions to the theory as well as to the
facts of biological evolution.

S.L.G.

MATSUYAMA, JAPAN.




CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 13


I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS

Occidental conceptions of the recent history of Japan--Japan seems to
be contradicting our theory of national evolution--Similarities of
ancient and modern Japan--Japanese evolution is "natural"--The study
of Japanese social evolution is of unusual interest, because it has
experienced such marked changes--Because it is now in a stage of rapid
growth--And is taking place before our eyes--Also because here is
taking place a unique union of Occidental and Oriental
civilizations--Comparison between India and Japan, 23


II. HISTORICAL SKETCH

Mythology and tradition--Authentic history--Old Japan--The transition
from Old to New Japan--New Japan--Compelled by foreign nations to
centralize--Ideals and material instruments supplied from
abroad--Exuberant Patriotism--"Ai-koku-shin," 35


III. THE PROBLEM OF PROGRESS

Is Japan making progress?--Happiness as a criterion--The oppressive
rule of militarism--The emptiness of the ordinary life--The condition
of woman--"The Greater Learning for Woman"--Divorce--Progress
defined--Deficiency of the hedonistic criterion of progress, 52


IV. THE METHOD OF PROGRESS

Progress a modern conception and ideal--How was the "cake of custom"
broken?--"Government by discussion" an insufficient principle of
progress--Two lines of progress, Ideal and Material--The significance
of Perry's coming to Japan--Effect on Japan of Occidental ideas--The
material element of progress--Mistaken praise of the simplicity of Old
Japan, L. Hearn--The significance of the material element of
civilization--Mastery of nature--The defect of Occidental
civilization, 61


V. JAPANESE SENSITIVENESS TO ENVIRONMENT

Our main question--Illustrations--Japanese students
abroad--Sensitiveness to ridicule--Advantages and disadvantages of
this characteristic--National sensitiveness to foreign
criticism--Nudity--Formosa--Mental and physical
flexibility--Adjustability--Some apparent exceptions--Chinese
ideographs--How account for these characteristics, 72


VI. WAVES OF FEELING--ABDICATION

The Japanese are emotional--An illustration from politics--The
tendency to run to extremes--Danger of overemphasizing this
tendency--Japanese silent dissent--Men of balance in public
life--Abdication--Gubbins quoted--Is abdication an inherent trait? 82


VII. HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP

Popular national heroes--The craving for modern heroes--Townsend
Harris's insight into Oriental character--Hero-worship an obstacle to
missionary work--Capt. Jaynes--An experience in Kumamoto--"The sage of
Omi"--"The true hero"--Moral heroes in Japan--The advantage and
disadvantage of hero-worship--Modern moral heroes--Hero-worship
depends on personality and idealism--The new social order is producing
new ideals and new heroes, 89


VIII. LOVE FOR CHILDREN

Japanese love for children--Children's festivals--Toys and
toy-stores--Do Japanese love children more than Americans
do?--Importance in Japan of maintaining the family line--The looseness
of the Japanese family tie--Early cessation of demonstrative
affection--Infanticide, 96


IX. MARITAL LOVE

Affection between husband and wife--Occidental and Oriental estimate
of woman contrasted--This a subject easily-misunderstood--Kissing a
social habit unknown in Japan--Demonstrative affection a social, not a
racial characteristic--Some specific illustrations, Dr. Neesima--A
personal experience--Illegitimate children--Fraudulent
registration--Adult adoption--Divorce--Monogamy, polygamy, and
prostitution--Race character, social order, and affection--Position of
women--The social order and affection--The social order and the
valuation of man and woman--The new social order and the valuation of
man--The spread of Christian ideals and the re-organization of the
family, 102


X. CHEERFULNESS--INDUSTRY--TRUTHFULNESS--SUSPICIOUSNESS

Japanese cheerfulness--Festivals--Pessimism existent, but easily
overlooked--The ubiquity of children gives an appearance of
cheerfulness--Industry--Illustrations--Easy-going--Sociological
interpretation--Mutual confidence and trustfulness--Relation to
communalistic feudalism--Changes in the social order and in
character--The American Board's experience in trusting Japanese
honor--The Doshisha and its difficulties--Suspiciousness--Necessary
under the old social order--The need of constant care in conversation,
115


XI. JEALOUSY--REVENGE--HUMANE FEELINGS

Jealousy particularly ascribed to women--How related to the social
order--Is jealousy limited to women?--Revenge--Taught as a moral
duty--Revenge and the new social order--Are the Japanese cruel?--First
impressions--Treatment of the insane--Of lepers--The cruelty and
hardness of heart of Old Japan--Buddhistic teaching and
practice--Buddhist and Christian Orphan Asylums--Treatment of
horses--Torture in Old Japan--Crucifixion and transfixion by
spears--Hard-heartedness cultivated under feudalism--Cruelty and the
humane feelings in the Occident--Abolition of cruel customs in ancient
and in Old Japan--Cruelty a sociological, not a biological
characteristic--The rise of humane feelings--Doctors and
hospitals--Philanthropy, 127


XII. AMBITION--CONCEIT

Ambition, both individual and national--The "Kumamoto
Band"--Self-confidence and conceit--Refined in nature--Illustrations
in the use of English--Readiness of young men to assume grave
responsibilities--A product of the social order--Assumptions of
inferiority by the common people--Obsequiousness--Modern
self-confidence and assumptions not without ground--Self-confidence
and success--Self-confidence and physical size--Young men and the
recent history of Japan--The self-confidence and conceit of Western
nations--The open-mindedness of most Japanese, 137


XIII. PATRIOTISM--APOTHEOSIS--COURAGE

"Yamato-Damashii": "The Soul of Japan"--Patriotism and the recent war
with China--Patriotism of Christian orphans--Mr. Ishii--Patriotism is
for a person, not for country--National patriotism is
modern--Passionate devotion to the Emperor--A gift of 20,000,000 yen
to the Emperor--The constitution derives its authority from the
Emperor--A quotation from Prof. Yamaguchi--Japanese Imperial
succession is of Oriental type--Concubines and children of the
reigning Emperor--Apotheosis, Oriental and Occidental--Apotheosis and
national unity--The political conflict between Imperial and popular
sovereignty--Japanese and Roman apotheosis--Prof. Nash
quoted--Courage--Cultivated in ancient times--A peculiar feature of
Japanese courage--"Harakiri"--E. Griffis quoted--A boy hero--Relation
of courage to social order--Japanese courage not only physical--modern
instance of moral courage, 144


XIV. FICKLENESS--STOLIDITY--STOICISM

Illustrations of fickleness--Prof. Chamberlain's
explanation--Fickleness a modern trait--Continuity of purpose in spite
of changes of method--The youth of those on whom responsibility
rests--Fluctuation of interest in Christianity not a fair
illustration--The period of fluctuation is passing
away--Impassiveness--"Putty faces"--Distinguish between stupidity and
stoicism--Stupid stolidity among the farmers--Easily removed--Social
stolidity cultivated--Demanded by the old social order--The influence
of Buddhism in suppressing expression of emotion--An illustration of
suppressed curiosity--Lack of emotional manifestations when the
Emperor appears in public--Stolidity a social, not a racial trait--A
personal experience--The increased vivacity of Christian
women--Relations of emotional to intellectual development and to the
social order, 159


XV. AESTHETIC CHARACTERISTICS

The wide development of the aesthetic sense in Japan--Japanese aesthetic
development is unbalanced--The sense of smell--Painting--Japanese art
pays slight attention to the human form--Sociological
interpretation--The nude in Japanese art--Relation to the social
order--Art and immorality--Caricature--Fondness for the abnormal in
nature--Abnormal stones--Tosa cocks--AEsthetics of speech--The aesthetic
sense and the use of personal pronouns--Deficiency of the aesthetic
development in regard to speech--Sociological explanations--Close
relation of aesthetics and conduct--Sociological explanation for the
wide development of the aesthetic sense--The classes lived in close
proximity--The spirit of dependence and imitation--Universality of
culture more apparent than real--Defects of aesthetic taste--Defective
etiquette--How accounted for--Old and new conditions--"Western taste
debasing Japanese art"--Illustration of aboriginal aesthetic
defects--Colored photographs--AEsthetic defects of popular shrines--The
aesthetics of music--Experience of the Hawaiian people--Literary
aesthetic development--Aston quoted--Architectural aesthetic
development--AEsthetic development is sociological rather than
biological, 170


XVI. MEMORY--IMITATION

Psychological unity of the East and the West--Brain size and social
evolution--The size of the Japanese brain--Memory--Learning Chinese
characters--Social selection and mnemonic power--Japanese memory in
daily life--Memory of uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples--Hindu
memory--Max Mueller quoted--Japanese acquisition of foreign
languages--The argument from language for the social as against the
biological distinction of races--The faculty of imitation; is not to
be despised--Prof. Chamberlain's over-emphasis of Japanese
imitation--Originality in adopting Confucianism and
Buddhism--"Shinshu"--"Nichirenshu"--Adoption of Chinese
philosophy--Dr. Knox's over-emphasis of servile adoption--Our
ignorance of Japanese history of thought--A reason for Occidental
misunderstanding--The incubus of governmental initiative--Relation of
imitation to the social order, 189


XVII. ORIGINALITY--INVENTIVENESS

Originality in art--Authoritative suppression of originality--Townsend
Harris quoted--Suppression of Christianity and of heterodox
Confucianism--Modern suppression of historical research--Yet Japan is
not wholly lacking in originality--Recent discoveries and
inventions--Originality in borrowing from the West--Quotations from a
native paper, 203


XVIII. INDIRECTNESS--"NOMINALITY"

"Roundaboutness"--Some advantages of this
characteristic--Illustrations--Study of English for direct and
accurate habits of thought--Rapid modern growth of
directness--"Nominality"--All Japanese history an illustration--The
Imperial rule only nominal--The daimyo as a figure-head--"Nominality"
in ordinary life--In family relations--Illustrations in Christian
work--A "nominal" express train--"Nominality" and the social order,
210


XIX. INTELLECTUALITY

Do Japanese lack the higher mental faculties?--Evidence of
inventions--Testimony of foreign teachers--Japanese students, at home
and abroad--Readiness in public speech--Powers of generalization in
primitive Japan--"Ri" and "Ki," "In" and "Yo"--Japanese use of Chinese
generalized philosophical terms--Generalization and the social
order--Defective explanation of puerile Oriental science--Relation to
the mechanical memory method of education--High intellectuality
dependent on social order, 218


XX. PHILOSOPHICAL ABILITY

Do Japanese lack philosophical ability?--Some opinions--Some
distinctions--Japanese interest in metaphysical problems--Buddhist and
Confucian metaphysics--Metaphysics and ethics--Japanese students of
Occidental philosophy--A personal experience--"The little
philosopher"--A Buddhist priest--Rarity of original philosophical
ability and even interest--Philosophical ability and the social order
in the West, 225


XXI. IMAGINATION

Some criticisms of Japanese mental traits--Wide range of imaginative
activity--Some salient points--Unbalanced imaginative
development--Prosaic matter-of-factness--Visionariness--Impractical
idealism--Illustrations--An evangelist--A principal--Visionariness in
Christian work--Visionariness in national ambition--Imagination and
optimism--Mr. Lowell's opinion criticised--Fancy and
imagination--Caricature--Imagination and imitation--Sociological
interpretation of visionariness--And of prosaic
matter-of-factness--Communalism and the higher mental
powers--Suppression of the constructive imagination--Racial
intellectual characteristics are social rather than inherent, 233


XXII. MORAL IDEALS

Loyalty and filial piety as moral ideals--Quotations from an ancient
moralist, Muro Kyuso--On the heavenly origin of moral teaching--On
self-control--Knowledge comes through obedience--On the impurity of
ancient literature--On the ideal of the samurai in relation to
trade--Old Japan combined statute and ethical law--"The testament of
Iyeyasu"--Ohashi's condemnation of Western learning for its
impiety--Japanese moral ideals were communal--Truthfulness
undeveloped--Relations of samurai to tradesman--The business standards
are changing with the social order--Ancient Occidental contempt for
trade--Plato and Aristotle, 249


XXIII. MORAL IDEALS (_Continued_)

The social position of woman--Valuation of the individual--Confucian
and Buddhistic teaching in regard to concubinage and
polygamy--Sociological interpretation--Japan not exceptional--Actual
morality of Old Japan--Modern growth of immorality--Note on the
"Social Evil"--No ancient teaching in regard to masculine
chastity--Mr. Hearn's mistaken contention--Filial obedience and
prostitution--How could the social order produce two different moral
ideals?--The new Civil Code on marriage--Divorce--Statistics--Modern
advance of woman--Significance of the Imperial Silver Wedding--The
Wedding of the Prince Imperial--Relation of Buddhism and Confucianism
to moral ideals and practice--The new spirit of Buddhism--Christian
influence on Shinto; Tenri Kyo--The ancient moralists confined their
attention to the rulers--The Imperial Edict in regard to Moral
Education, 258


XXIV. MORAL PRACTICE

The publicity of Japanese life--Public bathing--Personal experience at
a hot-spring--Mr. Hearn on privacy--Individualism and variation from
the moral standard--Standards advancing--Revenge--Modern liberty of
travel--Increase of wealth--Increasing luxury and vice--Increase of
concubinage--Native discussions--Statistics--Business honesty--A
native paper quoted--Some experiences with Christians--Testimony of a
Japanese consul--Difference of gifts to Buddhist and to Christian
institutions--Christian condemnation of Doshisha
mismanagement--Misappropriation of trust funds in the West--Business
honesty and the social order--Fitness of Christianity to the new
social order--A summary--Communal virtues--Individual Vices--The
authority of the moral ideal--Moral characteristics are not inherent,
but social, in nature, 273


XXV. ARE THE JAPANESE RELIGIOUS?

Prof. Pfleiderer's view--Percival Lowell's definition of
religion--Japanese appearance of irreligion due to many
facts--Skeptical attitude of Confucius towards the gods--Ready
acceptance of Western agnosticism--Prof. Chamberlain's assertion that
the Japanese take their religion lightly--Statements concerning
religion by Messrs. Fukuzawa, Kato, and Ito--Statements of Japanese
irreligion are not to be lightly accepted--Incompetence of many
critics--We must study all the religious
phenomena--Pilgrimages--Statistics--Mr. Lowell's criticism of
"peripatetic picnic parties"--Is religion necessarily gloomy?--God and
Buddha shelves universal in Japan--Temples and shrines--Statistics,
286


XXVI. SOME RELIGIOUS PHENOMENA

Stoical training conceals religious emotions--The earnestness of many
suppliants--Buddhistic and Shinto practice of religious ecstasy--The
revolt from Buddhism a religious movement--Muro Kyu-so
quoted--"Heaven's Way"--"God's omnipresence"--Pre-Christian teachers
of Christian truth--Interpretation of modern irreligious
phenomena--Japanese apparent lack of reverence--Not an inherent racial
characteristic--Sketch of Japanese religious
history--Shinto--Buddhism--Confucianism--Christianity--Roman
Catholicism--Protestantism--Religious characteristics are social, not
essential or racial, 296


XXVII. SOME RELIGIOUS CONCEPTIONS

Japanese conceptions as to deity--The number and relation of the gods
to the universe--Did the Japanese have the monotheistic
conception?--Attractiveness of Christian monotheism--Confucian and
Buddhist monism--Religious conception of man--Conception of
sin--Defective terminology--Relation of sin to salvation--"Holy
water"--Holy towels and the spread of disease--The slight connection
between physical and moral pollution--W.E. Griffis quoted--Exaggerated
cleanliness of the Japanese--Public bathing houses--Consciousness of
sin in the sixteenth century--A recent experience--Doctrine of the
future life--Salvation from fate--"Ingwa"--These are important
doctrines--"Mei" (Heaven's decree)--Japan not unique--Sociological
interpretations of religious characteristics, 310


XXVIII. SOME RELIGIOUS PRACTICES

Loyalty and filial piety as religious phenomena--Gratitude as a
religions trait--Hearn quoted--Unpleasant experiences of
ingratitude--Modern suppression of phallicism--Brothels and
prostitutes at popular shrines--The failure of higher ethnic faiths to
antagonize the lower--Suppression of phallicism due to Western
opinion--The significance of this suppression to sociological
theory--Religious liberty--Some history--Inconsistent attitude of the
Educational Department--Virtual establishment of compulsory state
religion--Review and summary--The Japanese ready learners of foreign
religions--The significance of this to sociology--Japanese future
religion is to be Christianity, 322


XXIX. SOME PRINCIPLES OF NATIONAL EVOLUTION

Progress is from smaller to larger communities--Arrest of
development--The necessity of individualism--The relation of communal
to individual development--A possible misunderstanding--The problem of
distribution--Personality, 332


XXX. ARE THE JAPANESE IMPERSONAL?

Assertion of Oriental impersonality--Quotations from Percival
Lowell--Defective and contradictory definitions--Arguments for
impersonality resting on mistaken interpretations--Children's
festivals--Occidental and Oriental method of counting ages--Argument
for impersonality from Japanese art--From the characteristics of the
Japanese family--The bearing of divorce on this argument--Do Japanese
"fall in love"?--Suicide and murder for love--Occidental approval and
Oriental condemnation of "falling in love"--Sociological significance
of divorce and of "falling in love," 344


XXXI. THE JAPANESE NOT IMPERSONAL

The problem stated--Definitions--Remarks on
definitions--Characteristics of a person--Impersonality defined--A
preliminary summary statement--Definitions of Communalism and
Individualism--The argument for "impersonality" from Japanese
politeness--Some difficulties of this interpretation--The sociological
interpretation of politeness--The significance of Japanese
sensitiveness--Altruism as a proof of impersonality--Japanese
selfishness and self-assertiveness--Distinction between communal and
individualistic altruism--Deficiency of personal pronouns as a proof
of impersonality--A possible counter-argument--Substitutes for
personal pronouns--Many personal words in Japanese--Origin of
pronouns, personal and others--The relation of the social order to the
use of personal pronouns--Japanese conceive Nationality only through
Personality--"Strong" and "weak" personality--Strong personalities in
Japan--Feudalism and strong personalities, 356


XXXII. IS BUDDHISM IMPERSONAL?

Self-suppression as a proof of impersonality--Self-suppression cannot
be ascribed to a primitive people--Esoteric Buddhism not
popular--Buddhism emphasized introspection and self-consciousness--Mr.
Lowell on the teaching of Buddha--Consciousness of union with the
Absolute a developed, not a primitive, trait--Buddhist
self-suppression proves a developed self--Buddhist self-salvation and
Christian salvation by faith--Buddhism does not develop rounded
personality--Buddhism attributes no worth to the self--Buddhist mercy
rests on the doctrine of transmigration, not on the inherent worth of
man--Analysis of the diverse elements in the asserted "Impersonality
"--Why Buddhism attributed no value to the self--The Infinite Absolute
Abstraction--Buddhism not impersonal but abstract--Buddhist doctrine
of illusion--Popular Buddhism not philosophical--Relation of "ingwa,"
Fate, to the development of personality--Relation of belief in freedom
to the fact of freedom--Sociological consequences of Buddhist
doctrine, 377


XXXIII. TRACES OF PERSONALITY IN SHINTOISM, BUDDHISM, AND CONFUCIANISM

Human illogicalness providential--Some devices for avoiding the evils
of logical conclusions--Buddhistic actual appeal to personal
self-activity--Practical Confucianism an antidote to Buddhist
poison--Confucian ethics produced strong persons--The personal
conception of deity is widespread--Shinto gods all persons--Popular
Buddhist gods are personal--Confucian "Heaven" implies
personality--The idea of personality not wholly wanting in the
Orient--The idea of divine personality not difficult to impart to a
Japanese--A conversation with a Buddhist priest--Sketch of the
development of Japanese personality--Is personality
inherent?--Intrinsic and phenomenal personality--Note on the doctrine
of the personality of God, 389


XXXIV. THE BUDDHIST WORLD-VIEW

Comparison of Buddhist, Greek, and Christian conceptions of
God--Nirvana--The Buddhistic Ultimate Reality absolute vacuity--Greek
affirmation of intelligence in the Ultimate Reality--Christian
affirmation of Divine Personality--The Buddhist universe is partly
rational and ethical--The Greek universe is partly rational and
ethical--Corresponding views of sin, salvation, change, and
history--Resulting pessimism and optimism--Consequences to the
respective civilizations and their social orders, 398


XXXV. COMMUNAL AND INDIVIDUAL ELEMENTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF JAPANESE
RELIGIOUS LIFE

Japanese religious life has been predominantly communal--Shinto
provided the sanctions for the social order--Recent abdication of
Shinto as a religion--Primitive Shinto world--view--Shinto and modern
science--Shinto sanctions for the modern social order--Buddhism is
individualistic--Lacks social ideals and sanctions--Hence it could not
displace Shinto--Shinto and Buddhism are supplementary--Produced a
period of prosperity--The defect of Buddhist individualism--Imperfect
acceptance of Shinto--Effect of political history--Confucianism
restored the waning communal sanctions--The difference between Shinto
and Confucian social ideals and sanctions--The difference between
Shinto and Confucian world-views--Rejection of the Confucian social
order--An interpretation--The failure of Confucianism to become a
religion--Western intercourse re-established Shinto sanctions--Japan's
modern religious problem--Difficulty of combining individual and
communal religious elements--Christianity has accomplished
it--Individualism in and through communalism--A modern expansion of
communal religion--Shared by Japan--Some Japanese recognize the need
of religion for Japan--Sociological function of individualistic
religion in the higher human evolution--Obstacle to evolution through
the development of intellect--The Japanese mind is outgrowing its old
religious conceptions--The dependence of religious phenomena on the
ideas dominating society--Note on National and Universal
religions--Buddhism not properly classified as Universal--The
classification of religions, 404


XXXVI. WHAT ARE THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE ORIENT

The conclusion reached in this work--Contrary to the opinion of
tourists, residents, and many sociologists--Professor Le Bon
quoted--Social psychic characteristics not inherent--Evolution and
involution--Advocates of inherent Oriental traits should catalogue
those traits--An attempt by the London _Daily Mail_--Is the East
inherently intuitive, and the West logical?--The difficulty of
becoming mutually acquainted--The secret of genuine acquaintance--Is
the East inherently meditative and the West active?--Oriental unity
and characteristics are social, not inherent--Isolated evolution is
divergent--Mutual influence of the East and the West--Summary
statement, 422


XXXVII. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS

Review of our course of thought--Purpose of this chapter--The problem
studied in this work--Interrelation of social and psychic
phenomena--Heredity defined and analyzed--Evolution defined--Exact
definition of our question, and our reply--What would be an adequate
disproof of our position--Reasons for limiting the discussion to
advanced races--Divergent evolution dependent on
segregation--Distinction between racial and social unity--Relation of
the individual psychic character to the social order--"Race soul" a
convenient fiction--Psychic function produces psychic organism--Causes
and nature of plasticity and fixity of society--Relation of incarnate
ideas to character and destiny--Valuelessness of "floating"
ideas--Progress is at once communal and individual--Personality is its
cause, aim, and criterion--Progress in personality is
ethico-religious--Japanese social and psychic evolution not
exceptional, 438




INTRODUCTION


The tragedy enacted in China during the closing year of the nineteenth
century marks an epoch in the history of China and of the world. Two
world-views, two types of civilization met in deadly conflict, and the
inherent weakness of isolated, belated, superstitious and corrupt
paganism was revealed. Moreover, during this, China's crisis, Japan
for the first time stepped out upon the world's stage of political and
military activity. She was recognized as a civilized nation, worthy to
share with the great nations of the earth the responsibility of ruling
the lawless and backward races.

The correctness of any interpretation as to the significance of this
conflict between the opposing civilizations turns, ultimately, on the
question as to what is the real nature of man and of society. If it be
true, as maintained by Prof. Le Bon and his school, that the mental
and moral character of a people is as fixed as its physiological
characteristics, then the conflict in China is at bottom a conflict of
races, not of civilizations.

The inadequacy of the physiological theory of national character may
be seen almost at a glance by a look at Japan. Were an Oriental
necessarily and unchangeably Oriental, it would have been impossible
for Japan to have come into such close and sympathetic touch with the
West.

The conflict of the East with the West, however, is not an inherent
and unending conflict, because it is not racial, but civilizational.
It is a conflict of world-views and systems of thought and life. It is
a conflict of heathen and Christian civilizations. And the conflict
will come to an end as soon as, and in proportion as, China awakes
from her blindness and begins to build her national temple on the
bedrock of universal truth and righteousness. The conflict is
practically over in Japan because she has done this. In loyally
accepting science, popular education, and the rights of every
individual to equal protection by the government, Japan has accepted
the fundamental conceptions of civilization held in the West, and has
thus become an integral part of Christendom, a fact of world-wide
significance. It proves that the most important differences now
separating the great races of men are civilizational, not
physiological. It also proves that European, American, and Oriental
peoples may be possessed by the same great ideals of life and
principles of action, enabling them to co-operate as nations in great
movements to their mutual advantage.

While even we of the West may be long in learning the full
significance of what has been and still is taking place in Japan and
more conspicuously just now, because more tragically, in China, one
thing is clear: steam and electricity have abolished forever the old
isolation of the nations.

Separated branches of the human race that for thousands of years have
been undergoing divergent evolution, producing radically different
languages, customs, civilizations, systems of thought and world-views,
and have resulted even in marked physiological and psychological
differences, are now being brought into close contact and inevitable
conflict. But at bottom it is a conflict of ideas, not of races. The
age of isolation and divergent evolution is passing away, and that of
international association and convergent social evolution has begun.
Those races and nations that refuse to recognize the new social order,
and oppose the cosmic process and its forces, will surely be pushed to
the wall and cease to exist as independent nations, just as, in
ancient times, the tribes that refused to unite with neighboring
tribes were finally subjugated by those that did so unite.

Universal economic, political, intellectual, moral, and religious
intercourse is the characteristic of the new aeon on which we are
entering. What are to be the final consequences of this wide
intercourse? Can a people change its character? Can a nation fully
possessed by one type of civilization reject it, and adopt one
radically different? Do races have "souls" which are fixed and
incapable of radical transformations? What has taken place in Japan, a
profound, or only a superficial change in psychical character? Are the
destinies of the Oriental races already unalterably determined?

The answers to these questions have already been suggested in the
preceding paragraphs, in regard to what has already taken place in
Japan. But we may add that that answer really turns on our conception
as to the nature of the characteristics separating the East from the
West. In proportion as national character is reckoned to be
biological, will it be considered fixed and the national destiny
predetermined. In proportion as it is reckoned to be sociological,
will it be considered alterable and the national destiny subject to
new social forces. Now that the intercourse of widely different races
has begun on a scale never before witnessed, it is highly important
for us to know its probable consequences. For this we need to gain a
clear idea of the nature both of the individual man and of society, of
the relation of the social order to individual and to race character,
and of the law regulating and the forces producing social evolution.
Only thus can we forecast the probable course and consequences of the
free social intercourse of widely divergent races.

It is the belief of the writer that few countries afford so clear an
illustration of the principles involved in social evolution as Japan.
Her development has been so rapid and so recent that some principles
have become manifest that otherwise might easily have escaped notice.
The importance of understanding Japan, because of the light her recent
transformations throw on the subject of social evolution and of
national character and also because of the conspicuous role to which
she is destined as the natural leader of the Oriental races in their
adoption of Occidental modes of life and thought, justifies a careful
study of Japanese character. He who really understands Japan, has
gained the magic key for unlocking the social mysteries of China and
the entire East. But the Japanese people, with their institutions and
their various characteristics, merit careful study also for their own
sakes. For the Japanese constitute an exceedingly interesting and even
a unique branch of the human race. Japan is neither a purgatory, as
some would have it, nor a paradise, as others maintain, but a land
full of individuals in an interesting stage of social evolution.

Current opinions concerning Japan, however, are as curious as they are
contradictory. Sir Edwin Arnold says that the Japanese "Have the
nature rather of birds or butterflies than of ordinary human beings."
Says Mr. A.M. Knapp: "Japan is the one country in the world which does
not disappoint ... It is unquestionably the unique nation of the
globe, the land of dream and enchantment, the land which could hardly
differ more from our own, were it located in another planet, its
people not of this world." An "old resident," however, calls it "the
land of disappointments." Few phenomena are more curious than the
readiness with which a tourist or professional journalist, after a few
days or weeks of sight-seeing and interviewing, makes up his mind in
regard to the character of the people, unless it be the way in which
certain others, who have resided in this land for a number of years,
continue to live in their own dreamland. These two classes of writers
have been the chief contributors of material for the omnivorous
readers of the West.

It appears to not a few who have lived many years in this Far Eastern
land, that the public has been fed with the dreams of poets or the
snap-judgments of tourists instead of with the facts of actual
experience. A recent editorial article in the _Japan Mail_, than whose
editor few men have had a wider acquaintance with the Japanese people
or language, contains the following paragraph:

     "In the case of such writers as Sir Edwin Arnold and Mr. Lafcadio
     Hearn it is quite apparent that the logical faculty is in
     abeyance. Imagination reigns supreme. As poetic nights or
     outbursts, the works of these authors on Japan are delightful
     reading. But no one who has studied the Japanese in a deeper
     manner, by more intimate daily intercourse with all classes of the
     people than either of these writers pretends to have had, can
     possibly regard a large part of their description as anything more
     than pleasing fancy. Both have given rein to the poetic fancy and
     thus have, from a purely literary point of view, scored a success
     granted to few.... But as exponents of Japanese life and thought
     they are unreliable.... They have given form and beauty to much
     that never existed except in vague outline or in undeveloped germs
     in the Japanese mind. In doing this they have unavoidably been
     guilty of misrepresentation.... The Japanese nation of Arnold and
     Hearn is not the nation we have known for a quarter of a century,
     but a purely ideal one manufactured out of the author's brains. It
     is high time that this was pointed out. For while such works please
     a certain section of the English public, they do a great deal of
     harm among a section of the Japanese public, as could be easily
     shown in detail, did space allow."--_Japan Mail, May 7, 1898_.

But even more harmful to the reading public of England and America are
the hastily formed yet, nevertheless, widely published opinions of
tourists and newspaper correspondents. Could such writers realize the
inevitable limitations under which they see and try to generalize, the
world would be spared many crudities and exaggerations, not to say
positive errors. The impression so common to-day that Japan's recent
developments are anomalous, even contrary to the laws of national
growth, is chiefly due to the superficial writings of hasty observers.
Few of those who have dilated ecstatically on her recent growth have
understood either the history or the genius of her people.

     "To mention but one among many examples," says Prof. Chamberlain,
     "the ingenious Traveling Commissioner of the _Pall Mall Gazette_,
     Mr. Henry Norman, in his lively letters on Japan published nine or
     ten years ago, tells the story of Japanese education under the
     fetching title of 'A Nation at School'; but the impression left is
     that they have been their own schoolmasters. In another letter on
     'Japan in Arms,' he discourses concerning 'The Japanese Military
     Re-organizers,' 'The Yokosuka dockyard,' and other matters, but
     omits to mention that the reorganizers were Frenchmen, and that the
     Yokosuka dockyard was also a French creation. Similarly, when
     treating of the development of the Japanese newspaper, he ignores
     the fact that it owed its origin to an Englishman, which surely, to
     a man whose object was reality, should have seemed an object worth
     recording. These letters, so full and apparently so frank, really
     so deceptive, are, as we have said, but one instance among many of
     the way in which popular writers on Japan travesty history by
     ignoring the part which foreigners have played. The reasons for
     this are not far to seek. A wonderful tale will please folks at a
     distance all the better if made more wonderful still. Japanese
     progress, traced to its causes and explained by references to the
     means employed, is not nearly such fascinating reading as when
     represented in the guise of a fairy creation, sprung from nothing,
     like Aladdin's palace."--"_Things Japanese," p. 116_.

But inter-racial misunderstanding is not, after all, so very strange.
Few things are more difficult than to accommodate one's self in
speech, in methods of life, and even in thought, to an alien people;
so identifying one's deepest interest with theirs as really to
understand them. The minds of most men are so possessed by notions
acquired in childhood and youth as to be unable to see even the
plainest facts at variance with those notions. He who comes to Japan
possessed with the idea that it is a dreamland and that its old social
order was free from defects, is blind to any important facts
invalidating that conception; while he who is persuaded that Japan,
being Oriental, is necessarily pagan at heart, however civilized in
form, cannot easily be persuaded that there is anything praiseworthy
in her old civilization, in her moral or religious life, or in any of
her customs.

If France fails in important respects to understand England; and
England, Germany; and Germany, its neighbors; if even England and
America can so misunderstand one another as to be on the verge of war
over the boundary dispute of an alien country, what hope is there that
the Occident shall understand the Orient, or the Orient the Occident?

Though the difficulty seems insurmountable, I am persuaded that the
most fruitful cause of racial misunderstandings and of defective
descriptions both of the West by Orientals, and of the East by
Occidentals, is a well-nigh universal misconception as to the nature
of man, and of society, and consequently of the laws determining their
development. In the East this error arises from and rests upon its
polytheism, and the accompanying theories of special national creation
and peculiar national sanctity. On these grounds alien races are
pronounced necessarily inferior. China's scorn for foreigners is due
to these ideas.

Although this pagan notion has been theoretically abandoned in the
West, it still dominates the thought not only of the multitudes, but
also of many who pride themselves on their high education and liberal
sentiments. They bring to the support of their national or racial
pride such modern sociological theories as lend themselves to this
view. Evolution and the survival of the fittest, degeneration and the
arrest of development, are appealed to as justifying the arrogance and
domineering spirit of Western nations.

But the most subtle and scholarly doctrine appealed to in support of
national pride is the biological conception of society. Popular
writers assume that society is a biological organism and that the laws
of its evolution are therefore biological. This assumption is not
strange, for until recent times the most advanced professional
sociologists have been dominated by the same misconception. Spencer,
for example, makes sociology a branch of biology. More recent
sociological writers, however, such as Professors Giddings and
Fairbanks, have taken special pains to assert the essentially psychic
character of society; they reject the biological conception, as
inadequate to express the real nature of society. The biological
conception, they insist, is nothing more than a comparison, useful for
bringing out certain features of the social life and structure, but
harmful if understood as their full statement. The laws of psychic
activity and development differ as widely from those of biologic
activity and development as these latter do from those that hold in
the chemical world. If the laws which regulate psychic development and
the progress of civilization were understood by popular writers on
Japan, and if the recent progress of Japan had been stated in the
terms of these laws, there would not have been so much mystification
in the West in regard to this matter as there evidently has been.
Japan would not have appeared to have "jumped out of her skin," or
suddenly to have escaped from the heredity of her past millenniums of
development. This wide misunderstanding of Japan, then, is not simply
due to the fact that "Japanese progress, traced to its causes and
explained by reference to the means employed, is not nearly such
fascinating reading as when represented in the guise of a fairy
creation," but it is also due to the still current popular view that
the social organism is biological, and subject therefore to the laws
of biological evolution. On this assumption, some hold that the
progress of Japan, however it may appear, is really superficial, while
others represent it as somehow having evaded the laws regulating the
development of other races. A nation's character and characteristics
are conceived to be the product of brain-structure; these can change
only as brain structure changes. Brain is held to determine
civilization, rather than civilization brain. Hampered by this
defective view, popular writers inevitably describe Japan to the West
in terms that necessarily misrepresent her, and that at the same time
pander to Occidental pride and prejudice.

But this misunderstanding of Japan reveals an equally profound
misunderstanding in regard to ourselves. Occidental peoples are
supposed to be what they are in civilization and to have reached their
high attainments in theoretical and applied science, in philosophy and
in practical politics, because of their unique brain-structures,
brains secured through millenniums of biological evolution. The
following statement may seem to be rank heresy to the average
sociologist, but my studies have led me to believe that the main
differences between the great races of mankind to-day are not due to
biological, but to social conditions; they are not
physico-psychological differences, but only socio-psychological
differences. The Anglo-Saxon is what he is because of his social
heredity, and the Chinaman is what he is because of his social
heredity. The profound difference between social and physiological
heredity and evolution is unappreciated except by a few of the most
recent sociological writers. The part that association, social
segregation, and social heredity take in the maintenance, not only of
once developed languages and civilizations, but even in their genesis,
has been generally overlooked.

But a still more important factor in the determination of social and
psychic evolution, generally unrecognized by sociologists, is the
nature and function of personality. Although in recent years it has
been occasionally mentioned by several eminent writers, personality as
a principle has not been made the core of any system of sociology. In
my judgment, however, this is the distinctive characteristic of human
evolution and of human association, and it should accordingly be the
fundamental principle of social science. Many writers on the East have
emphasized what they call its "impersonal" characteristics. So
important is this subject that I have considered it at length in the
body of this work.

Sociological phenomena cannot be fully expressed by any combination of
exclusively physical, biological, and psychic terms, for the
significant element of man and of society consists of something more
than these--namely, personality. It is this that differentiates human
from animal evolution. The unit of human sociology is a
self-conscious, self-determinative being. The causative factor in the
social evolution of man is his personality. The goal of that evolution
is developed personality. Personality is thus at once the cause and
the end of social progress. The conditions which affect or determine
progress are those which affect or determine personality.

The biological evolution of man from the animal has been, it is true,
frankly assumed in this work. No attempt is made to justify this
assumption. Let not the reader infer, however, that the writer
similarly assumes the adequacy of the so-called naturalistic or
evolutionary origin of ethics, of religion, or even of social
progress. It may be doubted whether Darwin, Wallace, Le Conte, or any
exponent of biological evolution has yet given a complete statement of
the factors of the physiological evolution of man. It is certain,
however, that ethical, religious, and social writers who have striven
to account for the higher evolution of man, by appealing to factors
exclusively parallel to those which have produced the physiological
evolution of man, have conspicuously failed. However much we may find
to praise in the social interpretations of such eminent writers as
Comte, Spencer, Ward, Fiske, Giddings, Kidd, Southerland, or even
Drummond, there still remains the necessity of a fuller consideration
of the moral and religious evolution of man. The higher evolution of
man cannot be adequately expressed or even understood in any terms
lower than those of personality.




EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE

I

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS


Said a well educated and widely read Englishman to the writer while in
Oxford, "Can you explain to me how it is that the Japanese have
succeeded in jumping out of their skins?" And an equally thoughtful
American, speaking about the recent strides in civilization made by
Japan, urged that this progress could not be real and genuine. "How
can such a mushroom-growth, necessarily without deep roots in the
past, be real and strong and permanent? How can it escape being
chiefly superficial?" These two men are typical of much of the thought
of the West in regard to Japan.

Seldom, perhaps never, has the civilized world so suddenly and
completely reversed an estimate of a nation as it has that with
reference to Japan. Before the recent war, to the majority even of
fairly educated men, Japan was little more than a name for a few small
islands somewhere near China, whose people were peculiar and
interesting. To-day there is probably not a man, or woman, or child
attending school in any part of the civilized world, who does not know
the main facts about the recent war: how the small country and the men
of small stature, sarcastically described by their foes as "Wojen,"
pygmy, attacked the army and navy of a country ten times their size.

Such a universal change of opinion regarding a nation, especially
regarding one so remote from the centers of Western civilization as
Japan, could not have taken place in any previous generation. The
telegraph, the daily paper, the intelligent reporters and writers of
books and magazine articles, the rapid steam travel and the many
travelers--all these have made possible this sudden acquisition of
knowledge and startling reversal of opinion.

There is reason, however, to think that much misapprehension and real
ignorance still exists about Japan and her leap into power and
world-wide prestige. Many seem to think that Japan has entered on her
new career through the abandonment of her old civilization and the
adoption of one from the West--that the victories on sea and land, in
Korea, at Port Arthur, and a Wei-hai-wei, and more recently at
Tientsin and Pekin, were solely due to her Westernized navy and army.
Such persons freely admit that this process of Westernization had been
going on for many years more rapidly than the world at large knew, and
that consequently the reputation of Japan before the war was not such
as corresponded with her actual attainments. But they assume that
there was nothing of importance in the old civilization; that it was
little superior to organized barbarism.

These people conceive of the change which has taken place in Japan
during the past thirty years as a revolution, not as an evolution; as
an abandonment of the old, and an adoption of the new, civilization.
They conceive the old tree of civilization to have been cut down and
cast into the fire, and a new tree to have been imported from the West
and planted in Japanese soil. New Japan is, from this view-point, the
new tree.

Not many months ago I heard of a wealthy family in Kyoto which did not
take kindly to the so-called improvements imported from abroad, and
which consequently persisted in using the instruments of the older
civilization. Even such a convenience as the kerosene lamp, now
universally adopted throughout the land of the Rising Sun, this family
refused to admit into its home, preferring the old-style andon with
its vegetable oil, dim light, and flickering flame. Recently, however,
an electric-light company was organized in that city, and this
brilliant illuminant was introduced not only into the streets and
stores, but into many private houses. Shortly after its introduction,
the family was converted to the superiority of the new method of
illumination, and passed at one leap from the old-style lantern to the
latest product of the nineteenth century. This incident is considered
typical of the transformations characteristic of modern Japan. It is
supposed that New Japan is in no proper sense the legitimate product
through evolution of Old Japan.

In important ways, therefore, Japan seems to be contradicting our
theories of national growth. We have thought that no "heathen" nation
could possibly gain, much less wield, unaided by Westerners, the
forces of civilized Christendom. We have likewise held that national
growth is a slow process, a gradual evolution, extending over scores
and centuries of years. In both respects our theories seem to be at
fault. This "little nation of little people," which we have been so
ready to condemn as "heathen" and "uncivilized," and thus to despise,
or to ignore, has in a single generation leaped into the forefront of
the world's attention.

Are our theories wrong? Is Japan an exception? Are our facts correct?
We instinctively feel that something is at fault. We are not satisfied
with the usual explanation of the recent history of Japan. We are
perhaps ready to concede that "the rejection of the old and the
adoption of Western civilization" is the best statement whereby to
account for the new power of Japan and her new position among the
nations, but when we stop to think, we ask whether we have thus
explained that for which we are seeking an explanation? Do not the
questions still remain--Why did the Japanese so suddenly abandon
Oriental for Occidental civilization? And what mental and other traits
enabled a people who, according to the supposition, were far from
civilized, so suddenly to grasp and wield a civilization quite alien
in character and superior to their own; a civilization ripened after
millenniums of development of the Aryan race? And how far, as a matter
of fact, has this assimilation gone? Not until these questions are
really answered has the explanation been found, So that, after all,
the prime cause which we must seek is not to be found in the external
environment, but rather in the internal endowment.

An effort to understand the ancient history of Japan encounters the
same problem as that raised by her modern history. What mental
characteristics led the Japanese a thousand years ago so to absorb the
Chinese civilization, philosophy, and language that their own suffered
a permanent arrest? What religious traits led them so to take on a
religion from China and India that their own native religion never
passed beyond the most primitive development, either in doctrine, in
ethics, in ritual, or in organization? On the other hand, what mental
characteristics enabled them to preserve their national independence
and so to modify everything brought from abroad, from the words of the
new language to the philosophy of the new religions, that Japanese
civilization, language, and religion are markedly distinct from the
Chinese? Why is it that, though the Japanese so fell under the bondage
of the Chinese language as permanently to enslave and dwarf their own
beautiful tongue, expressing the dominant thought of every sentence
with characters (ideographs) borrowed from China, yet at the same time
so transformed what they borrowed that no Chinaman can read and
understand a Japanese book or newspaper?

The same questions recur at this new period of Japan's national life.
Why has she so easily turned from the customs of centuries? What are
the mental traits that have made her respond so differently from her
neighbor to the environment of the nineteenth-century civilization of
the West Why is it that Japan has sent thousands of her students to
these Western lands to see and study and bring back all that is good
in them, while China has remained in stolid self-satisfaction, seeing
nothing good in the West and its ways? To affirm that the difference
is due to the environment alone is impossible, for the environment
seems to be essentially the same. This difference of attitude and
action must be traced, it would seem, to differences of mental and
temperamental characteristics. Those who seek to understand the
secret of Japan's newly won power and reputation by looking simply at
her newly acquired forms of government, her reconstructed national
social structure, her recently constructed roads and railroads,
telegraphs, representative government, etc., and especially at her
army and navy organized on European models and armed with European
weapons, are not unlike those who would discover the secret of human
life by the study of anatomy.

This external view and this method of interpretation are, therefore,
fundamentally erroneous. Never, perhaps, has the progress of a nation
been so manifestly an evolution as distinguished from a revolution. No
foreign conquerors have come in with their armies, crushing down the
old and building up a new civilization. No magician's wand has been
waved over the land to make the people forget the traditions of a
thousand years and fall in with those of the new regime. No rite or
incantation has been performed to charm the marvelous tree of
civilization and cause it to take root and grow to such lofty
proportions in an unprepared soil.

In contrast to the defective views outlined above, one need not
hesitate to believe that the actual process by which Old Japan has
been transformed into New Japan is perfectly natural and necessary. It
has been a continuous growth; it is not the mere accumulation of
external additions; it does not consist alone of the acquisition of
the machinery and the institutions of the Occident. It is rather a
development from within, based upon already existing ideas and
institutions. New Japan is the consequence of her old endowment and
her new environment. Her evolution has been in progress and can be
traced for at least a millennium and a half, during which she has been
preparing for this latest step. All that was necessary for its
accomplishment was the new environment. The correctness of this view
and the reasons for it will appear as we proceed in our study of
Japanese characteristics. But we need to note at this point the
danger, into which many fall, of ascribing to Japan an attainment of
western civilization which the facts will not warrant. She has
secured much, but by no means all, that the West has to give.

We may suggest our line of thought by asking what is the fundamental
element of civilization? Does it consist in the manifold appliances
that render life luxurious; the railroad, the telegraph, the post
office, the manufactures, the infinite variety of mechanical and other
conveniences? Or is it not rather the social and intellectual and
ethical state of a people? Manifestly the latter. The tools indeed of
civilization may be imported into a half-civilized, or barbarous
country; such importation, however, does not render the country
civilized, although it may assist greatly in the attainment of that
result. Civilization being mental, social, and ethical, can arise only
through the growth of the mind and character of the vast multitudes of
a nation. Now has Japan imported only the tools of civilization? In
other words, is her new civilization only external, formal, nominal,
unreal? That she has imported much is true. Yet that her attainments
and progress rest on her social, intellectual, and ethical development
will become increasingly clear as we take up our successive chapters.
Under the new environment of the past fifty years, this growth,
particularly in intellectual, in industrial, and in political lines,
has been exceedingly rapid as compared with the growths of other
peoples.

This conception of the rise of New Japan will doubtless approve itself
to every educated man who will allow his thought to rest upon the
subject. For all human progress, all organic evolution, proceeds by
the progressive modification of the old organs under new conditions.
The modern locomotive did not spring complete from the mind of James
Watt; it is the result of thousands of years of human experience and
consequent evolution, beginning first perhaps with a rolling log,
becoming a rude cart, and being gradually transformed by successive
inventions until it has become one of the marvels of the nineteenth
century. It is impossible for those who have attained the view-point
of modern science to conceive of discontinuous progress; of
continually rising types of being, of thought, or of moral life, in
which the higher does not find its ground and root and thus an
important part of its explanation, in the lower. Such is the case not
only with reference: to biological evolution; it is especially true of
social evolution. He who would understand the Japan of to-day cannot
rest with the bare statement that her adoption of the tools and
materials of Western civilization has given her her present power and
place among the nations. The student with historical insight knows
that it is impossible for one nation, off-hand, without preparation,
to "adopt the civilization" of another.

The study of the evolution of Japan is one of unusual interest; first,
because of the fact that Japan has experienced such unique changes in
her environment. Her history brings into clear light some principles
of evolution which the visual development of a people does not make so
clear.

In the second place, New Japan is in a state of rapid growth. She is
in a critical period, resembling a youth, just coming to manhood, when
all the powers of growth are most vigorous. The latent qualities of
body and mind and heart then burst forth with peculiar force. In the
course of four or five short years the green boy develops into a
refined and noble man; the thoughtless girl ripens into the full
maturity of womanhood and of motherhood. These are the years of
special interest to those who would observe nature in her time of most
critical activity.

Not otherwise is it in the life of nations. There are times when their
growth is phenomenally rapid; when their latent qualities are
developed; when their growth can be watched with special ease and
delight, because so rapid. The Renaissance was such a period in
Europe. Modern art, science, and philosophy took their start with the
awakening of the mind of Europe at that eventful and epochal period of
her life. Such, I take it, is the condition of Japan to-day. She is
"being born again"; undergoing her "renaissance." Her intellect,
hitherto largely dormant, is but now awaking. Her ambition is equaled
only by her self-reliance. Her self-confidence and amazing
expectations have not yet been sobered by hard experience. Neither
does she, nor do her critics, know how much she can or cannot do. She
is in the first flush of her new-found powers; powers of mind and
spirit, as well as of physical force. Her dreams are gorgeous with all
the colors of the rainbow. Her efforts are sure, to be noble in
proportion as her ambitions are high. The growth of the past
half-century is only the beginning of what we may expect to see.

Then again, this latest and greatest step in the evolution of Japan
has taken place at a time unparalleled for opportunities of
observation, under the incandescent light of the nineteenth century,
with its thousands of educated men to observe and record the facts,
many of whom are active agents in the evolution in progress. Hundreds
of papers and magazines, native and European, read by tens of
thousands of intelligent men and women, have kept the world aware of
the daily and hourly events. Telegraphic dispatches and letters by the
million have passed between the far East and the West. It would seem
as if the modernizing of Japan had been providentially delayed until
the last half of the nineteenth century with its steam and
electricity, annihilators of space and time, in order that her
evolution might be studied with a minuteness impossible in any
previous age, or by any previous generation. It is almost as if one
were conducting an experiment in human evolution in his own
laboratory, imposing the conditions and noting the results.

For still another reason is the evolution of New Japan of special
interest to all intelligent persons. To illustrate great things by
small, and human by physical, no one who has visited Geneva has failed
to see the beautiful mingling of the Arve and the Rhone. The latter
flowing from the calm Geneva lake is of delicate blue, pure and
limpid. The former, running direct from the glaciers of Mont Blanc and
the roaring bed of Chamouni, bears along in its rushing waters
powdered rocks and loosened soil. These rivers, though joined in one
bed, for hundreds of rods are quite distinct; the one, turbid; the
other, clear as crystal; yet they press each against the other, now a
little of the Rhone's clear current forces its way into the Arve, soon
to be carried off, absorbed and discolored by the mass of muddy water
around it. Now a little of the turbid Arve forces its way into the
clear blue Rhone, to lose there its identity in the surrounding
waters. The interchange goes on, increasing with the distance until,
miles below, the two-rivers mingle as one. No longer is it the Arve or
the old Rhone, but the new Rhone.

In Japan there is going on to-day a process unique in the history of
the human race. Two streams of civilization, that of the far East and
that of the far West, are beginning to flow in a single channel. These
streams are exceedingly diverse, in social structure, in government,
in moral ideals and standards, in religion, in psychological and
metaphysical conceptions. Can they live together? Or is one going to
drive out and annihilate the other? If so, which will be victor? Or is
there to be modification of both? In other words, is there to be a new
civilization--a Japanese, an Occidento-Oriental civilization?

The answer is plain to him who has eyes with which to see. Can the
Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? No more can Japan
lose all trace of inherited customs of daily life, of habits of
thought and language, products of a thousand years of training in
Chinese literature, Buddhist doctrine, and Confucian ethics. That "the
boy is father to the man" is true of a nation no less than of an
individual. What a youth has been at home in his habits of thought, in
his purpose and spirit and in their manifestation in action, will
largely determine his after-life. In like manner the mental and moral
history of Japan has so stamped certain characteristics on her
language, on her thought, and above all on her temperament and
character, that, however she may strive to Westernize herself, it is
impossible for her to obliterate her Oriental features. She will
inevitably and always remain Japanese.

Japan has already produced an Occidento-Oriental civilization. Time
will serve progressively to Occidentalize it. But there is no reason
for thinking that it will ever become wholly Occidentalized. A
Westerner visiting Japan will always be impressed with its Oriental
features, while an Asiatic will be impressed with its Occidental
features. This progressive Occidentalization of Japan will take place
according to the laws of social evolution, of which we must speak
somewhat more fully in a later chapter.

An important question bearing on this problem is the precise nature of
the characteristics differentiating the Occident and the Orient. What
exactly do we mean when we say that the Japanese are Oriental and will
always bear the marks of the Orient in their civilization, however
much they may absorb from the West? The importance and difficulty of
this question have led the writer to defer its consideration till
toward the close of this work.

If one would gain adequate conception of the process now going on, the
illustration already used of the mingling of two rivers needs to be
supplemented by another, corresponding to a separate class of facts.
Instead of the mingling of rivers, let us watch the confluence of two
glaciers. What pressures! What grindings! What upheavals! What
rendings! Such is the mingling of two civilizations. It is not smooth
and Noiseless, but attended with pressure and pain. It is a collision
in more ways than one. The unfortunates on whom the pressures of both
currents are directed are often quite destroyed.

Comparison is often made between Japan and India. In both countries
enormous social changes are taking place; in both, Eastern and Western
civilizations are in contact and in conflict. The differences,
however, are even more striking than the likenesses. Most conspicuous
is the fact that whereas, in India, the changes in civilization are
due almost wholly to the force and rule of the conquering race, in
Japan these changes are spontaneous, attributable entirely to the
desire and initiative of the native rulers. This difference is
fundamental and vital. The evolution of society in India is to a large
degree compulsory; in a true sense it is an artificial evolution. In
Japan, on the other hand, evolution is natural. There has not been
the slightest physical compulsion laid on her from without. With two
rare exceptions, Japan has never heard the boom of foreign cannon
carrying destruction to her people. During these years of change,
there have been none but Japanese rulers, and such has been the case
throughout the entire period of Japanese history. Their native rulers
have introduced changes such as foreign rulers would hardly have
ventured upon. The adoption of the Chinese language, literature, and
religions from ten to twelve centuries ago, was not occasioned by a
military occupancy of Japanese soil by invaders from China. It was due
absolutely to the free choice of their versatile people, as free and
voluntary as was the adoption by Rome of Greek literature and
standards of learning. The modern choice of Western material
civilization no doubt had elements of fear as motive power. But
impulsion through a knowledge of conditions differs radically from
compulsion exercised by a foreign military occupancy. India
illustrates the latter; Japan, the former.

Japan and her people manifest amazing contrasts. Never, on the one
hand, has a nation been so free from foreign military occupancy
throughout a history covering more than fifteen centuries, and at the
same time, been so influenced by and even subject to foreign psychical
environment. What was the fact in ancient times is the fact to-day.
The dominance of China and India has been largely displaced by that of
Europe. Western literature, language, and science, and even customs,
are being welcomed by Japan, and are working their inevitable effects.
But it is all perfectly natural, perfectly spontaneous. The present
choice by Japan of modern science and education and methods and
principles of government and nineteenth-century literature and
law,--in a word, of Occidental civilization,--is not due to any
artificial pressure or military occupancy. But the choice and the
consequent evolution are wholly due to the free act of the people. In
this, as in several other respects, Japan reminds us of ancient
Greece. Dr. Menzies, in his "History of Religion," says: "Greece was
not conquered from the East, but stirred to new life by the
communication of new ideas." Free choice has made Japan reject Chinese
astronomy, surgery, medicine, and jurisprudence. The early choice to
admit foreigners to Japan to trade may have been made entirely through
fear, but is now accepted and justified by reason and choice.

The true explanation, therefore, of the recent and rapid rise of Japan
to power and reputation, is to be found, not in the externals of her
civilization, not in the pressure of foreign governments, but rather
in the inherited mental and temperamental characteristics, reacting on
the new and stimulating environment, and working along the lines of
true evolution. Japan has not "jumped out of her skin," but a new
vitality has given that skin a new color.




II

HISTORICAL SKETCH


How many of the stories of the Kojiki (written in 712 A.D.) and
Nihongi (720 A.D.) are to be accepted is still a matter of dispute
among scholars. Certain it is, however, that Japanese early history is
veiled in a mythology which seems to center about three prominent
points: Kyushu, in the south; Yamato, in the east central, and Izumo
in the west central region. This mythological history narrates the
circumstances of the victory of the southern descendants of the gods
over the two central regions. And it has been conjectured that these
three centers represent three waves of migration that brought the
ancestors of the present inhabitants of Japan to these shores. The
supposition is that they came quite independently and began their
conflicts only after long periods of residence and multiplication.

Though this early record is largely mythological, tradition shows us
the progenitors of the modern Japanese people as conquerors from the
west and south who drove the aborigines before them and gradually took
possession of the entire land. That these conquerors were not all of
the same stock is proved by the physical appearance of the Japanese
to-day, and by their language. Through these the student traces an
early mixture of races--the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Ural-Altaic.
Whether the early crossing of these races bears vital relation to the
plasticity of the Japanese is a question which tempts the scholar.

Primitive, inter-tribal conflicts of which we have no reliable records
resulted in increasing intercourse. Victory was followed by
federation. And through the development of a common language, of
common customs and common ideas, the tribes were unified socially and
psychically. Consciousness of this unity was emphasized by the
age-long struggle against the Ainu, who were not completely conquered
until the eighteenth century.

With the dawn of authentic history (500-600 A.D.) we find amalgamation
of the conquering tribes, with, however, constantly recurring
inter-clan and inter-family wars. Many of these continued for scores
and even hundreds of years--proving that, in the modern sense, of the
word, the Japanese were not yet a nation, though, through
inter-marriage, through the adoption of important elements of
civilization brought from China and India via Korea, through the
nominal acceptance of the Emperor as the divinely appointed ruler of
the land, they were, in race and in civilization, a fairly homogeneous
people.

The national governmental system was materially affected by the need,
throughout many centuries, of systematic methods of defense against
the Ainu. The rise of the Shogunate dates back to 883 A.D., when the
chief of the forces opposing the Ainu was appointed by the Emperor and
bore the official title, "The Barbarian-expelling Generalissimo." This
office developed in power until, some centuries later, it usurped in
fact, if not in name, all the imperial prerogatives.

It is probable that the Chinese written language, literature, and
ethical teachings of Confucius came to Japan from Korea after the
Christian era. The oldest known Japanese writings (Japanese written
with Chinese characters) date from the eighth century. In this period
also Buddhism first came to Japan. For over a hundred years it made
relatively little progress. But when at last in the ninth and tenth
centuries native Japanese Buddhists popularized its doctrines and
adopted into its theogony the deities of the aboriginal religion, now
known as Shinto, Buddhism became the religion of the people, and
filled the land with its great temples, praying priests, and gorgeous
rituals.

Even in those early centuries the contact of Japan with her Oriental
neighbors revealed certain traits of her character which have been
conspicuous in recent times--great capacity for acquisition, and
readiness to adopt freely from foreign nations. Her contact with
China, at that time so far in advance of herself in every element of
civilization, was in some respects disastrous to her original growth.
Instead of working out the problems of thought and life for herself,
she took what China and Korea had to give. The result was an arrest in
the development of everything distinctively native. The native
religion was so absorbed by Buddhism that for a thousand years it lost
all self-consciousness. Indeed the modern clear demarcation between
the native and the imported religions is a matter of only a few
decades, due to the researches of native scholars during the latter
part of the last and the early part of this century. Even now,
multitudes of the common people know no difference between the various
elements of the composite religion of which they are the heirs.

Moreover, early contact with China and her enormous literature checked
the development of the native language and the growth of the native
literature. The language suffered arrest because of the rapid
introduction of Chinese terms for all the growing needs of thought and
civilization. Modern Japanese is a compound of the original tongue and
Japonicized Chinese. Native speculative thought likewise found little
encouragement or stimulus to independent activity in the presence of
the elaborate and in many respects profound philosophies brought from
India and China.

From earliest times the government of Japan was essentially feudal.
Powerful families and clans disputed and fought for leadership, and
the political history of Japan revolves around the varying fortunes of
these families. While the Imperial line is never lost to sight, it
seldom rises to real power.

When, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Japan's conquering arm
reached across the waters, to ravage the coast of China, to extend her
influence as far south as Siam, and even to invade Korea with a large
army in 1592, it looked as if she were well started on her career as a
world-power. But that was not yet to be. The hegemony of her clans
passed into the powerful and shrewd Tokugawa family, the policy of
which was peace and national self-sufficiency.

The representatives of the Occidental nations (chiefly of Spain and
Portugal) were banished. The Christian religion (Roman Catholic),
which for over fifty years had enjoyed free access and had made great
progress, was forbidden and stamped out, not without much bloodshed.
Foreign travel and commerce were strictly interdicted. A particular
school of Confucian ethics was adopted and taught as the state
religion. Feudalism was systematically established and intentionally
developed. Each and every man had his assigned and recognized place in
the social fabric, and change was not easy. It is doubtful if any
European country has ever given feudalism so long and thorough a
trial. Never has feudalism attained so complete a development as it
did in Japan under the Tokugawa regime of over 250 years.

During this period no influences came from other lands to disturb the
natural development. With the exception of three ships a year from
Holland, an occasional stray ship from other lands, and from fifteen
to twenty Dutchmen isolated in a little island in the harbor of
Nagasaki, Japan had no communication with foreign lands or alien
peoples.

Of this period, extending to the middle of the present century, the
ordinary visitor and even the resident have but a superficial
knowledge. All the changes that have taken place in Japan, since the
coming of Perry in 1854, are attributed by the easy-going tourist to
the external pressure of foreign nations. But such travelers know
nothing of the internal preparations that had been making for
generations previous to the arrival of Perry. The tourist is quite
ignorant of the line of Japanese scholars that had been undermining
the authority of the military rulers, "the Tokugawa," in favor of the
Imperial line which they had practically supplanted.

The casual student of Japan has been equally ignorant of the real
mental and moral caliber of the Japanese. Dressed in clothing that
appeared to us fantastic, and armed with cumbersome armor and
old-fashioned guns, it was easy to jump to the conclusion that the
people were essentially uncivilized. We did not know the intellectual
discipline demanded of one, whether native or foreign, who would
master the native language or the native systems of thought. We forgot
that we appeared as grotesque and as barbarous to them as they to us,
and that mental ability and moral worth are qualities that do not show
on the surface of a nation's civilization. While they thought us to be
"unclean," "dogs," "red-haired devils," we perhaps thought them to be
clever savages, or at best half-civilized heathen, without moral
perceptions or intellectual ability.

Of Old Japan little more needs to be said. Without external commerce,
there was little need for internal trade; ships were small; roads were
footpaths; education was limited to the samurai, or military class,
retainers of the daimyo, "feudal lords"; inter-clan travel was limited
and discouraged; Confucian ethics was the moral standard. From the
beginning of the seventeenth century Christianity was forbidden by
edict, and was popularly known as the "evil way"; Japan was thought to
be especially sacred, and the coming of foreigners was supposed to
pollute the land and to be the cause of physical evils. Education, as
in China, was limited to the Chinese classics. Mathematics, general
history, and science, in the modern sense, were of course wholly
unknown. Guns and powder were brought from the West in the sixteenth
century by Spaniards and Portuguese, but were never improved.
Ship-building was the same in the middle of the nineteenth century as
in the middle of the sixteenth, perhaps even less advanced.
Architecture had received its great impulse from the introduction of
Buddhism in the ninth and tenth centuries and had made no material
improvement thereafter.

But while there was little progress in the external and mechanical
elements of civilization, there was progress in other respects. During
the "great peace," first arose great scholars. Culture became more
general throughout the nation. Education was esteemed. The corrupt
lives of the priests were condemned and an effort was made to reform
life through the revival of a certain school of Confucian teachers
known as "Shin-Gaku"--"Heart-Knowledge." Art also made progress, both
pictorial and manual. It would almost seem as if modern artificers and
painters had lost the skill of their forefathers of one or two hundred
years ago.

Many reasons explain the continuance of the old political and social
order: the lack of a foreign foe to compel abandonment of the tribal
organisation; the mountainous nature of the country with its slow,
primitive means of intercommunication; the absence of all idea of a
completely centralized nation. Furthermore, the principle of complete
subordination to superiors and ancestors had become so strong that
individual innovations were practically impossible. Japan thus lacked
the indispensable key to further progress, the principle of
individualism. The final step in the development of her nationality
has been taken, therefore, only in our own time.

Old Japan seemed absolutely committed to a thorough-going antagonism
to everything foreign. New Japan seems committed to the opposite
policy. What are the steps by which she has effected this apparent
national reversal of attitude?

We should first note that the absolutism of the Tokugawa Shogunate
served to arouse ever-growing opposition because of its stern
repression of individual opinion. It not only forbade the Christian
religion, but also all independent thought in religious philosophy and
in politics. The particular form of Confucian moral philosophy which
it held was forced on all public teachers of Confucianism. Dissent was
not only heretical, but treasonable. Although, by its military
absolutism, the Tokugawa rule secured the great blessing of peace,
lasting over two hundred years, and although the curse of Japan for
well-nigh a thousand preceding years had been fierce inter-tribal and
inter-family wars and feuds, yet it secured that peace at the expense
of individual liberty of thought and act. It thus gradually aroused
against itself the opposition of many able minds. The enforced peace
rendered it possible for these men to devote themselves to problems of
thought and of history. Indeed, they had no other outlet for their
energies. As they studied the history of the past and compared their
results with the facts of the present, it gradually dawned on the
minds of the scholars of the eighteenth century, that the Tokugawa
family were exercising functions of government which had never been
delegated to them; and that the Emperor was a poverty-stricken puppet
in the hands of a family that had seized the military power and had
gradually absorbed all the active functions of government, together
with its revenues.

It is possible for us to see now that these early Japanese scholars
idealized their ancient history, and assigned to the Emperor a place
in ancient times which in all probability he has seldom held. But,
however that may be, they thought their view correct, and held that
the Emperor was being deprived of his rightful rule by the Tokugawa
family.

These ideas, first formulated in secret by scholars, gradually
filtered down, still in secrecy, and were accepted by a large number
of the samurai, the military literati of the land. Their opposition to
the actual rulers of the land, aroused by the individual-crushing
absolutism of the Tokugawa rule, naturally allied itself to the
religious sentiment of loyalty to the Emperor. Few Westerners can
appreciate the full significance of this fact. Throughout the
centuries loyalty to the Emperor has been considered a cardinal
virtue. With one exception, according to the popular histories, no one
ever acknowledged himself opposed to the Emperor. Every rebellion
against the powers in actual possession made it the first aim to gain
possession of the Emperor, and proclaim itself as fighting for him.
When, therefore, the scholars announced that the existing government
was in reality a usurpation and that the Emperor was robbed of his
rightful powers, the latent antagonism to the Tokugawa rule began to
find both intellectual and moral justification. It could and did
appeal to the religious patriotism of the people. It is perhaps not
too much to say that the overthrow of the Tokugawa family and the
restoration of the Imperial rule to the Imperial family would have
taken place even though there had been no interference of foreign
nations, no extraneous influences. But equally certain is it that
these antagonisms to the ruling family were crystallized, and the
great internal changes hastened by the coming in of the aggressive
foreign nations. How this external influence operated must and can be
told in a few words.

When Admiral Perry negotiated his treaty with the Japanese, he
supposed he was dealing with responsible representatives of the
government. As was later learned, however, the Tokugawa rulers had not
secured the formal assent of the Emperor to the treaty. The Tokugawa
rulers and their counselors, quite as much as the clan-rulers, wished
to keep the foreigners out of the country, but they realized their
inability. The rulers of the clans, however, felt that the Tokugawa
rulers had betrayed the land; they were, accordingly, in active
opposition both to the foreigners and to the national rulers. When the
foreigners requested the Japanese government, "the Tokugawa
Shogunate," to carry out the treaties, it was unable to comply with
the request because of the antagonism of the clan-rulers. When the
clan-rulers demanded that the government annul the treaties and drive
out the hated and much-feared foreigners, it found itself utterly
unable to do so, because of the formidable naval power of the
foreigners.

As a consequence of this state of affairs, a few serious collisions
took place between the foreigners and the two-sworded samurai,
retainers of the clan-rulers. The Tokugawa rulers apparently did their
best to protect the foreigners, and, when there was no possible method
of evasion, to execute the treaties they had made. But they could not
control the clans already rebellious. A few murders of foreigners,
followed by severe reprisals, and two bombardments of native towns by
foreign gunboats, began to reveal to the military class at large that
no individual or local action against the foreigners was at all to be
thought of. The first step necessary was the unification of the Empire
under the Imperial rule. This, however, could be done only by the
overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate; which was effected in 1867-68
after a short struggle, marked by great clemency.

We thus realize that the overthrow of the Shogunate as also the final
abolishment of feudalism with its clans, lords, and hereditary rulers,
and the establishment of those principles of political and personal
centralization which lie at the foundation of real national unity, not
only were hastened by, but in a marked degree dependent on, the
stimulus and contribution of foreigners. They compelled a more
complete Japanese unity than had existed before, for they demanded
direct relations with the national head. And when treaty negotiations
revealed the lack of such a head, they undertook to show its necessity
by themselves punishing those local rulers who did not recognize the
Tokugawa headship.

With the establishment of the Emperor on the throne, began the modern
era in Japanese history, known in Japan as "Meiji"--"Enlightened
Rule."

But not even yet was the purpose of the nation attained, namely, the
expulsion of the polluters of the sacred soil of Japan. As soon as the
new government was established and had turned its attention to foreign
affairs, it found itself in as great a dilemma as had its
predecessors, the Tokugawa rulers. For the foreign governments
insisted that the treaties negotiated with the old government should
be accepted in full by the new. It was soon as evident to the new
rulers as it had been to the old that direct and forcible resistance
to the foreigners was futile. Not by might were they to be overcome.
Westerners had, however, supplied the ideals whereby national,
political unity was to be secured. Mill's famous work on
"Representative Government" was early translated, and read by all the
thinking men of the day. These ideas were also keenly studied in their
actual workings in the West. The consequence was that feudalism was
utterly rejected and the new ideas, more or less modified, were
speedily adopted, even down to the production of a constitution and
the establishment of local representative assemblies and a national
diet. In other words, the theories and practices of the West in regard
to the political organization of the state supplied Japan with those
new intellectual variations which were essential to the higher
development of her own national unity.

A further point of importance is the fact that at the very time that
the West applied this pressure and supplied Japan with these political
ideals she also put within her reach the material instruments which
would enable her to carry them into practice. I refer to steam
locomotion by land and sea, the postal and telegraphic systems of
communication, the steam printing press, the system of popular
education, and the modern organization of the army and the navy. These
instruments Japan made haste to acquire. But for these, the rapid
transformation of Old Japan into New Japan would have been an
exceedingly long and difficult process. The adoption of these tools of
civilization by the central authority at once gave it an immense
superiority over any local force. For it could communicate speedily
with every part of the Empire, and enforce its decisions with a
celerity and a decisiveness before unknown. It became once more the
actual head of the nation.

We have thus reached the explanation of one of the most astonishing
changes in national attitude that history has to record, and the new
attitude seems such a contradiction of the old as to be inexplicable,
and almost incredible. But a better knowledge of the facts and a
deeper understanding of their significance will serve to remove this
first impression.

What, then, did the new government do? It simply said, "For us to
drive out these foreigners is impossible; but neither is it desirable.
We need to know the secrets of their power. We must study their
language, their science, their machinery, their steamboats, their
battle-ships. We must learn all their secrets, and then we shall be
able to turn them out without difficulty. Let us therefore restrict
them carefully to the treaty ports, but let us make all the use of
them we can."

This has virtually been the national policy of Japan ever since. And
this policy gained the acceptance of the people as a whole with
marvelous readiness, for a reason which few foreigners can appreciate.
Had this policy been formulated and urged by the Tokugawa rulers,
there is no probability that it would have been accepted. But because
it was, ostensibly at least, the declared will of the Emperor, loyalty
to him, which in Japan is both religion and patriotism, led to a
hearty and complete acceptance which could hardly have been realized
in any other land. During the first year of his "enlightened" rule
(1868), the Emperor gave his sanction to an Edict, the last two
clauses of which read as follows:

     "The old, uncivilized way shall be replaced by the eternal
     principles of the universe.

     "The best knowledge shall be sought throughout the world, so as to
     promote the Imperial welfare."

It is the wide acceptance of this policy, which, however, is in accord
with the real genius of the people, that has transformed Japan. It has
sent hundreds of its young men to foreign lands to learn and bring
back to Japan the secrets of Western power and wealth; it has
established roads and railways, postal and telegraphic facilities, a
public common-school system, colleges and a university in which
Western science, history, and languages have been taught by foreign
and foreign-trained instructors; daily, weekly, and monthly papers and
magazines; factories, docks, drydocks; local and foreign commerce;
representative government--in a word, all the characteristic features
of New Japan. The whole of New Japan is only the practical carrying
out of the policy adopted at the beginning of the new era, when it was
found impossible to cast out the foreigners by force. Brute force
being found to be out of the question, resort was thus made to
intellectual force, and with real success.

The practice since then has not been so much to retain the foreigner
as to learn of him and then to eliminate him. Every branch of learning
and industry has proved this to be the consistent Japanese policy. No
foreigner may hope to obtain a permanent position in Japanese employ,
either in private firms or in the government. A foreigner is useful
not for what he can do, but for what he can teach. When any Japanese
can do his work tolerably well, the foreigner is sure to be dropped.

The purpose of this volume does not require of us a minute statistical
statement of the present attainments of New Japan. Such information
may be procured from Henry Norman's "Real Japan," Ransome's "Japan in
Transition," and Newton's "Japan: Country, Court, and People." It is
enough for us to realize that Japan has wholly abandoned or profoundly
modified all the external features of her old, her distinctively
Oriental civilization and has replaced them by Occidental features. In
government, she is no longer arbitrary, autocratic, and hereditary,
but constitutional and representative. Town, provincial, and national
legislative assemblies are established, and in fairly good working
order, all over the land. The old feudal customs have been replaced by
well codified laws, which are on the whole faithfully administered
according to Occidental methods. Examination by torture has been
abolished. The perfect Occidentalization of the army, and the creation
of an efficient navy, are facts fully demonstrated to the world. The
limited education of the few--- and in exclusively Chinese
classics--has given place to popular education. Common schools number
over 30,000, taught by about 100,000 teachers (4278 being women),
having over 4,500,000 pupils (over 1,500,000 being girls). The school
accommodation is insufficient; it is said that 30,000 additional
teachers are needed at once. Middle and high schools throughout the
land are rejecting nearly one-half of the student applicants for lack
of accommodation.

Feudal isolation, repression, and seclusion have given way to free
travel, free speech, and a free press. Newspapers, magazines, and
books pour forth from the universal printing press in great profusion.
Twenty dailies issue in the course of a year over a million copies
each, while two of them circulate 24,000,000 and 21,000,000 copies,
respectively.

Personal, political, and religious liberty has been practically secure
now for over two decades, guaranteed by the constitution, and enforced
by the courts.

Chinese medical practice has largely been replaced by that from the
West, although many of the ignorant classes still prefer the old
methods. The government enforces Western hygienic principles in all
public matters, with the result that the national health has improved
and the population is growing at an alarming rate. While in 1872 the
people numbered 33,000,000, in 1898 they numbered 45,000,000. The
general scale of living for the common people has also advanced
conspicuously. Meat shops are now common throughout the land--a thing
unknown in pre-Meiji times--and rice, which used to be the luxury of
the wealthy few, has become the staple necessity of the many.

Postal and telegraph facilities are quite complete. Macadamized roads
and well-built railroads have replaced the old footpaths, except in
the most mountainous districts. Factories of many kinds are appearing
in every town and city. Business corporations, banks, etc., which
numbered only thirty-four so late as 1864 are now numbered by the
thousand, and trade flourishes as in no previous period of Japanese
history. Instead of being a country of farmers and soldiers, Japan is
to-day a land of farmers and merchants. Wealth is growing apace.
International commerce, too, has sprung up and expanded phenomenally.
Japanese merchant steamers may now be seen in every part of the world.

All these changes have taken place within about three decades, and so
radical have they been,--so productive of new life in Japan,--that
some have urged the re-writing of Japanese history, making the first
year of Meiji (1868) the year one of Japan, instead of reckoning from
the year in which Jimmu Tenno is said to have ascended the throne,
2560 years ago (B.C. 660).

The way in which Japanese regard the transformations produced by the
"restoration" of the present Emperor, upon the overthrow of the
"Bakufu," or "Curtain Government," may be judged from the following
graphic paragraph from _The Far East_:

     "The Restoration of Meiji was indeed the greatest of revolutions
     that this island empire ever underwent. Its magic wand left
     nothing untouched and unchanged. It was the Restoration that
     overthrew the Tokugawa Shogunate, which reigned supreme for over
     two centuries and a half. It was the Restoration that brought us
     face to face with the Occidentals. It was the Restoration that
     pulled the demigods of the Feudal lords down to the level of the
     commoners. It was the Restoration that deprived the samurai of
     their fiefs and reduced them to penury. It was the Restoration that
     taught the people to build their houses of bricks and stones and to
     construct ships and bridges of iron instead of wood. It was the
     Restoration that informed us that eclipses and comets are not to be
     feared, and that earthquakes are not caused by a huge cat-fish in
     the bottom of the earth. It was the Restoration that taught the
     people to use the "drum-backing" thunder as their messenger, and to
     make use of the railroad instead of the palanquin. It was the
     Restoration that set the earth in motion, and proved that there is
     no rabbit in the moon. It was the Restoration that bestowed on
     Socrates and Aristotle the chairs left vacant by Confucius and
     Mencius. It was the Restoration that let Shakspere and Goethe take
     the place of Bakin and Chikamatsu. It was the Restoration that
     deprived the people of the swords and topnots. In short, after the
     Restoration a great change took place in administration, in art, in
     science, in literature, in language spoken and written, in taste,
     in custom, in the mode of living, nay in everything" (p. 541).

A natural outcome of the Restoration is the exuberant patriotism that
is so characteristic a feature of New Japan. The very term
"ai-koku-shin" is a new creation, almost as new as the thing. This
word is an incidental proof of the general correctness of the
contention of this chapter that true nationality is a recent product
in Japan. The term, literally translated, is "love-country heart"; but
the point for us to notice particularly is the term for country,
"koku"; this word has never before meant the country as a whole, but
only the territory of a clan. If I wish to ask a Japanese what part
of Japan is his native home, I must use this word. And if a Japanese
wishes to ask me which of the foreign lands I am a native of, he must
use the same word. The truth is that Old Japan did not have any common
word corresponding to the English term, "My country." In ancient
times, this could only mean, "My clan-territory." But with the passing
away of the clans the old word has taken on a new significance. The
new word, "ai-koku-shin," refers not to love of clan, but to love of
the whole nation. The conception of national unity has at last seized
upon the national mind and heart, and is giving the people an
enthusiasm for the nation, regardless of the parts, which they never
before knew. Japanese patriotism has only in this generation come to
self-consciousness. This leads it to many a strange freak. It is
vociferous and imperious, and often very impractical and Chauvinistic.
It frequently takes the form of uncompromising disdain for the
foreigner, and the most absolute loyalty to the Emperor of Japan; it
demands the utmost respect of expression in regard to him and the form
of government he has graciously granted the nation. The slightest hint
or indirect suggestion of defect or ignorance, or even of limitation,
is most vehemently resented.

A few illustrations of the above statements from recent experience
will not be out of place. In August, 1891, the Minister of Education,
Mr. Y. Osaki, criticising the tendency in Japan to pay undue respect
to moneyed men, said, in the course of a long speech, "You Japanese
worship money even more reverently than the Americans do. If you had a
republic as they have, I believe you would nominate an Iwazaki or a
Mitsui to be president, whereas they don't think of nominating a
Vanderbilt or a Gould." It was not long before a storm was raging
around his head because of this reference to a republican form of
government as a possibility in Japan. The storm became so fierce that
he was finally compelled to resign his post and retire, temporarily,
from political life.

In October, 1898, the High Council of Education was required to
consider various questions regarding the conduct of the educational
department after the New Treaties should come into force. The most
important question was whether foreigners should be allowed to have a
part in the education of Japanese youth. The general argument, and
that which prevailed, was that this should not be allowed lest the
patriotism of the children be weakened. So far as appears but one
voice was raised for a more liberal policy. Mr. Y. Kamada maintained
that "patriotism in Japan was the outcome of foreign intercourse.
Patriotism, that is to say, love of country--not merely of fief--and
readiness to sacrifice everything for its sake, was a product of the
Meiji era."

In 1891 a teacher in the Kumamoto Boys' School gave expression to the
thought in a public address that, as all mankind are brothers, the
school should stand for the principle of universal brotherhood and
universal goodwill to men. This expression of universalism was so
obnoxious to the patriotic spirit of so large a number of the people
of Kumamoto Ken, or Province, that the governor required the school to
dismiss that teacher. There is to-day a strong party in Japan which
makes "Japanism" their cry; they denounce all expressions of universal
good-will as proofs of deficiency of patriotism. There are not wanting
those who see through the shallowness of such views and who vigorously
oppose and condemn such narrow patriotism. Yet the fact that it exists
to-day with such force must be noted and its natural explanation, too,
must not be forgotten. It is an indication of self-conscious
nationality.

That this love of country, even this conception of country, is a
modern thing will appear from two further facts. Until modern times
there was no such thing as a national flag. The flaming Sun on a field
of white came into existence as a national flag only in 1859. The use
of the Sun as the symbol for the Emperor has been in vogue since 700
A.D., the custom having been adopted from China. "When in 1859 a
national flag corresponding to those of Europe became necessary, the
Sun Banner naturally stepped into the vacant place."[A]

The second fact is the recent origin of the festival known as
"Kigensetsu." It occurs on February 11 and celebrates the alleged
accession of Jimmu Tenno, the first Emperor of Japan, to the throne
2560 years ago (660 B.C.). The festival itself, however, was
instituted by Imperial decree ten years ago (1890).

The transformation which has come over Japan in a single generation
requires interpretation. Is the change real or superficial? Is the new
social order "a borrowed trumpery garment, which will soon be rent by
violent revolutions," according to the eminent student of racial
psychology, Professor Le Bon, or is it of "a solid nature" according
to the firm belief of Mr. Stanford Ransome, one of the latest writers
on Japan?

This is the problem that will engage our attention more or less
directly throughout this work. We shall give our chief thought to the
nature and development of Japanese racial characteristics, believing
that this alone gives the light needed for the solution of the
problem.[B]




III

THE PROBLEM OF PROGRESS


What constitutes progress? And what is the true criterion for its
measurement? In adopting Western methods of life and thought, is Japan
advancing or receding? The simplicity of the life of the common
people, their freedom from fashions that fetter the Occidental, their
independence of furniture in their homes, their few wants and fewer
necessities--these, when contrasted with the endless needs and demands
of an Occidental, are accepted by some as evidences of a higher stage
of civilization than prevails in the West.

The hedonistic criterion of progress is the one most commonly adopted
in considering the question as to whether Japan is the gainer or the
loser by her rapid abandonment of old ways and ideas and by her
equally rapid adoption of Western ones in their place. Yet this appeal
to happiness seems to me a misleading because vague, if not altogether
false, standard of progress. Those who use it insist that the people
of Japan are losing their former happiness under the stress of new
conditions. Now there can be no doubt that during the "Kyu-han jidai,"
the times before the coming in of Western waves of life, the farmers
were a simple, unsophisticated people; living from month to month with
little thought or anxiety. They may be said to have been happy. The
samurai who lived wholly on the bounty of the daimyo led of course a
tranquil life, at least so far as anxiety or toil for daily rice and
fish was concerned. As the fathers had lived and fought and died, so
did the sons. To a large extent the community had all things in
common; for although the lord lived in relative luxury, yet in such
small communities there never was the great difference between classes
that we find in modern Europe and America. As a rule the people were
fed, if there was food. The socialistic principle was practically
universal. Especially was emphasis laid on kinship. As a result, save
among the outcast classes, the extremes of poverty did not exist.

Were we to rest our inquiries at this point, we might say that in
truth the Japanese had attained the summit of progress; that nothing
further could be asked. But pushing our way further, we find that the
peace and quiet of the ordinary classes of society were accompanied by
many undesirable features.

Prominent among them was the domineering spirit of the military class.
They alone laid claim to personal rights, and popular stories are full
of the free and furious ways in which they used their swords. The
slightest offense by one of the swordless men would be paid for by a
summary act of the two-sworded swashbucklers, while beggars and
farmers were cut down without compunction, sometimes simply to test a
sword. In describing those times one man said to me, "They used to cut
off the heads of the common people as farmers cut off the head of the
daikon" (a variety of giant radish). I have frequently asked my
Japanese friends and acquaintances, whether, in view of the increasing
difficulties of life under the new conditions, the country would not
like to return to ancient times and customs. But none have been ready
to give me an affirmative reply. On detailed questioning I have always
found that the surly, domineering methods, the absolutism of the
rulers, and the defenselessness of the people against unjust arbitrary
superiors would not be submitted to by a people that has once tasted
the joy arising from individual rights and freedom and the manhood
that comes from just laws for all.

A striking feature of those Japanese who are unchanged by foreign ways
is their obsequious manner toward superiors and officials. The lordly
and oftentimes ruthless manner of the rulers has naturally cowed the
subject. Whenever the higher nobility traveled, the common people were
commanded to fall on the ground in obeisance and homage. Failure to do
so was punishable with instant death at the hands of the retainers
who accompanied the lord. During my first stay in Kumamoto I was
surprised that farmers, coming in from the country on horseback,
meeting me as I walked, invariably got down from their horses,
unfastened the handkerchiefs from their heads, and even took off their
spectacles if there were nothing else removable. These were signs of
respect given to all in authority. Where my real status began to be
generally known, these signs of politeness gave place to rude staring.
It is difficult for the foreigner to appreciate the extremes of the
high-handed and the obsequious spirit which were developed by the
ancient form of government. Yet it is comparatively easy to
distinguish between the evidently genuine humility of the non-military
classes and the studied deference of the dominant samurai.

Another feature of the old order of things was the emptiness of the
lives of the people. Education was rare. Limited to the samurai, who
composed but a fraction of the population, it was by no means
universal even among them. And such education as they had was confined
to the Chinese classics. Although there were schools in connection
with some of the temples, the people as a whole did not learn to read
or write. These were accomplishments for the nobility and men of
leisure. The thoughts of the people were circumscribed by the narrow
world in which they lived, and this allowed but an occasional
glimpse of other clans through war or a chance traveler. For, in those
times, freedom of travel was not generally allowed. Each man, as a
rule, lived and labored and died where he was born. The military
classes had more freedom. But when we contrast the breadth of thought
and outlook enjoyed by the nation to-day, through newspapers and
magazines, with the outlook and knowledge of even the most progressive
and learned of those of ancient times, how contracted do their lives
appear!

A third feature of former times is the condition of women during those
ages. Eulogizers of Old Japan not only seem to forget that working
classes existed then, but also that women, constituting half the
population, were essential to the existence of the nation. Though
allowing more freedom than was given to women in other Oriental
nations, Japan did not grant such liberty as is essential to the full
development of her powers. "Woman is a man's plaything" expresses a
view still held in Japan. "Woman's sole duty is the bearing and
rearing of children for her husband" is the dominant idea that has
determined her place in the family and in the state for hundreds of
years. That she has any independent interest or value as a human being
has not entered into national conception. "The way in which they are
treated by the men has hitherto been such as might cause a pang to any
generous European heart.... A woman's lot is summed up in what is
termed 'the three obediences,' obedience, while yet unmarried, to a
father; obedience, when married, to a husband; obedience, when
widowed, to a son. At the present moment the greatest duchess or
marchioness in the land is still her husband's drudge. She fetches and
carries for him, bows down humbly in the hall when my lord sallies
forth on his good pleasure."[C] "The Greater Learning for Women," by
Ekken Kaibara (1630-1714), an eminent Japanese moralist, is the name
of a treatise on woman's duties which sums up the ideas common in
Japan upon this subject. For two hundred years or more it has been
used as a text-book in the training of girls. It enjoins such abject
submission of the wife to her husband, to her parents-in-law, and to
her other kindred by marriage, as no self-respecting woman of Western
lands could for a moment endure. Let me prove this through a few
quotations.

"A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself and
never weary of thinking how she may yield to her husband, and thus
escape celestial castigation." "Woman must form no friendships and no
intimacy, except when ordered to do so by her parents or by the
middleman. Even at the peril of her life, must she harden her heart
like a rock or metal, and observe the rules of propriety." "A woman
has no particular lord. She must look to her husband as her lord and
must serve him with all reverence and worship, not despising or
thinking lightly of him. The great life-long duty of a woman is
obedience.... When the husband issues his instructions, the wife must
never disobey them.... Should her husband be roused to anger at any
time, she must obey him, with fear and trembling." Not one word in all
these many and specific instructions hints at love and affection. That
which to Western ears is the sweetest word in the English language,
the foundation of happiness in the home, the only true bond between
husband and wife, parents and children--LOVE--does not once appear in
this the ideal instruction for Japanese women.

Even to this day divorce is the common occurrence in Japan. According
to Confucius there are seven grounds of divorce: disobedience,
barrenness, lewd conduct, jealousy, leprosy or any other foul or
incurable disease, too much talking, and thievishness. "In plain
English, a man may send away his wife whenever he gets tired of her."

Were the man's duties to the wife and to her parents as minutely
described and insisted on as are those of the wife to the husband and
to his parents, this "Greater Learning for Women" would not seem so
deficient; but such is not the case. The woman's rights are few, yet
she bears her lot with marvelous patience. Indeed, she has acquired a
most attractive and patient and modest behavior despite, or is it
because of, centuries of well-nigh tyrannical treatment from the male
sex. In some important respects the women of Japan are not to be
excelled by those of any other land. But that this lot has been a
happy one I cannot conceive it possible for a European, who knows the
meaning of love or home, to contend. The single item of one divorce
for every three marriages tells a tale of sorrow and heartache that is
sad to contemplate. Nor does this include those separations where
tentative marriage takes place with a view to learning whether the
parties can endure living together. I have known several such cases.
Neither does this take account of the great number of concubines that
may be found in the homes of the higher classes. A concubine often
makes formal divorce quite superfluous.

I by no means contend that the women of Old Japan were all and always
miserable. There was doubtless much happiness and even family joy;
affection between husband and wife could assuredly have been found in
numberless cases. But the hardness of life as a whole, the low
position held by woman in her relations to man, her lack of legal
rights,[D] and her menial position, justify the assertion that there
was much room for improvement.

These three conspicuous features of the older life in Japan help us to
reach a clear conception as to what constitutes progress. We may say
that true progress consists in that continuous, though slow,
transformation of the structure of society which, while securing its
more thorough organization, brings to each individual the opportunity
of a larger, richer, and fuller life, a life which increasingly calls
forth his latent powers and capacities. In other words, progress is a
growing organization of society, accompanied by a growing liberty of
the individual resulting in richness and fullness of life. It is not
primarily a question of unreflecting happiness, but a question of the
wide development of manhood and womanhood. Both men and women have as
yet unmeasured latent capacities, which demand a certain liberty,
accompanied by responsibilities and cares, in order for their
development. Intellectual education and a wide horizon are likewise
essential to the production of such manhood and womanhood. In the long
run this is seen to bring a deeper and a more lasting happiness than
was possible to the undeveloped man or woman.

The question of progress is confused and put on a wrong footing when
the consciousness of happiness or unhappiness, is made the primary
test. The happiness of the child is quite apart from that of the
adult. Regardless of distressing circumstances, the child is able to
laugh and play, and this because he is a child; a child in his
ignorance of actual life, and in his inability to perceive the true
conditions in which he lives. Not otherwise, I take it, was the
happiness of the vast majority in Old Japan. Theirs was the happiness
of ignorance and simple, undeveloped lives. Accustomed to tyranny,
they did not think of rebellion against it. Familiar with brutality
and suffering, they felt nothing of its shame and inhumanity. The
sight of decapitated bodies, the torture of criminals, the despotism
of husbands, the cringing obedience of the ruled, the haughtiness of
the rulers, the life of hard toil and narrow outlook, were all so
usual that no thought of escape from such an order of society ever
suggested itself to those who endured it.

From time to time wise and just rulers did indeed strive to introduce
principles of righteousness into their methods of government; but
these men formed the exception, not the rule. They were individuals
and not the system under which the people lived. It was always a
matter of chance whether or not such men were at the head of affairs,
for the people did not dream of the possibility of having any voice in
their selection. The structure of society was and always had been
absolute militarism. Even under the most benevolent rulers the use of
cruel torture, not only on convicted criminals, but on all suspected
of crime, was customary. Those in authority might personally set a
good example, but they did not modify the system. They owned not only
the soil but practically the laborers also, for these could not leave
their homes in search of others that were better. They were serfs, if
not slaves, and the system did not tend to raise the standard of life
or education, of manhood or womanhood among the people. The happiness
of the people in such times was due in part to their essential
inhumanity of heart and lack of sympathy with suffering and sorrow.
Each individual bore his own sorrow and pain alone. The community, as
such, did not distress itself over individuals who suffered. Sympathy,
in its full meaning, was unknown in Old Japan. The barbarous custom of
casting out the leper from the home, to wander a lonely exile, living
on the charity of strangers, is not unknown even to this day. We are
told that in past times the "people were governed by such strong
aversion to the sight of sickness that travelers were often left to
die by the roadside from thirst, hunger, or disease; and householders
even went the length of thrusting out of doors and abandoning to utter
destitution servants who suffered from chronic maladies." So universal
was this heartlessness that the government at one time issued
proclamations against the practices it allowed. "Whenever an epidemic
occurred the number of deaths was enormous." Seven men of the outcast,
"the Eta," class were authoritatively declared equal in value to one
common man. Beggars were technically called "hi-nin," "not men."

Those who descant on the happiness of Old Japan commit the great error
of overlooking all these sad features of life, and of fixing their
attention exclusively on the one feature of the childlike, not to say
childish, lightness of heart of the common people. Such writers are
thus led to pronounce the past better than the present time. They also
overlook the profound happiness and widespread prosperity of the
present era. Trade, commerce, manufactures, travel, the freest of
intercommunication, newspapers, and international relations, have
brought into life a richness and a fullness that were then unknown.
But in addition, the people now enjoy a security of personal
interests, a possession of personal rights and property, and a
personal liberty, that make life far more worthy and profoundly
enjoyable, even while they bring responsibilities and duties and not a
few anxieties. This explains the fact that no Japanese has expressed
to me the slightest desire to abandon the present and return to the
life and conditions of Old Japan.

Let me repeat, therefore, with all possible emphasis, that the problem
of progress is not primarily one of increasing light-heartedness, pure
and simple, nor yet a problem of racial unification or of political
centralization; it is rather a problem of so developing the structure
of society that the individual may have the fullest opportunity for
development.

The measure of progress is not the degree of racial unification, of
political centralization, or of unreflective happiness, but rather the
degree and the extent of individual personality. Racial unification,
political centralization, and increasing happiness are in the
attainment of progress, but they are not to be viewed as sufficient
ends. Personality, can alone be that end. The wide development of
personality, therefore, is at once the goal and the criterion of
progress.




IV

THE METHOD OF PROGRESS


Progress as an ideal is quite modern in its origin. For although the
ancients were progressing, they did it unconsciously, blindly,
stumbling on it by chance, forced to it, as we have seen, by the
struggle for existence. True of the ancient civilizations of Europe
and Western Asia and Africa, this is emphatically true of the Orient.
Here, so far from seeking to progress, the avowed aim has been not to
progress; the set purpose has been to do as the fathers did; to follow
their example even in customs and rites whose meaning has been lost in
the obscurity of the past. This blind adherence was the boast of those
who called themselves religious. They strove to fulfill their duties
to their ancestors.

Under such conditions how was progress possible? And how has it come
to pass that, ruled by this ideal until less than fifty years ago,
Japan is now facing quite the other way? The passion of the nation
to-day is to make the greatest possible progress in every direction.
Here is an anomaly, a paradox; progress made in spite of its
rejection; and, recently, a total volte-face. How shall we explain
this paradox?

In our chapter on the Principles of National Evolution,[E] we see that
the first step in progress was made through the development of
enlarging communities by means of extending boundaries and hardening
customs. We see that, on reaching this stage, the great problem was so
to break the "cake of custom" as to give liberty to individuals
whereby to secure the needful variations. We do not consider how this
was to be accomplished. We merely show that, if further progress was
to be made, it could only be through the development of the
individualistic principle to which we give the more exact name
communo-individualism. This problem as to how the "cake of custom" is
successfully broken must now engage our attention.

Mr. Bagehot contends that this process consisted, as a matter of
history, in the establishment of government by discussion. Matters of
principle came to be talked over; the desirability of this or that
measure was submitted to the people for their approval or disapproval.
This method served to stimulate definite and practical thought on a
wide scale; it substituted the thinking of the many for the thinking
of the few; it stimulated independent thinking and consequently
independent action. This is, however, but another way of saying that
it stimulated variation. A government whose action was determined
after wide discussion would be peculiarly fitted to take advantage of
all useful variations of ideas and practice. Experience shows, he
continues, that the difficulty of developing a "cake of custom" is far
more easily surmounted than that of developing government by
discussion; _i.e._, that it is far less difficult to develop
communalism than communo-individualism. The family of arrested
civilizations, of which China and India and Japan, until recent times,
are examples, were caught in the net of what had once been the source
of their progress. The tyranny of their laws and customs was such that
all individual variations were nipped in the bud. They failed to
progress because they failed to develop variations. And they failed in
this because they did not have government by discussion.

No one will dispute the importance of Mr. Bagehot's, contribution to
this subject. But it may be doubted whether he has pointed out the
full reason for the difficulty of breaking the "cake of custom" or
manifested the real root of progress. To attain progress in the full
sense, not merely of an oligarchy or a caste, but of the whole people,
there must not only be government by discussion, but the
responsibilities of the government must be snared more or less fully
by all the governed.

History, however, shows that this cannot take place until a
conception of intrinsic manhood and womanhood has arisen, a conception
which emphasizes their infinite and inherent worth. This conception is
not produced by government by discussion, while government by
discussion is the necessary consequence of the wide acceptance of this
conception. It is therefore the real root of progress.

As I look over the history of the Orient, I find no tendency to
discover the inherent worth of man or to introduce the principle of
government by discussion. Left to themselves, I see no probability
that any of these nations would ever have been able to break the
thrall of their customs, and to reach that stage of development in
which common individuals could be trusted with a large measure of
individual liberty. Though I can conceive that Japan might have
secured a thorough-going political centralization under the old
_regime_, I cannot see that that centralization would have been
accompanied by growing liberty for the individual or by such
constitutional rights for the common man as he enjoys to-day. Whatever
progress she might have made in the direction of nationality it would
still have been a despotism. The common man would have remained a
helpless and hopeless slave. Art might have prospered; the people
might have remained simple-minded and relatively contented. But they
could not have attained that freedom and richness of life, that
personality, which we saw in our last chapter to be the criterion and
goal of true progress.

If the reader judges the above contention correct and agrees with the
writer that the conception of the inherent value of a human being
could not arise spontaneously in Japan, he will conclude that the
progress of Japan depended on securing this important conception from
without. Exactly this has taken place. By her thorough-going
abandonment of the feudal social order and adoption of the
constitutional and representative government of Christendom, whether
she recognizes it or not, she has accepted the principles of the
inherent worth of manhood and womanhood, as well as government by
discussion. Japan has thus, by imitation rather than by origination,
entered on the path of endless progress.

So important, however, is the step recently taken that further
analysis of this method of progress is desirable for its full
comprehension. We have already noted quite briefly[F] how Japan was
supplied by the West with the ideal of national unity and the material
instruments essential to its attainment. In connection with the high
development of the nation as a whole, these two elements of progress,
the ideal and the material, need further consideration.

We note in the first place that both begin with imitation, but if
progress is to be real and lasting, both must grow to independence.

The first and by far the most important is the psychical, the
introduction of new ideas. So long as the old, familiar ideas hold
sway over the mind of a nation, there is little or no stimulus to
comparison and discussion. Stagnation is well-nigh complete. But let
new ideas be so introduced as to compel attention and comprehension,
and the mind spontaneously awakes to wonderful activity. The old
stagnation is no longer possible. Discussion is started; and in the
end something must take place, even if the new ideas are not accepted
wholly or even in part. But they will not gain attention if presented
simply in the abstract, unconnected with real life. They must bring
evidence that, if accepted and lived, they will be of practical use,
that they will give added power to the nation.

Exactly this took place in 1854 when Admiral Perry demanded entrance
to Japan. The people suddenly awoke from their sleep of two and a half
centuries to find that new nations had arisen since they closed their
eyes, nations among which new sets of ideas had been at work, giving
them a power wholly unknown to the Orient and even mysterious to it.
Those ideas were concerned, not alone with the making of guns, the
building of ships, the invention of machinery, the taming and using of
the forces of nature, but also with methods of government and law,
with strange notions, too, about religion and duty, about the family
and the individual, which the foreigners said were of inestimable
value and importance. It needed but a few years of intercourse with
Western peoples to convince the most conservative that unless the
Japanese themselves could gain the secret of their power, either by
adopting their weapons or their civilization, they themselves must
fade away before the stronger nations. The need of self-preservation
was the first great stimulus that drove new thoughts into unwilling
brains.

There can be no doubt that the Japanese were right in this analysis of
the situation. Had they insisted on maintaining their old methods of
national life and social order and ancient customs, there can be no
doubt as to the result. Africa and India in recent decades and China
and Korea in the most recent years tell the story all too clearly.
Those who know the course of treaty conferences and armed collisions,
as at Shimonoseki and Kagoshima between Japan and the foreign nations,
have no doubt that Japan, divided into clans and persisting in her
love of feudalism, would long since have become the territory of some
European Power. She was saved by the possession of a remarkable
combination of national characteristics,--the powers of observation,
of appreciation, and of imitation. In a word, her sensitiveness to her
environment and her readiness to respond to it proved to be her
salvation.

But the point on which I wish to lay special emphasis is that the
prime element of the form in which the deliverance came was through
the acquisition of numerous new ideas. These were presented by persons
who thoroughly believed in them and who admittedly had a power not
possessed by the Japanese themselves. Though unable to originate these
ideas, the Japanese yet proved themselves capable of understanding and
appreciating them--in a measure at least. They were at first attracted
to that which related chiefly to the externals of civilization, to
that which would contribute immediately to the complete political
centralization of the nation. With great rapidity they adopted Western
ideas about warfare and weapons. They sent their young men abroad to
study the civilization of the foreign nations. At great expense they
also employed many foreigners to teach them in their own land the
things they wished to learn. Thus have the Japanese mastered so
rapidly the details of those ideas which, less than fifty years ago,
were not only strange but odious to them.

Under their influence, the conditions which history shows to be the
most conducive to the continuous growth of civilization have been
definitely accepted and adopted by the people, namely, popular rights,
the liberty of individuals to differ from the past so far as this does
not interfere with national unity, and the direct responsibility and
relation of each individual to the nation without any mediating group.
These rights and liberties are secured to the individual by a
constitution and by laws enacted by representative legislatures.
Government by discussion has been fairly inaugurated.

During these years of change the effort has been to leave the old
social order as undisturbed as possible. For example, it was hoped
that the reorganization of the military and naval forces of the Empire
would be sufficient without disturbing the feudal order and without
abolishing the feudal states. But this was soon found ineffectual. For
a time it was likewise thought that the adoption of Western methods of
government might be made without disturbing the old religious ideas
and without removing the edicts against Christianity. But experience
soon showed that the old civilization was a unit. No part could be
vitally modified without affecting the whole structure. Having knocked
over one block in the long row that made up their feudal social order,
it was found that each successive block was touched and fell, until
nothing was left standing as before. It was found also that the old
ideas of education, of travel, of jurisprudence, of torture and
punishment, of social ranks, of the relation of the individual to the
state, of the state to the family, and of religion to the family, were
more or less defective and unsuited to the new civilization. Before
this new movement all obstructive ideas, however, sanctioned by
antiquity, have had to give way. The Japanese of to-day look, as it
were, upon a new earth and a new heaven. Those of forty years ago
would be amazed, not only at the enormous changes in the externals,
life and government, but also at the transformation which has
overtaken every element of the older civilization. Putting it rather
strongly, it is now not the son who obeys the father, but the father
the son. The rulers no longer command the people, but the people
command the rulers. The people do not now toil to support the state;
but the state toils to protect the people.

Whether the incoming of these new ideas and practices be thought to
constitute progress or not will depend on one's view of the aim of
life. If this be as maintained in the previous chapter, then surely
the transformation of Japan must be counted progress. That, however,
to which I call attention is the fact that the essential requisite of
progress is the attainment of new ideas, whatever be their source.
Japan has not only taken up a great host of these, but in doing so she
has adopted a social structure to stimulate the continuous production
of new ideas, through the development of individuality. She is thus in
the true line of continuously progressive evolution. Imitating the
stronger nations, she has introduced into her system the life-giving
blood of free discussion, popular education, and universal individual
rights and liberty. In a word, she has begun to be an individualistic
nation. She has introduced a social order fitted to a wide development
of personality.

The importance of the second line of progress, the physical, would
seem to be too obvious to call for any detailed consideration. But so
much has been said by both graceful and able writers on Japan as to
the advantages she enjoys from her simple non-mechanical civilization,
and the mistake she is making in adopting the mechanical civilization
of the West, that it may not be amiss to dwell for a few moments upon
it. I wish to show that the second element of progress consists in the
_increasing use of mechanisms_.

The enthusiastic admirer of Japan hardly finds words wherewith
sufficiently to praise the simplicity of her pre-Meiji civilization.
No furniture brings confusion to the room; no machinery distresses the
ear with its groanings or the eye with its unsightliness. No factories
blacken the sky with smoke. No trains screeching through the towns and
cities disturb sleepers and frighten babies. The simple bed on the
floor, the straw sandal on the foot, wooden chopsticks in place of
knives and forks, the small variety of foods and of cooking utensils,
the simple, homespun cotton clothing, the fascinating homes, so small
and neat and clean--in truth all that pertains to Old Japan finds
favor in the eyes of the enthusiastic admirer from the Occident. One
such writer, in an elaborate paper intended to set forth the
superiority of the original Japanese to the Occidental civilization,
uses the following language: "Ability to live without furniture,
without impedimenta, with the least possible amount of neat clothing,
shows more than the advantage held by the Japanese race in the
struggle of life; it shows also the real character of some of the
weaknesses in our own civilization. It forces reflection upon the
useless multiplicity of our daily wants. We must have meat and bread
and butter; glass windows and fire; hats, white shirts, and woolen
underwear; boots and shoes; trunks, bags, and boxes; bedsteads,
mattresses, sheets, and blankets; all of which a Japanese can do
without, and is really better off without."[G] Surely one finds much
of truth in this, and there is no denying the charm of the simpler
civilization, but the closing phrase of the quotation is the
assumption without discussion of the disputed point. Are the Japanese
really better off without these implements of Western civilization?
Evidently they themselves do not think so. For, in glancing through
the list as given by the writer quoted, one realizes the extent of
Japanese adoption of these Western devices. Hardly an article but is
used in Japan, and certainly with the supposition of the purchaser
that it adds either to his health or his comfort. In witness are the
hundreds of thousands of straw hats, the glass windows everywhere,
and the meat-shops in each town and city of the Empire. The charm of a
foreign fashion is not sufficient explanation for the rapidly
spreading use of foreign inventions.

That there are no useless or even evil features in our Western
civilization is not for a moment contended. The stiff starched shirt
may certainly be asked to give an account of itself and justify its
continued existence, if it can. But I think the proposition is capable
of defense that the vast majority of the implements of our Occidental
civilization have their definite place and value, either in
contributing directly to the comfort and happiness of their possessor,
or in increasing his health and strength and general mental and
physical power. What is it that makes the Occidental longer-lived than
the Japanese? Why is he healthier? Why is he more intelligent? Why is
he a more developed personality? Why are his children more energetic?
Or, reversing the questions, why has the population of Japan been
increasing with leaps and bounds since the introduction of Western
civilization and medical science? Why is the rising generation so free
from pockmarks? Why is the number of the blind steadily diminishing?
Why are mechanisms multiplying so rapidly--the jinrikisha, the
railroads, the roads, the waterworks and sewers, the chairs, the
tables, the hats and umbrellas, lamps, clocks, glass windows and
shoes? A hundred similar questions might be asked, to which no
definite answers are needful.

Further discussion of details seems unnecessary. Yet the full
significance of this point can hardly be appreciated without a
perception of the great principle that underlies it. The only way in
which man has become and continues to be increasingly superior to
animals is in his use of mechanisms. The animal does by brute force
what man accomplishes by various devices. The inventiveness of
different races differs vastly. But everywhere, the most advanced are
the most powerful. Take the individual man of the more developed race
and separate him from his tools and machines, and it is doubtless
true that he cannot in some selected points compete with an individual
of a less developed race. But let ten thousand men of the higher
development compete with ten thousand of the lower, each using the
mechanisms under his control, and can there be any doubt as to which
is the superior?

In other words, the method of human progress consists, in no small
degree, in the progressive mastery of nature, first through
understanding her and then through the use of her immense forces by
means of suitable mechanisms. All the machines and furniture, and
tools and clothing, and houses and canned foods, and shoes and boots,
and railroads and telegraph lines, and typewriters and watches, and
the ten thousand other so-called "impedimenta" of the Occidental
civilization are but devices whereby Western man has sought to
increase his health, his wealth, his knowledge, his comfort, his
independence, his capacity of travel--in a word, his well-being.
Through these mechanisms he masters nature. He extracts a rich living
from nature; he annihilates time and space; he defies the storms; he
tunnels the mountains; he extracts precious ores and metals from the
rock-ribbed hills; with a magic touch he loosens the grip of the
elements and makes them surrender their gold, their silver, and, more
precious still, their iron; with these he builds his spacious cities
and parks, his railroads and ocean steamers; he travels the whole
world around, fearing neither beast nor alien man; all are subject to
his command and will. He investigates and knows the constitution of
stellar worlds no less than that of the world in which he lives. By
his instruments he explores the infinite depths of heaven and the no
less infinite depths of the microscopic world. All these reviled
"impedimenta" thus bring to the race that has them a wealth of life
both physical and psychical, practical and ideal, that is otherwise
unattainable. By them he gains and gives external expression to the
reality of his inner nature, his freedom, his personality. True,
instead of bringing health and long life, knowledge and deep
enjoyment, they may become the means of bitterest curses. But the
lesson to learn from this fact is how to use these powers aright, not
how to forbid their use altogether. They are not to be branded as
hindrances to progress.

The defect of Occidental civilization to-day is hot its multiplicity
of machinery, but the defective view that still blinds the eyes of the
multitude as to the true nature and the legitimate goal of progress.
Individual, selfish happiness is still the ideal of too many men and
women to permit of the ideal which carries the Golden Rule into the
markets and factories, into the politics of parties and nations, which
is essential to the attainment of the highest progress. But no one who
casts his eyes over the centuries of struggle and effort through which
man has been slowly working his way upward from the rank of a beast to
that of a man, can doubt that progress has been made. The worth of
character has been increasingly seen and its possession desired. The
true end of effort and development was never more clear than it is at
the close of the nineteenth century. Never before were the conditions
of progress so bright, not only for the favored few in one or two
lands, but for the multitudes the world over. Isolation and separation
have passed from this world forever. Free social intercourse between
the nations permits wide dissemination of ideas and their application
to practical life in the form of social organization and mechanical
invention. This makes it possible for nations more or less backward in
social and civilizational development to gain in a relatively short
time the advantages won by advanced nations through ages of toil and
under favoring circumstances. Nation thus stimulates nation, each
furnishing the other with important variations in ideas, customs,
institutions, and mechanisms resulting from long-continued divergent
evolution. The advantages slowly gained by advanced peoples speedily
accrues through social heredity to any backward race really desiring
to enter the social heritage.

Thus does the paradox of Japan's recent progress become thoroughly
intelligible.




V

JAPANESE SENSITIVENESS TO ENVIRONMENT


With this chapter we begin a more detailed study of Japanese social
and psychic evolution. We shall take up the various characteristics of
the race and seek to account for them, showing their origin in the
peculiar nature of the social order which so long prevailed in Japan.
This is a study of Japanese psychogenesis. The question to which we
shall continually return is whether or not the characteristic under
consideration is inherent and congenital and therefore inevitable. Not
only our interpretation of Japanese evolution, past, present, and
future, but also our understanding of the essential nature of social
evolution in general, depends upon the answer to this question.

We naturally begin with that characteristic of Japanese nature which
would seem to be more truly congenital than any other to be mentioned
later. I refer to their sensitiveness to environment. More quickly
than most races do the Japanese seem to perceive and adapt themselves
to changed conditions.

The history of the past thirty years is a prolonged illustration of
this characteristic. The desire to imitate foreign nations was not a
real reason for the overthrow of feudalism, but there was, rather, a
more or less conscious feeling, rapidly pervading the whole people,
that the feudal system would be unable to maintain the national
integrity. As intimated, the matter was not so much reasoned out as
felt. But such a vast illustration is more difficult to appreciate
than some individual instances, of which I have noted several.

During a conversation with Drs. Forsythe and Dale, of Cambridge,
England, I asked particularly as to their experience with the Japanese
students who had been there to study. They both remarked on the fact
that all Japanese students were easily influenced by those with whom
they customarily associated; so much so that, within a short time,
they acquired not only the cut of coats and trousers, but also the
manner and accent, of those with whom they lived. It was amusing, they
said, to see what transformations were wrought in those who went to
the Continent for their long vacations. From France they returned with
marked French manners and tones and clothes, while from Germany they
brought the distinctive marks of German stiffness in manner and
general bearing. It was noted as still more curious that the same
student would illustrate both variations, provided he spent one summer
in Germany and another in France.

Japanese sensitiveness is manifested in many unexpected ways. An
observant missionary lady once remarked that she had often wondered
how such unruly, self-willed children as grow up under Japanese
training, or its lack, finally become such respectable members of
society. She concluded that instead of being punished out of their
misbehaviors they were laughed out of them. The children are
constantly told that if they do so and so they will be laughed at--a
terrible thing.

The fear of ridicule has thus an important sociological function in
maintaining ethical standards. Its power may be judged by the fact
that in ancient times when a samurai gave his note to return a
borrowed sum, the only guarantee affixed was the permission to be
laughed at in public in case of failure. The Japanese young man who is
making a typewritten copy of these pages for me says that, when still
young, he heard an address to children which he still remembers. The
speaker asked what the most fearful thing in the world was. Many
replies were given by the children--"snakes," "wild beasts,"
"fathers," "gods," "ghosts," "demons," "Satan," "hell," etc. These
were admitted to be fearful, but the speaker told the children that
one other thing was to be more feared than all else, namely, "to be
laughed at." This speech, with its vivid illustrations, made a lasting
impression on the mind of the boy, and on reading what I had written
he realized how powerful a motive fear of ridicule had been in his own
life; also how large a part it plays in the moral education of the
young in Japan.

Naturally enough this fear of being laughed at leads to careful and
minute observation of the clothing, manners, and speech of one's
associates, and prompt conformity to them, through imitation. The
sensitiveness of Japanese students to each new environment is thus
easily understood. And this sensitiveness to environment has its
advantages as well as its disadvantages. I have already referred to
the help it gives to the establishment of individual conformity to
ethical standards. The phenomenal success of many reforms in Japan may
easily be traced to the national sensitiveness to foreign criticism.
Many instances of this will be given in the course of this work, but
two may well be mentioned at this point. According to the older
customs there was great, if not perfect, freedom as to the use of
clothing by the people. The apparent indifference shown by them in the
matter of nudity led foreigners to call the nation uncivilized. This
criticism has always been a galling one, and not without reason. In
many respects their civilization has been fully the equal of that of
any other nation; yet in this respect it is true that they resembled
and still do resemble semi-civilized peoples. In response to this
foreign criticism, however, a law was passed, early in the Meiji era,
prohibiting nudity in cities. The requirement that public bathing
houses be divided into two separate compartments, one for men and one
for women, was likewise due to foreign opinion. That this is the case
may be fairly inferred from the fact that the enforcement of these
laws has largely taken places where foreigners abound, whereas, in the
interior towns and villages they receive much less attention. It must
be acknowledged, however, that now at last, twenty-five years after
their passage, they are almost everywhere beginning to be enforced by
the authorities.

My other illustration of sensitiveness to foreign opinion is the
present state of Japanese thought about the management of Formosa. The
government has been severely criticised by many leading papers for its
blunders there. But the curious feature is the constant reference to
the contempt into which such mismanagement will bring Japan in the
sight of the world--as if the opinion of other nations were the most
important issue involved, and not the righteousness and probity of the
government itself. It is interesting to notice how frequently the
opinion of other nations with regard to Japan is a leading thought in
the mind of the people.

In this connection the following extract finds its natural place:

     In a very large number of schools throughout the country special
     instructions have been given to the pupils as to their behavior
     towards foreigners. From various sources we have culled the
     following orders bearing on special points, which we state as
     briefly as possible.

     (1) Never call after foreigners passing along the streets or roads.

     (2) When foreigners make inquiries, answer them politely. If unable
     to make them understand, inform the police of the fact.

     (3) Never accept a present from a foreigner when there is no reason
     for his giving it, and never charge him anything above what is
     proper.

     (4) Do not crowd around a shop when a foreigner is making
     purchases, thereby causing him much annoyance. The continuance of
     this practice disgraces us as a nation.

     (5) Since all human beings are brothers and sisters, there is no
     reason for fearing foreigners. Treat them as equals and act
     uprightly in all your dealings with them. Be neither servile nor
     arrogant.

     (6) Beware of combining against the foreigner and disliking him
     because he is a foreigner; men are to be judged by their conduct
     and not by their nationality.

     (7) As intercourse with foreigners becomes closer and extends over
     a series of years, there is danger that many Japanese may become
     enamored of their ways and customs and forsake the good old customs
     of their forefathers. Against this danger you must be on your
     guard.

     (8) Taking off your hat is the proper way to salute a foreigner.
     The bending of the body low is not be commended.

     (9) When you see a foreigner be sure and cover up naked parts of
     the body.

     (10) Hold in high regard the worship of ancestors and treat your
     relations with warm cordiality, but do not regard a person as your
     enemy because he or she is a Christian.

     (11) In going through the world you will often find a knowledge of
     a foreign tongue absolutely essential.

     (12) Beware of selling your souls to foreigners and becoming their
     slaves. Sell them no houses or lands.

     (13) Aim at not being beaten in your competition with foreigners.
     Remember that loyalty and filial piety are our most precious
     national treasures and do nothing to violate them.

     Many of the above rules are excellent in tone. Number 7, however,
     which hails from Osaka, is somewhat narrow and prejudiced. The
     injunction not to sell houses to foreigners is, as the _Jiji
     Shimpo_ points out, absurd and mischievous.[H]

The sensitiveness of the people also works to the advantage of the
nation in the social unity which it helps to secure. Indeed I cannot
escape the conviction that the striking unity of the Japanese is
largely due to this characteristic. It tends to make their mental and
emotional activities synchronous. It retards reform for a season, to
be sure, but later it accelerates it. It makes it difficult for
individuals to break away from their surroundings and start out on new
lines. It leads to a general progress while it tends to hinder
individual progress. It tends to draw back into the general current of
national life those individuals who, under exceptional conditions, may
have succeeded in breaking away from it for a season. This, I think,
is one of the factors of no little power at work among the Christian
churches in Japan. It is one, too, that the Japanese themselves little
perceive; so far as I have observed, foreigners likewise fail to
realize its force.

Closely connected with this sensitiveness to environment are other
qualities which make it effective. They are: great flexibility,
adjustability, agility (both mental and physical), and the powers of
keen attention to details and of exact imitation.

As opposed to all this is the Chinese lack of flexibility. Contrast a
Chinaman and a Japanese after each has been in America a year. The one
to all appearances is an American; his hat, his clothing, his manner,
seem so like those of an American that were it not for his small size,
Mongolian type of face, and defective English, he could easily be
mistaken for one. How different is it with the Chinaman! He retains
his curious cue with a tenacity that is as intense as it is
characteristic. His hat is the conventional one adopted by all Chinese
immigrants. His clothing likewise, though far from Chinese, is
nevertheless entirely un-American. He makes no effort to conform to
his surroundings. He seems to glory in his separateness.

The Japanese desire to conform to the customs and appearances of those
about him is due to what I have called sensitiveness; his success is
due to the flexibility of his mental constitution.

But this characteristic is seen in multitudes of little ways. The new
fashion of wearing the hair according to the Western styles; of
wearing Western hats, and Western clothing, now universal in the army,
among policemen, and common among officials and educated men; the use
of chairs and tables, lamps, windows, and other Western things is due
in no small measure to that flexibility of mind which readily adopts
new ideas and new ways; is ready to try new things and new words, and
after trial, if it finds them convenient or useful or even amusing, to
retain them permanently, and this flexibility is, in part, the reason
why the Japanese are accounted a fickle people. They accept new ways
so easily that those who do not have this faculty have no explanation
for it but that of fickleness. A frequent surprise to a missionary in
Japan is that of meeting a fine-looking, accomplished gentleman whom
he knew a few years before as a crude, ungainly youth. I am convinced
that it is the possession of this set of characteristics that has
enabled Japan so quickly to assimilate many elements of an alien
civilization.

Yet this flexibility of mind and sensitiveness to changed conditions
find some apparently striking exceptions. Notable among these are the
many customs and appliances of foreign nations which, though adopted
by the people, have not been completely modified to suit their own
needs. In illustration is the Chinese ideograph, for the learning of
which even in the modern common-school reader, there is no arrangement
of the characters in the order of their complexity. The possibility of
simplifying the colossal task of memorizing these uncorrelated
ideographs does not seem to have occurred to the Japanese; though it
is now being attempted by the foreigner. Perhaps a partial explanation
of this apparent exception to the usual flexibility of the people in
meeting conditions may be found in their relative lack of originality.
Still I am inclined to refer it to a greater sensitiveness of the
Japanese to the personal and human, than to the impersonal and
physical environment.

The customary explanation of the group of characteristics considered
in this chapter is that they are innate, due to brain and nerve
structure, and acquired by each generation through biological
heredity. If closely examined, however, this is seen to be no
explanation at all. Accepting the characteristics as empirical
inexplicable facts, the real problem is evaded, pushed into
prehistoric times, that convenient dumping ground of biological,
anthropological, and sociological difficulties.

Japanese flexibility, imitativeness, and sensitiveness to environment
are to be accounted for by a careful consideration of the national
environment and social order. Modern psychology has called attention
to the astonishing part played by imitation, conscious and
unconscious, in the evolution of the human race, and in the
unification of the social group. Prof. Le Tarde goes so far as to make
this the fundamental principle of human evolution. He has shown that
it is ever at work in the life of every human being, modifying all his
thoughts, acts, and feelings. In the evolution of civilization the
rare man thinks, the millions imitate.

A slight consideration of the way in which Occidental lands have
developed their civilization will convince anyone that imitation has
taken the leading part. Japan, therefore, is not unique in this
respect. Her periods of wholesale imitation have indeed called special
notice to the trait. But the rapidity of the movement has been due to
the peculiarities of her environment. For long periods she has been in
complete isolation, and when brought into contact with foreign
nations, she has found them so far in advance of herself in many
important respects that rapid imitation was the only course left her
by the inexorable laws of nature. Had she not imitated China in
ancient times and the Occident in modern times, her independence, if
not her existence, could hardly have been maintained.

Imitation of admittedly superior civilizations has therefore been an
integral, conscious element of Japan's social order, and to a degree
perhaps not equaled by the social order of any other race.

The difference between Japanese imitation and that of other nations
lies in the fact that whereas the latter, as a rule, despise foreign
races, and do not admit the superiority of alien civilizations as a
whole, imitating only a detail here and there, often without
acknowledgment and sometimes even without knowledge, the Japanese, on
the other hand, have repeatedly been placed in such circumstances as
to see the superiority of foreign civilizations as a whole, and to
desire their general adoption. This has produced a spirit of imitation
among all the individuals of the race. It has become a part of their
social inheritance. This explanation largely accounts for the striking
difference between Japanese and Chinese in the Occident. The Japanese
go to the West in order to acquire all the West can give. The Chinaman
goes steeled against its influences. The spirit of the Japanese
renders him quickly susceptible to every change in his surroundings.
He is ever noting details and adapting himself to his circumstances.
The spirit of the Chinaman, on the contrary, renders him quite
oblivious to his environment. His mind is closed. Under special
circumstances, when a Chinaman has been liberated from the
prepossession of his social inheritance, he has shown himself as
capable of Occidentalization in clothing, speech, manner, and thought
as a Japanese. Such cases, however, are rare.

But a still more effective factor in the development of the
characteristics under consideration is the nature of Japanese
feudalism. Its emphasis on the complete subordination of the inferior
to the superior was one of its conspicuous features. This was a factor
always and everywhere at work in Japan. No individual was beyond its
potent influence. Attention to details, absolute obedience, constant,
conscious imitation, secretiveness, suspiciousness, were all highly
developed by this social system. Each of these traits is a special
form of sensitiveness to environment. From the most ancient times the
initiative of superiors was essential to the wide adoption by the
people of any new idea or custom. Christianity found ready acceptance
in the sixteenth century and Buddhism in the eighth, because they had
been espoused by exalted persons. The superiority of the civilization
of China in early times, and of the West in modern times, was first
acknowledged and adopted by a few nobles and the Emperor. Having
gained this prestige they promptly became acceptable to the rank and
file of people who vied with each other in their adoption. A
peculiarity of the Japanese is the readiness with which the ideas and
aims of the rulers are accepted by the people. This is due to the
nature of Japanese feudalism. It has made the body of the nation
conspicuously subject to the ruling brain and has conferred on Japan
her unique sensitiveness to environment.

Susceptibility to slight changes in the feelings of lords and masters
and corresponding flexibility were important social traits, necessary
products of the old social order. Those deficient in these regards
would inevitably lose in the struggle for social precedence, if not in
the actual struggle for existence. These characteristics would,
accordingly, be highly developed.

Bearing in mind, therefore, the character of the factors that have
ever been acting on the Japanese psychic nature, we see clearly that
the characteristics under consideration are not to be attributed to
her inherent race nature, but may be sufficiently accounted for by
reference to the social order and social environment.




VI

WAVES OF FEELING--ABDICATION


It has long been recognized that the Japanese are emotional, but the
full significance of this element of their nature is far from
realized. It underlies their entire life; it determines the mental
activities in a way and to a degree that Occidentals can hardly
appreciate. Waves of feeling have swept through the country, carrying
everything before them in a manner that has oftentimes amazed us of
foreign lands. An illustration from the recent political life of the
nation comes to mind in this connection. For months previous to the
outbreak of the recent war with China, there had been a prolonged
struggle between the Cabinet and the political parties who were united
in their opposition to the government, though in little else. The
parties insisted that the Cabinet should be responsible to the party
in power in the Lower House, as is the case in England, that thus they
might stand and fall together. The Cabinet, on the other hand,
contended that, according to the constitution, it was responsible to
the Emperor alone, and that consequently there was no need of a change
in the Cabinet with every change of party leadership. The nation waxed
hot over the discussion. Successive Diets were dissolved and new Diets
elected, in none of which, however, could the supporters of the
Cabinet secure a majority; the Cabinet was, therefore, incapable of
carrying out any of its distinctive measures. Several times the
opposition went so far as to decline to pass the budget proposed by
the Cabinet, unless so reduced as to cripple the government, the
reason constantly urged being that the Cabinet was not competent to
administer the expenditure of such large sums of money. There were no
direct charges of fraud, but simply of incompetence. More than once
the Cabinet was compelled to carry on the government during the year
under the budget of the previous year, as provided by the
constitution. So intense was the feeling that the capital was full of
"soshi,"--political ruffians,--and fear was entertained as to the
personal safety of the members of the Cabinet. The whole country was
intensely excited over the matter. The newspapers were not loath to
charge the government with extravagance, and a great explosion seemed
inevitable, when, suddenly, a breeze from a new quarter arose and
absolutely changed the face of the nation.

War with China was whispered, and then noised around. Events moved
rapidly. One or two successful encounters with the Chinese stirred the
warlike passion that lurked in every breast. At once the feud with the
Cabinet was forgotten. When, on short notice, an extra session of the
Diet was called to vote funds for a war, not a word was breathed about
lack of confidence in the Cabinet or its incompetence to manage the
ordinary expenditures of the government; on the contrary, within five
minutes from the introduction of the government bill asking a war
appropriation of 150,000,000 yen, the bill was unanimously passed.

Such an absolute change could hardly have taken place in England or
America, or any land less subject to waves of emotion. So far as I
could learn, the nation was a unit in regard to the war. There was not
the slightest sign of a "peace party." Of all the Japanese with whom I
talked only one ever expressed the slightest opposition to the war,
and he on religious grounds, being a Quaker.

The strength of the emotional element tends to make the Japanese
extremists. If liberals, they are extremely liberal; if conservative,
they are extremely conservative. The craze for foreign goods and
customs which prevailed for several years in the early eighties was
replaced by an almost equally strong aversion to anything foreign.

This tendency to swing to extremes has cropped out not infrequently in
the theological thinking of Japanese Christians. Men who for years
had done effective work in upbuilding the Church, men who had lifted
hundreds of their fellow-countrymen out of moral and religious
darkness into light and life, have suddenly, as it has appeared, lost
all appreciation of the truths they had been teaching and have swung
off to the limits of a radical rationalism, losing with their
evangelical faith their power of helping their fellow-men, and in some
few cases, going over into lives of open sin. The intellectual reasons
given by them to account for their changes have seemed insufficient;
it will be found that the real explanation of these changes is to be
sought not in their intellectual, but in their emotional natures.

Care must be taken, however, not to over-emphasize this extremist
tendency. In some respects, I am convinced that it is more apparent
than real. The appearance is due to the silent passivity even of those
who are really opposed to the new departure. It is natural that the
advocates of some new policy should be enthusiastic and noisy. To give
the impression to an outsider that the new enthusiasm is universal,
those who do not share it have simply to keep quiet. This takes place
to some degree in every land, but particularly so in Japan. The
silence of their dissent is one of the striking characteristics of the
Japanese. It seems to be connected with an abdication of personal
responsibility. How often in the experience of the missionary it has
happened that his first knowledge of friction in a church, wholly
independent and self-supporting and having its own native pastor, is
the silent withdrawal of certain members from their customary places
of worship. On inquiry it is learned that certain things are being
done or said which do not suit them and, instead of seeking to have
these matters righted, they simply wash their hands of the whole
affair by silent withdrawal.

The Kumi-ai church, in Kumamoto, from being large and prosperous, fell
to an actual active membership of less than a dozen, solely because,
as each member became dissatisfied with the high-handed and radical
pastor, he simply withdrew. Had each one stood by the church,
realizing that he had a responsibility toward it which duty forbade
him to shirk, the conservative and substantial members of the church
would soon have been united in their opposition to the radical pastor
and, being in the majority, could have set matters right. In the case
of perversion of trust funds by the trustees of the Kumamoto School,
many Japanese felt that injustice was being done to the American Board
and a stain was being inflicted on Japan's fair name, but they did
nothing either to express their opinions or to modify the results. So
silent were they that we were tempted to think them either ignorant of
what was taking place, or else indifferent to it. We now know,
however, that many felt deeply on the matter, but were simply silent
according to the Japanese custom.

But silent dissent does not necessarily last indefinitely, though it
may continue for years. As soon as some check has been put upon the
rising tide of feeling, and a reaction is evident, those who before
had been silent begin to voice their reactionary feeling, while those
who shortly before had been in the ascendant begin to take their turn
of silent dissent. Thus the waves are accentuated, both in their rise
and in their relapse, by the abdicating proclivity of the people.

Yet, in spite of the tendency of the nation to be swept from one
extreme to another by alternate waves of feeling, there are many
well-balanced men who are not carried with the tide. The steady
progress made by the nation during the past generation, in spite of
emotional actions and reactions, must be largely attributed to the
presence in its midst of these more stable natures. These are the men
who have borne the responsibilities of government. So far as we are
able to see, they have not been led by their feelings, but rather by
their judgments. When the nation was wild with indignation over
Europe's interference with the treaty which brought the China-Japanese
war to a close, the men at the helm saw too clearly the futility of an
attempt to fight Russia to allow themselves to be carried away by
sentimental notions of patriotism. Theirs was a deeper and truer
patriotism than that of the great mass of the nation, who, flushed
with recent victories by land and by sea, were eager to give Russia
the thrashing which they felt quite able to administer.

Abdication is such an important element in Japanese life, serving to
throw responsibility on the young, and thus helping to emphasize the
emotional characteristics of the people, that we may well give it
further attention at this point. In describing it, I can do no better
than quote from J.H. Gubbins' valuable introduction to his translation
of the New Civil Code of Japan.[I]

     "Japanese scholars who have investigated the subject agree in
     tracing the origin of the present custom to the abdication of
     Japanese sovereigns, instances of which occur at an early period of
     Japanese history. These earlier abdications were independent of
     religious influences, but with the advent of Buddhism abdication
     entered upon a new phase. In imitation, it would seem, of the
     retirement for the purpose of religious contemplation of the Head
     Priests of Buddhist monasteries, abdicating sovereigns shaved their
     heads and entered the priesthood, and when subsequently the custom
     came to be employed for political purposes, the cloak of religion
     was retained. From the throne the custom spread to Regents and high
     officers of state, and so universal had its observance amongst
     officials of the high ranks become in the twelfth century that, as
     Professor Shigeno states, it was almost the rule for such persons
     to retire from the world at the age of forty or fifty, and
     nominally enter the priesthood, both the act and the person
     performing it being termed 'niu do.' In the course of time, the
     custom of abdication ceased to be confined to officials, and
     extended to feudal nobility and the military class generally,
     whence it spread through the nation, and at this stage of its
     transition its connection with the phase it finally assumed becomes
     clear. But with its extension beyond the circle of official
     dignitaries, and its consequent severance from tradition and
     religious associations, whether real or nominal abdication changed
     its name. It was no longer termed 'niu do,' but 'in kio,' the old
     word being retained only in its strict religious meaning, and
     'inkyo' is the term in use to-day.

     "In spite of the religious origin of abdication, its connection
     with religion has long since vanished, and it may be said without
     fear of contradiction that the Japanese of to-day, when he or she
     abdicates, is in no way actuated by the feeling which impelled
     European monarchs in past times to end their days in the seclusion
     of the cloister, and which finds expression to-day in the Irish
     phrase, 'To make one's soul.' Apart from the influence of
     traditional convention, which counts for something and also
     explains the great hold on the nation which the custom has
     acquired, the motive seems to be somewhat akin to that which leads
     people in some Western countries to retire from active life at an
     age when bodily infirmity cannot be adduced as the reason. But with
     this great difference, that in the one case, that of Western
     countries, it is the business or profession, the active work of
     life, which is relinquished, the position of the individual
     vis-a-vis the family being unaffected; in the other case, it is the
     position of head of the family which is relinquished, with the
     result of the complete effacement of the individual so far as the
     family is concerned. Moreover, although abdication usually implies
     the abandonment of the business, or profession, of the person who
     abdicates, this does not necessarily follow, abdication being in no
     way incompatible with the continuation of the active pursuits in
     which the person-in question is engaged. And if an excuse be needed
     in either case, there would seem to be more for the Japanese head
     of family, who, in addition to the duties and responsibilities
     incumbent upon his position, has to bear the brunt of the tedious
     ceremonies and observances which characterize family life in Japan,
     and are a severe tax upon time and energies, while at the same time
     he is fettered by the restrictions upon individual freedom of
     action imposed by the family system. That in many cases the reason
     for abdication lies in the wish to escape from the tyrannical
     calls of family life, rather than in mere desire for idleness and
     ease, is shown by the fact that just as in past times the
     abdication of an Emperor, a Regent, or a state dignitary, was often
     the signal for renewed activity on his part, so in modern Japanese
     life the period of a person's greatest activity not infrequently
     dates from the time of his withdrawal from the headship of his
     family."

The abdicating proclivities of the nation in pre-Meiji times are well
shown by the official list of daimyos published by the Shogunate in
1862. To a list of 268 ruling daimyos is added a list of 104 "inkyo."

In addition to what we may call political and family abdication,
described above, is personal abdication, referred to on a previous
page.

Are the traits of Japanese character considered in this chapter
inherent and necessary? Already our description has conclusively shown
them to be due to the nature of the social order. This was manifestly
the case in regard to political and family abdication. The like origin
of personal abdication is manifest to him who learns how little there
was in the ancient training tending to give each man a "feeling of
independent responsibility to his own conscience in the sight of
Heaven." He was taught devotion to a person rather than to a
principle. The duty of a retainer was not to think and decide, but to
do. He might in silence disapprove and as far as possible he should
then keep out of his lord's way; should he venture to think and to act
contrary to his lord's commands, he must expect and plan to commit
"harakiri" in the near future. Personal abdication and silent
disapproval, therefore, were direct results of the social order.




VII

HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP


If a clew to the character of a nation is gained by a study of the
nature of the gods it worships, no less valuable an insight is gained
by a study of its heroes. Such a study confirms the impression that
the emotional life is fundamental in the Japanese temperament. Japan
is a nation of hero-worshipers. This is no exaggeration. Not only is
the primitive religion, Shintoism, systematic hero-worship, but every
hero known to history is deified, and has a shrine or temple. These
heroes, too, are all men of conspicuous valor or strength, famed for
mighty deeds of daring. They are men of passion. The most popular
story in Japanese literature is that of "The Forty-seven Ronin," who
avenged the death of their liege-lord after years of waiting and
plotting. This revenge administered, they committed harakiri in
accordance with the etiquette of the ethical code of feudal Japan.
Their tombs are to this day among the most frequented shrines in the
capital of the land, and one of the most popular dramas presented in
the theaters is based on this same heroic tragedy.

The prominence of the emotional element may be seen in the popular
description of national heroes. The picture of an ideal Japanese hero
is to our eyes a caricature. His face is distorted by a fierce frenzy
of passion, his eyeballs glaring, his hair flying, and his hands hold
with a mighty grip the two-handed sword wherewith he is hewing to
pieces an enemy. I am often amazed at the difference between the
pictures of Japanese heroes and the living Japanese I see. This
difference is manifestly due to the idealizing process; for they love
to see their heroes in their passionate moods and tenses.

The craving for heroes, even on the part of those who are familiar
with Western thought and customs, is a feature of great interest. Well
do I remember the enthusiasm with which educated, Christian young men
awaited the coming to Japan of an eminent American scholar, from whose
lectures impossible things were expected. So long as he was in America
and only his books were known, he was a hero. But when he appeared in
person, carrying himself like any courteous gentleman, he lost his
exalted position.

Townsend Harris showed his insight into Oriental thought never more
clearly than by maintaining his dignity according to Japanese
standards and methods. On his first entry into Tokyo he states, in his
journal, that although he would have preferred to ride on horseback,
in order that he might see the city and the people, yet as the highest
dignitaries never did so, but always rode in entirely closed
"norimono" (a species of sedan chair carried by twenty or thirty
bearers), he too would do the same; to have ridden into the limits of
the city on horseback would have been construed by the Japanese as an
admission that he held a far lower official rank than that of a
plenipotentiary of a great nation.

It is not difficult to understand how these ideals of heroes arose.
They are the same in every land where militarism, and especially
feudalism, is the foundation on which the social order rests.

Some of the difficulties met by foreign missionaries in trying to do
their work arise from the fact that they are not easily regarded as
heroes by their followers. The people are accustomed to commit their
guidance to officials or to teachers or advisers whom they can regard
as heroes. Since missionaries are not officials and do not have the
manners of heroes, it is not to be expected that the Japanese will
accept their leadership.

A few foreigners have, however, become heroes in Japanese eyes.
President Clark and Rev. S.R. Brown had great influence on groups of
young men in the early years of Meiji, while giving them secular
education combined with Christian instruction. The conditions,
however, were then extraordinarily exceptional, and it is a noticeable
fact that neither man remained long in Japan at that time. Another
foreigner who was exalted to the skies by a devoted band of students
was a man well suited to be a hero--for he had the samurai spirit to
the full. Indeed, in absolute fearlessness and assumption of
superiority, he out-samuraied the samurai. He was a man of impressive
and imperious personality. Yet it is a significant fact that when he
was brought back to Japan by his former pupils, after an absence of
about eighteen years, during which they had continued to extol his
merits and revere his memory, it was not long before they discovered
that he was not the man their imagination had created. Not many months
were needed to remove him from his pedestal. It would hardly be a fair
statement of the whole case to leave the matter here. So far as I
know, President Clark and Rev. S.R. Brown have always retained their
hold on the imagination of the Japanese. The foreigner who of all
others has perhaps done the most for Japan, and whose services have
been most heartily acknowledged by the nation and government, was Dr.
Guido F. Verbeck, who began his missionary work in 1859; he was the
teacher of large numbers of the young men who became leaders in the
transformation of Japan; he alone of foreigners was made a citizen and
was given a free and general pass for travel; and his funeral in 1898
was attended by the nobility of the land, and the Emperor himself made
a contribution toward the expenses. Dr. Verbeck is destined to be one
of Japan's few foreign heroes.

Among the signs of Japanese craving for heroes may be mentioned the
constant experience of missionaries when search is being made for a
man to fill a particular place. The descriptions of the kind of man
desired are such that no one can expect to meet him. The Christian
boys' school in Kumamoto, and the church with it, went for a whole
year without principal and pastor because they could not secure a man
of national reputation. They wanted a hero-principal, who would cut a
great figure in local politics and also be a hero-leader for the
Christian work in the whole island of Kyushu, causing the school to
shine not only in Kumamoto, but to send forth its light and its fame
throughout the Empire and even to foreign lands. The unpretentious,
unprepossessing-looking man who was chosen temporarily, though endowed
with common sense and rather unusual ability to harmonize the various
elements in the school, was not deemed satisfactory. He was too much
like Socrates. At last they found a man after their own heart. He had
traveled and studied long abroad; was a dashing, brilliant fellow;
would surely make things hum; so at least said those who recommended
him (and he did). But he was still a poor student in Scotland; his
passage money must be raised by the school if he was to be secured.
And raised it was. Four hundred and seventy-five dollars those one
hundred and fifty poor boys and girls, who lived on two dollars a
month, scantily clothed and insufficiently warmed, secured from their
parents and sent across the seas to bring back him who was to be their
hero-principal and pastor. The rest of the story I need not tell in
detail, but I may whisper that he was more of a slashing hero than
they planned for; in three months the boys' school was split in twain
and in less than three years both fragments of the school had not only
lost all their Christian character, but were dead and gone forever.
And the grounds on which the buildings stood were turned into mulberry
fields.

Talking not long since to a native friend, concerning the
hero-worshiping tendency of the Japanese, I had my attention called to
the fact that, while what has been said above is substantially correct
as concerns a large proportion of the people, especially the young
men, there is nevertheless a class whose ideal heroes are not
military, but moral. Their power arises not through self-assertion,
but rather through humility; their influence is due entirely to
learning coupled with insight into the great moral issues of life.
Such has been the character of not a few of the "moral" teachers. I
have recently read a Japanese novel based upon the life of one such
hero. Omi Seijin, or the "Sage of Omi," is a name well known among
the people of Japan; and his fame rests rather on his character than
on his learning. If tradition is correct, his influence on the people
of his region was powerful enough to transform the character of the
place, producing a paradise on earth whence lust and crime were
banished. Whatever the actual facts of his life may have been, this is
certainly the representation of his character now held up for honor
and imitation. There are also indications that the ideal military hero
is not, for all the people, the self-assertive type that I have
described above, though this is doubtless the prevalent one. Not long
since I heard the following couplet as to the nature of a true hero:

            "Makoto no Ei-yu;
Sono yo, aizen to shite shumpu no gotoshi;
Sono shin, kizen to shite kinseki no gotoshi.

            "The true Hero;
In appearance, charming like the spring breeze.
In heart, firm as a rock."

Another phrase that I have run across relating to the ideal man is, "I
atte takakarazu," which means in plain English, "having authority, but
not puffed up." In the presence of these facts, it will not do to
think that the ideal hero of all the Japanese is, or even in olden
times was, only a military hero full of swagger and bluster; in a
military age such would, of necessity, be a popular ideal; but just in
proportion as men rose to higher forms of learning, and character, so
would their ideals be raised.

It is not to be lightly assumed that the spirit of hero-worship is
wholly an evil or a necessarily harmful thing. It has its advantages
and rewards as well as its dangers and evils. The existence of
hero-worship in any land reveals a nature in the people that is
capable of heroic actions. Men appreciate and admire that which in a
measure at least they are, and more that which they aspire to become.
The recent war revealed how the capacity for heroism of a warlike
nature lies latent in every Japanese breast and not in the descendants
of the old military class alone. But it is more encouraging to note
that popular appreciation of moral heroes is growing.

Education and religion are bringing forth modern moral heroes. The
late Dr. Neesima, the founder of the Doshisha, is a hero to many even
outside the Church. Mr. Ishii, the father of Orphan Asylums in Japan,
promises to be another. A people that can rear and admire men of this
character has in it the material of a truly great nation.

The hero-worshiping characteristic of the Japanese depends on two
other traits of their nature. The first is the reality of strong
personalities among them capable of becoming heroes; the second is the
possession of a strong idealizing tendency. Prof. G.T. Ladd has called
them a "sentimental" people, in the sense that they are powerfully
moved by sentiment. This is a conspicuous trait of their character
appearing in numberless ways in their daily life. The passion for
group-photographs is largely due to this. Sentimentalism, in the sense
given it by Prof. Ladd, is the emotional aspect of idealism.

The new order of society is reacting on the older ideal of a hero and
is materially modifying it. The old-fashioned samurai, girded with two
swords, ready to kill a personal foe at sight, is now only the ideal
of romance. In actual life he would soon find himself deprived of his
liberty and under the condemnation not only of the law, but also of
public opinion. The new ideal with which I have come into most
frequent contact is far different. Many, possibly the majority, of the
young men and boys with whom I have talked as to their aim in life,
have said that they desired to secure first of all a thorough
education, in order that finally they might become great "statesmen"
and might guide the nation into paths of prosperity and international
power. The modern hero is one who gratifies the patriotic passion by
bringing some marked success to the nation. He must be a gentleman,
educated in science, in history, and in foreign languages; but above
all, he must be versed in political economy and law. This new ideal of
a national hero has been brought in by the order of society, and in
proportion as this order continues, and emphasis continues to be laid
on mental and moral power, rather than on rank or official position,
on the intrinsic rather than on the accidental, will the old ideal
fade away and the new ideal take its place. Among an idealizing and
emotional people, such as the Japanese, various ideals will naturally
find extreme expression. As society grows complex also and its various
elements become increasingly differentiated, so will the ideals pass
through the same transformations. A study of ideals, therefore, serves
several ends; it reveals the present character of those whose ideals
they are; it shows the degree of development of the social organism in
which they live; it makes known, likewise, the degree of the
differentiation that has taken place between the various elements of
the nation.




VIII

LOVE FOR CHILDREN


An aspect of Japanese life widely remarked and praised by foreign
writers is the love for children. Children's holidays, as the third
day of the third moon and the fifth day of the fifth moon, are general
celebrations for boys and girls respectively, and are observed with
much gayety all over the land. At these times the universal aim is to
please the children; the girls have dolls and the exhibition of
ancestral dolls; while the boys have toy paraphernalia of all the
ancient and modern forms of warfare, and enormous wind-inflated paper
fish, symbols of prosperity and success, fly from tall bamboos in the
front yard. Contrary to the prevailing opinion among foreigners, these
festivals have nothing whatever to do with birthday celebrations. In
addition to special festivals, the children figure conspicuously in
all holidays and merry-makings. To the famous flower-festival
celebrations, families go in groups and make an all-day picnic of the
joyous occasion.

The Japanese fondness for children is seen not only at festival times.
Parents seem always ready to provide their children with toys. As a
consequence toy stores flourish. There is hardly a street without its
store.

A still further reason for the impression that the Japanese are
especially fond of their children is the slight amount of punishment
and reprimand which they administer. The children seem to have nearly
everything their own way. Playing on the streets, they are always in
evidence and are given the right of way.

That Japanese show much affection for their children is clear. The
question of importance, however, is whether they have it in a marked
degree, more, for instance, than Americans? And if so, is this due to
their nature, or may it be attributed to their family life as molded
by the social order? It is my impression that, on the whole, the
Japanese do not show more affection for their children than
Occidentals, although they may at first sight appear to do so. Among
the laboring classes of the %est, the father, as a rule, is away from
home all through the hours of the day, working in shop or factory. He
seldom sees his children except upon the Sabbath. Of course, the
father has then very little to do with their care or education, and
little opportunity for the manifestation of affection. In Japan,
however, the industrial organization of society is still such that the
father is at home a large part of the time. The factories are few as
yet; the store is usually not separate from the home, but a part of
it, the front room of the house. Family life is, therefore, much less
broken in upon by the industrial necessities of civilization, and
there are accordingly more opportunities for the manifestation of the
father's affection for the children. Furthermore, the laboring-people
in Japan live much on the street, and it is a common thing to see the
father caring for children. While I have seldom seen a father with an
infant tied to his back, I have frequently seen them with their infant
sons tucked into their bosoms, an interesting sight. This custom gives
a vivid impression of parental affection. But, comparing the middle
classes of Japan and the West, it is safe to say that, as a whole, the
Western father has more to do by far in the care and education of the
children than the Japanese father, and that there is no less of
fondling and playing with children. If we may judge the degree of
affection by the signs of its demonstrations, we must pronounce the
Occidental, with his habits of kissing and embracing, as far and away
more affectionate than his Oriental cousin. While the Occidental may
not make so much of an occasion of the advent of a son as does the
Oriental, he continues to remember the birthdays of all his children
with joy and celebrations, as the Oriental does not. Although the
Japanese invariably say, when asked about it, that they celebrate
their children's birthdays, the uniform experience of the foreigner
is that birthday celebrations play a very insignificant part in the
joys and the social life of the home.

It is not difficult to understand why, apart from the question of
affection, the Japanese should manifest special joy on the advent of
sons, and particularly of a first son. The Oriental system of
ancestral worship, with the consequent need, both religious and
political, of maintaining the family line, is quite enough to account
for all the congratulatory ceremonies customary on the birth of sons.
The fact that special joy is felt and manifested on the birth of sons,
and less on the birth of daughters, clearly shows that the dominant
conceptions of the social order have an important place in determining
even so fundamental a trait as affection for offspring.

Affection for children is, however, not limited to the day of their
birth or the period of their infancy. In judging of the relative
possession by different races of affection for children, we must ask
how the children are treated during all their succeeding years. It
must be confessed that the advantage is then entirely on the side of
the Occidental. Not only does this appear in the demonstrations of
affection which are continued throughout childhood, often even
throughout life, but more especially in the active parental solicitude
for the children's welfare, striving to fit them for life's duties and
watching carefully over their mental and moral education. In these
respects the average Occidental is far in advance of the average
Oriental.

I have been told that, since the coming in of the new civilization and
the rise of the new ideas about woman, marriage, and home, there is
clearly observable to the Japanese themselves a change in the way in
which children are being treated. But, even still, the elder son takes
the more prominent place in the affection of the family, and sons
precede daughters.

A fair statement of the case, therefore, is somewhat as follows: The
lower and laboring classes of Japan seem to have more visible
affection for their children than the same classes in the Occident.
Among the middle and upper classes, however, the balance is in favor
of the West. In the East, while, without doubt, there always has been
and is now a pure and natural affection, it is also true that this
natural affection has been more mixed with utilitarian considerations
than in the West. Christian Japanese, however, differ little from
Christian Americans in this respect. The differences between the East
and the West are largely due to the differing industrial and family
conditions induced by the social order.

The correctness of this general statement will perhaps be better
appreciated if we consider in detail some of the facts of Japanese
family life. Let us notice first the very loose ties, as they seem to
us, holding the Japanese family together. It is one of the constant
wonders to us Westerners how families can break up into fragments, as
they constantly do. One third of the marriages end in divorce; and in
case of divorce, the children all stay with the father's family. It
would seem as if the love of the mother for her children could not be
very strong where divorce under such a condition is so common. Or,
perhaps, it would be truer to say that divorce would be far more
frequent than it is but for the mother's love for her children. For I
am assured that many a mother endures most distressing conditions
rather than leave her children. Furthermore, the way in which parents
allow their children to leave the home and then fail to write or
communicate with them, for months or even years at a time, is
incomprehensible if the parental love were really strong. And still
further, the way in which concubines are brought into the home,
causing confusion and discord, is a very striking evidence of the lack
of a deep love on the part of the father for the mother of his
children and even for his own legitimate children. One would expect a
father who really loved his children to desire and plan for their
legitimacy; but the children by his concubines are not "ipso facto"
recognized as legal. One more evidence in this direction is the
frequency of adoption and of separation. Adoption in Japan is largely,
though by no means exclusively, the adoption of an adult; the cases
where a child is adopted by a childless couple from love of children
are rare, as compared with similar cases in the United States, so far,
at least, as my observation goes. I recently heard of a conversation
on personal financial matters between a number of Christian
evangelists. After mutual comparisons they agreed that one of their
number was more fortunate than the rest in that he did not have to
support his mother. On inquiring into the matter, the missionary
learned that this evangelist, on becoming a Buddhist priest many years
before, had secured from the government, according to the laws of the
land, exemption from this duty. When he became a Christian it did not
seem to occur to him that it was his duty and his privilege to support
his indigent mother. I may add that this idea has since occurred to
him and he is acting upon it.

Infanticide throws a rather lurid light on Japanese affection. First,
in regard to the facts: Mr. Ishii's attention was called to the need
of an orphan asylum by hearing how a child, both of whose parents had
died of cholera, was on the point of being buried alive with its dead
mother by heartless neighbors when it was rescued by a fisherman.
Certain parts of Japan have been notorious from of old for this
practice. In Tosa the evil was so rampant that a society for its
prevention has been in existence for many years. It helps support
children of poor parents who might be tempted to dispose of them
criminally. In that province from January to March, 1898, I was told
that "only" four cases of conviction for this crime were reported. The
registered annual birth rate of certain villages has increased from
40-50 to 75-80, and this without any immigration from outside. The
reason assigned is the diminution of infanticide.

In speaking of infanticide in Japan, let us not forget that every race
and nation has been guilty of the same crime, and has continued to be
guilty of it until delivered by Christianity.

Widespread infanticide proves a wide lack of natural affection.
Poverty is, of course, the common plea. Yet infanticide has been
practiced not so much by the desperately poor as by small
land-holders. The amount of farming land possessed by each family was
strictly limited and could feed only a given number of mouths. Should
the family exceed that number, all would be involved in poverty, for
the members beyond that limit did not have the liberty to travel in
search of new occupation. Infanticide, therefore, bore direct relation
to the rigid economic nature of the old social order.

Whatever, therefore, be the point of view from which we study the
question of Japanese affection for children, we see that it was
intimately connected with the nature of the social order. Whether we
judge such affection or its lack to be a characteristic trait of
Japanese nature, we must still maintain that it is not an inherent
trait of the race nature, but only a characteristic depending for its
greater or less development on the nature of the social order.




IX

MARITAL LOVE


If the Japanese are a conspicuously emotional race, as is commonly
believed, we should naturally expect this characteristic to manifest
itself in a marked degree in the relation of the sexes. Curiously
enough, however, such does not seem to be the case. So slight a place
does the emotion of sexual love have in Japanese family life that some
have gone to the extreme of denying it altogether. In his brilliant
but fallacious volume, entitled "The Soul of the Far East," Mr.
Percival Lowell states that the Japanese do not "fall in love." The
correctness of this statement we shall consider in connection with the
argument for Japanese impersonality. That "falling in love" is not a
recognized part of the family system, and that marriage is arranged
regardless not only of love, but even of mutual acquaintance, are
indisputable facts.

Let us confine our attention here to Japanese post-marital emotional
characteristics. Do Japanese husbands love their wives and wives their
husbands? We have already seen that in the text-book for Japanese
women, the "Onna Daigaku," not one word is said about love. It may be
stated at once that love between husband and wife is almost as
conspicuously lacking in practice as in precept. In no regard,
perhaps, is the contrast between the East and the West more striking
than the respective ideas concerning woman and marriage. The one
counts woman the equal, if not the superior of man; the other looks
down upon her as man's inferior in every respect; the one considers
profound love as the only true condition of marriage; the other thinks
of love as essentially impure, beneath the dignity of a true man, and
not to be taken into consideration when marriage is contemplated; in
the one, the two persons most interested have most to say in the
matter; in the other, they have the least to say; in the one, a long
and intimate previous acquaintance is deemed important; in the other,
the need for such an acquaintance does not receive a second thought;
in the one, the wife at once takes her place as the queen of the home;
in the other, she enters as the domestic for her husband and his
parents; in the one, the children are hers as well as his; in the
other, they are his rather than hers, and remain with him in case of
divorce; in the one, divorce is rare and condemned; in the other, it
is common in the extreme; in the one, it is as often the woman as the
man who seeks the divorce; in the other, until most recent times, it
is the man alone who divorces the wife; in the one, the reasons for
divorce are grave; in the other, they are often trivial; in the one,
the wife is the "helpmate"; in the other, she is the man's
"plaything"; or, at most, the means for continuing the family lineage;
in the one, the man is the "husband"; in the other, he is the "danna
san" or "teishu" (the lord or master); in the ideal home of the one,
the wife is the object of the husband's constant affection and
solicitous care; in the ideal home of the other, she ever waits upon
her lord, serves his food for him, and faithfully sits up for him at
night, however late his return may be; in the one, the wife is
justified in resenting any unfaithfulness or immorality on the part of
her husband; in the other, she is commanded to accept with patience
whatever he may do, however many concubines he may have in his home or
elsewhere; and however immoral he may be, she must not be jealous. The
following characterization of the women of Japan is presumably by one
who would do them no injustice, having himself married a Japanese wife
(the editor of the _Japan Mail_).

     "The woman of Japan is a charming personage in many ways--gracious,
     refined, womanly before everything, sweet-tempered, unselfish,
     virtuous, a splendid mother, and an ideal wife from the point of
     view of the master. But she is virtually excluded from the whole
     intellectual life of the nation. Politics, art, literature,
     science, are closed books to her. She cannot think logically about
     any of these subjects, express herself clearly with reference to
     them, or take an intellectual part in conversations relating to
     them. She is, in fact, totally disqualified to be her husband's
     intellectual companion, and the inevitable result is that he
     despises her."[J]

In face of all these facts, it is evident that the emotional element
of character which plays so large a part in the relation of the sexes
in the West has little, if any, counterpart in the Far East. Where the
emotional element does come in, it is under social condemnation. There
are doubtless many happy marriages in Japan, if the wife is faithful
in her place and fills it well; and if the master is honorable
according to the accepted standards, steady in his business, not given
to wine or women. But even then the affection must be different from
that which prevails in the West. No Japanese wife ever dreams of
receiving the loving care from her husband which is freely accorded
her Western sister by her husband.[K]

I wish, however, to add at once that this is a topic about which it is
dangerous to dogmatize, for the customs of Japan demand that all
expressions of affection between husband and wife shall be sedulously
concealed from the outer world. I can easily believe that there is no
little true affection existing between husband and wife. A Japanese
friend with whom I have talked on this subject expresses his belief
that the statement made above, to the effect that no Japanese wife
dreams of receiving the loving care which is expected by her Western
sister, is doubtless true of Old Japan, but that there has been a
great change in this respect in recent decades; and especially among
the Christian community. That Christians excel the others with whom I
have come in contact, has been evident to me. But that even they are
still very different from Occidentals in this respect, is also clear.
Whatever be the affection lavished on the wife in the privacy of the
home, she does not receive in public the constant evidence of special
regard and high esteem which the Western wife expects as her right.

How much affection can be expressed by low formal bows? The fact is
that Japanese civilization has striven to crush out all signs of
emotion; this stoicism is exemplified to a large degree even in the
home, and under circumstances when we should think it impossible.
Kissing was an unknown art in Japan, and it is still unknown, except
by name, to the great majority of the people. Even mothers seldom kiss
their infant children, and when they do, it is only while the children
are very young.

The question, however, which particularly interests us, is as to the
explanation for these facts. Is the lack of demonstrative affection
between husband and wife due to the inherent nature of the Japanese,
or is it not due rather to the prevailing social order? If a Japanese
goes to America or. England, for a few years, does he maintain his
cold attitude toward all women, and never show the slightest tendency
to fall in love, or exhibit demonstrative affection? These questions
almost answer themselves, and with them the main question for whose
solution we are seeking.

A few concrete instances may help to illustrate the generalization
that these are not fixed because racial characteristics, but variable
ones dependent on the social order. Many years ago when the late Dr.
Neesima, the founder, with Dr. Davis, of the Doshisha, was on the
point of departure for the United States on account of his health, he
made an address to the students. In the course of his remarks he
stated that there were three principal considerations that made him
regret the necessity for his departure at that time; the first was
that the Doshisha was in a most critical position; it was but
starting on its larger work, and he felt that all its friends should
be on hand to help on the great undertaking. The second was that he
was compelled to leave his aged parents, whom he might not find living
on his return to Japan. The third was his sorrow at leaving his
beloved wife. This public reference to his wife, and especially to his
love for her, was so extraordinary that it created no little comment,
not to say scandal; especially obnoxious was it to many, because he
mentioned her after having mentioned his parents. In the reports of
this speech given by his friends to the public press no reference was
made to this expression of love for his wife. And a few months after
his death, when Dr. Davis prepared a short biography of Dr. Neesima,
he was severely criticised by some of the Japanese for reproducing the
speech as Dr. Neesima gave it.

Shortly after my first arrival in Japan, I was walking home from
church one day with an English-speaking Japanese, who had had a good
deal to do with foreigners. Suddenly, without any introduction, he
remarked that he did not comprehend how the men of the West could
endure such tyranny as was exercised over them by their wives. I, of
course, asked what he meant. He then said that he had seen me
buttoning my wife's shoes. I should explain that on calling on the
Japanese, in their homes, it is necessary that we leave our shoes at
the door, as the Japanese invariably do; this is, of course, awkward
for foreigners who wear shoes; especially so is the necessity of
putting them on again. The difficulty is materially increased by the
invariably high step at the front door. It is hard enough for a man to
kneel down on the step and reach for his shoes and then put them on;
much more so is it for a woman. And after the shoes are on, there is
no suitable place on which to rest the foot for buttoning and tying. I
used, therefore, very gladly to help my wife with hers. Yet, so
contrary to Japanese precedent was this act of mine that this
well-educated gentleman and Christian, who had had much intercourse
with foreigners, could not see in it anything except the imperious
command of the wife and the slavish obedience of the husband. His
conception of the relation between the Occidental husband and wife is
best described as tyranny on the part of the wife.

One of the early shocks I received on this general subject was due to
the discovery that whenever my wife took my arm as we walked the
street to and from church, or elsewhere, the people looked at us in
surprised displeasure. Such public manifestation of intimacy was to be
expected from libertines alone, and from these only when they were
more or less under the influence of drink. Whenever a Japanese man
walks out with his wife, which, by the way, is seldom, he invariably
steps on ahead, leaving her to follow, carrying the parcels, if there
are any. A child, especially a son, may walk at his side, but not his
wife.

Let me give a few more illustrations to show how the present family
life of the Japanese checks the full and free development of the
affections. In one of our out-stations I but recently found a young
woman in a distressing condition. Her parents had no sons, and
consequently, according to the custom of the land, they had adopted a
son, who became the husband of their eldest daughter; the man proved a
rascal, and the family was glad when he decided that he did not care
to be their son any longer. Shortly after his departure a child was
born to the daughter; but, according to the law, she had no husband,
and consequently the child must either be registered as illegitimate,
or be fraudulently registered as the child of the mother's father.
There is much fraudulent registration, the children of concubines are
not recognized as legitimate; yet it is common to register such
children as those of the regular wife, especially if she has few or
none of her own.

An evangelist who worked long in Kyushu was always in great financial
trouble because of the fact that he had to support two mothers,
besides giving aid to his father, who had married a third wife. The
first was his own mother, who had been divorced, but, as she had no
home, the son took her to his. When the father divorced his second
wife, the son was induced to take care of her also. Another
evangelist, with whom I had much to do, was the adopted son of a
scheming old man; it seems that in the earlier part of the present era
the eldest son of a family was exempt from military draft. It often
happened, therefore, that families who had no sons could obtain large
sums of money from those who had younger sons whom they wished to have
adopted for the purpose of escaping the draft. This evangelist, while
still a boy, was adopted into such a family, and a certain sum was
fixed upon to be paid at some time in the future. But the adopted son
proved so pleasing to the adopting father that he did not ask for the
money; by some piece of legerdemain, however, he succeeded in adopting
a second son, who paid him the desired money. After some years the
first adopted son became a Christian, and then an evangelist, both
steps being taken against the wishes of the adopting father. The
father finally said that he would forego all relations to the son, and
give him back his original name, provided the son would pay the
original sum that had been agreed on, plus the interest, which
altogether would, at that time, amount to several hundred yen. This
was, of course, impossible. The negotiations dragged on for three or
four years. Meanwhile, the young man fell in love with a young girl,
whom he finally married; as he was still the son of his adopting
father, he could not have his wife registered as his wife, for the old
man had another girl in view for him and would not consent to this
arrangement. And so the matter dragged for several months more. Unless
the matter could be arranged, any children born to them must be
registered as illegitimate. At this point I was consulted and, for the
first time, learned the details of the case. Further consultations
resulted in an agreement as to the sum to be paid; the adopted son was
released, and re-registered under his newly acquired name and for the
first time his marriage became legal. The confusion and suffering
brought into the family by this practice of adoption and of separation
are almost endless.

The number of cases in which beautiful and accomplished young women
have been divorced by brutal and licentious husbands is appalling. I
know several such. What wonder that Christians and others are
constantly laying emphasis, in public lectures and sermons and private
talks, on the crying need of reform in marriage and in the home?

Throughout the land the newspapers are discussing the pros and cons of
monogamy and polygamy. In January of 1898 the _Jiji Shimpo_, one of
the leading daily papers of Tokyo, had a series of articles on the
subject from the pen of one of the most illustrious educators of New
Japan, Mr. Fukuzawa. His school, the "Keio Gijiku," has educated more
thousands of young men than any other, notwithstanding the fact that
it is a private institution. Though not a Christian himself, nor
making any professions of advocating Christianity, yet Mr. Fukuzawa
has come out strongly in favor of monogamy. His description of the
existing social and family life is striking, not to say sickening. If
I mistake not, it is he who tells of a certain noble lady who shed
tears at the news of the promotion of her husband in official rank;
and when questioned on the matter she confessed that, with added
salary, he would add to the number of his concubines and to the
frequency of his intercourse with famous dancing and singing girls.

The distressing state of family life may also be gathered from the
large numbers of public and secret prostitutes that are to be found in
all the large cities, and the singing girls of nearly every town.
According to popular opinion, their number is rapidly increasing.
Though this general subject trenches on morality rather than on the
topic immediately before us, yet it throws a lurid light on this
question also. It lets us see, perhaps, more clearly than we could in
any other way, how deficient is the average home life of the people. A
professing Christian, a man of wide experience and social standing,
not long since seriously argued at a meeting of a Young Men's
Christian Association that dancing and singing girls are a necessary
part of Japanese civilization to-day. He argued that they supply the
men with that female element in social life which the ordinary woman
cannot provide; were the average wives and daughters sufficiently
accomplished to share in the social life of the men as they are in the
West, dancing and singing girls, being needless, would soon cease to
be.

One further question in this connection merits our attention. How are
we to account for an order of society that allows so little scope for
the natural affections of the heart, unless by saying that that order
is the true expression of their nature? Must we not say that the
element of affection in the present social order is deficient because
the Japanese themselves are naturally deficient? The question seems
more difficult than it really is.

In the first place, the affectionate relation existing between
husbands and wives and between parents and children, in Western lands,
is a product of relatively recent times. In his exhaustive work on
"The History of Human Marriage," Westermarck makes this very plain.
Wherever the woman is counted a slave, is bought and sold, is
considered as merely a means of bearing children to the family, or in
any essential way is looked down upon, there high forms of affection
are by the nature of the case impossible, though some affection
doubtless exists; it necessarily attains only a rudimentary
development. Now it is conspicuous that the conception of the nature
and purpose of woman, as held in the Orient, has always been debasing
to her. Though individual women might rise above their assigned
position the whole social order, as established by the leaders of
thought, was against her. The statement that there was a primitive
condition of society in Japan in which the affectionate relations
between husband and wife now known in the West prevailed, is, I think,
a mistake.

We must remember, in the second place, what careful students of human
evolution have pointed out, that those tribes and races in which the
family was most completely consolidated, that is to say, those in
which the power of the father was absolute, were the ones to gain the
victory over their competitors. The reason for this is too obvious to
require even a statement. Every conquering race has accordingly
developed the "patria potestas" to a greater or less degree. Now one
general peculiarity of the Orient is that that stage of development
has remained to this day; it has not experienced those modifications
and restrictions which have arisen in the West. The national
government dealt with families and clans, not with individuals, as the
final social unit. In the West, however, the individual has become the
civil unit; the "patria potestas" has thus been all but lost. This,
added to religious and ethical considerations, has given women and
children an ever higher place both in society and in the home. Had
this loss of authority by the father been accompanied with a weakening
of the nation, it would have been an injury; but, in the West, his
authority has been transferred to the nation. These considerations
serve to render more intelligible and convincing the main proposition
of these chapters, that the distinctive emotional characteristics of
the Japanese are not inherent; they are the results of the social and
industrial order; as this order changes, they too will surely change.
The entire civilization of a land takes its leading, if not its
dominant, color from the estimate set by the people as a whole on the
value of human life. The relatively late development of the tender
affections, even in the West, is due doubtless to the extreme slowness
with which the idea of the inherent value of a human being, as such,
has taken root, even though it was clearly taught by Christ. But the
leaven of His teaching has been at work for these hundreds of years,
and now at last we are beginning to see its real meaning and its vital
relation to the entire progress of man. It may be questioned whether
Christ gave any more important impetus to the development of
civilization than by His teaching in regard to the inestimable worth
of man, grounding it, as He did, on man's divine sonship. Those
nations which insist on valuing human life only by the utilitarian
standard, and which consequently keep woman in a degraded place,
insisting on concubinage and all that it implies, are sure to wane
before those nations which loyally adopt and practice the higher
ideals of human worth. The weakness of heathen lands arises in no
slight degree from their cheap estimate of human life.

In Japan, until the Meiji era, human life was cheap. For criminals of
the military classes, suicide was the honorable method of leaving this
world; the lower orders of society suffered loss of life at the hands
of the military class without redress. The whole nation accepted the
low standards of human value; woman was valued chiefly, if not
entirely, on a utilitarian basis, that, namely, of bearing children,
doing house and farm work, and giving men pleasure. So far as I know,
not among all the teachings of Confucius or Buddha was the supreme
value of human life, as such, once suggested, much less any adequate
conception of the worth and nature of woman. The entire social order
was constructed without these two important truths.

By a great effort, however, Japan has introduced a new social order,
with unprecedented rapidity. By one revolution it has established a
set of laws in which the equality of all men before the law is
recognized at least; for the first time in Oriental history, woman is
given the right to seek divorce. The experiment is now being made on a
great scale as to whether the new social order adopted by the rulers
can induce those ideas among the people at large which will insure its
performance. Can the mere legal enactments which embody the principles
of human equality and the value of human life, regardless of sex,
beget those fundamental conceptions on which alone a steady and
lasting government can rest? Can Japan really step into the circle of
Western nations, without abandoning her pagan religions and pushing
onward into Christian monotheism with all its corollaries as to the
relations and mutual duties of man? All earnest men are crying out for
a strengthening of the moral life of the nation through the reform of
the family and are proclaiming the necessity of monogamy; but, aside
from the Christians, none appear to see how this is to be done. Even
Mr. Fukuzawa says that the first step in the reform of the family and
the establishment of monogamy is to develop public sentiment against
prostitution and plural or illegal marriage; and the way to do this
is first to make evil practices secret. This, he says, is more
important than to give women a higher education. He does not see that
Christianity with its conceptions of immediate responsibility of the
individual to God, the loving Heavenly Father, and of the infinite
value of each human soul, thus doing away with the utilitarian scale
for measuring both men and women, together with its conceptions of the
relations of the sexes and of man to man, can alone supply that
foundation for all the elements of the new social order, intellectual
and emotional, which will make it workable and permanent, and of which
monogamy is but one element.[L] He does not see that representative
government and popular rights cannot stand for any length of time on
any other foundation.




X

CHEERFULNESS--INDUSTRY--TRUTHFULNESS--SUSPICIOUSNESS


Many writers have dwelt with delight on the cheerful disposition that
seems so common in Japan. Lightness of heart, freedom from all anxiety
for the future, living chiefly in the present, these and kindred
features are pictured in glowing terms. And, on the whole, these
pictures are true to life. The many flower festivals are made
occasions for family picnics when all care seems thrown to the wind.
There is a simplicity and a freshness and a freedom from worry that is
delightful to see. But it is also remarked that a change in this
regard is beginning to be observed. The coming in of Western
machinery, methods of government, of trade and of education, is
introducing customs and cares, ambitions and activities, that militate
against the older ways. Doubtless, this too is true. If so, it but
serves to establish the general proposition of these pages that the
more outstanding national characteristics are largely the result of
special social conditions, rather than of inherent national character.

The cheerful disposition, so often seen and admired by the Westerner,
is the cheerfulness of children. In many respects the Japanese are
relatively undeveloped. This is due to the nature of their social
order during the past. The government has been largely paternal in
form and fully so in theory. Little has been left to individual
initiative or responsibility. Wherever such a system has been dominant
and the perfectly accepted order, the inevitable result is just such a
state of simple, childish cheerfulness as we find in Japan. It
constitutes that golden age sung by the poets of every land. But being
the cheerfulness of children, the happiness of immaturity, it is
bound to change with growth, to be lost with coming maturity.

Yet the Japanese are by no means given up to a cheerful view of life.
Many an individual is morose and dejected in the extreme. This
disposition is ever stimulated by the religious teachings of Buddhism.
Its great message has been the evanescent character of the present
life. Life is not worth living, it urges; though life may have some
pleasures, the total result is disappointment and sorrow. Buddhism has
found a warm welcome in the hearts of many Japanese. For more than a
thousand years it has been exercising a potent influence on their
thoughts and lives. Yet how is this consistent with the cheerful
disposition which seems so characteristic of Japan? The answer is not
far to seek. Pessimism is by its very nature separative, isolating,
silent. Those oppressed by it do not enter into public joys. They hide
themselves in monasteries, or in the home. The result is that by its
very nature the actual pessimism of Japan is not a conspicuous feature
of national character. The judgment that all Japanese are cheerful
rests on shallow grounds. Because, forsooth, millions on holidays bear
that appearance, and because on ordinary occasions the average man and
woman seem cheerful and happy, the conclusion is reached that all are
so. No effort is made to learn of those whose lives are spent in
sadness and isolation. I am convinced that the Japan of old, for all
its apparent cheer, had likewise its side of deep tragedy. Conditions
of life that struck down countless individuals, and mental conditions
which made Buddhism so popular, both point to this conclusion.

Again I wish to call attention to the fact that the prominence of
children and young people is in part the cause of the appearance of
general happiness. The Japanese live on the street as no Western
people do. The stores and workshops are the homes; when these are
open, the homes are open. When the children go out of the house to
play they use the streets, for they seldom have yards. Here they
gather in great numbers and play most enthusiastically, utterly
regardless of the passers-by, for these latter are all on foot or in
jinrikishas, and, consequently, never cause the children any alarm.

The Japanese give the double impression of being industrious and
diligent on the one hand, and, on the other, of being lazy and utterly
indifferent to the lapse of time. The long hours during which they
keep at work is a constant wonder to the Occidental. I have often been
amazed in Fukuoka to find stores and workshops open, apparently in
operation, after ten and sometimes even until eleven o'clock at night,
while blacksmiths and carpenters and wheelwrights would be working
away as if it were morning. Many of the factories recently started
keep very long hours. Indeed most of the cotton mills run day and
night, having two sets of workers, who shift their times of labor
every week. Those who work during the night hours one week take the
day hours the following week. In at least one such factory, with which
I am acquainted, the fifteen hundred girls who work from six o'clock
Saturday evening until six o'clock Sunday morning, are then supposed
to have twenty-four hours of rest before they begin their day's work
Monday morning; but, as a matter of fact, they must spend three or
four and sometimes five hours on Sunday morning cleaning up the
factory.

In a small silk-weaving factory that I know the customary hours for
work were from five in the morning until nine at night, seven days in
the week. The wife, however, of the owner became a Christian. Through
her intervention time for rest was secured on Sunday long enough for a
Bible class, which the evangelist of the place was invited to teach.
After several months of instruction a number of the hands became
Christian, and all were sufficiently interested to ask that the whole
of the Sabbath be granted to them for rest; but in order that the
master might not lose thereby, they agreed to begin work at four each
morning and to work on until ten at night. With such hours one would
have expected them to fall at once into their beds when the work of
the day was over. But for many months, at ten o'clock in the evening,
my wife and I heard them singing a hymn or two in their family
worship before retiring for the night.

In certain weaving factories I have been told that the girls are
required to work sixteen hours a day; and that on Sundays they are
allowed to have some rest, being then required to work but ten hours!
The diligence of mail deliverers, who always run when on duty, the
hours of consecutive running frequently performed by jin-irikisha men
(several have told me that they have made over sixty miles in a single
day), the long hours of persistent study by students in the higher
schools, and many kindred facts, certainly indicate a surprising
capacity for work.

But there are equally striking illustrations of an opposite nature.
The farmers and mechanics and carpenters, among regular laborers, and
the entire life of the common people in their homes, give an
impression of indifference to the flight of time, if not of absolute
laziness. The workers seem ready to sit down for a smoke and a chat at
any hour of the day. In the home and in ordinary social life, the loss
of time seems to be a matter of no consequence whatever. Polite
palaver takes unstinted hours, and the sauntering of the people
through the street emphasizes the impression that no business calls
oppress them.

In my opinion these characteristics, also, are due to the conditions
of society, past and present, rather than to the inherent nature of
the people. The old civilization was easy-going; it had no clocks; it
hardly knew the time of day; it never hastened. The hour was estimated
and was twice as long as the modern hour. The structure of society
demanded the constant observance of the forms of etiquette; this, with
its numberless genuflections and strikings of the head on the floor,
always demanded time. Furthermore, the very character of the footgear
compelled and still compels a shuffling, ambling gait when walking the
streets. The clog is a well-named hindrance to civilization in the
waste of time it compels. The slow-going, time-ignoring
characteristics of New Japan are social inheritances from feudal
times, characteristics which are still hampering its development. The
industrious spirit that is to be found in so many quarters to-day is
largely the gift of the new civilization. Shoes are taking the place
of clogs. The army and all the police, on ordinary duty, wear shoes.
Even the industry of the students is largely due to the new conditions
of student life. The way in which the Japanese are working to-day, and
the feverish haste that some of them evince in their work, shows that
they are as capable as Occidentals of acquiring the rush of
civilization.

The home life of the people gives an impression of listlessness that
is in marked contrast to that of the West. This is partly due to the
fact that the house work is relatively light, there being no furniture
to speak of, the rooms small, and the cooking arrangements quite
simple. Housewives go about their work with restful deliberation,
which is trying, however, to one in haste. It is the experience of the
housekeepers from the West that one Japanese domestic is able to
accomplish from a third to a half of what is done by a girl in
America. This is not wholly due to slowness of movement, however, but
also to smallness of stature and corresponding lack of strength. On
the other hand, the long hours of work required of women in the
majority of Japanese homes is something appalling. The wife is
expected to be up before the husband, to prepare his meals, and to
wait patiently till his return at night, however late that may be. In
all except the higher ranks of society she takes entire care of the
children, except for the help which her older children may give her.
During much of the time she goes about her work with an infant tied to
her back. Though she does not work hard at any one time (and is it to
be wondered at?) yet she works long. Especially hard is the life of
the waiting girls in the hotels. I have learned that, as a rule, they
are required to be up before daylight and to remain on duty until
after midnight. In some hotels they are allowed but four or five hours
out of the twenty-four. The result is, they are often overcome and
fall asleep while at service. Sitting on the floor and waiting to
serve the rice, with nothing to distract their thoughts or hold their
attention, they easily lose themselves for a few moments.

Two other strongly contrasted traits are found in the Japanese
character, absolute confidence and trustfulness on the one hand, and
suspicion on the other. It is the universal testimony that the former
characteristic is rapidly passing away; in the cities it is well-nigh
gone. But in the country places it is still common. The idea of making
a bargain when two persons entered upon some particular piece of work,
the one as employer, the other as employed, was entirely repugnant to
the older generation, since it was assumed that their relations as
inferior and superior should determine their financial relations; the
superior would do what was right, and the inferior should accept what
the superior might give without a question or a murmur. Among the
samurai, where the arrangement is between equals, bargaining or making
fixed and fast terms which will hold to the end, and which may be
carried to the courts in case of differences, was a thing practically
unknown in the older civilization. Everything of a business nature was
left to honor, and was carried on in mutual confidence.

A few illustrations of this spirit of confidence from my own
experience may not be without interest. On first coming to Japan, I
found it usual for a Japanese who wished to take a jinrikisha to call
the runner and take the ride without making any bargain, giving him at
the end what seemed right. And the men generally accepted the payment
without question. I have found that recently, unless there is some
definite understanding arrived at before the ride, there is apt to be
some disagreement, the runner presuming on the hold he has, by virtue
of work done, to get more than is customary. This is especially true
in case the rider is a foreigner. Another set of examples in which
astonishing simplicity and confidence were manifested was in the
employment of evangelists. I have known several instances in which a
full correspondence with an evangelist with regard to his employment
was carried on, and the settlement finally concluded, and the man set
to work without a word said about money matters. It need hardly be
said that no foreigner took part in that correspondence.

The simple, childlike trustfulness of the country people is seen in
multiplied ways; yet on the whole I cannot escape the conviction that
it is a trustfulness which is shown toward each other as equals.
Certain farmers whom I have employed to care for a cow and to
cultivate the garden, while showing a trustful disposition towards me,
have not had the same feelings toward their fellows apparently.

This confidence and trustfulness were the product of a civilization
resting on communalistic feudalism; the people were kept as children
in dependence on their feudal lord; they had to accept what he said
and did; they were accustomed to that order of things from the
beginning and had no other thought; on the whole too, without doubt,
they received regular and kindly treatment. Furthermore, there was no
redress for the peasant in case of harshness; it was always the wise
policy, therefore, for him to accept whatever was given without even
the appearance of dissatisfaction. This spirit was connected with the
dominance of the military class. Simple trustfulness was, therefore,
chiefly that of the non-military classes. The trustfulness of the
samurai sprang from their distinctive training. As already mentioned,
when drawing up a bond in feudal times, in place of any tangible
security, the document would read, "If I fail to do so and so, you may
laugh at me in public."

Since the overthrow of communal feudalism and the establishment of an
individualistic social order, necessitating personal ownership of
property, and the universal use of money, trustful confidence is
rapidly passing away. Everything is being more and more accurately
reduced to a money basis. The old samurai scorn for money seems to be
wholly gone, an astonishing transformation of character. Since the
disestablishment of the samurai class many of them have gone into
business. Not a few have made tremendous failures for lack of business
instinct, being easily fleeced by more cunning and less honorable
fellows who have played the "confidence" game most successfully;
others have made equally great successes because of their superior
mental ability and education. The government of Japan is to-day chiefly
in the hands of the descendants of the samurai class. They have their
fixed salaries and everything is done on a financial basis, payment
being made for work only. The lazy and the incapable are being pushed
to the wall. Many of the poorest and most pitiable people of the land
to-day are the proud sons of the former aristocracy, who glory in the
history of their ancestors, but are not able or willing to change
their old habits of thought and manner of life.

The American Board has had a very curious, not to say disastrous,
experience with the spirit of trustful confidence that was the
prevailing business characteristic of the older civilization.
According to the treaties which Japan had made with foreign nations,
no foreigner was allowed to buy land outside the treaty ports. As,
however, mission work was freely allowed by the government and
welcomed by many of the people in all parts of the land, and as it
became desirable to have continuous missionary work in several of the
interior towns, it seemed wise to locate missionaries in those places
and to provide suitable houses for them. In order to do this, land was
bought and the needed houses erected, and the title was necessarily
held in the names of apparently trustworthy native Christians. The
government was, of course, fully aware of what was being done and
offered no objection. It was well understood that the property was not
for the private ownership of the individual missionary, but was to be
held by the Christians for the use of the mission to which the
missionary belonged. For many years no questions were raised and all
moved along smoothly. The arrangement between the missionaries and the
Christian or Christians in whose names the property might be held was
entirely verbal, no document being of any legal value, to say nothing
of the fact that in those early days the mention of documentary
relationships would have greatly hurt the tender feelings of honor
which were so prominent a part of samurai character. The financial
relations were purely those of honor and trust.

Under this general method, large sums of money were expended by the
American Board for homes for its missionaries in various parts of
Japan, and especially in Kyoto. Here was the Doshisha, which grew from
a small English school and Evangelists' training class to a prosperous
university with fine buildings. Tens of thousands of dollars were put
into this institution, besides the funds needful for the land and the
houses for nine foreign families. An endowment was also raised, partly
in Japan, but chiefly in America. In a single bequest, Mr. Harris of
New London gave over one hundred thousand dollars for a School of
Science. It has been estimated that, altogether, the American Board
and its constituency have put into the Doshisha, including the
salaries of the missionary teachers, toward a million dollars.

In the early nineties the political skies were suddenly darkened. The
question of treaty revision loomed up black in the heavens. The
politicians of the land clamored for the absolute refusal of all right
of property ownership by foreigners. In their political furore they
soon began to attack the Japanese Christians who were holding the
property used by the various missions. They accused them of being
traitors to the country. A proposed law was drafted and presented in
the National Diet, confiscating all such property. The Japanese
holders naturally became nervous and desirous of severing the
relationships with the foreigners as soon as possible. In the case of
corporate ownership the trustees began to make assumptions of absolute
ownership, regardless of the moral claims of the donors of the funds.
In the earlier days of the trouble frequent conferences on the
question were held by the missionaries of the American Board with the
leading Christians of the Empire, and their constant statement was,
"Do not worry; trust us; we are samurai and will do nothing that is
not perfectly honorable." So often were these sentiments reiterated,
and yet so steadily did the whole management of the Doshisha move
further and further away from the honorable course, that finally the
"financial honor of the samurai" came to have an odor far from
pleasant. A deputation of four gentlemen, as representatives of the
American Board, came from America especially to confer with the
trustees as to the Christian principles of the institution, and the
moral claims of the Board, but wholly in vain. The administration of
the Doshisha became so distinctly non-Christian, to use no stronger
term, that the mission felt it impossible to co-operate longer with
the Doshisha trustees; the missionary members of the faculty
accordingly resigned. In order to secure exemption from the draft for
its students the trustees of the Doshisha abrogated certain clauses of
the constitution relating to the Christian character of the
institution, in spite of the fact that these clauses belonged to the
"unchangeable" part of the constitution which the trustees, on taking
office, had individually sworn to maintain. Again the Board sent out a
man, now a lawyer vested with full power to press matters to a final
issue. After months of negotiations with the trustees in regard to the
restoration of the substance of the abrogated clauses, without result,
he was on the point of carrying the case into the courts, when the
trustees decided to resign in a body. A new board of trustees has been
formed, who bid fair to carry on the institution in accord with the
wishes of its founders and benefactors, as expressed in the original
constitution. At one stage of the proceedings the trustees voted
magnanimously, as they appeared to think, to allow the missionaries of
the Board to live for fifteen years, rent free, in the foreign houses
connected with the Doshisha; this, because of the many favors it had
received from the Board! By this vote they maintained that they had
more than fulfilled every requirement of honor. That they were
consciously betraying the trust that had been reposed in them is not
for a moment to be supposed.

It would not be fair not to add that this experience in Kyoto does not
exemplify the universal Japanese character. There are many Japanese
who deeply deplore and condemn the whole proceeding. Some of the
Doshisha alumni have exerted themselves strenuously to have
righteousness done.

Passing now from the character of trustful confidence, we take up its
opposite, suspiciousness. The development of this quality is a natural
result of a military feudalism such as ruled Japan for hundreds of
years. Intrigue was in constant use when actual war was not being
waged. In an age when conflicts were always hand to hand, and the man
who could best deceive his enemy as to his next blow was the one to
carry off his head, the development of suspicion, strategy, and deceit
was inevitable. The most suspicious men, other things being equal,
would be the victors; they, with their families, would survive and
thus determine the nature of the social order. The more than two
hundred and fifty clans and "kuni," "clan territory," into which the
land was divided, kept up perpetual training in the arts of intrigue
and subtlety which are inevitably accompanied by suspicion.

Modern manifestations of this characteristic are frequent. Not a
cabinet is formed, but the question of its make-up is discussed from
the clannish standpoint. Even though it is now thirty years since the
centralizing policy was entered upon and clan distinctions were
effectually broken down, yet clan suspicion and jealousy is not dead.

The foreigner is impressed by the constant need of care in
conversation, lest he be thought to mean something more or other than
he says. When we have occasion to criticise anything in the Japanese,
we have found by experience that much more is inferred than is said.
Shortly after my arrival in Japan I was advised by one who had been in
the land many years to be careful in correcting a domestic or any
other person sustaining any relation to myself, to say not more than
one-tenth of what I meant, for the other nine-tenths would be
inferred. Direct and perfectly frank criticism and suggestion, such as
prevail among Anglo-Americans at least, seem to be rare among the
Japanese.

In closing, it is in order to note once again that the emotional
characteristics considered in this chapter, although customarily
thought to be deep-seated traits of race nature, are, nevertheless,
shown to be dependent on the character of the social order. Change the
order, and in due season corresponding changes occur in the national
character, a fact which would be impossible were that character
inherent and essential, passed on from generation to generation by the
single fact of biological heredity.




XI

JEALOUSY--REVENGE--HUMANE FEELINGS


According to the teachings of Confucius, jealousy is one of the seven
just grounds on which a woman may be divorced. In the "Greater
Learning for Women,"[M] occur the following words: "Let her never even
dream of jealousy. If her husband be dissolute, she must expostulate
with him, but never either render her countenance frightful or her
accents repulsive, which can only result in completely alienating her
husband from her, and making her intolerable in his eyes." "The five
worst maladies that afflict the female mind are indocility,
discontent, slander, jealousy, and silliness. Without any doubt, these
five maladies infest seven or eight out of every ten women, and it is
from these that arises the inferiority of women to men ... Neither
when she blames and accuses and curses innocent persons, nor when in
her jealousy of others she thinks to set herself up alone, does she
see that she is her own enemy, estranging others and incurring their
hatred."

The humiliating conditions to which women have been subjected in the
past and present social order, and to which full reference has been
made in previous chapters, give sufficient explanation of the jealousy
which is recognized as a marked, and, as might appear, inevitable
characteristic of Japanese women. Especially does this seem inevitable
when it is remembered how slight is their hold on their husbands, on
whose faithfulness their happiness so largely depends. Only as this
order changes and the wife secures a more certain place in the home,
free from the competition of concubines and harlots and dancing girls,
can we expect the characteristic to disappear. That it will do so
under such conditions, there is no reason to question. Already there
are evidences that in homes where the husband and the wife are both
earnest Christians, and where each is confident of the loyalty of the
other, jealousy is as rare as it is in Christian lands.

But is jealousy a characteristic limited to women? or is it not also a
characteristic of men? I am assured from many quarters that men also
suffer from it. The jealousy of a woman is aroused by the fear that
some other woman may supplant her in the eyes of her husband; that of
a man by the fear that some man may supplant him in rank or influence.
Marital jealousy of men seems to be rare. Yet I heard not long since
of a man who was so afraid lest some man might steal his wife's
affections that he could not attend to his business, and finally,
after three months of married wretchedness, he divorced her. A year
later he married her again, but the old trouble reappeared, and so he
divorced her a second time. If marital jealousy is less common among
men than among women, the explanation is at hand in the lax moral
standard for man. The feudal order of society, furthermore, was
exactly the soil in which to develop masculine jealousy. In such a
society ambition and jealousy go hand in hand. Wherever a man's rise
in popularity and influence depends on the overthrow of someone
already in possession, jealousy is natural. Connected with the spirit
of jealousy is that of revenge. Had we known Japan only during her
feudal days, we should have pronounced the Japanese exceedingly
revengeful. Revenge was not only the custom, it was also the law of
the land and the teaching of moralists. One of the proverbs handed
down from the hoary past is: "Kumpu no ada to tomo ni ten we
itadakazu." "With the enemy of country, or father, one cannot live
under the same heaven." The tales of heroic Japan abound in stories of
revenge. Once when Confucius was asked about the doctrine of Lao-Tse
that one should return good for evil, he replied, "With what then
should one reward good? The true doctrine is to return good for good,
and evil with justice." This saying of Confucius has nullified for
twenty-four hundred years that pearl of truth enunciated by Lao-Tse,
and has caused it to remain an undiscovered diamond amid the rubbish
of Taoism. By this judgment Confucius sanctified the rough methods of
justice adopted in a primitive order of society. His dictum peculiarly
harmonized with the militarism of Japan. Being, then, a recognized
duty for many hundred years, it would be strange indeed were not
revengefulness to appear among the modern traits of the Japanese.

But the whole order of society has been transformed. Revenge is now
under the ban of the state, which has made itself responsible for the
infliction of corporal punishment on individual transgressors. As a
result conspicuous manifestations of the revengeful spirit have
disappeared, and, may we not rightly say, even the spirit itself? The
new order of society leaves no room for its ordinary activity; it
furnishes legal methods of redress. The rapid change in regard to this
characteristic gives reason for thinking that if the industrial and
social order could be suitably adjusted, and the conditions of
individual thought and life regulated, this, and many other evil
traits of human character, might become radically changed in a short
time. Intelligent Christian Socialism is based on this theory and
seems to have no little support for its position.

Are Japanese cruel or humane? The general impression of the casual
tourist doubtless is that they are humane. They are kind to children
on the streets, to a marked degree; the jinrikisha runners turn out
not only for men, women, and children, but even for dogs. The
patience, too, of the ordinary Japanese under trying circumstances is
marked; they show amazing tolerance for one another's failings and
defects, and their mutual helpfulness in seasons of distress is often
striking. To one traveling through New Japan there is usually little
that will strike the eye as cruel.

But the longer one lives in the country, the more is he impressed with
certain aspects of life which seem to evince an essentially
unsympathetic and inhumane disposition. I well remember the shock I
received when I discovered, not far from my home in Kumamoto, an
insane man kept in a cage. He was given only a slight amount of
clothing, even though heavy frost fell each night. Food was given him
once or twice a day. He was treated like a wild animal, not even being
provided with bedding. This is not an exceptional instance, as might,
perhaps, at first be supposed. The editor of the _Japan Mail_, who has
lived in Japan many years, and knows the people well, says: "Every
foreigner traveling or residing in Japan must have been shocked from
time to time by the method of treating lunatics. Only a few months ago
an imbecile might have been seen at Hakone confined in what was
virtually a cage, where, from year's end to year's end, he received
neither medical assistance nor loving tendance, but was simply fed
like a wild beast in a menagerie. We have witnessed many such sights
with horror and pity. Yet humane Japanese do not seem to think of
establishing asylums where these unhappy sufferers can find refuge.
There is only one lunatic asylum in Tokyo. It is controlled by the
municipality, its accommodation is limited, and its terms place it
beyond the reach of the poor." And the amazing part is that such
sights do not seem to arouse the sentiment of pity in the Japanese.

The treatment accorded to lepers is another significant indication of
the lack of sympathetic and humane sentiments among the people at
large. For ages they have been turned from home and house and
compelled to wander outcasts, living in the outskirt of the villages
in rude booths of their own construction, and dependent on their daily
begging, until a wretched death gives them relief from a more wretched
life. So far as I have been able to learn, the opening of hospitals
for lepers did not take place until begun by Christians in recent
times. This casting out of leper kindred was not done by the poor
alone, but by the wealthy also, although I do hot affirm or suppose
that the practice was universal. I am personally acquainted with the
management of the Christian Leper Hospital in Kumamoto, and the sad
accounts I have heard of the way in which lepers are treated by their
kindred would seem incredible, were they not supported by the
character of my informants, and by many other facts of a kindred
nature.

A history of Japan was prepared by Japanese scholars under appointment
from the government and sent to the Columbian Exposition in 1893; it
makes the following statement, already referred to on a previous page:
"Despite the issue of several proclamations ... people were governed
by such strong aversion to the sight of sickness that travelers were
often left to die by the roadside from thirst, hunger, or disease, and
householders even went to the length of thrusting out of doors and
abandoning to utter destitution servants who suffered from chronic
maladies.... Whenever an epidemic occurred, the number of deaths that
resulted was enormous."[N] This was the condition of things after
Buddhism, with its civilizing and humanizing influences, had been at
work in the land for about four hundred years, and Old Japan was at
the height of her glory, whether considered from the standpoint of her
government, her literature, her religious development, or her art.

Of a period some two hundred years earlier, it is stated that, by the
assistance of the Sovereign, Buddhism established a charity hospital
in Nara, "where the poor received medical treatment and drugs gratis,
and an asylum was founded for the support of the destitute. Measures
were also taken to rescue foundlings, and, in general, to relieve
poverty and distress" (p. 92). The good beginning made at that time
does not seem to have been followed up. As nearly as I can make out,
relying on the investigations of Rev. J.H. Pettee and Mr. Ishii, there
are to-day in Japan fifty orphan asylums, of which eleven are of
non-Christian, and thirty-nine of Christian origin, support, and
control. Of the non-Christian, five are in Osaka, two in Tokyo, four
in Kyoto, and one each in Nagoya, Kumamoto, and Matsuye. Presumably
the majority of these are in the hands of Buddhists. Of the Christian
asylums twenty are Roman Catholic and nineteen are Protestant. It is a
noteworthy fact that in this form of philanthropy and religious
activity, as in so many others, Christians are the pioneers and
Buddhists are the imitators. In a land where Buddhism has been so
effective as to modify the diet of the nation, leading them in
obedience to the doctrines of Buddha, as has been stated, to give up
eating animal food, it is exceedingly strange that the people
apparently have no regard for the pain of living animals. Says the
editor of the _Mail_ in the article already quoted: "They will not
interfere to save a horse from the brutality of its driver, and they
will sit calmly in a jinrikisha while its drawer, with throbbing heart
and straining muscles, toils up a steep hill." How often have I seen
this sight! How the rider can endure it, I cannot understand, except
it be that revolt at cruelty and sympathy with suffering do not stir
within his heart. Of course, heartless individuals are not rare in the
West also. I am speaking here, however, not of single individuals, but
of general characteristics.

But a still more conspicuous evidence of Japanese deficiency of
sympathy is the use, until recently, of public torture. It was the
theory of Japanese jurisprudence that no man should be punished, even
though proved guilty by sufficient evidence, until he himself
confessed his guilt; consequently, on the flimsiest evidence, and even
on bare suspicion, he was tortured until the desired confession was
extracted. The cruelty of the methods employed, we of the nineteenth
century cannot appreciate. Some foreigner tells how the sight of
torture which he witnessed caused him to weep, while the Japanese
spectators stood by unmoved. The methods of execution were also
refined devices of torture. Townsend Harris says that crucifixion was
performed as follows: "The criminal is tied to a cross with his arms
and legs stretched apart as wide as possible; then a spear is thrust
through the body, entering just under the bottom of the shoulder blade
on the left side, and coming out on the right side, just by the
armpit. Another is then thrust through in a similar manner from the
right to the left side. The executioner endeavors to avoid the heart
in this operation. The spears are thrust through in this manner until
the criminal expires, but his sufferings are prolonged as much as
possible. Shinano told me that a few years ago a very strong man lived
until the eleventh spear had been thrust through him."

From these considerations, which might be supported by a multitude of
illustrations, we conclude that in the past there has certainly been a
great amount of cruelty exhibited in Japan, and that even to this day
there is in this country far less sympathy for suffering, whether
animal or human, than is felt in the West.

But we must not be too quick to jump to the conclusion that in this
regard we have discovered an essential characteristic of the Japanese
nature. With reference to the reported savagery displayed by Japanese
troops at Port Arthur, it has been said and repeated that you have
only to scratch the Japanese skin to find the Tartar, as if the recent
development of human feelings were superficial, and his real character
were exhibited in his most cruel moments. To get a true view of the
case let us look for a few moments at some other parts of the world,
and ask ourselves a few questions.

How long is it since the Inquisition was enforced in Europe? Who can
read of the tortures there inflicted without shuddering with horror?
It is not necessary to go back to the times of the Romans with their
amphitheaters and gladiators, and with their throwing of Christians to
wild animals, or to Nero using Christians as torches in his garden.
How long is it since witches were burned, not only in Europe by the
thousand, but in enlightened and Christian New England? although it is
true that the numbers there burned were relatively few and the reign
of terror brief. How long is it since slaves were feeling the lash
throughout the Southern States of our "land of freedom"? How long is
it since fiendish mobs have burned or lynched the objects of their
rage? How long is it since societies for preventing cruelty to animals
and to children were established in England and America? Is it not a
suggestive fact that it was needful to establish them and that it is
still needful to maintain them? The fact is that the highly developed
humane sense which is now felt so strongly by the great majority of
people in the West is a late development, and is not yet universal. It
is not for us to boast, or even to feel superior to the Japanese,
whose opportunities for developing this sentiment have been limited.

Furthermore, in regard to Japan, we must not overlook certain facts
which show that Japan has made gradual progress in the development of
the humane feelings and in the legal suppression of cruelty. The Nihon
Shoki records that, on the death of Yamato Hiko no Mikoto, his
immediate retainers were buried alive in a standing position around
the grave, presumably with the heads alone projecting above the
surface of the ground. The Emperor Suijin Tenno, on hearing the
continuous wailing day after day of the slowly dying retainers, was
touched with pity and said that it was a dreadful custom to bury with
the master those who had been most faithful to him when alive. And he
added that an evil custom, even though ancient, should not be
followed, and ordered it to be abandoned. A later record informs us
that from this time arose the custom of burying images in the place of
servants. According to the ordinary Japanese chronology, this took
place in the year corresponding to 1 B.C. The laws of Ieyasu (1610
A.D.) likewise condemn this custom as unreasonable, together with the
custom in accordance with which the retainers committed suicide upon
the master's death. These same laws also refer to the proverb on
revenge, given in the third paragraph of this chapter, and add that
whoever undertakes thus to avenge himself or his father or mother or
lord or elder brother must first give notice to the proper office of
the fact and of the time within which he will carry out his intention;
without such a notice, the avenger will be considered a common
murderer. This provision was clearly a limitation of the law of
revenge. These laws of Ieyasu also describe the old methods of
punishing criminals, and then add: "Criminals are to be punished by
branding, or beating, or tying up, and, in capital cases, by spearing
or decapitation; but the old punishments of tearing to pieces and
boiling to death are not to be used." Torture was finally legally
abolished in Japan only as late as 1877.

It has already become quite clear that the prevalence of cruelty or of
humanity depends largely upon the social order that prevails. It is
not at all strange that cruelty, or, at least, lack of sympathy for
suffering in man or beast, should be characteristic of an order based
on constant hand-to-hand conflict. Still more may we expect to find a
great indifference to human suffering wherever the value of man as man
is slighted. Not until the idea of the brotherhood of man has taken
full possession of one's heart and thought does true sympathy spring
up; then, for the first time, comes the power of putting one's self in
a brother's place. The apparently cruel customs of primitive times, in
their treatment of the sick, and particularly of those suffering from
contagious diseases, is the natural, not to say necessary, result of
superstitious ignorance. Furthermore, it was often the only ready
means to prevent the spread of contagious or epidemic diseases.

In the treatment of the sick, the first prerequisite for the
development of tenderness is the introduction of correct ideas as to
the nature of disease and its proper treatment. As soon as this has
been effectually done, a great proportion of the apparent indifference
to human suffering passes away. The cruelty which is to-day so
universal in Africa needs but a changed social and industrial order to
disappear. The needed change has come to Japan. Physicians trained in
modern methods of medical practice are found all over the land. In
1894 there were 597 hospitals, 42,551 physicians, 33,921 nurses and
midwives, 2869 pharmacists, and 16,106 druggists, besides excellent
schools of pharmacy and medicine.[O]

It is safe to say that nearly all forms of active cruelty have
disappeared from Japan; some amount of active sympathy has been
developed, though, as compared to that of other civilized lands, it is
still small. But there can be no doubt that the rapid change which has
come over the people during the past thirty years is not a change in
essential innate character, but only in the social order. As soon as
the idea takes root that every man has a mission of mercy, and that
the more cruel are not at liberty to vent their barbarous feelings on
helpless creatures, whether man or beast, a strong uprising of humane
activity will take place which will demand the formation of societies
for the prevention of cruelty and for carrying active relief to the
distressed and wretched. Lepers will no longer need to eke out a
precarious living by exhibiting their revolting misery in public;
lunatics will no longer be kept in filthy cages and left with
insufficient care or clothing. The stream of philanthropy will rise
high, to be at once a blessing and a glory to a race that already has
shown itself in many ways capable of the highest ideals of the West.




XII

AMBITION--CONCEIT


Ambition is a conspicuous characteristic of New Japan. I have already
spoken of the common desire of her young men to become statesmen. The
stories of Neesima and other young Japanese who, in spite of
opposition and without money, worked their way to eminence and
usefulness, have fired the imagination of thousands of youths. They
think that all they need is to get to America, when their difficulties
will be at an end. They fancy that they have but to look around to
find some man who will support them while they study.

Not only individuals, but the people as a whole, have great ambitions.
Three hundred years ago the Taiko, Hideyoshi, the Napoleon of Japan,
and the virtual ruler of the Empire, planned, after subjugating Korea,
to conquer China and make himself the Emperor of the East. He thought
he could accomplish this in two years. During the recent war, it was
the desire of many to march on to Pekin. Frequent expression was given
to the idea that it is the duty of Japan to rouse China from her long
sleep, as America roused Japan in 1854. It is frequently argued, in
editorial articles and public speeches, that the Japanese are
peculiarly fitted to lead China along the path of progress, not only
indirectly by example, as they have been doing, but directly by
teaching, as foreigners have led Japan. "The Mission of Japan to the
Orient" is a frequent theme of public discourse. But national
ambitions do not rest here. It is not seldom asserted that in Japan a
mingling of the Occidental and Oriental civilizations is taking place
under such favorable conditions that, for the first time in history,
the better elements of both are being selected; and that before long
the world will sit to learn at her feet. The lofty ambition of a group
of radical Christians is to discover or create a new religion which
shall unite the best features of Oriental and Occidental religious
thought and experience. The religion of the future will be, not
Christianity, nor Buddhism, but something better than either, more
consistent, more profound, more universal; and this religion, first
developed in Japan, will spread to other lands and become the final
religion of the world.

A single curious illustration of the high-flying thoughts of the
people may well find mention here. When the Kumamoto Boys' School
divided over the arbitrary, tyrannical methods of their newly secured,
brilliant principal, already referred to in a previous chapter, the
majority of the trustees withdrew and at once established a new school
for boys. For some time they struggled for a name which should set
forth the principles for which the school stood, and finally they
fixed on that of "To-A Gakko." Translated into unpretentious English,
this means "Eastern Asia School"; the idea was that the school stood
for no narrow methods of education, and that its influence was to
extend beyond the confines of Japan. This interpretation is not an
inference, but was publicly stated oil various occasions. The school
began with twenty-five boys, if my memory is correct, and never
reached as many as fifty. In less than three years it died an untimely
death through lack of patronage.

The young men of the island of Kyushu, especially of Kumamoto and
Kagoshima provinces, are noted for their ambitious projects. The once
famous "Kumamoto Band" consisted entirely of Kyushu boys. Under the
masterful influence of Captain Jaynes those high-spirited sons of
samurai, who had come to learn foreign languages and science, in a
school founded to combat Christianity and to upbuild Buddhism, became
impressed with the immense superiority of foreign lands, which
superiority they were led to attribute to Christianity. They
accordingly espoused the Christian cause with great ardor, and, in
their compact with one another, agreed to work for the reform of
Japan. I have listened to many addresses by the Kumamoto schoolboys,
and I have been uniformly impressed with the political and national
tendencies of their thought.

Accompanying ambition is a group of less admirable qualities, such as
self-sufficiency and self-conceit. They are seldom manifested with
that coarseness which in the West we associate with them, for the
Japanese is usually too polished to be offensively obtrusive. He
seldom indulges in bluster or direct assertion, but is contented
rather with the silent assumption of superiority.

I heard recently of a slight, though capital, illustration of my
point. Two foreign gentlemen were walking through the town of Tadotsu
some years since and observed a sign in English which read
"Stemboots." Wondering what the sign could mean they inquired the
business of the place, and learning that it was a steamboat office,
they gave the clerk the reason for their inquiry, and at his request
made the necessary correction. A few days later, however, on their
return, they noticed that the sign had been re-corrected to
"Stem-boats," an assumption of superior knowledge on the part of some
tyro in English. The multitude of signboards in astonishing English,
in places frequented by English-speaking people, is one of the amusing
features of Japan. It would seem as if the shopkeepers would at least
take the pains to have the signs correctly worded and spelled, by
asking the help of some foreigner or competent Japanese. Yet they
assume that they know all that is needful.

Indications of perfect self-confidence crop out in multitudes of ways
far too numerous to mention. The aspiring ambition spoken of in the
immediately preceding pages is one indication of this characteristic.
Another is the readiness of fledglings to undertake responsibilities
far beyond them. Young men having a smattering of English, yet wholly
unable to converse, set up as teachers. Youths in school not
infrequently undertake to instruct their teachers as to what courses
of study and what treatment they should receive. Still more
conspicuous is the cool assumption of superiority evinced by so many
Japanese in discussing intellectual and philosophical problems. The
manner assumed is that of one who is complete master of the subject.
The silent contempt often poured on foreigners who attempt to discuss
these problems is at once amusing and illustrative of the
characteristic of which I am speaking.[P]

We turn next to inquire for the explanation of these characteristics.
Are they inherent traits of the race? Or are they the product of the
times? Doubtless the latter is the true explanation. It will be found
that those individuals in whom these characteristics appear are
descendants of the samurai. A small class of men freed from heavy
physical toil, given to literature and culture, ever depending on the
assumption of superiority for the maintenance of their place in
society and defending their assumption by the sword--such a class, in
such a social order, would develop the characteristics in question to
a high degree. Should we expect an immediate change of character when
the social order has been suddenly changed?

In marked contrast to the lofty assumptions of superiority which
characterized the samurai of Old Japan, was the equally marked
assumption of inferiority which characterized the rest of the people,
or nineteen-twentieths of the nation. I have already sufficiently
dwelt on this aspect of national character. I here recur to it merely
to enforce the truth that self-arrogation and self-abnegation,
haughtiness and humility, proud, high-handed, magisterial manners, and
cringing, obsequious obedience, are all elements of character that
depend on the nature of the social order. They are passed on from
generation to generation more by social than by biological heredity.
Both of these sets of contrasted characteristics are induced by a
full-fledged feudal system, and must remain for a time as a social
inheritance after that system has been overthrown, particularly if its
overthrow is sudden. In proportion as the principles of personal
rights and individual worth on the basis of manhood become realized
by the people and incorporated into the government and customs of the
land, will abnegating obsequiousness, as well as haughty lordliness,
be replaced by a straightforward manliness, in which men of whatever
grade of society will frankly face each other, eye to eye.

But what shall we say in regard to the assumption made by young Japan
in its attitude to foreigners? Are the assumptions wholly groundless?
Is the self-confidence unjustified? Far from it. When we study later
the intellectual elements of Japanese character, we shall see some
reasons for their feeling of self-reliance. The progress which the
nation has made in many lines within thirty years shows that it has
certain kinds of power and, consequently, some ground for
self-reliance. Furthermore, self-reliance, if fairly supported by
ability and zeal, is essential in the attainment of any end whatever.
Faint heart never won fair lady. Confidence in self is one form of
faith. No less of peoples than individuals is it true, that without
faith in themselves they cannot attain their goal. The impression of
undue self-confidence made by the Japanese may be owing partly to
their shortness of stature. It is a new experience for the West to see
a race of little people with large brains and large plans. Especially
does it seem strange and conceited for a people whose own civilization
is so belated to assume a role of such importance in the affairs of
the world. Yet we must learn to dissociate physical size from mental
or spiritual capacity. The future alone will disclose what Japanese
self-reliance and energy can produce.

The present prominence of this characteristic in Japan is still
further to be accounted for by her actual recent history. The
overthrow of the Shogunate was primarily the work of young men; the
introduction of almost all the sweeping reforms which have transformed
Japan has been the work of young men who, though but partly equipped
for their work, approached it with energy and perfect confidence, not
knowing enough perhaps to realize the difficulties they were
undertaking. They had to set aside the customs of centuries; to do
this required startling assumptions of superiority to their ancestors
and their immediate parents. The young men undertook to dispute and
doubt everything that stood in the way of national re-organization. In
what nation has there ever been such a setting aside of parental
teaching and ancestral authority? These heroic measures secured
results in which the nation glories. Is it strange, then, that the
same spirit should show itself in every branch of life, even in the
attitude of the people to the Westerners who have brought them the new
ways and ideas?

The Japanese, however, is not the only conceited nation. Indeed, it
would be near the truth to say that there is no people without this
quality. Certainly the American and English, French and German nations
cannot presume to criticise others. The reason why we think Japan
unique in this respect is that in the case of these Western nations we
know more of the grounds for national self-satisfaction than in the
case of Japan. Yet Western lands are, in many respects, truly
provincial to this very day, in spite of their advantages and
progress; the difficulty with most of them is that they do not
perceive it. The lack of culture that prevails among our working
classes is in some respects great. The narrow horizon still bounding
the vision of the average American or Briton is very conspicuous to
one who has had opportunities to live and travel in many lands. Each
country, and even each section of a country, is much inclined to think
that it has more nearly reached perfection than any other.

This phase of national and local feeling is interesting, especially
after one has lived in Japan a number of years and has had
opportunities to mingle freely with her people. For they, although
self-reliant and self-conceited, are at the same time surprisingly
ready to acknowledge that they are far behind the times. Their
open-mindedness is truly amazing. In describing the methods of land
tenure, of house-building, of farming, of local government, of
education, of moral instruction, of family life, indeed, of almost
anything in the West that has some advantageous feature, the remark
will be dropped incidentally that these facts show how uncivilized
Japan still is. In their own public addresses, if any custom is
attacked, the severest indictment that can be brought against it is
that it is uncivilized. In spite, therefore, of her self-conceit,
Japan is in a fairer way of making progress than many a Western
nation, because she is also so conscious of defects. A large section
of the nation has a passion for progress. It wishes to learn of the
good that foreign lands have attained, and to apply the knowledge in
such wise as shall fit most advantageously into the national life.
Although Japan is conceited, her conceit is not without reason, nor is
it to be attributed to her inherent race nature. It is manifestly due
to her history and social order past and present.




XIII

PATRIOTISM--APOTHEOSIS--COURAGE


No word is so dear to the patriotic Japanese as the one that leaps to
his lips when his country is assailed or maligned, "Yamato-Damashii."
In prosaic English this means "Japan Soul." But the native word has a
flavor and a host of associations that render it the most pleasing his
tongue can utter. "Yamato" is the classic name for that part of Japan
where the divinely honored Emperor, Jimmu Tenno, the founder of the
dynasty and the Empire, first established his court and throne.
"Damashii" refers to the soul, and especially to the noble qualities
of the soul, which, in Japan of yore, were synonymous with bravery,
the characteristic of the samurai. If, therefore, you wish to stir in
the native breast the deepest feelings of patriotism and courage, you
need but to call upon his "Yamato-Damashii."

There has been a revival in the use of this word during the last
decade. The old Japan-Spirit has been appealed to, and the watchword
of the anti-foreign reaction has been "Japan for the Japanese." Among
English-speaking and English-reading Japanese there has been a
tendency to give this term a meaning deeper and broader than the
historic usage, or even than the current usage, will bear. One
Japanese writer, for instance, defines the term as meaning, "a spirit
of loyalty to country, conscience, and ideal." An American writer
comes more nearly to the current usage in the definition of it as "the
aggressive and invincible spirit of Japan." That there is such a
spirit no one can doubt who has the slightest acquaintance with her
past or present history.

Concerning the recent rise of patriotism I have spoken elsewhere,
perhaps at sufficient length. Nor is it needful to present extensive
evidence for the statement that the Japanese have this feeling of
patriotism in a marked degree. One or two rather interesting items
may, however, find their place here.

The recent war with China was the occasion of focusing patriotism and
fanning it into flame. Almost every town street, and house, throughout
the Empire, was brilliantly decked with lanterns and flags, not on a
single occasion only, but continuously. Each reported victory, however
small, sent a thrill of delight throughout the nation. Month after
month this was kept up. In traveling through the land one would not
have fancied that war was in progress, but rather, that a
long-continued festival was being observed.

An incident connected with sending troops to Korea made a deep
impression on the nation. The Okayama Orphan Asylum under the
efficient management of its founder, Mr. Ishii, had organized the
older boys into a band, securing for them various kinds of musical
instruments. These they learned to use with much success. When the
troops were on the point of leaving, Mr. Ishii went with his band to
the port of Hiroshima, erected a booth, prepared places for heating
water, and as often as the regiments passed by, his little orphans
sallied forth with their teapots of hot tea for the refreshment of the
soldiers. Each regiment was also properly saluted, and if opportunity
offered, the little fellows played the national anthem, "Kimi-ga yo,"
which has been thus translated: "May Our Gracious Sovereign reign a
thousand years, reign till the little stone grow into a mighty rock,
thick velveted with ancient moss." And finally the orphans would raise
their shrill voices with the rhythmical national shout, "Tei-koku
Ban-zai, Tei-koku Ban-zai"; "Imperial-land, a myriad years,
Imperial-land, a myriad years." This thoughtful farewell was
maintained for the four or five days during which the troops were
embarking for the seat of war, well knowing that some would never
return, and that their children would be left fatherless even as were
these who saluted them. So deep was the impression made upon the
soldiers that many of them wept and many a bronzed face bowed in
loving recognition of the patriotism of these Christian boys. It is
said that the commander-in-chief of the forces himself gave the little
fellows the highest military salute in returning theirs.

Throughout the history of Japan, the aim of every rebellious clan or
general was first to get possession of the Emperor. Having done this,
the possession of the Imperial authority was unquestioned. Whoever was
opposed to the Emperor was technically called "Cho-teki," the enemy of
the throne, a crime as heinous as treason in the West. The existence
of this sentiment throughout the Empire is an interesting fact. For,
at the very same time, there was the most intense loyalty to the local
lord or "daimyo." This is a fine instance of a certain characteristic
of the Japanese of which I must speak more fully in another
connection, but which, for convenience, I term "nominality." It
accepts and, apparently at least, is satisfied with a nominal state of
affairs, which may be quite different from the real. The theoretical
aspect of a question is accepted without reference to the actual
facts. The real power may be in the hands of the general or of the
daimyo, but if authority nominally proceeds from the throne, the
theoretical demands are satisfied. The Japanese themselves describe
this state as "yumei-mujitsu." In a sense, throughout the centuries
there has been a genuine loyalty to the throne, but it has been of the
"yumei-mujitsu" type, apparently satisfied with the name only. In
recent times, however, there has been growing dissatisfaction with
this state of affairs. Some decades before Admiral Perry appeared
there were patriots secretly working against the Tokugawa Shogunate.
Called in Japanese "Kinnoka," they may be properly termed in English
"Imperialists." Their aim was to overthrow the Shogunate and restore
full and direct authority to the Emperor. Not a few lost their lives
because of their views, but these are now honored by the nation as
patriots.

There is a tendency among scholars to-day to magnify the patriotism
and loyalty of preceding ages, also to emphasize the dignity and
Imperial authority of the Emperor. The patriotic spirit is now so
strong that it blinds their eyes to many of the salient facts of
their history. Their patriotism is more truly a passion than an idea.
It is an emotion rather than a conception. It demands certain methods
of treatment for their ancient history that Western scholarship cannot
accept. It forbids any really critical research into the history of
the past, since it might cast doubt on the divine descent of the
Imperial line. It sums itself up in passionate admiration, not to say
adoration, of the Emperor. In him all virtues and wisdom abound. No
fault or lack in character can be attributed to him. I question if any
rulers have ever been more truly apotheosized by any nation than the
Emperors of Japan. The essence of patriotism to-day is devotion to the
person of the Emperor. It seems impossible for the people to
distinguish between the country and its ruler. He is the fountain of
authority. Lower ranks gain their right and their power from him
alone. Power belongs to the people only because, and in proportion as,
he has conferred it upon them. Even the Constitution has its authority
only because he has so determined. Should he at any time see fit to
change or withdraw it, it is exceedingly doubtful whether one word of
criticism or complaint would be publicly uttered, and as for forcible
opposition, of such a thing no one would dream.

Japanese patriotism has had some unique and interesting features. In
some marked respects it is different from that of lands in which
democratic thought has held sway. For 1500 years, under the military
social order, loyalty has consisted of personal attachment to the
lord. It has ever striven to idealize that lord. The "yumei-mujitsu"
characteristic has helped much in this idealizing process, by bridging
the chasm between the prosaic fact and the ideal. Now that the old
form of feudalism has been abruptly abolished, with its local lords
and loyalty, the old sentiment of loyalty naturally fixes itself on
the Emperor. Patriotism has perhaps gained intensity in proportion as
it has become focalized. The Emperor is reported to be a man of
commanding ability and good sense. It is at least true that he has
shown wisdom in selecting his councilors. There is general agreement
that he is not a mere puppet in the hands of his advisers, but that he
exercises a real and direct influence on the government of the day.
During the late war with China it was currently reported that from
early morning until late at night, week after week and month after
month, he worked upon the various matters of business that demanded
his attention. No important move or decision was made without his
careful consideration and final approval. These and other noble
qualities of the present Emperor have, without doubt, done much toward
transferring the loyalty of the people from the local daimyo to the
national throne.

An event in the political world has recently occurred which
illustrates pointedly the statements just made in regard to the
enthusiastic loyalty of the people toward the Emperor. In spite of the
fact that the national finances are in a distressing state of
confusion, and notwithstanding the struggle which has been going on
between successive cabinets and political parties, the former
insisting on, and the latter refusing, any increase in the land tax,
no sooner was it suggested by a small political party, to make a
thank-offering to the Emperor of 20,000,000 yen out of the final
payment of the war indemnity lately received, than the proposal was
taken up with zeal by both of the great and utterly hostile political
parties, and immediately by both houses of the Diet. The two reasons
assigned were, "First, that the victory over China would never have
been won, nor the indemnity obtained, had not the Emperor been the
victorious, sagacious Sovereign that he is, and that, therefore, it is
only right that a portion of the indemnity should be offered to him;
secondly, that His Majesty is in need of money, the allowance granted
by the state for the maintenance of the Imperial Household being
insufficient, in view of the greatly enhanced prices of commodities
and the large donations constantly made by His Majesty for charitable
purposes."[Q] This act of the Diet appeals to the sentiment of the
people as the prosaic, business-like method of the Occident would not
do. The significance of the appropriation made by the Diet will be
better realized if it is borne in mind that the post-bellum programme
for naval and military expansion which was adopted in view of the
large indemnity (being, by the way, 50,000,000 yen), already calls for
an expenditure in excess of the indemnity. Either the grand programme
must be reduced, or new funds be raised, yet the leading political
parties have been absolutely opposed to any substantial increase of
the land tax, which seems to be the only available source of increase
even to meet the current expenses of the government, to say nothing of
the post-bellum programme. So has a burst of sentiment buried all
prudential considerations. This is a species of loyalty that
Westerners find hard to appreciate. To them it would seem that the
first manifestation of loyalty would be to provide the Emperor's
Cabinet and executive officers with the necessary funds for current
expenses; that the second would be to give the Emperor an allowance
sufficient to meet his actual needs, and the third,--if the funds held
out,--to make him a magnificent gift. This sentimental method of
loyalty to the Emperor, however, is matched by many details of common
life. A sentimental parting gift or speech will often be counted as
more friendly than thoroughly business-like relations. The prosaic
Occidental discounts all sentiment that has not first satisfied the
demands of business and justice. Such a standard, however, seems to be
repugnant to the average Japanese mind.

The theory that all authority resides in the Emperor is also enforced
by recent history. For the constitution was not wrung from an
unwilling ruler by an ambitious people, but was conferred by the
Emperor of his own free will, under the advice of his enlightened and
progressive councilors.

As an illustration of some of the preceding statements let me quote
from a recent article by Mr. Yamaguchi, Professor of History in the
Peeresses' School and Lecturer in the Imperial Military College. After
speaking of the abolition of feudalism and the establishment of a
constitutional monarchy, he goes on to say: "But we must not suppose
that the sovereign power of the state has been transferred to the
Imperial Diet. On the contrary, it is still in the hands of the
Emperor as before.... The functions of the government are retained in
the Emperor's own hands, who merely delegates them to the Diet, the
Government (Cabinet), and the Judiciary, to exercise the same in his
name. The present form of government is the result of the history of a
country which has enjoyed an existence of many centuries. Each country
has its own peculiar characteristics which differentiate it from
others. Japan, too, has her history, different from that of other
countries. Therefore we ought not to draw comparisons between Japan
and other countries, as if the same principles applied to all
indiscriminately. The Empire of Japan has a history of 3000 [!] years,
which fact distinctly marks out our nationality as unique. The
monarch, in the eyes of the people, is not merely on a par with an
aristocratic oligarchy which rules over the inferior masses, or a few
nobles who equally divide the sovereignty among themselves. According
to our ideas, the monarch reigns over and governs the country in his
own right, and not by virtue of rights conferred by the
constitution.... Our Emperor possesses real sovereignty and also
exercises it. He is quite different from other rulers who possess but
a partial sovereignty.... He has inherited the rights of sovereignty
from his ancestors. Thus it is quite legitimate to think that the
rights of sovereignty exist in the Emperor himself.... The Empire of
Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors
unbroken for ages eternal. (Constitution, Art. LXXIII.) ... The
sovereign power of the state cannot be dissociated from the Imperial
Throne. It lasts forever, along with the Imperial line of succession,
unbroken for ages eternal. If the Imperial house cease to exist, the
Empire falls."

In a land where adopted sons are practically equivalent to lineal
descendants (another instance of the "yumei-mujitsu" type of thought),
and where marriage is essentially polygamous, and where the
"yumei-mujitsu" spirit has allowed the sovereignty to be usurped in
fact, though it may not be in name, it is not at all wonderful that
the nation can boast of a longer line of Emperors than any other land.
But when monogamy becomes the rule in Japan, as it doubtless will some
day, and if lineal descent should be considered essential to
inheritance, as in the Occident, it is not at all likely that the
Imperial line will maintain itself unbroken from father to son
indefinitely. Although the present Emperor has at least five
concubines besides his wife, the Empress, and has had, prior to 1896,
no less than thirteen children by them, only two of these are still
living, both of them the offspring of his concubines; one of these is
a son born in 1879, proclaimed the heir in 1887, elected Crown Prince
in 1889, and married in 1900; he is said to be in delicate health; the
second child is a daughter born in 1890. Since 1896 several children
have been born to the Emperor and two or three have died, so that at
present writing there are but four living children. These are all
offspring of concubines.[R]

In speaking, however, of the Japanese apotheosis of their Emperor, we
must not forget how the "divine right of kings" has been a popular
doctrine, even in enlightened England, until the eighteenth century,
and is not wholly unknown in other lands at the present day. Only in
recent times has the real source of sovereignty been discovered by
historical and political students. That the Japanese are not able to
pass at one leap from the old to the new conception in regard to this
fundamental element of national authority is not at all strange. Past
history, together with that which is recent, furnishes a satisfactory
explanation for the peculiar nature of Japanese patriotism. This is
clearly due to the nature of the social order.

A further fact in this connection is that, in a very real sense, the
existence of Japan as a unified nation has depended on apotheosis. It
is the method that all ancient nations have adopted at one stage of
their social development for expressing their sense of national unity
and the authority of national law. In that stage of social development
when the common individual counts for nothing, the only possible
conception of the authority of law is that it proceeds from a superior
being--the highest ruler. And in order to secure the full advantage of
authority, the supreme ruler must be raised to the highest possible
pinnacle, must be apotheosized. That national laws should be the
product of the unvalued units which compose the nation was unthinkable
in an age when the worth of the individual was utterly unrecognized.
The apotheosis of the Emperor was neither an unintelligible nor an
unreasonable practice. But now that an individualistic, democratic
organization of society has been introduced resting on a principle
diametrically opposed to that of apotheosis, a struggle of most
profound importance has been inaugurated. Does moral or even national
authority really reside in the Emperor? The school-teachers are
finding great difficulty in teaching morality as based exclusively on
the Imperial Edict. The politicians of Japan are not content with
leaving all political and state authority to the Emperor. Not long ago
(June, 1898), for the first time in Japan, a Cabinet acknowledging
responsibility to a political party took the place of one
acknowledging responsibility only, to the Emperor. For this end the
politicians have been working since the first meeting of the national
Diet. Which principle is to succeed, apotheosis and absolute Imperial
sovereignty, or individualism with democratic sovereignty? The two
cannot permanently live together. The struggle is sure to be intense,
for the question of authority, both political and moral, is inevitably
involved.

The parallel between Japanese and Roman apotheosis is interesting. I
can present it no better than by quoting from that valuable
contribution to social and moral problems, "The Genesis of the Social
Conscience," by Prof. H.S. Nash: "Yet Rome with all her greatness
could not outgrow the tribal principle.... We find something that
reveals a fundamental fault in the whole system. It is the apotheosis
of the Emperors. The process of apotheosis was something far deeper
than servility in the subject conspiring with vanity in the ruler. It
was a necessity of the state. There was no means of insuring the
existence of the state except religion. In the worship of the Caesars
the Empire reverenced its own law. There was no other way in which
pagan Rome could guarantee the gains she had made for civilization.
Yet the very thing that was necessary to her was in logic her
undoing.... The worship of the Emperor undid the definition of
equality the logic of the Empire demanded. Again apotheosis violated
the divine unity of humanity upon which alone the Empire could
securely build."[S]

That the final issue of Japan's experience will be like that of Rome I
do not believe. For her environment is totally different. But the same
struggle of the two conflicting principles is already on. Few, even
among the educated classes, realize its nature or profundity. The
thinkers who adhere to the principle of apotheosis do so admittedly
because they see no other way in which to secure authority for law,
whether political or moral. Here we see the importance of those
conceptions of God, of law, of man, which Christianity alone can give.

From patriotism we naturally pass to the consideration of courage.
Nothing was more prized and praised in Old Japan. In those days it was
the deliberate effort of parents and educators to develop courage in
children. Many were their devices for training the young in bravery.
Not content with mere precept, they were sent alone on dark stormy
nights to cemeteries, to houses reputed to be haunted, to dangerous
mountain peaks, and to execution grounds. Many deeds were required of
the young whose sole aim was the development of courage and daring.
The worst name you could give to a samurai was "koshinuke" (coward).
Many a feud leading to a fatal end has resulted from the mere use of
this most hated of all opprobrious epithets. The history of Japan is
full of heroic deeds. I well remember a conversation with a son of the
old samurai type, who told me, with the blood tingling in his veins,
of bloody deeds of old and the courage they demanded. He remarked
incidentally that, until one had slain his first foe, he was ever
inclined to tremble. But once the deed had been done, and his sword
had tasted the life blood of a man, fear was no more. He also told me
how for the sake of becoming inured to ghastly sights under
nerve-testing circumstances, the sons of samurai were sent at night to
the execution grounds, there, by faint moonlight to see, stuck on
poles, the heads of men who had been recently beheaded.

The Japanese emotion of courage is in some respects peculiar. At least
it appears to differ from that of the Anglo-Saxon. A Japanese seems to
lose all self-control when the supreme moment comes; he throws himself
into the fray with a frenzied passion and a fearless madness allied to
insanity. Such is the impression I have gathered from the descriptions
I have heard and the pictures I have seen. Even the pictures of the
late war with China give evidence of this.

But their courage is not limited to fearlessness in the face of death;
it extends to complete indifference to pain. The honorable method by
which a samurai who had transgressed some law or failed in some point
of etiquette, might leave this world is well known to all, the
"seppuku," the elegant name for the vulgar term "hara-kiri" or
"belly-cutting." To one who is sensitive to tales of blood,
unexpurgated Japanese history must be a dreadful thing. The vastness
of the multitudes who died by their own hands would be incredible,
were there not ample evidence of the most convincing nature. It may be
said with truth that suicide became apotheosized, a condition that I
suppose cannot be said to have prevailed in any other land.

In thus describing the Japanese sentiment in regard to "seppuku,"
there is, however, some danger of misrepresenting it. "Seppuku" itself
was not honored, for in the vast majority of cases those who performed
it were guilty of some crime or breach of etiquette. And not
infrequently those who were condemned to commit "seppuku" were
deficient in physical courage; in such cases, some friend took hold of
the victim's hand and forced him to cut himself. Such cowards were
always despised. To be condemned to commit "seppuku" was a disgrace,
but it was much less of a disgrace than to be beheaded as a common
man, for it permitted the samurai to show of what stuff he was made.
It should be stated further that in the case of "seppuku," as soon as
the act of cutting the abdomen had been completed, always by a single
rapid stroke, someone from behind would, with a single blow, behead
the victim. The physical agony of "seppuku" was, therefore, very
brief, lasting but a few seconds.

I can do no better than quote in this connection a paragraph from the
"Religions of Japan" by W.E. Griffis:

     "From the prehistoric days when the custom of 'Junshi,' or dying
     with the master, required the interment of living retainers with
     their dead lord, down through all the ages to the Revolution of
     1868, when at Sendai and Aidzu scores of men and boys opened their
     bowels, and mothers slew their infant sons and cut their own
     throats, there has been flowing a river of suicides' blood having
     its springs in devotion of retainers to masters, and of soldiers to
     a lost cause.... Not only a thousand, but thousands of thousands of
     soldiers hated their parents, wife, child, friend, in order to be
     disciples to the supreme loyalty. They sealed their creed by
     emptying their own veins.... The common Japanese novels read like
     records of slaughter-houses. No Molech or Shivas won more victims
     to his shrine than has this idea of Japanese loyalty, which is so
     beautiful in theory but so hideous in practice ... Could the
     statistics of the suicides during this long period be collected,
     their publication would excite in Christendom the utmost
     incredulity."[T]

I well remember the pride, which almost amounted to glee, with which a
young blood gave me the account of a mere boy, perhaps ten or twelve
years old, who cut his bowels in such a way that the deed was not
quite complete, and then tying his "obi" or girdle over it, walked
into the presence of his mother, explained the circumstances which
made it a point of honor that he should commit "seppuku," and
forthwith untied his "obi" and died in her presence.

These are the ideals of courage and loyalty that have been held up
before Japanese youth for centuries. Little comment is needful. From
the evolutionary standpoint, it is relatively easy to understand the
rise of these ideas and practices. It is clear that they depend
entirely on the social order. With the coming in of the Western social
order, feudal lords and local loyalty and the carrying of swords were
abolished. Are the Japanese any less courageous now than they were
thirty years ago? The social order has changed and the ways of showing
courage have likewise changed. That is all that need be said.

Are we to say that the Japanese are more courageous than other
peoples? Although no other people have manifested such phenomena as
the Japanese in regard to suicide for loyalty, yet any true
appreciation of Western peoples will at once dispel the idea that they
lack courage. Manifestations of courage differ according to the nature
of the social order, but no nation could long maintain itself, to say
nothing of coming into existence, without a high degree of this
endowment.

But Japanese courage is not entirely of the physical order, although
that is the form in which it has chiefly shown itself thus far. The
courage of having and holding one's own convictions is known in Japan
as elsewhere. There has been a long line of martyrs. During the
decades after the introduction of Buddhism, there was such opposition
that it required much courage for converts to hold to their beliefs.
So, too, at the time of the rise of the new Buddhist sects, there was
considerable persecution, especially with the rise of the Nichiren
Shu. And when the testing time of Christianity came, under the edict
of the Tokugawas by which it was suppressed, tens of thousands were
found who preferred death to the surrender of their faith. In recent
times, too, much courage has been shown by the native Christians.

As an illustration is the following: When an eminent American teacher
of Japanese youth returned to Japan after a long absence, his former
pupils gathered around him with warm admiration. They had in the
interval of his absence become leaders among the trustees and faculty
of the most prosperous Christian college in Japan. He was accordingly
invited to deliver a course of lectures in the Chapel. It was
generally known that he was no longer the earnest Christian that he
had once been, when, as teacher in an interior town, he had inspired a
band of young men who became Christians under his teaching and a power
for good throughout the land. But no one was prepared to hear such
extreme denunciations of Christianity and Christian missions and
missionaries as constituted the substance of his lectures. At first
the matter was passed over in silence. But, by the end of the second
lecture, the missionaries entered a protest, urging that the Christian
Chapel should not again be used for such lectures. The faculty,
however, were not ready to criticise their beloved teacher. The third
lecture proved as abusive as the others; the speaker seemed to have no
sense of propriety. A glimpse of his thought, and method of expression
may be gained from a single sentence: "I have been commissioned,
gentlemen, by Jesus Christ, to tell you that there is no such thing as
a soul or a future life." Although the missionary members of the
faculty urged it, the Japanese members, most of whom were his former
pupils, were unwilling to take any steps whatever to prevent the
continuation of the blasphemous lectures. The students of the
institution accordingly held a mass-meeting, in which the matter was
discussed, and it was decided to inform the speaker that the students
did not care to hear any more such lectures. The question then arose
as to who would deliver the resolution. There was general hesitancy,
and anyone who has seen or known the lecturer, and has heard him
speak, can easily understand this feeling; for he is a large man with
a most impressive and imperious manner. The young man, however, who
had perhaps been most active in agitating the matter, and who had
presented the resolution to the meeting, volunteered to go. He is
slight and rather small, even for a Japanese. Going to the home of the
lecturer, he delivered calmly the resolution of the students. To the
demand as to who had drawn up and presented the resolution to the
meeting, the reply was: "I, sir." That ended the conversation, but not
the matter. From that day the idolized teacher was gradually lowered
from his pedestal. But the moral courage of the young man who could
say in his enraged presence, "I, sir," has not been forgotten. Neither
has that of the young man who had acted as interpreter for the first
lecture; not only did he decline to act in that capacity any longer,
but, taking the first public opportunity, at the chapel service the
following day, which proved to be Sunday, he went to the platform and
asked forgiveness of God and of men that he had uttered such language
as he had been compelled to use in his translating. Here, too, was
moral courage of no mean order.




XIV

FICKLENESS--STOLIDITY--STOICISM


A frequent criticism of the Japanese is that they are fickle; that
they run from one fad to another, from one idea to another, quickly
tiring of each in turn. They are said to lack persistence in their
amusements no less than in the most serious matters of life.

None will deny the element of truth in this charge. In fact, the
Japanese themselves recognize that of late their progress has been by
"waves," and not a few lament it. A careful study of school attendance
will show that it has been subject to alternate waves of popularity
and disfavor. Private schools glorying in their hundreds of pupils
have in a short time lost all but a few score. In 1873 there was a
passion for rabbits, certain varieties of which were then for the
first time introduced into Japan. For a few months these brought
fabulous prices, and became a subject of the wildest speculation. In
1874-75 cock-fighting was all the rage. Foreign waltzing and gigantic
funerals were the fashion one year, while wrestling was the fad at
another time, even the then prime minister, Count Kuroda, taking the
lead. But the point of our special interest is as to whether
fickleness is an essential element of Japanese character, and so
dominant that wherever the people may be and whatever their
surroundings, they will always be fickle; or whether this trait is due
to the conditions of their recent history. Let us see.

Prof. Basil H. Chamberlain says, "Japan stood still so long that she
has to move quickly and often now to make up for lost time." This
states the case pretty well. Had we known Japan only through her
Tokugawa period, the idea of fickleness would not have occurred to us;
on the contrary, the dominant impression would have been that of the
permanence and fixity of her life and customs. This quality or
appearance of fickleness is, then, a modern trait, due to the
extraordinary circumstances in which Japan finds herself. The
occurrence of wave after wave of fresh fashions and fads is neither
strange nor indicative of an essentially fickle disposition. Glancing
below the surface for a moment, we shall see that there is an
earnestness of purpose which is the reverse of fickle.

What nation, for example, ever voluntarily set itself to learn the
ways and thoughts and languages of foreign nations as persistently as
Japan? That there has been fluctuation of intensity is not so
surprising as that, through a period of thirty years, she has kept
steadily at it. Tens of thousands of her young men are now, able to
read the English language with some facility; thousands are also able
to read German and French. Foreign languages are compulsory in all the
advanced schools. A regulation going into force in September, 1900,
requires the study of two foreign languages. This has been done at a
cost of many hundred thousands of dollars. There has been a fairly
permanent desire and effort to learn all that the West has to teach.
The element of fickleness is to be found chiefly in connection with
the methods rather than in connection with the ends to be secured.
From the moment when Japan discovered that the West had sources of
power unknown to herself, and indispensable if she expected to hold
her own with the nations of the world, the aim and end of all her
efforts has been to master the secrets of that power. She has seen
that education is one important means. That she should stumble in the
adoption of educational methods is not strange. The necessary
experience is being secured. But for a lesson of this sort, more than
one generation of experience is required of a nation. For some time to
come Japan is sure to give signs of unsteadiness, of lack of perfect
balance.

A pitiful sight in Japan is that of boys not more than five or six
years of age pushing or pulling with all their might at heavily loaded
hand-carts drawn by their parents. Yet this is typical of one aspect
of Japanese civilization. The work is largely done by young people
under thirty, and vast multitudes of the workers are under twenty
years of age. This is true not only of menial labor, but also in
regard to labor involving more or less responsibility. In the post
offices, for instance, the great majority of the clerks are mere boys.
In the stores one rarely sees a man past middle age conducting the
business or acting as clerk. Why are the young so prominent? Partly
because of the custom of "abdication." As "family abdication" is
frequent, it has a perceptible effect on the general character of the
nation, and accounts in part for rash business ventures and other
signs of impetuosity and unbalanced judgment. Furthermore, under the
new civilization, the older men have become unfitted to do the
required work. The younger and more flexible members of the rising
generation can quickly adjust themselves to the new conditions, as in
the schools, where the older men, who had received only the regular
training in Chinese classics, were utterly incompetent as teachers of
science. Naturally, therefore, except for instruction in these
classics, the common-school teachers, during the earlier decades, were
almost wholly young boys. The extreme youthfulness of school-teachers
has constantly surprised me. In the various branches of government
this same phenomenon is equally common. Young men have been pushed
forward into positions with a rapidity and in numbers unknown in the
West, and perhaps unknown in any previous age in Japan.

The rise and decline of the Christian Church in Japan has been
instanced as a sign of the fickleness of the people. It is a mistaken
instance, for there are many other causes quite sufficient to account
for the phenomenon in question. Let me illustrate by the experience of
an elderly Christian. He had been brought to Christ through the
teachings of a young man of great brilliancy, whose zeal was not
tempered with full knowledge--which, however, was not strange, in view
of his limited opportunities for learning. His instruction was
therefore narrow, not to say bigoted. Still the elderly gentleman
found the teachings of the young man sufficiently strong and clear
thoroughly to upset all his old ideas of religion, his polytheism, his
belief in charms, his worship of ancestors, and all kindred ideas. He
accepted the New Testament in simple unquestioning faith. But, after
six or eight years, the young instructor began to lose his own
primitive and simple faith. He at once proceeded to attack that which
before he had been defending and expounding. Soon his whole
theological position was changed. Higher criticism and religious
philosophy were now the center of his preaching and writing. The
result was that this old gentleman was again in danger of being upset
in his religious thinking. He felt that his new faith had been
received in bulk, so to speak, and if a part of it were false, as his
young teacher now asserted, how could he know that any of it was true?
Yet his heart's experience told him that he had secured something in
this faith that was real; he was loath to lose it; consequently, for
some years now, he has systematically stayed away from church
services, and refrained from reading magazines in which these new and
destructive views have been discussed; he has preferred to read the
Bible quietly at home, and to have direct communion with God, even
though, in many matters of Biblical or theoretical science, he might
hold his mistaken opinions. A surface view of this man's conduct might
lead one to think of him as fickle; but a deeper consideration will
lead to the opposite conclusion.

The fluctuating condition of the Christian churches is not cause for
astonishment, nor is it to be wholly, if at all, attributed to the
fickleness of the national character, but rather, in a large degree,
to the peculiar conditions of Japanese life. The early Christians had
much to learn. They knew, experimentally, but little of Christian
truth. The whole course of Christian thought, the historical
development of theology, with the various heresies, the recent
discussions resting on the so-called "higher criticism" of the Bible,
together with the still more recent investigations into the history
and philosophy of religion in general, were of course wholly unknown
to them. This was inevitable, and they were blameless. All could not
be learned at once.

Nor is there any blame attached to the missionaries. It was as
impossible for them to impart to young and inexperienced Christians a
full knowledge of these matters as it was for the latter to receive
such information. The primary interest of the missionaries was in the
practical and everyday duties of the Christian life, in the great
problem of getting men and women to put away the superstitions and
narrowness and sins springing from polytheism or practical atheism,
and getting them started in ways of godliness. The training schools
for evangelists were designed to raise up practical workers rather
than speculative theologians. Missionaries considered it their duty
(and they were beyond question right) to teach religion rather than
the science and philosophy of religion. When, therefore, the
evangelists discovered that they had not been taught these advanced
branches of knowledge, it is not strange that some should rush after
them, and, in their zeal for that which they supposed to be important,
hasten to criticise their former teachers. As a result, they
undermined both their own faith and that of many who had become
Christians through their teaching.

The dullness of the church life, so conspicuous at present in many of
the churches, is only partly due to the fact that the Christians are
tired of the services. It is true that these services no longer afford
them that mental and spiritual stimulus which they found at the first,
and that, lacking this, they find little inducement to attend. But
this is only a partial explanation. Looking over the experience of the
past twenty-five years, we now see that the intense zeal of the first
few years was a natural result of a certain narrowness of view. It is
an interesting fact that, during one of the early revivals in the
Doshisha, the young men were so intense and excited that the
missionaries were compelled to restrain them. These young Christians
felt and said that the missionaries were not filled with the Holy
Spirit; they accordingly considered it their duty to exhort their
foreign leaders, even to chide them for their lack of faith. The
extraordinary expectations entertained by the young Japanese workers
of those days and shared by the missionaries, that Japan was to
become a Christian nation before the end of the century, was due in
large measure to an ignorance alike of Christianity, of human nature,
and of heathenism, but, under the peculiar conditions of life, this
was well-nigh inevitable. And that great and sudden changes in feeling
and thought have come over the infant churches, in consequence of the
rapid acquisition of new light and new experience, is equally
inevitable. These changes are not primarily attributable to fickleness
of nature, but to the extraordinary additions to their knowledge.

There is good reason to think, however, that the period of these rapid
fluctuations is passing away. All the various fads, fancies, and
follies, together with the sciences, philosophies, ologies, and isms
of the Western world, have already come to Japan, and are fairly well
known. No essentially new and sudden experiences lie before the
people.

Furthermore, the young men are year by year growing older. Experience
and age together are giving a soberness and a steadiness otherwise
unattainable. In the schools, in the government, in politics, and in
the judiciary, and in the churches, men of years and of training in
the new order are becoming relatively numerous, and erelong they will
be in the majority. We may expect to see Japan gradually settling down
to a steadiness and a regularity that have been lacking during the
past few decades. The newcomer to Japan is much impressed with the
expressionless character of so many Japanese faces. They appear like
the images of Buddha, who is supposed to be so absorbed in profound
meditation that the events of the passing world make no impression
upon him. I have sometimes heard the expression "putty face" used to
describe the appearance of the common Japanese face. This immobility
of the Oriental is more conspicuous to a newcomer than to one who has
seen much of the people and who has learned its significance. But
though the "putty" effect wears off, there remains an impression of
stoicism that never fades away. These two features, stolidity and
stoicism, are so closely allied in appearance that they are easily
mistaken, yet they are really distinct. The one arises from
stupidity, from dullness of mind. The other is the product of
elaborate education and patient drill. Yet it is often difficult to
determine where the one ends and the other begins.

The stolidity of stupidity is, of course, commonest among the peasant
class. For centuries they have been in closest contact with the soil;
nothing has served to awaken their intellectual faculties. Reading and
writing have remained to them profound mysteries. Their lives have
been narrow in the extreme. But the Japanese peasant is not peculiar
in this respect. Similar conditions in other lands produce similar
results, as in France, according to Millet's famous painting, "The Man
with the Hoe."

It is an interesting fact, however, that this stolidity of stupidity
can be easily removed. I have often heard comments on the marked
change in the facial expression of those adults who learn to read the
Bible. Their minds are awakened; a new light is seen in their eyes as
new ideas are started in their minds.

The impression of stolidity made on the foreigner is, due less,
however, to stupidity than to a stoical education. For centuries the
people have been taught to repress all expression of their emotions.
It has been required of the inferior to listen quietly to his superior
and to obey implicitly. The relations of superior and inferior have
been drilled into the people for ages. The code of a military camp has
been taught and enforced in all the homes. Talking in the presence of
a superior, or laughter, or curious questions, or expressions of
surprise, anything revealing the slightest emotion on the part of the
inferior was considered a discourtesy.

Education in these matters was not confined to oral instruction;
infringements were punished with great rigor. Whenever a daimyo
traveled to Yedo, the capital, he was treated almost as a god by the
people. They were required to fall on their knees and bow their faces
to the ground, and the death penalty was freely awarded to those who
failed to make such expressions of respect.

One source, then, of the systematic repression of emotional expression
is the character of the feudal order of society that so long
prevailed. The warrior who had best control of his facial expression,
who could least expose to his foe or even to his ordinary friends the
real state of his feelings, other things being equal, would come off
the victor. In further explanation of this repression is the religion
of Buddha. For 1200 years it has helped to mold the middle and the
lower classes of the people. According to its doctrine, desire is the
great evil; from it all other evils spring. For this reason, the aim
of the religious life is to suppress all desire, and the most natural
way to accomplish this is to suppress the manifestation of desire; to
maintain passive features under all circumstances. The images of
Buddha and of Buddhist saints are utterly devoid of expression. They
indicate as nearly as possible the attainment of their desire, namely,
freedom from all desire. This is the ambition of every earnest
Buddhist. Being the ideal and the actual effort of life, it does
affect the faces of the people. Lack of expression, however, does not
prove absence of desire.

Every foreigner has had amusing proof of this. A common experience is
the passing of a group of Japanese who, apparently, give no heed to
the stranger. Neither by the turn of the head nor by the movement of a
single facial muscle do they betray any curiosity, yet their eyes take
in each detail, and involuntarily follow the receding form of the
traveler. In the interior, where foreigners are still objects of
curiosity, young men have often run up from behind, gone to a distance
ahead of me, then turned abruptly, as though remembering something,
and walked slowly back again, giving me, apparently, not the slightest
attention. The motive was the desire to get a better look at the
foreigner. They hoped to conceal it by a ruse, for there must be no
manifestation of curiosity.

Phenomena which a foreigner may attribute to a lack of emotion of, at
least, to its repression, may be due to some very different cause. Few
things, for instance, are more astonishing to the Occidental than the
silence on the part of the multitude when the Emperor, whom they all
admire and love, appears on the street. Under circumstances which
would call forth the most enthusiastic cheers from Western crowds, a
Japanese crowd will maintain absolute silence. Is this from lack of
emotion? By no means. Reverence dominates every breast. They would no
more think of making noisy demonstrations of joy in the presence of
the Emperor than a congregation of devout Christians would think of
doing the same during a religious service. This idea of reverence for
superiors has pervaded the social order--the intensity of the
reverence varying with the rank of the superior. But a change has
already begun. Silence is no longer enforced; no profound bowings to
the ground are now demanded before the nobility; on at least one
occasion during the recent China-Japan war the enthusiasm of the
populace found audible expression when the Emperor made a public
appearance. Even the stoical appearance of the people is passing away
under the influence of the new order of society, with its new,
dominant ideas. Education is bringing the nation into a large and
throbbing life. Naturalness is taking the place of forced repression.
A sense of the essential equality of man is springing up, especially
among the young men, and is helping to create a new atmosphere in this
land, where, for centuries, one chief effort has been to repress all
natural expression of emotion.

While touring in Kyushu several years ago, I had an experience which
showed me that the stolidity, or vivacity, of a people is largely
dependent on the prevailing social order rather than on inherent
nature. Those who have much to do with the Japanese have noted the
extreme quiet and reserve of the women. It is a trait that has been
lauded by both native and foreign writers. Because of this
characteristic it is difficult for a stranger, to carry on
conversation with them. They usually reply in monosyllables and in low
tones. The very expression of their faces indicates a reticence, a
calm stolidity, and a lack of response to the stimulus of social
intercourse that is striking and oppressive to an Occidental. I have
always found it a matter of no little difficulty to become acquainted
with the women, and especially with the young women, in the church
with which I have been connected. With the older women this reticence
is not so marked. Now for my story:

One day I called on a family, expecting to meet the mother, with whom
I was well acquainted. She proved to be out; but a daughter of whom I
had not before heard was at home, and I began to talk with her.
Contrary to all my previous experience, this young girl of less than
twenty years looked me straight in the face with perfect composure,
replied to my questions with clear voice and complete sentences, and
asked questions in her turn without the slightest embarrassment. I was
amazed. Here was a Japanese girl acting and talking with the freedom
of an American. How was this to be explained? Difficult though it
appeared, the problem was easily solved. The young lady had been in
America, having spent several years in Radcliffe College. There it was
that her Japanese demureness was dropped and the American frankness
and vivacity of manner acquired. It was a matter simply of the
prevailing social customs, and not of her inherent nature as a
Japanese.

And this conclusion is enforced by the further fact that there is a
marked increase in vivacity in those who become Christian. The
repressive social restraints of the old social order are somewhat
removed. A freedom is allowed to individuals of the Christian
community, in social life, in conversation between men and women, in
the holding of private opinions, which the non-Christian order of
society did not permit. Sociability between the sexes was not allowed.
The new freedom naturally results in greater vivacity and a far freer
play of facial expression than the older order could produce. The
vivacity and sociability of the geisha (dancing and singing girls),
whose business it is to have social relations with the men, freely
conversing with them, still further substantiates the view that the
stolid, irrepressive features of the usual Japanese woman are social,
not essential, characteristics. The very same girls exhibit
alternately stolidity and vivacity according as they are acting as
geisha or as respectable members of society.

This completes our direct study of the various elements characterizing
the emotional nature of the Japanese. It is universally admitted that
the people are conspicuously emotional. We have shown, however, that
their feelings are subject to certain remarkable suppressions.

It remains to be asked why the Japanese are more emotional than other
races? One reason doubtless is that the social conditions were such as
to stimulate their emotional rather than their intellectual powers.
The military system upon which the social structure rested kept the
nation in its mental infancy. Twenty-eight millions of farmers and a
million and a half of soldiers was the proportion during the middle of
the nineteenth century. Education was limited to the soldiers. But
although they cultivated their minds somewhat, their very occupation
as soldiers required them to obey rather than to think; their
hand-to-hand conflicts served mightily to stimulate the emotions. The
entire feudal order likewise was calculated to have the same effect.
The intellectual life being low, its inhibitions were correspondingly
weak. When, in the future, the entire population shall have become
fairly educated, and taught to think independently; and when
government by the people shall have become much more universal,
throwing responsibility on the people as never before, and stimulating
discussion of the general principles of life, of government, and of
law, then must the emotional features of the nation become less
conspicuous.

It is a question of relative development. As children run to extremes
of thought and action on the slightest occasion, simply because their
intellects have not come into full activity, weeping at one moment and
laughing at the next, so it is with national life. Where the general
intellectual development of a people is retarded, the emotional
manifestations are of necessity correspondingly conspicuous.

Even so fundamental a racial trait, then, as the emotional, is seen to
be profoundly influenced by the prevailing social order. The emotional
characteristics which distinguish the Japanese from other races are
due, in the last analysis, to the nature of their social order rather
than to their inherent nature or brain structure.




XV

AESTHETIC CHARACTERISTICS


In certain directions, the Japanese reveal a development of aesthetic
taste which no other nation has reached. The general appreciation of
landscape-views well illustrates this point. The home and garden of
the average workman are far superior artistically to those of the same
class in the West. There is hardly a home without at least a
diminutive garden laid out in artistic style with miniature lake and
hills and winding walks. And this garden exists solely for the delight
of the eye.

The general taste displayed in many little ways is a constant delight
to the Western "barbarian" when he first comes to Japan. Nor does this
delight vanish with time and familiarity, though it is tempered by a
later perception of certain other features. Indeed, the more one knows
of the details of their artistic taste, the more does he appreciate
it. The "toko-no-ma," for example, is a variety of alcove usually
occupying half of one side of a room. It indicates the place of honor,
and guests are always urged to sit in front of it. The floor of the
"toko-no-ma" is raised four or five inches above the level of the room
and should never be stepped upon. In this "toko-no-ma" is usually
placed some work of art, or a vase with flowers, and on the wall is
hung a picture or a few Chinese characters, written by some famous
calligraphist, which are changed with the seasons. The woodwork and
the coloring of this part of the room is of the choicest. The
"toko-no-ma" of the main room of the house is always restful to the
eye; this "honorable spot" is found in at least one room in every
house; and if the owner has moderate means, there are two or three
such rooms. Only the homes of the poorest of the poor are without this
ornament.

The Japanese show a refined taste in the coloring and decoration of
rooms; natural woods, painted and polished, are common; every post and
board standing erect must stand in the position in which it grew. A
Japanese knows at once whether a board or post is upside down, though
it would often puzzle a Westerner to decide the matter. The natural
wood ceilings and the soft yellows and blues of the walls are all that
the best trained Occidental eye could ask. Dainty decorations called
the "ramma," over the neat "fusuma," consist of delicate shapes and
quaint designs cut in thin boards, and serve at once as picture and
ventilator. The drawings, too, on the "fusuma" (solid thick paper
sliding doors separating adjacent rooms or shutting off the closet)
are simple and neat, as is all Japanese pictorial art.

Japanese love for flowers reveals a high aesthetic development. Not
only are there various flower festivals at which times the people
flock to suburban gardens and parks, but sprays, budding branches, and
even large boughs are invariably arranged in the homes and public
halls. Every church has an immense vase for the purpose. The proper
arrangement of flowers and of flowering sprays and boughs is a highly
developed art. It is often one of the required studies in girls'
schools. I have known two or three men who made their entire living by
teaching this art. Miniature flowering trees are reared with
consummate skill. An acquaintance of mine glories in 230 varieties of
the plum tree, all in pots, some of them between two and three hundred
years old. Shinto and Buddhist temples also reveal artistic qualities
most pleasing to the eye.

But the main point of our interest lies in the explanation of this
characteristic. Is the aesthetic sense more highly developed in Japan
than in the West? Is it more general? Is it a matter of inherent
nature, or of civilization?

In trying to meet these problems, I note, first of all, that the
development of the Japanese aesthetic taste is one-sided; though
advanced in certain respects it is belated in others. In illustration
is the sense of smell. It will not do to say that "the Japanese have
no use for the nose," and that the love of sweet smells is unknown.
Sir Rutherford Alcock's off-quoted sentence that "in one of the most
beautiful and fertile countries in the whole world the flowers have no
scent, the birds no song, and the fruit and vegetables no flavor," is
quite misleading, for it has only enough truth to make it the more
deceptive. It is true that the cherry blossom has little or no odor,
and that its beauty lies in its exquisite coloring and abounding
luxuriance, but most of the native flowers are praised and prized by
the Japanese for their odors, as well as for their colors, as the
plum, the chrysanthemum, the lotus, and the rose. The fragrance of
flowers is a frequent theme in Japanese poetry. Japanese ladies, like
those of every land, are fond of delicate scents. Cologne and kindred
wares find wide sale in Japan, and I am told that expensive musk is
not infrequently packed away with the clothing of the wealthy.

But in contrast to this appreciation is a remarkable indifference to
certain foul odors. It is amazing what horrid smells the cultivated
Japanese will endure in his home. What we conceal in the rear and out
of the way, he very commonly places in the front yard; though this is,
of course, more true of the country than of large towns or cities. It
would seem as if a high aesthetic development should long ago have
banished such sights and smells. As a matter of fact, however, the
aesthetics of the subject does not seem to have entered the national
mind, any more than have the hygienics of the same subject.

In explanation of these facts, may it not be that the Japanese method
of agriculture has been a potent hindrance to the aesthetic development
of the sense of smell? In primitive times, when wealth was small, the
only easy method which the people had of preserving the fertilizing
properties of that which is removed from our cities by the
sewer-system was such as we still find in use in Japan to-day. Perhaps
the necessities of the case have toughened the mental, if not the
physical, sense of the people. Perhaps the unaesthetic character of the
sights and smells has been submerged in the great value of fertilizing
materials. Then, too, with the Occidental, the thought is common that
such odors are indications of seriously unhealthful conditions. We are
accordingly offended not simply by the odor itself, but also by the
associations of sickness and death which it suggests. Not so the
unsophisticated Oriental. Such a correlation of ideas is only now
arising in Japan, and changes are beginning to be made, as a
consequence.

I cannot leave this point without drawing attention to the fact that
the development of the sense of smell in these directions is
relatively recent, even in the West. Of all the non-European nations
and races, I have no doubt Japan is most free from horrid smells and
putrid odors. And in view of our own recent emancipation it is not for
us to marvel that others have made little progress. Rather is it
marvelous that we should so easily forget the hole from which we have
been so recently digged.

In turning to study certain features of Japanese pictorial art, we
notice that a leading characteristic is that of simplicity. The
greatest results are secured with the fewest possible strokes. This
general feature is in part due to the character of the instrument
used, the "fude," "brush." This same brush answers for writing. It
admits of strong, bold outlines; and a large brush allows the
exhibition of no slight degree of skill. As a result, "writing" is a
fine art in Japan. Hardly a family that makes any pretense at culture
but owns one or more framed specimens of writing. In Japan these rank
as pictures do or mottoes in the West, and are prized not merely for
the sentiment expressed, but also for the skill displayed in the use
of the brush. Skillful writers become famous, often receiving large
sums for small "pictures" which consist of but two or three Chinese
characters.

No doubt the higher development of appreciation for natural scenery
among the people in general is largely due to the character of the
scenery itself. Steep hills and narrow valleys adjoin nearly every
city in the land. Seas, bays, lakes, and rivers are numerous;
reflected mountain scenes are common; the colors are varied and
marked. Flowering trees of striking beauty are abundant. Any people
living under these physical conditions, and sufficiently advanced in
civilization to have leisure and culture, can hardly fail to be
impressed with such wealth of beauty in the scenery itself.

In the artistic reproduction of this scenery, however, Japanese
artists are generally supposed to be inferior to those of the West.

As often remarked, Japanese art has directed its chief endeavor to
animals and to nature, thus failing to give to man his share of
attention. This curious one-sidedness shows itself particularly in
painting and in sculpture. In the former, when human beings are the
subject, the aim has apparently been to extol certain characteristics;
in warriors, the military or heroic spirit; in wise men, their wisdom;
in monks and priests, their mastery over the passions and complete
attainment of peace; in a god, the moral character which he is
supposed to represent. Art has consequently been directed to bringing
into prominence certain ideal features which must be over-accentuated
in order to secure recognition; caricatures, rather than lifelike
forms, are the frequent results. The images of multitudes of gods are
frightful to behold; the aim being to show the character of the
emotion of the god in the presence of evil. These idols are easily
misunderstood, for we argue that the more frightful he is, the more
vicious must be the god in his real character; not so the Oriental. To
him the more frightful the image, the more noble the character. Really
evil gods, such as demons, are always represented, I think, as
deformed creatures, partly human and partly beast. It is to be
remembered, in this connection, that idols are an imported feature of
Japanese religion; Shinto to this day has no "graven image." All idols
are Buddhistic. Moreover, they are but copies of the hideous idols of
India; the Japanese artistic genius has added nothing to their
grotesque appearance. But the point of interest for us is that the
aesthetic taste which can revel in flowers and natural scenery has
never delivered Japanese art from truly unaesthetic representations of
human beings and of gods.

Standing recently before a toy store and looking at the numberless
dolls offered for sale, I was impressed afresh with the lack of taste
displayed, both in coloring and in form; their conventionality was
exceedingly tiresome; their one attractive feature was their
absurdity. But the moment I turned away from the imitations of human
beings to look at the imitations of nature, the whole impression was
changed. I was pleased with the artistic taste displayed in the
perfectly imitated, delicately colored flowers. They were beautiful
indeed.

Why has Japanese art made so little of man as man? Is it due to the
"impersonality" of the Orient, as urged by some? This suggests, but
does not give, the correct interpretation of the phenomenon in
question. The reason lies in the nature of the ruling ideas of
Oriental civilization. Man, as man, has not been honored or highly
esteemed. As a warrior he has been honored; consequently, when
pictured or sculptured as a warrior, he has worn his armor; his face,
if visible, is not the natural face of a man, but rather that of a
passionate victor, slaying his foe or planning for the same. And so
with the priests and the teachers, the emperors and the generals; all
have been depicted, not for what they are in themselves, but for the
rank which they have attained; they are accordingly represented with
their accouterments and robes and the characteristic attitudes of
their rank. The effort to preserve their actual appearance is
relatively rare. Manhood and womanhood, apart from social rank, have
hardly been recognized, much less extolled by art. This feature, then,
corresponds to the nature of the Japanese social order. The art of a
land necessarily reveals the ruling ideals of its civilization. As
Japan failed to discover the inherent nature and value of manhood and
womanhood, estimating them only on a utilitarian basis, so has her art
reflected this failure.

Apparently it has never attempted to depict the nude human form. This
is partly explained, perhaps, by the fact that the development of a
perfect physical form through exercise and training has not been a
part of Oriental thought. Labor of every sort has been regarded as
degrading. Training for military skill and prowess has indeed been
common among the military classes; but the skill and strength
themselves have been the objects of thought, rather than the beauty of
the muscular development which they produce. When we recall the
prominent place which the games of Greece took in her civilization
previous to her development of art, and the stress then laid on
perfect bodily form, we shall better understand why there should be
such difference in the development of the art of these two lands. I
have never seen a Japanese man or youth bare his arm to show with
pride the development of his biceps; and so far as I have observed,
the pride which students in the United States feel over well-developed
calves has no counterpart in Japan--this, despite the fact that the
average Japanese has calves which would turn the American youth green
with envy.

From the absence of the nude in Japanese art it has been urged that
Japan herself is far more morally pure than the West. Did the moral
life of the people correspond to their art in this respect, the
argument would have force. Unfortunately, such does not seem to be the
case. It is further suggested as a reason that the bodily form of
Oriental peoples is essentially unaesthetic; that the men are either
too fat or too lean, and the women too plump when in the bloom of
youth and too wrinkled and flabby when the first bloom is over. The
absurdity of this suggestion raises a smile, and a query as to the
experience which its author must have had. For any person who has
lived in Japan must have seen individuals of both sexes, whom the most
fastidious painter or sculptor would rejoice to secure as models.

It might be thought that a truly artistic people, who are also
somewhat immoral, would have developed much skill in the portrayal of
the nude female form. But such an attempt does not seem to have been
made until recent times, and in imitation of Western art. At least
such attempts have not been recognized as art nor have they been
preserved as such. I have never seen either statue or picture of a
nude Japanese woman. Even the pictures of famous prostitutes are
always faultlessly attired. The number and size of the conventional
hairpins, and the gaudy coloring of the clothing, alone indicate the
immoral character of the woman represented.

It is not to be inferred, however, that immoral pictures have been
unknown in Japan, for the reverse is true. Until forcibly suppressed
by the government under the incentive of Western criticism, there was
perfect freedom to produce and sell licentious and lascivious
pictures. The older foreign residents in Japan testify to the
frequency with which immoral scenes were depicted and exposed for
sale. Here I merely say that these were not considered works of art;
they were reproduced not in the interests of the aesthetic sense, but
wholly to stimulate the taste for immoral things.

The absence of the nude from Japanese art is due to the same causes
that led to the relative absence of all distinctively human nature
from art. Manhood and womanhood, as such, were not the themes they
strove to depict.

A curious feature of the artistic taste of the people is the marked
fondness for caricature. It revels in absurd accentuations of special
features. Children with protruding foreheads; enormously fat little
men; grotesque dwarf figures in laughable positions; these are a few
common examples. Nearly all of the small drawings and sculpturings of
human figures are intentionally grotesque. But the Japanese love of
the grotesque is not confined to its manifestation in art. It also
reveals itself in other surprising ways. It is difficult to realize
that a people who revel in the beauties of nature can also delight in
deformed nature; yet such is the case. Stunted and dwarfed trees,
trees whose branches have been distorted into shapes and proportions
that nature would scorn--these are sights that the Japanese seem to
enjoy, as well as "natural" nature. Throughout the land, in the
gardens of the middle and higher classes, may be found specimens of
dwarfed and stunted trees which have required decades to raise. The
branches, too, of most garden shrubs and trees are trimmed in
fantastic shapes. What is the charm in these distortions? First,
perhaps, the universal human interest in anything requiring skill.
Think of the patience and persistence and experimentation necessary
to rear a dwarf pear tree twelve or fifteen inches high, growing its
full number of years and bearing full-size fruit in its season! And
second is the no less universal human interest in the strange and
abnormal. All primitive people have this interest. It shows itself in
their religions. Abnormal stones are often objects of religious
devotion. Although I cannot affirm that such objects are worshiped in
Japan to-day, yet I can say that they are frequently set up in temple
grounds and dedicated with suitable inscriptions. Where nature can be
made to produce the abnormal, there the interest is still greater. It
is a living miracle. Witness the cocks of Tosa, distinguished by their
two or three tail feathers reaching the extraordinary length of ten or
even fifteen feet, the product of ages of special breeding.

According to the ordinary use of the term, aesthetics has to do with
art alone. Yet it also has intimate relations with both speech and
conduct. Poetry depends for its very existence on aesthetic
considerations. Although little conscious regard is paid to aesthetic
claims in ordinary conversation, yet people of culture do, as a matter
of fact, pay it much unconscious attention. In conduct too, aesthetic
ideas are often more dominant than we suppose. The objection of the
cultured to the ways of the boorish rests on aesthetic grounds. This is
true in every land. In the matter of conduct it is sometimes hard to
draw the line between aesthetics and ethics, for they shade
imperceptibly into one another; so much so that they are seen to be
complementary rather than contradictory. Though it is doubtless true
that conduct aesthetically defective may not be defective ethically,
still is it not quite as true that conduct bad from the ethical is bad
also from the aesthetical standpoint?

In no land have aesthetic considerations had more force in molding both
speech and conduct than in Japan. Not a sentence is uttered by a
Japanese but has the characteristic marks of aestheticism woven into
its very structure. By means of "honorifics" it is seldom necessary
for a speaker to be so pointedly vulgar as even to mention self. There
are few points in the language so difficult for a foreigner to
master, whether in speaking himself, or in listening to others, as the
use of these honorific words. The most delicate shades of courtesy and
discourtesy may be expressed by them. Some writers have attributed the
relative absence of the personal pronouns from the language to the
dominating force of impersonal pantheism. I am unable to take this
view for reasons stated in the later chapters on personality.

Though the honorific characteristics of the language seem to indicate
a high degree of aesthetic development, a certain lack of delicacy in
referring to subjects that are ruled out of conversation by cultivated
people in the West make the contrary impression upon the uninitiated.
Such language in Japan cannot be counted impure, for no such idea
accompanies the words. They must be described simply as aesthetically
defective. Far be it from me to imply that there is no impure
conversation in Japan. I only say that the particular usages to which
I refer are not necessarily a proof of moral tendency. A realistic
baldness prevails that makes no effort to conceal even that which is
in its nature unpleasant and unaesthetic. A spade is called a spade
without the slightest hesitation. Of course specific illustrations of
such a point as this are out of place. AEsthetic considerations forbid.

And how explain these unaesthetic phenomena? By the fact that Japan has
long remained in a state of primitive development. Speech is but the
verbal expression of life. Every primitive society is characterized by
a bald literalism shocking to the aesthetic sense of societies which
represent a higher stage of culture. In Japan, until recently, little
effort has been made to keep out of sight objects and acts which we of
the West have considered disagreeable and repulsive. Language alters
more slowly than acts. Laws are making changes in the latter, and they
in time will take effect in the former. But many decades will
doubtless pass before the cultivated classes of Japan will reach, in
this respect, the standard of the corresponding classes of the West.

As for the aesthetics of conduct in Japan, enough is indicated by what
has been said already concerning the aesthetics of speech. Speech and
conduct are but diverse expressions of the same inner life. Japanese
etiquette has been fashioned on the feudalistic theory of society,
with its numberless gradations of inferior and superior. Assertive
individualism, while allowed a certain range among the samurai, always
had its well-marked limits. The mass of the people were compelled to
walk a narrow line of respectful obedience and deference both in form
and speech. The constant aim of the inferior was to please the
superior. That individuals of an inferior rank had any inherent
rights, as opposed to those of a superior rank, seldom occurred to
them. Furthermore, this whole feudal system, with its characteristic
etiquette of conduct and speech, was authoritatively taught by
moralists and religious leaders, and devoutly believed by the noblest
of the land. Ethical considerations, therefore, combined powerfully
with those that were social and aesthetic to produce "the most polite
race on the face of the globe." Recent developments of rudeness and
discourtesy among themselves and toward foreigners have emphasized my
general contention that these characteristics are not due to inherent
race nature, but rather to the social order.

How are we to account for the wide aesthetic development of all classes
of the Japanese? As already suggested, the beautiful scenery explains
much. But I pass at once to the significant fact that although the
classes of Japanese society were widely differentiated in social rank,
yet they lived in close proximity to each other. There was no spatial
gulf of separation preventing the lower from knowing fully and freely
the thoughts, ideals, and customs of the upper classes. The
transmission of culture was thus an easy matter, in spite of social
gradations.

Moreover, the character of the building materials, and the methods of
construction used by the more prosperous among the people, were easily
imitated in kind, if not in costliness, by the less prosperous. Take,
for example, the structure of the room; it is always of certain fixed
proportions, that the uniform mats may be easily fitted to it. The
mats themselves are always made of a straw "toko," "bed," and an
"omote," "surface," of woven straw; they vary greatly in value, but,
of whatever grade, may always be kept neat and fresh at comparatively
small cost. The walls of the average houses are made of mud wattles.
The outer layers of plaster consist of selected earth and tinted lime.
Whether put up at large or small expense, these walls may be neat and
attractive. So, too, with other parts of the house.

The utter lack of independent thinking throughout the middle and lower
classes, and the constant desire of the inferior to imitate the
superior, have also helped to make the culture of the classes the
possession of the masses. This subserviency and spirit of imitation
has been further stimulated by the enforced courtesy and deference and
obedience of the common people.

In this connection it should be noted, however, that the universality
of culture in Japan is more apparent than real. The appearance is due
in part to the lack of furniture in the homes. Without chairs or
tables, bedsteads or washstands, and the multitude of other things
invariably found in the home of the Occidental, it is easy for the
Japanese housewife to keep her home in perfect order. No special
culture is needful for this.

How it came about that the Japanese people adopted their own method of
sitting on the feet, I cannot say; neither have I heard any plausible
explanation of the practice. Yet this habit has relieved them of all
necessity for heavy furniture. Given the custom of sitting on the
feet, and a large part of the furniture of the house will be useless.
Already is the introduction of furniture after Western patterns
producing changes in the homes of the people; and it will be
interesting to see whether the aesthetic sense of the Japanese will be
able to assimilate and harmonize with itself these useful, but bulky
and unaesthetic, elements of Occidental civilization.

That no part of the fine taste of the Japanese is due to the general
civilization, rather than to the individual possession of the aesthetic
faculty, may be inferred from many little signs. In spite of the fact
that, following the long-established social fashions, the women
usually display good taste in the choice of colors for their clothing,
it sometimes happens that they also manifest not the slightest sense
of the harmony of colors. Daughters of wealthy families will array
themselves in brilliant discordant hues, yet apparently without
causing the wearers or their friends the slightest aesthetic
discomfort. Little children are arrayed in clothing that would
doubtless put Joseph's coat of many colors quite out of countenance.
Combinations and brilliancy that to the Western eye of culture seem
crude and gaudy, typical of barbaric splendor, are in constant use,
and are apparently thought to be fine. The Japanese display both taste
and its lack in the choice of colors for clothing; this contradiction
is the more striking in view of the taste manifest in the decorations
of the homes of all classes of the people. Few sights are more
ludicrously unaesthetic than the red, yellow, and blue worsted
crocheted caps and shawls for infants, which shock all our ideas of
aesthetic harmony.

In connection with Western ways or articles of clothing, the native
aesthetic faculty often seems to take its flight. In a foreign house
many a Japanese seems to lose his sense of fitness. I have had
schoolboys, and even gentlemen, enter my home with hobnailed muddied
boots, without wiping their feet on the conspicuous door mat, which is
the more remarkable since, in their own homes, they invariably take
off their shoes on entering. I have frequently noticed that in railway
cars the first comers monopolize the seats, and the later ones receive
not the slightest notice, being often compelled to stand for an hour
at a time, although, with a little moving, there would be abundant
room for all. I have noticed this so often that I cannot think it an
exceptional occurrence. I do not believe it to be intentional
rudeness, but to be due simply to a lack of real heart politeness. Yet
a true and deep aesthetic development, so far at least as relates to
conduct, to say nothing of the spirit of altruism, would not permit
such indifference to another's discomfort.

My explanation for this, and for all similar defects in etiquette, is
somewhat as follows. Etiquette is popularly conceived as consisting of
rules of conduct, rather than as the outward expression of the state
of the heart. From time immemorial rules for the ordinary affairs of
life have been formulated by superiors and have been taught the
people. In all usual and conventional relations, therefore, the
average farmer and peasant know how to express perfect courtesy. But
in certain situations, as in foreign houses and the railroad car,
where there are no precedents to follow, or rules to obey, all
evidence of politeness takes its flight. The old rules do not fit the
new conditions. Not being grounded on the inner principles of
etiquette, the people are not able to formulate new rules for new
conditions. To the Westerner, on the other hand, these seem to follow
from the simplest principles of common sense and kindliness. The
general collapse of etiquette in Japan, which native writers note and
deplore, is due, therefore, not only to the withdrawal of feudal
pressure, but also to introduction of strange circumstances for which
the people have no rules, and to the fact that the people have not
been taught those underlying principles of high courtesy which are
applicable on all occasions.

An impression seems to have gained currency in the United States that
the unaesthetic features seen in Japan to-day are due to the debasing
influences of Western art and Occidental intercourse. There can be no
doubt that a certain type of tourist, ignorant of Japanese art, by
greedily buying strange, gaudy things at high prices, has stimulated a
morbid production of truly unaesthetic pseudo-Japanese art. But this
accounts for only a small part of the grossly inartistic features of
Japan. The instances given of hideous worsted bibs for babes and
collars for dogs, combining in the closest proximity the most
uncomplementary and mutually repellent colors, has nothing whatever to
do with foreign art or foreign intercourse. What foreigner ever
decorated a little lapdog with a red-green-yellow-blue-and purple
crocheted collar, four or five inches wide?

Westerners have been charmed with the exquisite colored photographs
produced in Japan. It is strange, yet true, that the same artistic
hand that produces these beautiful effects will also, by a slight
change of tints, produce the most unnatural and spectral views. Yet
the strangest thing is, not that he produces them, but that he does
not seem conscious of the defect, for he will put them on sale in his
own shop or send them to purchasers in America, without the slightest
apparent hesitation. The constant care of the purchaser in selection
and his insistence on having only truly artistic work are what keep
the Japanese artist up to the standard.

If other evidence is needed of aesthetic defect in the still
unoccidentalized Japanese taste let the doubter go to any popular
second-grade Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple. Here unaesthetic objects
and sights abound. Hideous idols, painted and unpainted, big and
little, often decorated with soiled bibs; decaying to-rii; ruined
sub-shrines; conglomerate piles of cast-off paraphernalia, consisting
of broken idols, old lanterns, stones, etc., filthy towels at the
holy-water basins, piously offered to the gods and piously used by
hundreds of dusty pilgrims; equally filthy bell-ropes hung in front of
the main shrines, pulled by ten thousand hands to call the attention
of the deity; travel-stained hands, each of which has left its mark on
the once beautiful enormous tasselated cord; ex-voto tufts of human
hair; scores of pictures, where the few may be counted works of art
while the rest are hideous beyond belief; frightful faces of tengu,
with their long noses and menacing teeth, decorated with scores of
spit-balls or even with mud-balls; these are some of the more
conspicuous unaesthetic features of multitudes of popular shrines and
temples. And none of these can be attributed to the debasing influence
of Western art. And these inartistic features will be found
accompanying scrupulous neatness in well-swept walks, new sub-shrines,
floral decorations, and much that pleases the eye--a strange compound
of the beautiful and the ugly. Truly the aesthetic development of the
Japanese is curiously one-sided.

A survey of Japanese musical history leads to the conclusion that
while the people are fairly developed in certain aspects of the
aesthetics of music, such as rhythm, they are certainly undeveloped in
other directions--in melody, for example, and in harmony. Their
instrumental music is primitive and meager. They have no system of
musical notation. The love of music, such as it is, is well-nigh
universal. Their solo-vocal music, a semi-chanting in minors, has
impressive elements; but these are due to the passionate outbursts and
plaintive wails, rather than to the musically aesthetic character of
the melodies. The universal twanging samisen, a species of guitar,
accompanied by the shrill, hard voices of the geisha (singing girls),
marks at once the universality of the love of music and the
undeveloped quality of the musical taste, both vocal and instrumental.
But in comparing the musical development of Japan with that of the
West, we must not forget how recent is that of the former.

The conditions which have served to develop musical taste in the West
have but recently come to Japan. Sufficient time has not yet elapsed
for the nation to make much visible progress in the lines of
Occidental music. But it has already done something. The popularity of
brass bands, the wide introduction of organs, their manufacture in
this land, their use in all public schools, the exclusive use of
Occidental music in Christian churches, the ability of trained
individuals in foreign vocal and instrumental music--all these facts
go to show that in time we may expect great musical evolution in
Japan. Those who doubt this on the ground of inherent race nature may
be reminded of the evolution which has taken place among the Hawaiians
during the past two generations. From being a race manifesting marked
deficiency in music they have developed astonishing musical taste and
ability. During a recent visit to these islands after an absence of
twenty-seven years, I attended a Sunday-school exhibition, which was
largely a musical contest; the voices were sweet and rich; and the
difficulty of the part songs, easily carried through by children and
adults, revealed a musical sense that surpasses any ordinary Sunday
school of the United States or England with which I am acquainted.

The development of Japanese literature likewise conspicuously
reflects the ruling ideas of the social order, and reveals the
dependence of literary taste on the order. As in other aspects in
Japanese aesthetic development, so in this do we see marked lack of
balance. "It is wonderful what felicity of phrase, melody of
versification, and true sentiment can be compressed within the narrow
limits (of the Tanka). In their way nothing can be more perfect than
some of these little poems."[U] The deficiencies of Japanese poetry
have been remarked by the foreigners most competent to judge. The
following general characterization from the volume just quoted merits
attention.

     "Narrow in its scope and resources, it is chiefly remarkable for
     its limitations--for what it has not, rather than what it has. In
     the first place there are no long poems. There is nothing which
     even remotely resembles an epic--no Iliad or Divina Commedia--not
     even a Nibelungen Lied or Chevy Chase. Indeed, narrative poems of
     any kind are short and very few, the only ones which I have met
     with being two or three ballads of a sentimental cast. Didactic,
     philosophical, political, and satirical poems are also
     conspicuously absent. The Japanese muse does not meddle with such
     subjects, and it is doubtful whether, if it did, the native Pegasus
     possesses sufficient staying power for them to be dealt with
     adequately. For dramatic poetry we have to wait until the
     fourteenth century. Even then there are no complete dramatic poems,
     but only dramas containing a certain poetical element.

     "Japanese poetry is, in short, confined to lyrics, and what, for
     want of a better word, may be called epigrams. It is primarily an
     expression of emotion. We have amatory verse poems of longing for
     home and absent dear ones, praise of love and wine, elegies on the
     dead, laments over the uncertainty of life. A chief place is given
     to the seasons, the sound of purling streams, the snow of Mount
     Fuji, waves breaking on the beach, seaweed drifting to the shore,
     the song of birds, the hum of insects, even the croaking of frogs,
     the leaping of trout in a mountain stream, the young shoots of fern
     in spring, the belling of deer in autumn, the red tints of the
     maple, the moon, flowers, rain, wind, mist; these are among the
     favorite subjects which the Japanese poets delight to dwell upon.
     If we add some courtly and patriotic effusions, a vast number of
     conceits more or less pretty, and a very few poems of a religious
     cast, the enumeration is tolerably complete. But, as Mr.
     Chamberlain has observed, there are curious omissions. War
     songs--strange to say--are almost wholly absent. Fighting and
     bloodshed are apparently not considered fit themes for poetry."[V]

The drama and the novel have both achieved considerable development,
yet judged from Occidental standards, they are comparatively weak and
insipid. They, of course, conspicuously reflect the characteristics of
the social order to which they belong. Critics call repeated attention
to the lack of sublimity in Japanese literature, and ascribe it to
their inherent race nature. While the lack of sublimity in Japanese
scenery may in fact account for the characteristic in question, still
a more conclusive explanation would seem to be that in the older
social order man, as such, was not known. The hidden glories of the
soul, its temptations and struggles, its defects and victories, could
not be the themes of a literature arising in a completely communal
social order, even though it possessed individualism of the Buddhistic
type.[W] These are the themes that give Western literature--poetic,
dramatic, and narrative--its opportunity for sustained power and
sublimity. They portray the inner life of the spirit.

The poverty of poetic form is another point of Western criticism. Mr.
Aston has shown how this poverty is directly due to the phonetic
characteristics of the language. Diversities of both rhyme and rhythm
are practically excluded from Japanese poetry by the nature of the
language. And this in turn has led to the "preference of the national
genius for short poems." But language is manifestly the combined
product of linguistic heredity and the social order, and can in no
sense be ascribed to inherent race nature. Thus directly are social
heredity and social order determinative of the literary
characteristics and aesthetic tastes of a nation.

Even more manifestly may Japanese architectural development be traced
to the social heredity derived from China and India. The needs of the
developing internal civilization have determined its external
manifestation. So far as Japanese differs from Chinese architecture,
it may be attributed to Japan's isolation, to the different demands of
her social order, to the difference of accessible building materials,
and to the different social heredity handed down from prehistoric
times. That the distinguishing characteristics of Japanese
architecture are due to the inherent race nature cannot for a moment
be admitted.

We conclude that the Japanese are not possessed of a unique and
inherent aesthetic taste. In some respects they are as certainly ahead
of the Occidental as they are behind him in other respects. But this,
too, is a matter of social development and social heredity, rather
than of inherent race character, of brain structure. If aesthetic
nature were a matter of inherited brain structure, it would be
impossible to account for rapid fluctuations in aesthetic judgment, for
the great inequality of aesthetic development in the different
departments of life, or for the ease of acquiring the aesthetic
development of alien races.[X]




XVI

MEMORY--IMITATION


The differences which separate the Oriental from the Occidental mind
are infinitesimal as compared with the likenesses which unite them.
This is a fact that needs to be emphasized, for many writers on Japan
seem to ignore it. They marvel at the differences. The real marvel is
that the differences are so few and so superficial. The Japanese are a
race whose ancestors were separated from their early home nearly three
thousand years ago; during this period they have been absolutely
prevented from intermarriage with the parent stock. Furthermore, that
original stock was not the Indo-European race. And no one has ventured
to suggest how long before the migration of the ancestors of the
Japanese to Japan their ancestors parted from those who finally became
the progenitors of modern Occidental peoples. For thousands of years,
certainly, the Japanese and Anglo-Saxon races have had no ancestry in
common. Yet so similar is the entire structure and working of their
minds that the psychological textbooks of the Anglo-Saxon are adopted
and perfectly understood by competent psychological students among the
Japanese. I once asked a professor of psychology in the Matsuyama
Normal School if he had no difficulty in teaching his classes the
psychological system of Anglo-Saxon thinkers, if there were not
peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon mind which a Japanese could not
understand, and if there were not psychological phenomena of the
Japanese mind which were ignored in Anglo-Saxon psychological
text-books. The very questions surprised him; to each he gave a
negative reply. The mental differences that characterize races so
dissimilar as the Japanese and the Anglo-Saxon, I venture to repeat,
are insignificant as compared with their resemblances.

Our discussions shall have reference, not to those general
psychological characteristics which all races have in common, but only
to those which may seem to stamp the Japanese people as peculiar. We
wish to understand the distinguishing features of the Japanese mind.
We wish to know whether they are due to brain structure, to inherent
race nature, or whether they are simply the result of education, of
social heredity. This is our ever-recurring question.

First, in regard to Japanese brain development. Travelers have often
been impressed with the unusual size of the Japanese head. It has
sometimes been thought, however, that the size is more apparent than
real, and the appearance has been attributed to the relatively short
limbs of the people and to the unusual proportion of round heads which
one sees everywhere. It may also be due to the shape of the head. But,
after all has been said, it remains true that the Japanese head, as
related to his body, is unexpectedly large.

Prof. Marsh of Yale University is reported to have said that, on the
basis of brain size, the Japanese is the race best fitted to survive
in the struggle for existence, or at least in the struggle for
pre-eminence.

Statements have been widely circulated to the effect that not only
relatively to the body, but even absolutely, the Japanese possess
larger brains than the European, but craniological statistics do not
verify the assertion. The matter has been somewhat discussed in
Japanese magazines of late, to which, through the assistance of a
Japanese friend, I am indebted for the following figures. They are
given in Japanese measurements, but are, on this account, however,
none the less satisfactory for comparative purposes.

According to Dr. Davis, the average European male brain weighs 36,498
momme, and the Australian, 22,413, while the Japanese, according to
Dr. Taguchi weighs 36,205. Taking the extremes, the largest English
male brain weighs 38,100 momme and the smallest 35,377, whereas the
corresponding figures for Japan are 43,919 and 30,304, respectively,
showing an astonishing range between extremes. According to Dr. E.
Baelz of the Imperial University of Tokyo, the lower classes of Japan
have a larger skull circumference than either the middle or upper
classes (1.8414, 1.7905, and 1.8051 feet, respectively), and the Ainu
(1.8579) exceed the Japanese. From these facts it might almost appear
that brain size and civilizational development are in inverse ratio.
Were the Japanese brain larger, then, than that of the European, it
might plausibly be argued that they are therefore inferior in brain
power. This would be in accord with certain of De Quatrefages's
investigations. He has shown that negroes born in America have smaller
brains, but are intellectually superior to their African brothers.
"With them, therefore, intelligence increases, while the cranial
capacity diminishes."[Y]

Those who trace racial and civilizational nature to brain development
cannot gain much consolation from a comparative statistical study of
race brains. De Quatrefages's conclusion is repeatedly forced home:
"We must confess that there can be no real relation between the
dimension of the cranial capacity and social development."[Z] "The
development of the intellectual faculties of man is, to a great
extent, independent of the capacity of the cranium and the volume of
the brain."[AA]

We may conclude at once, then, that Japanese intellectual
peculiarities are in no way due to the size of their brains, but
depend rather on their social evolution. Yet it will not be amiss to
study in detail the various mental peculiarities of the race, real and
supposed, and to note their relation to the social order.

In becoming acquainted with the Japanese and Chinese peoples, an
Occidental is much impressed with their powers of memory, and this
especially in connection with the written language, the far-famed
"Chinese Character," or ideograph. My Chinese dictionary contains over
50,000 different characters. The task of learning them is appalling.
How the Japanese or Chinese do it is to us a constant wonder. We
assume at once their possession of astonishing memories. We argue
that, for hundreds of years, each generation has been developing
powers of memory through efforts to conquer this cumbersome
contrivance for writing, and that, as a consequence for the nations
using this system, there is now prodigious ability to remember.

It is my impression, however, that we greatly overrate these powers.
In the first place, few Japanese claim any acquaintance with the
entire 50,000 characters; only the educated make any pretense of
knowing more than a few hundred, and a vast majority even of learned
men do not know more than 10,000 characters. Some Japanese newspapers
have undertaken to limit themselves in the use of the ideograph. It is
said that between four and five thousand characters suffice for all
the ordinary purposes of communication. These are, without doubt,
fairly well known to the educated classes. But for the masses, there
is need that the pronunciation be placed beside each printed
character, before it can be read. Furthermore, we must remember that a
Japanese youth gives the best years of his life to the bare memorizing
of these symbols.[AB]

Were European or American youth to devote to the study of Chinese the
same number of hours each day for the same number of years, I doubt if
there would be any conspicuous difference in the results. We should
not forget also that some Occidentals manifest astonishing facility in
memorizing Chinese characters.

In this connection is the important fact that the social order serves
to sift out individuals of marked mnemonic powers and bring them into
prominence, while those who are relatively deficient are relegated to
the background. The educated class is necessarily composed of those
who have good powers of memory. All others fail and are rejected. We
see and admire those who succeed; of those who fail we know nothing
and we even forget that there are such.

In response to my questions Japanese friends have uniformly assured me
that they are not accustomed to think of the Japanese as possessed of
better memories than the people of the West. They appear surprised
that the question should be raised, and are specially surprised at our
high estimate of Japanese ability in this direction.

If, however, we inquire about their powers of memory in connection
with daily duties and the ordinary acquisition of knowledge and its
retention, my own experience of twelve years, chiefly with the middle
and lower classes of society, has left the impression that, while some
learn easily and remember well, a large number are exceedingly slow.
On the whole, I am inclined to believe that, although the Japanese may
be said to have good memories, yet it can hardly be maintained that
they conspicuously exceed Occidentals in this respect.

In comparing the Occidental with the Oriental, it is to be remembered
that there is not among Occidental nations that attention to bare
memorizing which is so conspicuous among the less civilized nations.
The astonishing feats performed by the transmitters of ancient poems
and religious teachings seem to us incredible. Professor Max Mueller
says that the voluminous Vedas have been handed down for centuries,
unchanged, simply from mouth to mouth by the priesthood. Every
progressive race, until it has attained a high development of the art
of writing, has manifested similar power of memory. Such power is not,
however, inherent; that is to say, it is not due to the innate
peculiarity of brain structure, but rather to the nature of the social
order which demands such expenditure of time and strength for the
maintenance of its own higher life. Through the art of writing
Occidental peoples have found a cheaper way of retaining their history
and of preserving the products of their poets and religious teachers.
Even for the transactions of daily life we have resorted to the
constant use of pen and notebook and typewriter, by these devices
saving time and strength for other things. As a result, our memories
are developed in directions different from those of semi-civilized or
primitive man. The differences of memory characterizing different
races, then, are for the most part due to differences in the social
order and to the nature of the civilization, rather than to the
intrinsic and inherited structure of the brain itself.

Since memory is the foundation of all mental operations, we have given
to it the first place in the present discussion. And that the Japanese
have a fair degree of memory argues well for the prospect of high
attainment in other directions. With this in mind, we naturally ask
whether they show any unusual proficiency or deficiency in the
acquisition of foreign languages? In view of her protracted separation
from the languages of other peoples, should we not expect marked
deficiency in this respect? On the contrary, however, we find that
tens of thousands of Japanese students have acquired a fairly good
reading knowledge of English, French, and German. Those few who have
had good and sufficient teaching, or who have been abroad and lived in
Occidental lands, have in addition secured ready conversational use of
the various languages. Indeed, some have contended that since the
Japanese learn foreign languages more easily than foreigners learn
Japanese, they have greater linguistic powers than the foreigner. It
should be borne in mind, however, that in such a comparison, not only
are the time required and the proficiency; attained to be considered,
but also the inherent difficulty of the language studied and the
linguistic helps provided the student.

I have come gradually to the conclusion that the Japanese are neither
particularly gifted nor particularly deficient in powers of language
acquisition. They rank with Occidental peoples in this respect.

To my mind language affords one of the best possible proofs of the
general contention of this volume that the characteristics which
distinguish the races are social rather than biological. The reason
why the languages of the different races differ is not because the
brain-types of the races are different, but only because of the
isolated social evolution which the races have experienced. Had it
been possible for Japan to maintain throughout the ages perfect and
continuous social intercourse with the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon
race, while still maintaining biological isolation, _i.e._, perfect
freedom from intermarriage, there is no reason to think that two
distinct languages so different as English and Japanese would have
arisen. The fact that Japanese children can accurately acquire
English, and that English or American children can accurately acquire
Japanese, proves conclusively that diversities of language do not rest
on brain differences and brain heredity, but exclusively on social
differences and social heredity.

If this is true, then the argument can easily be extended to all the
features that differentiate the civilizations of different races; for
the language of any race is, in a sense, the epitome of the
civilization of that race. All its ideas, customs, theologies,
philosophies, sciences, mythologies; all its characteristic thoughts,
conceptions, ideals; all its distinguishing social features, are
represented in its language. Indeed, they enter into it as determining
factors, and by means of it are transmitted from age to age. This
argument is capable of much extension and illustration.

The charge that the Japanese are a nation of imitators has been
repeated so often as to become trite, and the words are usually spoken
with disdain. Yet, if the truth were fully told, it would be found
that, from many points of view, this quality gives reason rather for
congratulation. Surely that nation which can best discriminate and
imitate has advantage over nations that are so fixed in their
self-sufficiency as to be able neither to see that which is
advantageous nor to imitate it. In referring to the imitative powers
of the Japanese, then, I do not speak in terms of reproach, but rather
in those of commendation. "Monkeyism" is not the sort of imitation
that has transformed primitive Japan into the Japan of the early or
later feudal ages, nor into the Japan of the twentieth century. Bare
imitation, without thought, has been relatively slight in Japan. If it
has been known at times, those times have been of short duration.

In his introduction to "The Classic Poetry of the Japanese" Professor
Chamberlain has so stated the case for the imitative quality of the
people that I quote the following:

     "The current impression that the Japanese are a nation of imitators
     is in the main correct. As they copy us to-day, so did they copy
     the Chinese and Koreans a millennium and a half ago. Religion,
     philosophy, laws, administration, written characters, all arts but
     the very simplest, all science, or at least what then went by that
     name, everything was imported from the neighboring continent; so
     much so that of all that we are accustomed to term 'Old Japan'
     scarce one trait in a hundred is really and properly Japanese. Not
     only are their silk and lacquer not theirs by right of invention,
     nor their painting (albeit so often praised by European critics for
     its originality), nor their porcelain, nor their music, but even
     the larger part of their language consists of mispronounced
     Chinese; and from the Chinese they have drawn new names for already
     existing places, and new titles for their ancient Gods."

While the above cannot be disputed in its direct statements, yet I can
but feel that it makes, on the whole, a false impression. Were these
same tests applied to any European people, what would be the result?
Of what European nation may it be said that its art, or method of
writing, or architecture, or science, or language even, is "its own by
right of invention"? And when we stop to examine the details of the
ancient Japanese civilization which is supposed to have been so,
slavishly copied from China and India, we shall find that, though the
beginnings were indeed imitated, there were also later developments of
purely Japanese creation. In some instances the changes were vital.

In examining the practical arts, while we acknowledge that the
beginnings of nearly all came from Korea or China, we must also
acknowledge that in many important respects. Japan has developed along
her own lines. The art of sword-making, for instance, was undoubtedly
imported; but who does not know of the superior quality and beauty of
Japanese swords, the Damascus blades of the East? So distinct is this
Japanese production that it cannot be mistaken for that of any other
nation. It has received the impress of the Japanese social order. Its
very shape is due to the habit of carrying the sheath in the "obi" or
belt.

If we study the home of the laborer, or the instruments in common use,
we shall find proof that much more than imitation has been involved.

Were the Japanese mere imitators, how could we explain their
architecture, so different from that of China and Korea? How explain
the multiplied original ways in which bamboo and straw are used?

For a still closer view of the matter, let us consider the imported
ethical and religious codes of the country. In China the emphasis of
Confucianism is laid on the duty of filial piety. In Japan the primary
emphasis is on loyalty. This single change transformed the entire
system and made the so-called Confucianism of Japan distinct from that
of China. In Buddhism, imported from India, we find greater changes
than Occidental nations have imposed on their religion imported from
Palestine. Indeed, so distinct has Japanese Buddhism become that it is
sometimes difficult to trace its connections in China and India. And
the Buddhistic sects that have sprung up in Japan are more radically
diverse and antagonistic to each other and to primitive Buddhism than
the denominations of Christianity are to each other and to primitive
Christianity.

In illustration is the most popular of all the Buddhist sects to-day,
Shinshu. This has sometimes been called by foreigners "Reformed"
Buddhism; and so similar are many of its doctrines to those of
Christianity that some have supposed them to have been derived from
it, but without the slightest evidence. All its main doctrines and
practices were clearly formulated by its founder, Shinrah, six hundred
years ago. The regular doctrines of Buddhism that salvation comes only
through self-effort and self-victory are rejected, and salvation
through the merits of another is taught. "Ta-riki," "another's power,"
not "Ji-riki," "self-power," is with them the orthodox doctrine.
Priests may marry and eat meat, practices utterly abhorrent to the
older and more primitive Buddhism. The sacred books are printed in the
vernacular, in marked contrast to the customs of the other sects.
Women, too, are given a very different place in the social and
religious scale and are allowed hopes of attaining salvation that are
denied by all the older sects. "Penance, fasting, prescribed diet,
pilgrimages, isolation from society, whether as hermits or in the
cloister, and generally amulets and charms, are all tabooed by this
sect. Monasteries imposing life vows are unknown within its pale.
Family life takes the place of monkish seclusion. Devout prayer,
purity, earnestness of life, and trust in Buddha himself as the only
worker of perfect righteousness, are insisted on. Morality is taught
as more important than orthodoxy."[AC] It is amazing how far the Shin
sect has broken away from regular Buddhistic doctrine and practice.
Who can say that no originality was required to develop such a system,
so opposed at vital points to the prevalent Buddhism of the day?

Another sect of purely Japanese origin deserving notice is the "Hokke"
or "Nicheren." Its founder, known by the name of Nichiren, was a man
of extraordinary independence and religious fervor. Wholly by his
original questions and doubts as to the prevailing doctrines and
customs of the then dominant sects, he was led to make independent
examination into the history and meaning of Buddhistic literature and
to arrive at conclusions quite different from those of his
contemporaries. Of the truth and importance of his views he was so
persuaded that he braved not only fierce denunciations, but prolonged
opposition and persecution. He was rejected and cast out by his own
people and sect; he was twice banished by the ruling military powers.
But he persevered to the end, finally winning thousands of converts to
his views. The virulence of the attacks made upon him was due to the
virulence with which he attacked what seemed to him the errors and
corruption of the prevailing sects. Surely his was no case of servile
imitation. His early followers had also to endure opposition and
severe persecution.

Glancing at the philosophical ideas brought from China, we find here
too a suggestion of the same tendency toward originality. It is true
that Dr. Geo. Wm. Knox, in his valuable monograph on "A Japanese
Philosopher," makes the statement that, "In acceptance and rejection
alike no native originality emerges, nothing beyond a vigorous power
of adoption and assimilation. No improvements of the new philosophy
were even attempted. Wherein it was defective and indistinct,
defective and indistinct it remained. The system was not thought out
to its end and independently adopted. Polemics, ontology, ethics,
theology, marvels, heroes--all were enthusiastically adopted on faith.
It is to be added that the new system was superior to the old, and so
much of discrimination was shown."[AD] And somewhat earlier he
likewise asserts that "There is not an original and valuable
commentary by a Japanese writer. They have been content to brood over
the imported works and to accept unquestioningly politics, ethics, and
metaphysics." After some examination of these native philosophers, I
feel that, although not without some truth, these assertions cannot be
strictly maintained. It is doubtless true that no powerful thinker and
writer has appeared in Japan that may be compared to the two great
philosophers of China, Shushi and Oyomei. The works and the system of
the former dominated Japan, for the simple reason that governmental
authority forbade the public teaching or advocacy of the other.
Nevertheless, not a few Japanese thinkers rejected the teachings and
philosophy of Shushi, regardless of consequences. Notable among those
rejecters was Kaibara Yekken, whose book "The Great Doubt" was not
published until after his death. In it he rejects in emphatic terms
the philosophical and metaphysical ideas of Shushi. An article[AE] by
Dr. Tetsujiro Inouye, Professor of Philosophy in the Imperial
University in Tokyo, on the "Development of Philosophical Ideas in
Japan," concludes with these words:

     "From this short sketch the reader can clearly see that
     philosophical considerations began in our country with the study of
     Shushi and Oyomei. But many of our thinkers did not long remain
     faithful to that tradition; they soon formed for themselves new
     conceptions of life and of the world, which, as a rule, are not
     only more practical, but also more advanced than those of the
     Chinese."

An important reason for our Western thought, that the Japanese have
had no independence in philosophy, is our ignorance of the larger part
of Japanese and Chinese literature. Oriental speculation was moving in
a direction so diverse from that of the West that we are impressed
more with the general similarity that prevails throughout it than with
the evidences of individual differences. Greater knowledge would
reveal these differences. In our generalized knowledge, we see the
uniformity so strongly that we fail to discover the originality.

As a traveler from the West, on reaching some Eastern land, finds it
difficult at first to distinguish between the faces of different
individuals, his mind being focused on the likeness pervading them
all, so the Occidental student of Oriental thought is impressed with
the remarkable similarity that pervades the entire Oriental
civilization, modes of thought, and philosophy, finding it difficult
to discover the differences which distinguish the various Oriental
races. In like manner, a beginner in the study of Japanese philosophy
hardly gives the Japanese credit for the modifications of Chinese
philosophy which they have originated.

In this connection it is well to remember that, more than any
Westerner can realize, the Japanese people have been dependent on
governmental initiative from time immemorial. They have never had any
thought but that of implicit obedience, and this characteristic of the
social order has produced its necessary consequences in the present
characteristics of the people. Individual initiative and independence
have been frowned upon, if not always forcibly repressed, and thus the
habit of imitation has been stimulated. The people have been
deliberately trained to imitation by their social system. The
foreigner is amazed at the sudden transformations that have swept the
nation. When the early contact with China opened the eyes of the
ruling classes to the fact that China had a system of government that
was in many respects better than their own, it was an easy thing to
adopt it and make it the basis for their own government. This
constituted the epoch-making period in Japanese history known as the
Taikwa Reform. It occurred in the seventh century, and consisted of a
centralizing policy; under which, probably for the first time in
Japanese history, the country was really unified. Critics ascribe it
to an imitation of the Chinese system. Imitation it doubtless was; but
its significant feature was its imposition by the few rulers on the
people; hence its wide prevalence and general acceptance.

Similarly, in our own times, the Occidentalized order now dominant in
Japan was adopted, not by the people, but by the rulers, and imposed
by them on the people; these had no idea of resisting the new order,
but accepted it loyally as the decision of their Emperor, and this
spirit of unquestioning obedience to the powers that be is, I am
persuaded, one of the causes of the prevalent opinion respecting
Japanese imitativeness as well as of the fact itself.

The reputation for imitativeness, together with the quality itself,
is due in no small degree, therefore, to the long-continued dominance
of the feudal order of society. In a land where the dependence of the
inferior on the superior is absolute, the wife on the husband, the
children on the parents, the followers on their lord, the will of the
superior being ever supreme, individual initiative must be rare, and
the quality of imitation must be powerfully stimulated.




XVII

ORIGINALITY--INVENTIVENESS


Originality is the obverse side of imitation. In combating the notion
that Japan is a nation of unreflective imitators, I have given
numerous examples of originality. Further extensive illustration of
this characteristic is, accordingly, unnecessary. One other may be
cited, however.

The excellence of Japanese art is admitted by all. Japanese temples
and palaces are adorned with mural paintings and pieces of sculpture
that command the admiration of Occidental experts. The only question
is as to their authors. Are these, properly speaking, Japanese works
of art--or Korean or Chinese? That Japan received her artistic
stimulus, and much of her artistic ideas and technique, from China is
beyond dispute. But did she develop nothing new and independent? This
is a question of fact. Japanese art, though Oriental, has a
distinctive quality. A magnificent work entitled "Solicited Relics of
Japanese Art" is issuing from the press, in which there is a large
number of chromo-xylographic and collotype reproductions of the best
specimens of ancient Japanese art. Reviewing this work, the _Japan
Mail_ remarks:

     "But why should the only great sculptors that China or Korea ever
     produced have come to Japan and bequeathed to this country the
     unique results of their genius? That is the question we have to
     answer before we accept the doctrine that the noblest masterpieces
     of ancient Japan were from foreign lands. When anything comparable
     is found in China or Korea, there will be less difficulty in
     applying this doctrine of over-sea-influence to the genius that
     enriched the temples of antique Japan."[AF]

Under the early influence of Buddhism (900-1200 A.D.) Japan fairly
bloomed. Those were the days of her glory in architecture, literature,
and art. But a blight fell upon her from which she is only now
recovering. The causes of this blight will receive attention in a
subsequent chapter. Let us note here only one aspect of it, namely,
official repression of originality.

Townsend Harris, in his journal, remarks on the way in which the
Japanese government has interfered with the originality of the people.
"The genius of their government seems to forbid any exercise of
ingenuity in producing articles for the gratification of wealth and
luxury. Sumptuary laws rigidly enforce the forms, colors, material,
and time of changing the dress of all. As to luxury of furniture, the
thing is unknown in Japan.... It would be an endless task to attempt
to put down all the acts of a Japanese that are regulated by
authority."

The Tokugawa rule forbade the building of large ships; so that, by the
middle of the nineteenth century, the art of ship-building was far
behind what it had been two centuries earlier. Government authority
exterminated Christianity in the early part of the seventeenth century
and freedom of religious belief was forbidden. The same power that put
the ban on Christianity forbade the spread of certain condemned
systems of Confucianism. Even in the study of Chinese literature and
philosophy, therefore, such originality as the classic models
stimulated was discouraged by the all-powerful Tokugawa government.
The avowed aim and end of the ruling powers of Japan was to keep the
nation in its _status quo_. Originality was heresy and treason;
progress was impiety. The teaching of Confucius likewise lent its
support to this policy. To do exactly as the fathers did is to honor
them; to do, or even to think, otherwise is to dishonor them. There
have not been wanting men of originality and independence in both
China and Japan; but they were not great enough to break over, or
break down, the incrusted system in which they lived--the system of
blind devotion to the past. This system, that deliberately opposed all
invention and originality, has been the great incubus to national
progress, in that it has rejected and repressed every tendency to
variation. What results might not the country have secured, had
Christianity been allowed to do its work in stimulating individual
development and in creating the sense of personal responsibility
towards God and man!

A curious anomaly still remains in Japan on the subject of liberty in
study and belief. Though perfect liberty is the rule, one topic is
even yet under official embargo. No one may express public dissent
from the authorized version of primitive Japanese history. A few years
ago a professor in the Imperial University made an attempt to
interpret ancient Japanese myths. His constructions were supposed to
threaten the divine descent of the Imperial line, and he was summarily
dismissed.

Dr. E. Inouye, Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in the Imperial
University, addressing a Teachers' Association of Sendai, delivered a
conservative, indirectly anti-foreign speech. He insisted, as reported
by a local English correspondent, that the Japanese people "were
descended from the gods. In all other countries the sovereign or
Emperor was derived from the people, but here the people had the honor
of being derived from the Emperor. Other countries had filial piety
and loyalty, but no such filial piety and loyalty as exist in Japan.
The moral attainments of the people were altogether unique. He
informed his audience that though they might adopt foreign ways of
doing things, their minds needed no renovating; they were good enough
as they were."[AG]

As a result of this position, scholarship and credulity are curiously
combined in modern historical production. Implicit confidence seems to
be placed in the myths of the primitive era. Tales of the gods are
cited as historical events whose date, even, can be fixed with some
degree of accuracy. Although writing was unknown in Japan until early
in the Christian era, the chronology of the previous six or eight
hundred years is accepted on the authority of a single statement in
the Kojiki, written 712 years A.D. This statement was reproduced from
the memory of a single man, who remembered miraculously the contents
of a book written shortly before, but accidentally destroyed by fire.
In the authoritative history of Japan, prepared and translated into
English at the command of the government for the Columbian Exposition,
we find such statements as these:

"From the time that Amaterasu-Omikami made Ninigi-no-mikoto to descend
from the heavens and subject to his administrative sway
Okini-nushi-no-mikoto and other offspring of the deities in the land,
descendants of the divine beings have sat upon the throne, generation
after generation in succession."[AH] "Descended in a direct line from
the heavenly deities, the Emperor has stood unshaken in his high place
through all generations, his prestige and dignity immutable from time
immemorial and independent of all the vicissitudes of the world about
him."[AI] "Never has there been found a single subject of the realm
who sought to impair the Imperial prestige."[AJ] It is true that in a
single passage the traditions of the "age of the Deities" are
described as "strange and incredible legends," but it is added that,
however singular they are, in order to understand the history of the
Empire's beginnings, they must be studied. Then follows, without a
word of criticism or dissent, the account of the doings of the
heavenly deities, in creating Japan and its people, as well as the
myriads of gods. There is no break between the age of the gods and the
history of men. The first inventions and discoveries, such as those of
fire, of mining, and of weaving are ascribed to Amate rasu-Omikami
(the Sun Goddess). According to these traditions and the modern
histories built upon them, the Japanese race came into existence
wholly independently of all other races of men. Such is the
authoritative teaching in the schools to-day.

Occidental scholars do not accept these statements or dates. That the
Japanese will evince historical and critical ability in the study of
their own early history, as soon as the social order will allow it,
can hardly be doubted. Those few who even now entertain advanced ideas
do not dare to avow them. And this fact throws an interesting light on
the way in which the social order, or a despotic government, may
thwart for a time the natural course of development. The present
apparent credulity of Japanese historical scholarship is due neither
to race character nor to superstitions lodged in the inherited race
brain, but simply to the social system, which, as yet, demands the
inviolability of the Imperial line.

Now that the Japanese have been so largely relieved from the incubus
of the older social order, the question rises whether they are showing
powers of originality. The answer is not doubtful, for they have
already made several important discoveries and inventions. The Murata
rifle, with which the army is equipped, is the invention of a
Japanese. In 1897 Colonel Arisaka invented several improvements in
this same rifle, increasing the velocity and accuracy, and lessening
the weight. Still more recently he has invented a rapid-fire
field-piece to superintend whose manufacture he has been sent to
Europe. Mr. Shimose has invented a smokeless powder, which the
government is manufacturing for its own use. Not infrequently there
appear in the papers notices of new inventions. I have recently noted
the invention of important improvements in the hand loom universally
used in Japan, also a "smoke-consumer" which not only abolishes the
smoke, but reduces the amount of coal used and consequently the
expense. These are but a few of the ever-increasing number of Japanese
inventions.

In the, field of original scientific research is the famous
bacteriologist, Dr. Kitazato. Less widely known perhaps, but none the
less truly original explorers in the field of science, are Messrs.
Hirase and Ikeno, whose discoveries of spermatozoids in Ginko and
Cycas have no little value for botanists, especially in the
development of the theory of certain forms of fertilization. These
instances show that the faculty of original thought is not entirely
lacking among the Japanese. Under favorable conditions, such as now
prevail, there is good reason for holding that the Japanese will take
their place among the peoples of the world, not only as skillful
imitators and adapters, but also as original contributors to the
progress of civilization and of science.

Originality may be shown in imitation as well as in production, and
this type of originality the Japanese have displayed in a marked way.
They have copied the institutions of no single country. It might even
be difficult to say which Western land has had the greatest influence
in molding the new social order of Japan. In view of the fact that it
is the English language which has been most in favor during the past
thirty years, it might be assumed that England and America are the
favored models. But no such hasty conclusion can be drawn. The
Japanese have certainly taken ideas and teachers from many different
sources; and they have changed them frequently, but not thoughtlessly.
A writer in _The Far East_ brings this points out clearly:

     "While Japan remained secluded from other countries, she had no
     necessity for and scarcely any war vessels, but after the country
     was opened to the free intercourse of foreign powers--immediately
     she felt the urgent necessity of naval defense and employed a Dutch
     officer to construct her navy. In 1871 the Japanese government
     employed a number of English officers, and almost wholly
     reconstructed her navy according to the English system. But in the
     matter of naval education our rulers found the English system
     altogether unsatisfactory, and adopted the American system for the
     model of our naval academy. So, in discipline, our naval officers
     found the German principle much superior to the English, and
     adopted that in point of discipline. Thus the Japanese navy is not
     wholly after the English system, or the American, or the French, or
     the German system. But it has been so constructed as to include the
     best portions of all the different systems. In the case of the
     army, we had a system of our own before we began to utilize
     gunpowder and foreign methods of discipline. Shortly before the
     present era we reorganized our army by adopting the Dutch system,
     then the English, then the French, and after the Franco-Prussian
     war, made an improvement by adopting the German system. But on
     every occasion of reorganization we retained the most advantageous
     parts of the old systems and harmonized them with the new one. The
     result has been the creation of an entirely new system, different
     from any of those models we have adopted. So in the case of our
     civil code, we consulted most carefully the laws of many civilized
     nations, and gathered the cream of all the different codes before
     we formulated our own suited to the customs of our people. In the
     revision of our monetary system, our government appointed a number
     of prominent economists to investigate the characteristics of
     foreign systems, as to their merits and faults, and also the
     different circumstances under which various systems present their
     strength and weakness. The investigation lasted more than two
     years, which finally culminated in our adoption of the gold in the
     place of the old silver standard."

This quotation gives an idea of the selective method that has been
followed. There has been no slavish or unconscious imitation. On the
contrary, there has been a constant conscious effort to follow the
best model that the civilized world afforded. Of course, it may be
doubted whether in fact they have always chosen the best; but that is
a different matter. The Japanese think they have; and what foreigner
can say that, under the circumstances and in view of the conditions of
the people, they have not? One point is clear, that on the whole the
nation has made great progress in recent decades, and that the conduct
of the government cannot fail to command the admiration of every
impartial student of Oriental lands. This is far from saying that all
is perfection. Even the Japanese make no such claim. Nor is this
equivalent to an assertion of Japan's equality with the leading lands
of the West, although many Japanese are ready to assert this. But I
merely say that the leaders of New Japan have revealed a high order of
judicious originality in their imitation of foreign nations.




XVIII

INDIRECTNESS--"NOMINALITY"


The Japanese have two words in frequent use which aptly describe
certain striking aspects of their civilization. They are "tomawashi
ni," "yumei-mujitsu," the first translated literally signifying
"roundabout" or "indirect," the second meaning "having the name, but
not the reality." Both these aspects of Japanese character are forced
on the attention of any who live long in Japan.

Some years ago I had a cow that I wished to sell. Being an American,
my natural impulse was to ask a dairyman directly if he did not wish
to buy; but that would not be the most Japanese method. I accordingly
resorted to the help of a "go-between." This individual, who has a
regular name in Japanese, "nakadachi," is indispensable for many
purposes. When land was being bought for missionary residences in
Kumamoto, there were at times three or even four agents acting between
the purchaser and the seller and each received his "orei," "honorable
politeness," or, in plain English, commission. In the purchase of two
or three acres of land, dealings were carried on with some fifteen or
more separate landowners. Three different go-betweens dealt directly
with the purchaser, and each of these had his go-between, and in some
cases these latter had theirs, before the landowner was reached. A
domestic desiring to leave my employ conferred with a go-between, who
conferred with his go-between, who conferred with me! In every
important consultation a go-between seems essential in Japan. That
vexatious delays and misunderstandings are frequent may be assumed.

The system, however, has its advantages. In case of disagreeable
matters the go-between can say the disagreeable things in the third
person, reducing the unpleasant utterances to a minimum.

I recall the case of two evangelists in the employ of the Kumamoto
station. Each secured the other to act as go-between in presenting his
own difficulties to me. To an American the natural course would have
been for each man to state his own grievances and desires, and secure
an immediate settlement.

The characteristic of "roundaboutness" is not, however, confined to
Japanese methods of action, but also characterizes their methods of
speech. In later chapters on the alleged Japanese impersonality we
shall consider the remarkable deficiency of personal pronouns in the
language, and the wide use of "honorifics." This substitution of the
personal pronouns by honorifics makes possible an indefiniteness of
speech that is exceedingly difficult for an Anglo-Saxon to appreciate.
Fancy the amount of implication in the statement, "Ikenai koto-we
shimashita" which, strictly translated, means "Can't go thing have
done." Who has done? you? or he? or I? This can only be inferred, for
it is not stated. If a speaker wishes to make his personal allusion
blind, he can always do so with the greatest ease and without the
slightest degree of grammatical incorrectness. "Caught cold," "better
ask," "honorably sorry," "feel hungry," and all the common sentences
of daily life are entirely free from that personal definiteness which
an Occidental language necessitates. We shall see later that the
absence of the personal element from the wording of the sentence does
not imply, or prove, its absence from the thought of either the
speaker or hearer. The Japanese language abounds in roundabout methods
of expression. This is specially true in phrases of courtesy. Instead
of saying, "I am glad to see you," the Japanese say, "Well, honorably
have come"; instead of, "I am sorry to have troubled you," they say,
"Honorable hindrance have done"; instead of "Thank you," the correct
expression is, "It is difficult."

In a conversation once with a leading educator, I was maintaining that
a wide study of English was not needful for the Japanese youth; that
the majority of the boys would never learn enough English to make it
of practical use to them in after-life, and that it would be wiser for
them to spend the same amount of time on more immediately practical
subjects. The reply was that the boys needed to have the drill in
English in order to gain clear methods of thought: that the sharp
distinctness of the English sentence, with its personal pronouns and
tense and number, affords a mental drill which the Japanese can get in
no other way; and that even if the boys should never make the
slightest after-use of English in reading or conversation, the
advantage gained was well worth the time expended. I have since
noticed that those men who have spent some time in the study of a
foreign language speak very much more clearly in Japanese than those
who have not had this training. In the former case, the enunciation is
apt to be more distinct, and the sentences rounded into more definite
periods. The conversation of the average Japanese tends to ramble on
in a never-ending sentence. But a marked change has come over vast
numbers of the people during the last three decades. The
roundaboutness of to-day is as nothing to that which existed under the
old order of society. For the new order rests on radically different
ideas; directness of speech and not its opposite is being cultivated,
and in absolute contrast to the methods of the feudal era, directness
of governmental procedure is well-nigh universal to-day. In trade,
too, there has come a straightforwardness that is promising, though
not yet triumphant. It is safe to assume that in all respectable
stores the normal price is charged; for the custom of fixed prices has
been widely adopted. If individuals are known to have the "beating
down" habit, special prices are added for their sakes.

A personal experience illustrates the point. My wife and I had priced
several lamps, had made note of the most satisfactory, and had gone
home without buying. The next day a domestic was sent to secure the
one which pleased us best. He was charged more than we had been, and
in surprise mentioned the sum which we had authorized him to pay. The
shopkeeper explained by saying that he always told us the true price
in the beginning, because we never tried to beat him down. In truth,
modern industrial conditions have pretty well banished the old-time
custom of haggling. A premium is set on straightforwardness in
business unknown to the old social order.

Roundaboutness is, however, closely connected with "yumei-mujitsu,"
the other characteristic mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.
This, for the sake of simplicity, I venture to call "nominality."
Japanese history is a prolonged illustration of this characteristic.
For over a thousand years "yumei-mujitsu" has been a leading feature
in governmental life. Although the Emperor has ostensibly been seated
on the throne, clothed with absolute power, still he has often reigned
only in name.[AK] Even so early as 130 A.D., the two families of Oomi
and Omuraji began to exercise despotic authority in the central
government, and the feudal system, as thus early established,
continued with but few breaks to the middle of the present century.
There were also the great families which could alone furnish wives to
the Imperial line. These early took possession of the person of the
Emperor, and the fathers of the wives often exercised Imperial power.
The country was frequently and long disturbed by intense civil wars
between these rival families. In turn the Fujiwaras, the Minamotos,
and the Tairas held the leading place in the control of the Emperor;
they determined the succession and secured frequent abdication in
favor of their infant sons, but within these families, in turn, there
appeared the influence of the "yumei-mujitsu" characteristic. Lesser
men, the retainers of these families, manipulated the family leaders,
who were often merely figureheads of the contending families and
clans. Emperors were made and unmade at the will of these men behind
the scenes, most of whom are quite unknown to fame. The creation of
infant Emperors, allowed to bear the Imperial name in their infancy
and youth, but compelled to abdicate on reaching manhood, was a common
device for maintaining nominal Imperialism with actual impotence.

When military clans began to monopolize Imperial power, the people
distinctly recognized the nature of their methods and gave it the name
of "Bakufu" or "curtain government," a roundabout expression for
military government. There has been a succession of these "curtain
governments," the last and most successful being that of the Tokugawa,
whose fall in 1867-68 brought the entire system to an end and placed
the true Emperor on the throne.

But this "yumei-mujitsu" characteristic of Japanese life has been by
no means limited to the national government. Every daimyate was more
or less blighted by it; the daimyo, or "Great Name," was in too many
cases but a puppet in the hands of his "kerai," or family retainers.
These men, who were entirely out of sight, were, in very many cases,
the real holders of the power which was supposed to be exercised by
the daimyo. The lord was often a "great name" and nothing more. That
this state of affairs was always attended with evil results is by no
means the contention of these pages. Not infrequently the people were
saved by it from the incompetence and ignorance and selfishness of
hereditary rulers. Indeed, this system of "yumei-mujitsu" government
was one of the devices whereby the inherent evils of hereditary rulers
were more or less obviated. It may be questioned, however, whether the
device did not in the long run cost more than it gained. Did it not
serve to maintain, if not actually to produce, a system of
dissimulation and deception which could but injure the national
character? It certainly could not stimulate the straightforward
frankness and outspoken directness and honesty so essential to the
well-being of the human race.

Although "yumei-mujitsu" government is now practically extinct in
Japan, yet in the social structure it still survives.

The Japanese family is a maze of "nominality." Full-grown young men
and women are adopted as sons and daughters, in order to maintain the
family line and name.

A son is not a legal son unless he is so registered, while an
illegitimate child is recognized as a true son if so registered. A man
may be the legal son of his grandmother, or of his sister, if so
registered. Although a family may have no children, it does not die
out unless there has been a failure to adopt a son or daughter, and an
extinct family may be revived by the legal appointment of someone to
take the family name and worship at the family shrine. The family
pedigree, therefore, does not describe the actual ancestry, but only
the nominal, the fictitious. There is no deception in this. It is a
well-recognized custom of Old Japan. Its origin, moreover, is not
difficult to explain. Nor is this kind of family peculiar to Japan. It
is none the less a capital illustration of the "yumei-mujitsu"
characteristic permeating the feudal civilization, and still exerting
a powerful influence. Even Christians are not free from "nominalism,"
as we have frequently found in our missionary work.

A case in mind is of an evangelist employed by our mission station. He
was to receive a definite proportion of his salary from the church for
which he worked and the rest from the station. On inquiry I learned
that he was receiving only that provided by the station, and on
questioning him further he said that probably the sum promised by the
church was being kept as his monthly contribution to the expenses of
the church! Instances of this kind are not infrequent. While in Kyushu
I more than once discovered that a body of Christians, whose
evangelists we were helping to support proportionately, were actually
raising not a cent of their proportion. On inquiry, I would be told
that the evangelists themselves contributed out of their salary the
sums needed, and that, therefore, the Christians did not need to raise
it.

The mission, at one time, adopted the plan of throwing upon the local
churches the responsibility of deciding as to the fitness of young men
for mission aid in securing a theological education. It was agreed by
representatives of the churches and the mission that each candidate
should secure the approval of the deacons of the church of which he
was a member, and that the church should pay a certain proportion of
the candidate's school expenses. It was thought that by this method
the leading Christians of the young man's acquaintance would become
his sponsors, and that they would be unwilling to take this
responsibility except for men in whom they had personal confidence,
and for whom they would be willing to make personal contributions. In
course of time the mission discovered that the plan was not working as
expected. The young men could secure the approval of the deacons of
their church without any difficulty; and as for the financial aid from
the church, that could be very easily arranged for by the student's
making a monthly contribution to the church of the sum which the
church should contribute toward his expenses. Although this method
seems to the average Occidental decidedly deceptive, it seemed to the
Japanese perfectly proper. The arrangement, it is needless to state,
was not long continued. I am persuaded that the correct explanation of
these cases is "yumei-mujitsu."

Not long since express trains were put on between Kobe and Tokyo. One
morning at Osaka I planned to take the early express to Kyoto, distant
about thirty miles. These are the second and third cities of Japan,
and the travel between them is heavy. On applying for a ticket I was
refused and told there was no train for Kyoto. But as multitudes were
buying tickets, and going out upon the platform, I asked an official
what the trouble was, and received the explanation that for this
express train no tickets could be sold for less than forty miles; but
if I would buy a ticket for the next station beyond Kyoto, it would be
all right; I could get off at Kyoto. I was assured that I would be
allowed to land and leave the station at Kyoto. This I did then, and
have repeatedly done since. The same absurd rule is applied, I am
told, between Yokohama and Tokyo.

But our interest in these illustrations is the light they shed on
Japanese character. They indicate the intellectual angle from which
the people have looked out on life. What is the origin of the
characteristic? Is it due to deep-lying race nature, to the quality of
the race brain? Even more clearly than in the case of
"roundaboutness," it seems to me that "nominality" is due to the
nature of the old social order. Feudalism has always exhibited more or
less of these same features. To Anglo-Saxons, reared in a land blessed
by direct government of the people, by the people, and for the people,
such methods were not only needless but obnoxious. Nominal
responsibility without real power has been seen to breed numberless
evils. We have learned to hate all nominalism, all fiction in
government, in business and, above all, in personal character. But
this is due to the Anglo-Saxon social order, the product in large
measure of centuries of Christian instruction.

Through contact with Westerners and the ideas they stand for,
directness and reality are being assimilated and developed by the
Japanese. This would be impossible were the characteristic in question
due to inherent race nature necessarily bequeathed from generation to
generation by intrinsic heredity.




XIX

INTELLECTUALITY


Some writers hold that the Japanese are inherently deficient in the
higher mental faculties. They consider mediocre mentality to be an
inborn characteristic of Japan and assert that it lies at the root of
the civilizational differences distinguishing the East from the West.
The puerility of Oriental science in all its departments, the
prevalence of superstition even among the cultivated, the lack of
historical insight and interpretation of history are adduced as
conclusive evidences of this view.

Foreign teachers in Japanese employ have told me that Japanese
students, as compared with those of the West, manifest deficient
powers of analysis and of generalization. Some even assert that the
Japanese have no generalizing ability whatever, their progress in
civilization being entirely due to their remarkable power of clever
imitation. Mr. W.G. Aston, in ascribing the characteristic features of
Japanese literature to the fundamental nature of the race, says they
are "hardly capable of high intellectual achievement."[AL]

While we may admit that the Japanese do not seem to have at present
the same power of scientific generalization as Occidentals, we
naturally ask ourselves whether the difference is due to natal
deficiency, or whether it may not be due to difference in early
training. We must not forget that the youth who come under the
observation of foreign teachers in Japanese schools are already
products of the Japanese system of education, home and school, and
necessarily are as defective as it is.

In a previous chapter a few instances of recent invention and
important scientific discovery were given.

These could not have been made without genuine powers of analysis and
generalization. We need not linger to elaborate this point.

Another set of facts throwing light on our problem is the success of
so many Japanese students, at home and in foreign lands, in mastering
modern thought. Great numbers have come back from Europe and America
with diplomas and titles; not a few have taken high rank in their
classes. The Japanese student abroad is usually a hard worker, like
his brother at home. I doubt if any students in the new or the old
world study more hours in a year than do these of Japan. It has often
amazed me to learn how much they are required to do. This is one fair
sign of intellectuality. The ease too with which young Japan, educated
in Occidental schools and introduced to Occidental systems of thought,
acquires abstruse speculations, searching analyses, and generalized
abstractions proves conclusively Japanese possession of the higher
mental faculties, in spite of the long survival in their civilization
of primitive puerility and superstitions and the lack of science,
properly so called.

Japanese youths, furthermore, have a fluency in public speech
decidedly above anything I have met with in the United States. Young
men of eighteen or twenty years of age deliver long discourses on
religion or history or politics, with an apparent ease that their
uncouth appearance would not lead one to expect. In the little school
of less than 150 boys in Kumamoto there were more individuals who
could talk intelligibly and forcefully on important themes of national
policy, the relation of religion and politics, the relation of Japan
to the Occident and the Orient, than could be found in either of the
two colleges in the United States with which I was connected. I do not
say that they could bring forth original ideas on these topics. But
they could at least remember what they had heard and read and could
reproduce the ideas with amazing fluency.

A recent public meeting in Tokyo in which Christian students of the
University spoke to fellow-students on the great problems of religion,
revealed a power of no mean order in handling the peculiar
difficulties encountered by educated young men. A competent listener,
recently graduated from an American university and widely acquainted
with American students, declared that those Japanese speakers revealed
greater powers of mind and speech than would be found under similar
circumstances in the United States.

The fluency with which timid girls pray in public has often surprised
me. Once started, they never seem to hesitate for ideas or words. The
same girls would hardly be able to utter an intelligible sentence in
reply to questions put to them by the pastor or the missionary, so
faint would be their voices and so hesitating their manner.

The question as to whether the Japanese have powers of generalization
receives some light from a study of the language of the people. An
examination of primitive Japanese proves that the race, prior to
receiving even the slightest influence from China, had developed
highly generalized terms. It is worth while to call attention here to
a simple fact which most writers seem to ignore, namely, that all
language denotes and indeed rests on generalization. Consider the word
"uma," "horse"; this is a name for a whole class of objects, and is
therefore the product of a mind that can generalize and express its
generalization in a concept which no act of the imagination can
picture; the imagination can represent only individuals; the mind that
has concepts of classes of things, as, for instance, of horses,
houses, men, women, trees, has already a genuine power of
generalization. Let me also call attention to such words as "wake,"
"reason"; "mono," "thing"; "koto," "fact"; "aru," "is"; "oro,"
"lives"; "aru koto," "is fact," or "existence"; "ugoku koto,"
"movement"; "omoi," "thought"; this list might be indefinitely
extended. Let the reader consider whether these words are not highly
generalized; yet these are all pure Japanese words, and reveal the
development of the Japanese mind before it was in the least influenced
by Chinese thought. Evidently it will not do to assert the entire lack
of the power of generalization to the Japanese mind.

Still further evidence proving Japanese possession of the higher
mental faculties may be found in the wide prevalence and use of the
most highly generalized philosophical terms. Consider for instance,
"Ri" and "Ki," "In" and "Yo." No complete translation can be found for
them in English; "Ri" and "Ki" may be best translated as the rational
and the formative principles in the universe, while "In" and "Yo"
signify the active and the passive, the male and the female, the light
and the darkness; in a word, the poles of a positive and negative. It
is true that these terms are of Chinese origin as well as the thoughts
themselves, but they are to-day in universal use in Japan. Similar
abstract terms of Buddhistic origin are the possession of the common
people.

Of course the possession of these Chinese terms is not offered as
evidence of independent generalizing ability. But wide use proves
conclusively the possession of the higher mental faculties, for,
without such faculties, the above terms would be incomprehensible to
the people and would find no place in common speech. We must be
careful not to give too much weight to the foreign origin of these
terms. Chinese is to Japanese what Latin and Greek are to modern
European languages. The fact that a term is of Chinese origin proves
nothing as to the nature of the modern Japanese mind. The developing
Japanese civilization demanded new terms for her new instruments and
increasing concepts. These for over fifteen centuries have been
borrowed from, or constructed out of, Chinese in the same way that all
our modern scientific terms are constructed out of Latin and Greek. It
is doubtful if any of the Chinese terms, even those borrowed bodily,
have in Japan the same significance as in China. If this is true, then
the originating feature of Japanese power of generalization becomes
manifest.

Indeed from this standpoint, the fact that the Japanese have made such
extensive use of the Chinese language shows the degree to which the
Japanese mind has outgrown its primitive development, demanding new
terms for the expression of its expanding life. But mental growth
implies energy of acquisition. The adoption of Chinese terms is not a
passive but an active process.

Acquisition of generalized terms can only take place with the
development of a generalizing mind. Foreign terms may help, but they
do not cause that development.

In a study of the question whether or not the Japanese possess
independent powers of analysis and generalization, we must ever
remember the unique character of the social environment to which they
have been subjected. Always more or less of an isolated nation, they
have been twice or thrice suddenly confronted with a civilization much
superior to that which they in their isolation had developed. Under
such circumstances, adoption and modification of ideas and language as
well as of methods and machinery were the most rational and natural
courses.

The explanation usually given for the puerilities of Oriental science,
history, and religion has been short and simple, namely, the inherent
nature of the Oriental races, as if this were the final fact, needing
and admitting no further explanation. That the Orient has not
developed history or science is doubtless true, but the correct
explanation of this fact is, in my opinion, that the educational
method of the entire Orient has rested on mechanical memorization;
during the formative period of the mind the exclusive effort of
education has been to develop a memory which acts by arbitrary or
fanciful connections and relations. A Japanese boy of Old Japan, for
instance, began his education at from seven to eight years of age and
spent three or four years in memorizing the thousands of Chinese
hieroglyphic characters contained in the Shisho and Gokyo, nine of the
Chinese classics. This completed, his teacher would begin to explain
to him the meaning of the characters and sentences. The entire
educational effort was to develop the powers of observing and
memorizing accidental, superficial, or even purely artificial
relations. This double faculty of observing trifling and irrelevant
details, and of remembering them, became phenomenally and abnormally
developed.

Recent works on the psychology of education, however, have made plain
how an excessive development of a child's lower mental faculties may
arrest its later growth in all the higher departments of its
intellectual nature; the development of a mechanical memory is well
known as a serious obstacle to the higher activities of reason. Now
Japanese education for centuries, like Chinese, has developed such
memory. It trained the lower and ignored the higher. Much of the
Japanese education of to-day, although it includes mathematics,
science, and history, is based on the mechanical memory method. The
Orient is thus a mammoth illustration of the effects of
over-development of the mechanical memory, and the consequent arrest
of the development of the remaining powers of the mind.

Encumbered by this educational ideal and system, how could the ancient
Chinese and Japanese men of education make a critical study of
history, or develop any science worthy of the name? The childish
physics and astronomy, the brutal therapeutics and the magical and
superstitious religions of the Orient, are a necessary consequence of
its educational system, not of its inherent lack of the higher mental
powers.

If Japanese children brought up from infancy in American homes, and
sent to American schools from kindergarten days onward, should still
manifest marked deficiencies in powers of analysis and generalization,
as compared with American children, we should then be compelled to
conclude that this difference is due to diverse natal psychic
endowment. Generalizations as to the inherent intellectual
deficiencies of the Oriental are based on observations of individuals
already developed in the Oriental civilization, whose psychic defects
they accordingly necessarily inherit through the laws of social
heredity. Such observations have no relevancy to our main problem. We
freely admit that Oriental civilization manifests striking
deficiencies of development of the higher mental faculties, although
it is not nearly so great as many assert; but we contend that these
deficiencies are due to something else than the inherent psychic
nature of the Oriental individual. Innumerable causes have combined to
produce the Oriental social order and to determine its slow
development. These cannot be stated in a sentence, nor in a paragraph.

In the final analysis, however, the causes which produce the
characteristic features of Japanese social order are the real sources
of the differentiating intellectual traits now characterizing the
Japanese. Introduce a new social heredity,--a new system of
education,--one which relegates a mechanical memory to the
background,--one which exalts powers of rational observation of the
profound causal relations of the phenomena of nature, and which sets a
premium on such observation, analysis, and generalization, and the
results will show the inherent psychic nature of the Oriental to be
not different from that of the Occidental.




XX

PHILOSOPHICAL ABILITY


We are now prepared to consider whether or not the Japanese have
philosophical ability. The average educated Japanese believe such to
be the case. The rapidity and ease with which the upper classes have
abandoned their superstitious faiths is commonly attributed by
themselves to the philosophical nature of their minds. Similarly the
rapid spread of so-called rationalism and Unitarian thought and Higher
Criticism among once earnest Christians, during the past decade, they
themselves ascribe to their interest in philosophical questions, and
to their ability in handling philosophical problems.

Foreigners, on the other hand, usually deny them the possession of
philosophical ability.

Dr. Peery, in his volume entitled "The Gist of Japan," says: "By
nature, I think, they are more inclined to be practical than
speculative. Abstract theological ideas have little charm for them.
There is a large element in Japan that simulates a taste for
philosophical study. Philosophy and metaphysics are regarded by them
as the profoundest of all branches of learning, and in order to be
thought learned they profess great interest in these studies. Not only
are the highly metaphysical philosophies of the East studied, but the
various systems of the West are looked into likewise. Many of the
people are capable of appreciating these philosophies, too; but they
do it for a purpose." Other writers make the same general charge of
philosophical incompetence. One or two quotations from Dr. Knox's
writings were given on this subject, under the head of Imitation.[AM]

What, then, are the facts? Do the Japanese excel in philosophy, or
are they conspicuously deficient? In either case, is the
characteristic due to essential race nature or to some other cause?

We must first distinguish between interest in philosophical problems
and ability in constructing original philosophical systems. In this
distinction is to be found the reconciliation of many conflicting
views. Many who argue for Japanese philosophical ability are impressed
with the interest they show in metaphysical problems, while those who
deny them this ability are impressed with the dependence of Japanese
on Chinese philosophy.

The discussions of the previous chapter as to the nature of Japanese
education and its tendency to develop the lower at the expense of the
higher mental faculties, have prepared us not to expect any
particularly brilliant history of Japanese philosophy. Such is indeed
the case. Primitive Japanese cosmology does not differ in any
important respect from the primitive cosmology of other races. The
number of those in Old Japan who took a living interest in distinctly
metaphysical problems is indisputably small. While we admit them to
have manifested some independence and even originality, as Professor
Inouye urges,[AN] yet it can hardly be maintained that they struck out
any conspicuously original philosophical systems. There is no
distinctively Japanese philosophy.

These facts, however, should not blind us to the distinction between
latent ability in philosophical thought and the manifestation of that
ability. The old social order, with its defective education, its habit
of servile intellectual dependence on ancestors, and its social and
legal condemnation of independent originality, particularly in the
realm of thought, was a mighty incubus on speculative philosophy.
Furthermore, crude science and distorted history could not provide the
requisite material from which to construct a philosophical
interpretation of the universe that would appeal to the modern
Occidental.


In spite, however, of social and educational hindrances, the Japanese
have given ample evidence of interest in metaphysical problems and of
more or less ability in their solution. Religious constructions of the
future life, conceptions as to the relations of gods and men and the
universe, are in fact results of the metaphysical operations of the
mind. Primitive Japan was not without these. As she developed in
civilization and came in contact with Chinese and Hindu metaphysical
thought, she acquired their characteristic systems. Buddhist first,
and later Confucian, metaphysics dominated the thought of her educated
men. In view of the highly metaphysical character of Buddhist
doctrines and the interest they have produced at least among the
better trained priests, the assertion that the Japanese have no
ability in metaphysics cannot be maintained.

At one period in the history of Buddhism in Japan, prolonged public
discussions were all the fashion. Priests traveled from temple to
temple to engage in public debate. The ablest debater was the abbot,
and he had to be ready to face any opponent who might appear. If a
stranger won, the abbot yielded his place and his living to the
victor. Many an interesting story is told of those times, and of the
crowds that would gather to hear the debates. But our point is that
this incident in the national life shows the appreciation of the
people for philosophical questions. And although that particular
fashion has long since passed away, the national interest in
discussions and arguments still exists. No monks of the West ever
enjoyed hair-splitting arguments more than do many of the Japanese.
They are as adept at mental refinements and logical juggling as any
people of the West, though possibly the Hindus excel them.

If it be said that Confucianism was not only non-metaphysical, but
uniquely practical, and for this reason found wide acceptance in
Japan, the reply must be first that, professing to be
non-metaphysical, it nevertheless had a real metaphysical system of
thought in the background to which it ever appealed for authority, a
system, be it noted, more in accord with modern science and philosophy
than Buddhist metaphysics; and secondly, although Confucianism became
the bulwark of the state and the accepted faith of the samurai, it
was limited to them. The vast majority of the nation clung to their
primitive Buddhistic cosmology. That Confucianism rested on a clearly
implied and more or less clearly expressed metaphysical foundation may
be seen in the quotations from the writings of Muro Kyuso which are
given in chapter xxiv. We should note that the revolt of the educated
classes of Japan from Buddhism three hundred years ago, and their
general adoption of Confucian doctrine, was partly in the interests of
religion and partly in the interests of metaphysics. In both respects
the progressive part of the nation had become dissatisfied with
Buddhism. The revolt proves not lack of religious or metaphysical
interest and insight, but rather the reverse.

Not a little of the teaching of Shushi (1130-1200 A.D.) and of Oyomei
(1472-1528 A.D.), Chinese philosophical expounders of Confucianism, is
metaphysical. The doctrine of the former was widely studied and was
the orthodox doctrine in Japan for more than two centuries, all other
doctrine and philosophy being forbidden by the state. It is true that
the central interest in this philosophical instruction was the
ethical. It was felt that the entire ethical system rested on the
acceptance of a particular metaphysical system. But so far from
detracting from our argument this statement rather adds. For in what
land has not the prime interest in metaphysics been ethical? A study
of the history of philosophy shows clearly that philosophy and
metaphysics arose out of religious and ethical problems, and have ever
maintained their hold on thinking men, because of their mutually vital
relations. In Japan it has not been otherwise. If anyone doubts this
he should read the Japanese philosophers--in the original, if
possible; if not, then in such translations and extracts as Dr. Knox
has given us in his "A Japanese Philosopher," and Mr. Aston in his
"Japanese Literature." The ethical interest is primary, and the
metaphysical interest is secondary,[AO] to be sure, but not to be
denied.

Occidental philosophy has found many earnest and capable Japanese
students. The Imperial University has a strong corps of philosophical
instructors. Occidental metaphysical thought, both materialistic and
idealistic, has found many congenial minds. Indeed, it is not rash to
say that in the thought of New Japan the distinguishing Oriental
metaphysical conceptions of the universe have been entirely displaced
by those of the West. Christians, in particular, have entirely
abandoned the old polytheistic, pantheistic, and fatalistic
metaphysics and have adopted thoroughgoing monotheism.

Ability to understand and sufficient interest to study through
philosophical and metaphysical systems of foreign lands indicate a
mental development of no slight order, whatever may be the ability, or
lack of it, in making original contributions to the subject. That
educated Japanese have shown real ability in the former sense can
hardly be doubted by those who have read the writings of such men as
Goro Takahashi, ex-president Hiroyuki Kato, Prof. Yujiro Motora, Prof.
Rikizo Nakashima, or Dr. Tetsujiro Inouye. The philosophical
brightness of many of Japan's foreign as well as home-trained scholars
argues well for the philosophical ability of the nation.

A recent conversation with a young Japanese gives point to what has
just been said. The young man suddenly appeared at my study door, and,
with unusually brief salutations, said that he wished me to talk to
him about religion. In answer to questions he explained that he had
been one of my pupils ten years ago in the Kumamoto Boys' School; that
he had been baptized as a Christian at that time, but had become cold
and filled with doubts; that he had been studying ever since, having
at one time given considerable attention to the Zen sect of Buddhism;
but that he had found no satisfaction there. He accordingly wished to
study Christianity more carefully. For three hours we talked, he
asking questions about the Christian conception of God, of the
universe, of man, of sin, of evolution, of Christ, of salvation, of
the object of life, of God's purpose in creation, of the origin and
nature of the Bible. Toward the latter part of our conversation,
referring to one idea expressed, he said, "That is about what Hegel
held, is it not?" As he spoke he opened his knapsack, which I then saw
to be full of books, and drew out an English translation of Hegel's
"Philosophy of History"; he had evidently read it carefully, making
his notes in Japanese on the margin. I asked him if he had read it
through. "Yes," he replied, "three times." He also incidentally
informed me that he had thought of entering our mission theological
training class during the previous winter, but that he was then in the
midst of the study of the philosophy of Kant, and had accordingly
decided to defer entering until the autumn. How thoroughly he had
mastered these, the most profound and abstruse metaphysicians that the
West can boast, I cannot state. But this at least is clear; his
interest in them was real and lasting. And in his conversation he
showed keen appreciation of philosophical problems. It is to be noted
also that he was a self-taught philosopher--for he had attended no
school since he studied elementary English, ten years before, while a
lad of less than twenty.

As a sample of the kind of men I not infrequently meet, let me cite
the case of a young business man who once called on me in the hotel at
Imabari, popularly called "the little philosopher." He wished to talk
about the problem of the future life and to ask my personal belief in
the matter. He said that he believed in God and in Jesus as His unique
son and revealer, but that he found great difficulty in believing in
the continued life of the soul after death. His difficulty arose from
the problems of the nature of future thinking; shall we continue to
think in terms of sense perception, such as time, space, form, color,
pleasure, and pain? If not, how can we think at all? And can we then
remember our present life? If we do, then the future life will not be
essentially different from this, _i.e._, we must still have physical
senses, and continue to live in an essentially physical world. Here
was a set of objections to the doctrine of the future life that I
have never heard as much as mentioned by any Occidental youth. Though
without doubt not original with him, yet he must have had in some
degree both philosophical ability and interest in order to appreciate
their force and to seek their solution.

In conversation not long since with a Buddhist priest of the Tendai
sect, after responding to his request for a criticism of Buddhism, I
asked him for a similarly frank criticism of Christianity. To my
surprise, he said that while Christianity was far ahead of Buddhism in
its practical parts and in its power to mold character, it was
deficient in philosophical insight and interest. This led to a
prolonged conversation on Buddhistic philosophy, in which he explained
the doctrines of the "Ku-ge-chu," and the "Usa and Musa." Without
attempting to explain them here, I may say that the first is amazingly
like Hegel's "absolute nothing," with its thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis, and the second a psychological distinction between
volitional and spontaneous emotions.

In discussing Japanese philosophical ability, a point often forgotten
is the rarity of philosophical ability or even interest in the West.
But a small proportion of college students have the slightest interest
in philosophical or metaphysical problems. The majority do not
understand what the distinctive metaphysical problems are. In my
experience it is easier to enter into a conversation with an educated
man in Japan on a philosophical question than with an American. If
interest in philosophical and metaphysical questions in the West is
rare, original ability in their investigation is still rarer.

We conclude, then, that in regard to philosophical ability the
Japanese have no marked racial characteristic differentiating them
from other races. Although they have not developed a distinctive
national philosophy, this is not due to inherent philosophical
incompetence. Nor, on the other hand, is the relatively wide interest
now manifest in philosophical problems attributable to the inherent
philosophical ability of the race. So far as Japan is either behind or
in advance of other races, in this respect, it is due to her social
order and social inheritance, and particularly to the nature, methods,
and aims of the educational system, but not to her intrinsic psychic
inheritance.




XXI

IMAGINATION


In no respect, perhaps, have the Japanese been more sweepingly
criticised by foreigners than in regard to their powers of imagination
and idealism. Unqualified generalizations not only assert the entire
lack of these powers, but they consider this lack to be the
distinguishing inherent mental characteristic of the race. The
Japanese are called "prosaic," "matter-of-fact," "practical,"
"unimaginative."

Mr. Walter Dening, describing Japanese mental characteristics, says:

     "Neither their past history nor their prevailing tastes show any
     tendency to idealism. They are lovers of the practical and the
     real; neither the fancies of Goethe nor the reveries of Hegel are
     to their liking. Our poetry and our philosophy and the mind that
     appreciates them are alike the results of a network of subtle
     influences to which the Japanese are comparative strangers. It is
     maintained by some, and we think justly, that the lack of idealism
     in the Japanese mind renders the life of even the most cultivated a
     mechanical, humdrum affair when compared with that of Westerners.
     The Japanese cannot understand why our controversialists should wax
     so fervent over psychological, ethical, religious, and
     philosophical questions, failing to perceive that this fervency is
     the result of the intense interest taken in such subjects. The
     charms that the cultured Western mind finds in the world of fancy
     and romance, in questions themselves, irrespective of their
     practical bearings, is for the most part unintelligible to the
     Japanese."[AP]

Mr. Percival Lowell expends an entire chapter in his "Soul of the Far
East," in showing how important imagination is as a factor in art,
religion, science, and civilization generally, and how strikingly
deficient Japanese are in this faculty. "The Far Orientals," he
argues, "ought to be a particularly unimaginative set of people. Such
is precisely what they are. Their lack of imagination is a
well-recognized fact."[AQ]

Mr. Aston, characterizing Japanese literature, says:

     "A feature which strikingly distinguishes the Japanese poetic muse
     from that of Western nations is a certain lack of imaginative
     power. The Japanese are slow to endow inanimate objects with life.
     Shelley's 'Cloud,' for example, contains enough matter of this kind
     for many volumes of Japanese verse. Such lines as:

     'From my wings are shaken
     The dews that waken
     The sweet buds every one,
     When rocked to rest
     On their mother's breast
     As she dances about the sun,'

     would appear to them ridiculously overcharged with metaphor, if not
     absolutely unintelligible."[AR]


On the other hand, some writers have called attention to the contrary
element of Japanese mental nature. Prof. Ladd, for instance, maintains
that the characteristic mental trait of the Japanese is their
sentimentality. He has shown how their lives are permeated with and
regulated by sentiment. Ancestral worship, patriotism, Imperial
apotheosis, friendship, are fashioned by idealizing sentiment. In our
chapters on the emotional elements of Japanese character we have
considered how widespread and powerful these ideals and sentiments
have been and still are.

Writers who compare the Chinese with the Japanese remark the practical
business nature of the former and the impractical, visionary nature of
the latter.

For a proper estimate of our problem we should clearly distinguish
between the various forms of imagination. It reveals itself not merely
in art and literature, in fantastic conception, in personification and
metaphor, but in every important department of human life. It is the
tap-root of progress, as Mr. Lowell well points out. It pictures an
ideal life in advance of the actual, which ideal becomes the object of
effort. The forms of imagination may, therefore, be classified
according to the sphere of life in which it appears. In addition to
the poetic fancy and the idealism of art and literature generally, we
must distinguish the work of imagination in the aesthetic, in the
moral, in the religious, in the scientific, and in the political life.
The manifestation of the imaginative faculty in art and in literature
is only one part of the aesthetic imagination.

In studying Japanese aesthetic characteristics, we noted how unbalanced
was the development of their aesthetic sense. This proposition of
unbalanced development applies with equal force to the imaginative
faculty as a whole. Conspicuously lacking in certain directions, it is
as conspicuously prominent in others. Rules of etiquette are the
products of the aesthetic imagination, and in what land has etiquette
been more developed than in feudal Japan? Japanese imagination has
been particularly active in the political world. The passionate
loyalty of retainers to their lord, of samurai to their daimyo, of all
to their "kuni," or clan, in ancient times, and now, of the people to
their Emperor, are the results of a vivid political idealizing
imagination. Imperial apotheosis is a combination of the political and
religious imagination. And in what land has the apotheosizing
imagination been more active than in Japan? Ambition and self-conceit
are likewise dependent on an active imaginative faculty.

There can be no doubt the writers quoted above have drawn attention to
some salient features of Japanese art. In the literature of the past,
the people have not manifested that high literary imagination that we
discover in the best literature of many other nations.

This fact, however, will not justify the sweeping generalizations
based upon it. Judging from the pre-Elizabethan literature, who would
have expected the brilliancy of the Elizabethan period? Similarly in
regard to the Victorian period of English literature. Because the
Japanese have failed in the past to produce literature equal to the
best of Western lands, we are not justified in asserting that she
never will and that she is inherently deficient in literary
imagination. In regard to certain forms of light fancy, all admit that
Japanese poems are unsurpassed by those of other lands. Japanese
amative poetry is noted for its delicate fancies and plays on words
exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, of translation, or even of
expression, to one unacquainted with the language.

The deficiencies of Japanese literature, therefore, are not such as to
warrant the conclusion that they both mark and make a fundamental
difference in the race mind. For such differences as exist are capable
of a sociological explanation.

The prosaic matter-of-factness of the Japanese mind has been so widely
emphasized that we need not dwell upon it here. There is, however,
serious danger of over-emphasis, a danger into which all writers fall
who make it the ground for sweeping condemnatory criticism.

They are right in ascribing to the average Japanese a large amount of
unimaginative matter-of-factness, but they are equally wrong in
unqualified dogmatic generalizations. They base their inductions on
insufficient facts, a habit to which foreigners are peculiarly liable,
through ignorance of the language and also of the inner thoughts and
life of the people.

The prosaic nature of the Japanese has not impressed me so much as the
visionary tendency of the people, and their idealism. The Japanese
themselves count this idealism a national characteristic. They say
that they are theorizers, and numberless experiences confirm this
view.

They project great undertakings; they scheme; they discuss
contingencies; they make enormous plans; all with an air of
seriousness and yet with a nonchalance which shows a semi-conscious
sense of the unreality of their proposals. In regard to Korea and
China and Formosa, they have hatched political and business schemes
innumerable. The kaleidoscopic character of Japanese politics is in
part due to the rapid succession of visionary schemes. One idea reigns
for a season, only to be displaced by another, causing constant
readjustment of political parties. Frequent attacks on government
foreign policy depend for their force on lordly ideas as to the part
Japan should play in international relations. Writing about the recent
discussions in the public press over the question of introducing
foreign capital into Japan, one contributor to the _Far East_ remarks
that "It has been treated more from a theoretical than from a
practical standpoint.... This seems to me to arise from a peculiar
trait of Japanese mind which is prone to dwell solely on the
theoretical side until the march of events compels a sudden leap
toward the practical." This visionary faculty of the Japanese is
especially conspicuous in the daily press. Editorials on foreign
affairs and on the relations of Japan to the world are full of it.

I venture to jot down a few illustrations of impractical idealism out
of my personal knowledge. An evangelist in the employ of the Kumamoto
station exemplified this visionary trait in a marked degree. Nervous
in the extreme, he was constantly having new ideas. For some reason
his attention was turned to the subject of opium and the evils China
was suffering from the drug, forced on her by England. Forthwith he
came to me for books on the subject; he wished to become fully
informed, and then he proposed to go to China and preach on the
subject. For a few weeks he was full of his enterprise. It seemed to
him that if he were only allowed the opportunity he could convince the
Chinese of their error, and the English of their crime. One of his
plans was to go to England and expostulate with them on their
un-Christian dealings with China. A few weeks later his attention was
turned to the wrongs inflicted on the poor on account of their
ignorance about law and their inability to get legal assistance. This
idea held him longer than the previous.

He desired to study law and become a public pleader in order to
defend the poor against unjust men of wealth. In his theological ideas
he was likewise extreme and changeable; swinging from positive and
most emphatic belief to extreme doubt, and later back again. In his
periods of triumphant faith it seemed to him that he could teach the
world; and his expositions of truth were extremely interesting. He
proposed to formulate a new theology that would dissolve forever the
difficulties of the old theology. In his doubts, too, he was no less
interesting and assertive. His hold on practical matters was
exceedingly slender. His salary, though considerably larger than that
of most of the evangelists, was never sufficient. He would spend
lavishly at the beginning of the month so long as he had the money,
and then would pinch himself or else fall into debt.

Mr. ----, the head of the Kumamoto Boys' School during the period of
its fierce struggles and final collapse, whom I have already referred
to as the Hero-Principal,[AS] is another example of this impractical
high-strung visionariness. No sooner had he reached Kumamoto, than
there opened before our enchanted eyes the vision of this little
insignificant school blooming out into a great university. True, there
had been some of this bombast before his arrival; but it took on new
and gorgeous form under his master hand. The airs that he put on,
displaying his (fraudulent) Ph.D., and talking about his schemes, are
simply amusing to contemplate from this distance. His studies in the
philosophy of religion had so clarified his mind that he was going to
reform both Christianity and Buddhism. His sermons of florid eloquence
and vociferous power, never less than an hour in length, were as
marked in ambitious thoughts as in pulpit mannerisms. He threw a spell
over all who came in contact with him. He overawed them by his
vehemence and tremendous earnestness and insistence on perfect
obedience to his masterful will. In one of his climactic sermons,
after charging missionaries with teaching dangerous errors, he said
that while some were urging that the need of the times was to "his
back to Luther," and others were saying, that we must "his back to
Christ" (these English words being brought into his Japanese sermon),
they were both wrong; we must "hie back to God"; and he prophesied a
reformation in religion, beginning there in Kumamoto, in that school,
which would be far and away more important in the history of the world
than was the Lutheran Reformation.

The recent history of Christianity in Japan supplies many striking
instances of visionary plans and visionary enthusiasts. The confident
expectation entertained during the eighties of Christianizing the
nation before the close of the century was such a vision. Another,
arising a few years later, was the importance of returning all foreign
missionaries to their native lands and of intrusting the entire
evangelistic work to native Christians, and committing to them the
administration of the immense sums thus set free. For it was assumed
by these brilliant Utopians that the amount of money expended in
supporting missionaries would be available for aggressive work should
the missionaries be withdrawn, and that the Christians in foreign
lands would continue to pour in their contributions for the
evangelization of Japan.

Still another instance of utopian idealism is the vision that Japan
will give birth to that perfect religion, meeting the demands of both
heart and head, for which the world waits. In January, 1900, Prof. T.
Inouye, of the Imperial University, after showing quite at length, and
to his own satisfaction, the inadequacy of all existing religions to
meet the ethical and religious situation in Japan, maintained this
ambitious view.

Some Japanese Christians are declaring the need of Japonicized
Christianity. "Did not the Greeks transform Christianity before they
accepted it? And did not the Romans, and finally the Germans, do the
same? Before Japan will or can accept the religion of Christ, it must
be Japonicized." So they argue; "and who so fit to do it as we?" lies
in the background of their thought.

Many a Christian pastor and evangelist, although not sharing the
ambition of Prof. Inouye, nevertheless glows with the confident
expectation that Japonicized Christianity will be its most perfect
type. "No one need wonder if Japan should be destined to present to
the world the best type of Christianity that has yet appeared in
history," writes an exponent of this view, at one time a Christian
pastor. In this connection the reader may recall what was said in
chapter xiv. on Japanese Ambition and Conceit, qualities depending on
the power of seeing visions. We note, in passing, the optimistic
spirit of New Japan. This is in part due, no doubt, to ignorance of
the problems that lie athwart their future progress, but it is also
due to the vivid imaginative faculty which pictures for them the
glories of the coming decades when they shall lead not only the
Orient, but also the Occident, in every line of civilization, material
and spiritual, moral and religious. A dull, unimaginative, prosaic
nature cannot be exuberantly optimistic. It is evident that writers
who proclaim the unimaginative matter-of-factness of the Japanese as
universal and absolute, have failed to see a large side of Japanese
inner life.

Mr. Percival Lowell states that the root of all the peculiarities of
Oriental peoples is their marked lack of imagination. This is the
faculty that "may in a certain sense be said to be the creator of the
world." The lack of this faculty, according to Mr. Lowell, is the root
of the Japanese lack of originality and invention; it gives the whole
Oriental civilization its characteristic features. He cites a few
words to prove the essentially prosaic character of the Japanese mind,
such as "up-down" for "pass" (which word, by the way, is his own
invention, and reveals his ignorance of the language), "the being (so)
is difficult," in place of "thank you." "A lack of any fanciful
ideas," he says, "is one of the most salient traits of all Far Eastern
peoples, if indeed a sad dearth can properly be called salient.
Indirectly, their want of imagination betrays itself in their everyday
sayings and doings, and more directly in every branch of thought." I
note, in passing, that Mr. Lowell does not distinguish between fancy
and imagination. Though allied faculties, they are distinct. Mr.
Lowell's extreme estimate of the prosaic nature of the Japanese mind I
cannot share. Many letters received from Japanese friends refute this
view by their fanciful expressions. The Japanese language, too, has
many fanciful terms. Why "pass" is any more imaginative than
"up-down," to accept Mr. Lowell's etymology, or "the being (so) is
difficult" than "thank you," I do not see. To me the reverse
proposition would seem the truer. And are not "breaking-horns" for "on
purpose," and "breaking-bones" for "with great difficulty," distinctly
imaginative terms, more imaginative than the English? In the place of
our English term "sun," the Japanese have several alternative terms in
common use, such as "_hi_," "day," "_Nichirin_," "day-ball," "_Ten-to
Sama_," "the god of heaven's light;" and for "moon," it has "_tsuki_,"
"month," "_getsu-rin_," "month ball." The names given to her
men-of-war also indicate a fanciful nature. The torpedo destroyers are
named "Dragon-fly," "Full Moon," "The Moon in the Cloud," "Seabeach,"
"Dawn of Day," "Clustering Clouds," "Break of Day," "Ripples,"
"Evening Mist," "Dragon's Lamp," "Falcon," "Magpie," "White-naped
Crane," and "White Hawk." Surely, it cannot be maintained that the
Japanese are utterly lacking in fancy.

Distinguishing between fancy as "the power of forming pleasing,
graceful, whimsical, or odd mental images, or of combining them with
little regard to rational processes of construction," and imagination,
in its more philosophical use, as "the act of constructive intellect
in grouping the materials of knowledge or thought into new, original,
and rational systems," we assert without fear of successful
contradiction, that the Japanese race is not without either of these
important mental faculties.

In addition to the preceding illustrations of visionary and fanciful
traits, let the reader reflect on the significance of the comic and of
caricature in art. Japanese _Netsuke_ (tiny carvings of exquisite
skill representing comical men, women, and children) are famous the
world over. Surely, the fancy is the most conspicuous mental
characteristic revealed in this branch of Japanese art. In Japanese
poetry "a vast number of conceits, more or less pretty," are to be
found, likewise manifesting the fancy of both the authors who wrote
and the people who were pleased with and preserved their writings.[AT]
The so-called "impersonal habit of the Japanese mind," with a
corresponding "lack of personification of abstract qualities,"
doubtless prevents Japanese literature from rising to the poetic
heights attained by Western nations. But this lack does not prove the
Japanese mind incapable of such flights. As describing the actual
characteristics of the literature of the past the assertion of "a lack
of imaginative power" is doubtless fairly correct. But the inherent
nature of the Japanese mind cannot be inferred from the deficiencies
of its past literature, without first examining the relation between
its characteristic features and the nature of the social order and the
social inheritance.

Are the Japanese conspicuously deficient in imagination, in the sense
of the definition given above? The constructive imagination is the
creator of civilization. Not only art and literature, but, as already
noted, science, philosophy, politics, and even the practical arts and
prosaic farming are impossible without it. It is the tap-root of
invention, of discovery, of originality.

It is needless to repeat what has been said in previous chapters[AU]
on Japanese imitation, invention, discovery, and originality. Yet, in
consideration of the facts there given, are we justified in counting
the Japanese so conspicuously deficient in constructive, imagination
as to warrant the assertion that such a lack is the fundamental
characteristic of the race psychic nature?

As an extreme case, look for a moment at their imitativeness. Although
imitation is considered a proof of deficient originality, and thus of
imagination, yet reflection shows that this depends on the nature of
the imitation. Japanese imitation has not been, except possibly for
short periods, of that slavish nature which excludes the work of the
imagination. Indeed, the impulse to imitation rests on the
imagination. But for this faculty picturing the state of bliss or
power secured in consequence of adopting this or that feature of an
alien civilization, the desire to imitate could not arise. In view,
moreover, of the selective nature of Japanese imitation, we are
further warranted in ascribing to the people no insignificant
development of the imagination.

In illustration, consider Japan's educational system. Established no
doubt on Occidental models, it is nevertheless a distinctly Japanese
institution. Its buildings are as characteristically Japonicized
Occidental school buildings as are its methods of instruction.
Japanese railroads and steamers, likewise constructed in Japan, are
similarly Japonicized--adapted to the needs and conditions of the
people. To our eyes this of course signifies no improvement, but
assuredly, without such modification, our Western railroads and
steamers would be white elephants on their hands, expensive and
difficult of operation.

What now is the sociological interpretation of the foregoing facts?
How are the fanciful, visionary, and idealistic characteristics, on
the one hand, and, on the other, the prosaic, matter-of-fact, and
relatively unimaginative characteristics, related to the social order?

It is not difficult to account for the presence of accentuated
visionariness in Japan. Indeed, this quality is conspicuous among the
descendants of the military and literary classes; and this fact
furnishes us the clew. "From time immemorial," to use a phrase common
on the lips of Japanese historians, up to the present era, the samurai
as a class were quite separated from the practical world; they were
comfortably supported by their liege lords; entirely relieved from the
necessity of toiling for their daily bread, they busied themselves not
only with war and physical training, but with literary accomplishments,
that required no less strenuous mental exertions.

Furthermore, in a class thus freed from daily toil, there was sure to
arise a refined system of etiquette and of rank distinctions. Even a
few centuries of life would, under such conditions, develop highly
nervous individuals in large numbers, hypersensitive in many
directions. These men, by the very development of their nervous
constitutions, would become the social if not the practical leaders of
their class; high-spirited, and with domineering ideas and scheming
ambitions, they would set the fashion to all their less nervously
developed fellows. Freed from the exacting conditions of a practical
life, they would inevitably fly off on tangents more or less
impractical, visionary.

If, therefore, this trait is more marked in Japanese character than in
that of many other nations, it may be easily traced to the social
order that has ruled this land "from time immemorial." More than any
other of her mental characteristics, impractical visionariness may be
traced to the development of the nervous organization at the expense
of the muscular. This characteristic accordingly may be said to be
more inherently a race characteristic than many others that have been
mentioned. Yet we should remember that the samurai constitute but a
small proportion of the people. According to recent statistics (1895)
the entire class to-day numbers but 2,050,000, while the common people
number over 40,000,000. It is, furthermore, to be remembered that not
all the descendants of the samurai are thus nervously organized. Large
numbers have a splendid physical endowment, with no trace of abnormal
nervous development. While the old feudal order, with its constant
carrying of swords, and the giving of honor to the most impetuous,
naturally tended to push the most high-strung individuals into the
forefront and to set them up as models for the imitation of the young,
the social order now regnant in Japan faces in the other direction.
Such visionary men are increasingly relegated to the rear. Their
approach to insanity is recognized and condemned. Even this trait of
character, therefore, which seems to be rooted in brain and nerve
structure is, nevertheless, more subject to the prevailing social
order than would at first seem possible.

Its rise we have seen was due to that order, and the setting aside of
these characteristics as ideals at least, and thus the bringing into
prominence of more normal and healthy ideals, is due to the coming in
of a new order.

Japanese prosaic matter-of-factness may similarly be shown to have
intimate relations to the nature of the social order. Oppressive
military feudalism, keeping the vast majority of the people in
practical bondage, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, would
necessarily render their lives and thoughts narrow in range and
spiritless in nature. Such a system crushes out hope. From sunrise to
sunset, "_nembyaku nenju_," "for a hundred years and through all the
year," the humdrum duties of daily life were the only psychic stimuli
of the absolutely uneducated masses. Without ambition, without
self-respect, without education or any stimulus for the higher mental
life, what possible manifestation of the higher powers of the mind
could be expected? Should some "sport" appear by chance, it could not
long escape the sword of domineering samurai. Even though originally
possessing some degree of imagination, cringing fear of military
masters, with the continuous elimination by ruthless slaughter of the
more idealizing, less submissive, and more self-assertive individuals
of the non-military classes, would finally produce a dull, imitative,
unimaginative, and matter-of-fact class such as we find in the
hereditary laboring and merchant classes.

Furthermore, Japanese civilization, like that of the entire Orient,
with its highly communalized social order, is an expression of passive
submission to superior authority. Although an incomplete
characterization, there is still much truth in saying that the Orient
is an expression of Fate, the Occident of Freedom. We have seen that a
better contrasted characterization is found in the terms communal and
individual. The Orient has known nothing of individualism. It has not
valued the individual nor sought his elevation and freedom. In every
way, on the contrary, it has repressed and opposed him. The high
development of the individual culminating in powerful personality has
been an exceptional occurrence, due to special circumstances. A
communal social order, often repressing and invariably failing to
evoke the higher human faculties, must express its real nature in the
language, literature, and customs of the people. Thus in our chapter
on the AEsthetic Characteristics of the Japanese[AV] we saw how the
higher forms of literature were dependent on the development of
manhood and on a realization of his nature. A communal social order
despising, or at least ignoring the individual, cannot produce the
highest forms of literature or art, because it does not possess the
highest forms of psychic development. Take from Western life all that
rests on or springs from the principles of individual worth, freedom,
and immortality, and how much of value or sublimity will remain? The
absence from Japanese literature and language of the higher forms of
fancy, metaphor, and personification on the one hand, and, on the
other, the presence of widespread prosaic matter-of-factness, are thus
intimately related to the communal nature of Japan's long dominant
social order.

Similarly, in regard to the constructive imagination, whose
conspicuous lack in Japan is universally asserted by foreign critics,
we reply first that the assertion is an exaggeration, and secondly,
that so far as it is fact, it is intimately related to the social
order. In our discussions concerning Japanese Intellectuality and
Philosophical Ability,[AW] we saw how intimate a relation exists
between the social order, particularly as expressed in its educational
system, and the development of the higher mental faculties. Now a
moment's reflection will show how the constructive imagination,
belonging as it does to the higher faculties, was suppressed by the
system of mechanical and superficial education required by the social
order. Religion apotheosized ancestral knowledge and customs, thus
effectively condemning all conscious use of this faculty. So far as it
was used, it was under the guise of reviving old knowledge or of
expounding it more completely.

This, however, has been the experience of every race in certain
stages of its development. Such periods have been conspicuously
deficient in powerful literature, progressive science, penetrating
philosophy, or developing political life. When a nation has once
entered such a social order it becomes stagnant, its further
development is arrested. The activity of the higher faculties of the
mind are in abeyance, but not destroyed. It needs the electric shock
of contact and conflict with foreign races to startle the race out of
its fatal repose and start it on new lines of progress by demanding,
on pain of death, or at least of racial subordination, the
introduction of new elements into its social order by a renewed
exercise of the constructive imagination. For without such action of
the constructive imagination a radical and voluntary modification of
the dominant social order is impossible.

Old Japan experienced this electric shock and New Japan is the result.
She is thus a living witness to the inaccuracy of those sweeping
generalizations as to her inherent deficiency of constructive
imagination.

It is by no means our contention that Japanese imagination is now as
widely and profoundly exercised as that of the leading Western
nations. We merely contend that the exercise of this mental faculty is
intimately related to the nature of the whole social order; that under
certain circumstances this important faculty may be so suppressed as
to give the impression to superficial observers of entire absence, and
that with a new environment necessitating a new social order, this
faculty may again be brought into activity.

The inevitable conclusion of the above line of thought is that the
activity and the manifestation of the higher faculties is so
intimately related to the nature of the social order as to prevent our
attributing any particular mental characteristics to a race as its
inherent and unchangeable nature. The psychic characteristics of a
race at any given time are the product of the inherited social order.
To transform those characteristics changes in the social order,
introduced either from without, or through individuals within the
race, are alone needful. This completes our specific study of the
intellectual characteristics of the Japanese. It may seem, as it
undoubtedly is, quite fragmentary. But we have purposely omitted all
reference to those characteristics which the Japanese admittedly have
in common with other races. We have attempted the consideration of
only the more outstanding characteristics by which they seem to be
differentiated from other races. We have attempted to show that in so
far as they are different, the difference is due not to inherent
psychic nature transmitted by organic heredity, but to the nature of
the social order, transmitted by social heredity.




XXII

MORAL IDEALS


Even a slight study of Japanese history suffices to show that the
faculty of moral discrimination was highly developed in certain
directions. In what land have the ideal and practice of loyalty been
higher? The heroes most lauded by the Japanese to-day are those who
have proved their loyalty by the sacrifice of their lives. When
Masashige Kusunoki waged a hopeless war on behalf of one branch of the
then divided dynasty, and finally preferred to die by his own hand
rather than endure the sight of a victorious rebel, he is considered
to have exhibited the highest possible evidence of devoted loyalty.
One often hears his name in the sermons of Christian preachers as a
model worthy of all honor. The patriots of the period immediately
preceding the Meiji era, known as the "Kinnoka," some of whom lost
their lives because of their devotion to the cause of their then
impotent Emperor, are accorded the highest honor the nation can give.

The teachings of the Japanese concerning the relations that should
exist between parents, and children, and, in multitudes of instances,
their actual conduct also, can hardly be excelled. We can assert that
they have a keen moral faculty, however further study may compel us to
pronounce its development and manifestations to be unbalanced.

Better, however, than generalizations as to the ethical ideals of
Japan, past and present, are actual quotations from her moral
teachers. The following passages are taken from "A Japanese
Philosopher," by Dr. Geo. W. Knox, the larger part of the volume
consisting of a translation of one of the works of Muro Kyuso--who
lived from 1658 to 1734. It was during his life that the famous
forty-seven ronin performed their exploit, and Kyu-so gave them the
name by which they are still remembered, Gi-shi, the "Righteous
Samurai." The purpose of the work is the defense of the Confucian
faith and practice, as interpreted by Tei-shu, the philosopher of
China whom Japan delighted to honor. It discusses among other things
the fundamental principles of ethics, politics, and religion. Dr. Knox
has done all earnest Western students of Japanese ethical and
religious ideas an inestimable service in the production of this work
in English.

     "The 'Way' of Heaven and Earth is the 'Way' of Gyo and Shun
     [semi-mythical rulers of ancient China idealized by Confucius]; the
     'Way' of Gyo and Shun is the 'Way' of Confucius and Mencius, and
     the 'Way' of Confucius and Mencius is the 'Way' of Tei-Shu.
     Forsaking Tei-Shu, we cannot find Confucius and Mencius; forsaking
     Confucius and Mencius, we cannot find Gyo and Shun; and forsaking
     Gyo and Shun, we cannot find the 'Way' of Heaven and Earth. Do not
     trust implicitly an aged scholar; but this I know, and therefore I
     speak. If I say that which is false, may I be instantly punished by
     Heaven and Earth."[AX]

     "Recently I was astounded at the words of a philosopher: 'The "Way"
     comes not from Heaven,' he said, 'it was invented by the sages. Nor
     is it in accord with nature; it is a mere matter of aesthetics and
     ornament. Of the five relations, only the conjugal is natural,
     while loyalty, filial obedience, and the rest were invented by the
     sages, and have been maintained by their authority ever since.'
     Surely, among all heresies from ancient days until now, none has
     been so monstrous as this."[AY]

     "Kujuro, a lad of fifteen years, quarreled with a neighbor's son
     over a game of _go_, lost his self-control, and before he could be
     seized, drew his sword and cut the boy down. While the wounded boy
     was under the surgeon's care, Kujuro was in custody, but he showed
     no fear, and his words and acts were calm beyond his years. After
     some days the boy died, and Kujuro was condemned to hara-kiri. The
     officers in charge gave him a farewell feast the night before he
     died. He calmly wrote to his mother, took ceremonious farewell of
     his keeper and all in the house, and then said to the guests: 'I
     regret to leave you all, and should like to stay and talk till
     daybreak; but I must not be sleepy when I commit hara-kiri
     to-morrow, so I'll go to bed at once. Do you stay at your ease and
     drink the wine.' So he went to his room and fell asleep, all being
     filled with admiration as they heard him snore. On the morrow he
     rose early, bathed and dressed himself with care, made all his
     preparations with perfect calmness, and then, quiet and composed,
     killed himself. No old, trained, self-possessed samurai could have
     excelled him. No one who saw it could speak of it for years without
     tears.... I have told you this that Kujuro may be remembered. It
     would be shameful were it to be forgotten that so young a boy
     performed such a deed."[AZ]

     "We are not to cease obeying for the sake of study, nor must we
     establish the laws before we begin to obey. In obedience we are to
     establish its Tightness and wrongness."[BA]

     "We learn loyalty and obedience as we are loyal and obedient.
     To-day I know yesterday's short-comings, and to-morrow I shall know
     to-day's.... In our occupations we learn whether conduct conforms
     to right and so advance in the truth by practice."[BB]

     "Besides a few works on history, like the Sankyo Ega Monogatari,
     which record facts, there are no books worth reading in our
     literature. For the most part they are sweet stories of the
     Buddhas, of which one soon wearies. But the evil is traditional,
     long-continued, and beyond remedy. And other books are full of
     lust, not even to be mentioned, like the Genji Monogatari, which
     should never be shown to a woman or a young man. Such books lead to
     vice. Our nobles call the Genji Monogatari a national treasure,
     why, I do not know, unless it is that they are intoxicated with its
     style. That is like plucking the spring blossom unmindful of the
     autumn's fruit. The book is full of adulteries from beginning to
     end. Seeing the right, ourselves should become good, seeing the
     wrong, we should reprove ourselves. The Genji Monogatari, Chokonka,
     and Seishoki are of a class, vile, mean, comparable to the books of
     the sages as charcoal to ice, as the stench of decay to the perfume
     of flowers."[BC]

     "To the samurai, first of all is righteousness; next life, then
     silver and gold. These last are of value, but some put them in the
     place of righteousness. But to the samurai even life is as dirt
     compared to righteousness. Until the middle part of the middle ages
     customs were comparatively pure, though not really righteous.
     Corruption has come only during this period of government by the
     samurai. A maid servant in China was made ill with astonishment
     when she saw her mistress, soroban (abacus) in hand, arguing prices
     and values. So was it once with the samurai. They knew nothing of
     trade, were economical and content."[BD]

     "Even in the days of my youth, young folks never mentioned the
     price of anything; and their faces reddened if the talk was of
     women. Their joy was in talk of battles and plans for war. And they
     studied how parents and lords should be obeyed, and the duty of
     samurai. But nowadays the young men talk of loss and gain, of
     dancing girls and harlots and gross pleasures. It is a complete
     change from fifty or sixty years ago.... Said Aochi to his son:
     'There is such a thing as trade. See that you know nothing of it.
     In trade the profit should always go to the other side.... To be
     proud of buying high-priced articles cheap is the good fortune of
     merchants, but should be unknown to samurai. Let it not be even so
     much as mentioned.... Samurai must have a care of their words, and
     are not to speak of avarice, cowardice, or lust.'"[BE]

A point of considerable interest to the student of Japanese ethical
ideals is the fact that the laws of Old Japan combined legal and moral
maxims. Loyalty and morality were conceived as inseparable. Ieyasu
(abdicated in 1605, and died in 1616), the founder of the Tokugawa
Shogunate, left a body of laws to his successors as his last will, in
accordance with which they should rule the land. These laws were not
made public, but were kept strictly for the guidance of the rulers.
They are known as the Testament or "Honorable Will" of Ieyasu, and
consist of one hundred rules. It will serve our purpose here to quote
some of those that refer to the moral ideal.

     "No one is to act simply for the gratification of his own desires,
     but he is to strive to do what may be opposed to his desires,
     _i.e_., to exercise self-control, in order that everyone may be
     ready for whatever he may be called upon by his superiors to do."

     "The aged, whether widowers or widows, and orphans, and persons
     without relations, every one should assist with kindness and
     liberality; for justice to these four is the root of good
     government."

     "Respect the gods [or God], keep the heart pure, and be diligent in
     business during the whole life."

     "When I was young I determined to fight and punish all my own and
     my ancestors' enemies, and I did punish them; but afterwards, by
     deep consideration, I found that the way of heaven was to help the
     people, and not to punish them. Let my successors follow out this
     policy, or they are not of my line. In this lies the strength of
     the nation."

     "To insure the Empire peace, the foundation must be laid in the
     ways of holiness and religion, and if men think they can be
     educated, and will not remember this, it is as if a man were to go
     to a forest to catch fish, or thought he could draw water out of
     fire. They must follow the ways of holiness."

     "Japan is the country of the gods [or God--'Shinkoku']. Therefore,
     we have among us Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism, and other
     sects. If we leave our gods [or God] it is like refusing the wages
     of our master and taking them from another."

     "In regard to dancing women, prostitutes, brothels, night work,
     and all other improper employments, all these are like caterpillars
     or locusts in the country. Good men and writers in all times have
     written against them."

     "It is said that the Mikado, looking down on his people, loves them
     as a mother does her children. The same may be said of me and my
     government. This benevolence of mind is called Jin. This Jin may be
     said to consist of five parts; these are humanity, integrity,
     courtesy, wisdom, and truth. My mode of government is according to
     the way of heaven. This I have done to show that I am impartial,
     and am not assisting my own relatives and friends only."[BF]

These quotations are perhaps sufficient, though one more from a recent
writer has a peculiar interest of its own, from the fact that the
purpose of the book from which the quotation is taken was the
destruction of the tendencies toward approval of Western thought. It
was published in 1857. The writer, Junzo Ohashi, felt himself to be a
witness for truth and righteousness, and, in the spirit of the
doctrine he professed, sealed his faith with a martyr's suffering and
death, dying (in August, 1868) from the effect of repeated examination
by torture for a supposed crime, innocence of which he maintained to
the end. It is interesting to note that two of his granddaughters,
"with the physics and astronomy of the West, have accepted its
religion."

     "The West knows not the 'Ri'[BG] of the virtues of the heart which
     are in all men unchangeably the same. Nor does it know that the
     body is the organ of the virtues, however careful its analysis of
     the body may be. The adherents of the Western Philosophy indeed
     study carefully the outward appearances, but they have no right to
     steal the honored name of natural philosophy. As when 'Ki' is
     destroyed, 'Ri' too disappears, so, with their analysis of 'Ki,'
     they destroy 'Ri,' and thus this learning brings benevolence and
     righteousness and loyalty and truth to naught. Among the
     Westerners who from of old have studied details minutely, I have
     not heard of one who was zealous for the Great Way, for
     benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, and truth, and who opposed the
     absurdities of the Lord of Heaven [God].'[BH] 'Let then the child
     make its parent, Heaven; the retainer, his lord; the wife, her
     husband; and let each give up life for righteousness. Thus will
     each serve Heaven. But if we exalt Heaven above parent or lord, we
     shall come to think that we can serve it though they be disobeyed,
     and like wolf or tiger shall rejoice to kill them. To such fearful
     end does the Western learning lead."[BI]

The foregoing quotations reveal the exalted nature of the ideals held
by at least some of the leaders of ethical thought in Japan. Taken as
a whole, the moral ideals characterizing the Japanese during their
entire historical period have been conspicuously communal. The feudal
structure of society has determined the peculiar character of the
moral ideal. Loyalty took first rank in the moral scale; the
subordination of the inferior to the superior has come next, including
unquestioning obedience of children to parents, and of wife to
husband. The virtues of a military people have been praised and often
gloriously exemplified. The possession of these various ideals and
their attainment in such high degree have given the nation its
cohesiveness. They make the people a unit. The feudal training under
local daimyos was fitting the people for the larger life among the
nations of the world on which they are now entering. Especially is
their sense of loyalty, as exhibited toward the Emperor, serving them
well in this period of transition from Oriental to Occidental social
ideals.

Let us now examine some defective moral standards and observe their
origin in the social order. Take, for instance, the ideal of
truthfulness. Every Occidental remarks on the untruthfulness of the
Japanese. Lies are told without the slightest apparent compunction;
and when confronted with the charge of lying, the culprit often seems
to feel little sense of guilt. This trait of character was noted
repeatedly by the early negotiators with Japan. Townsend Harris and
Sir Rutherford Alcock made frequent mention of it. When we inquire as
to the moral ideal and actual instruction concerning truthfulness, we
are amazed to find how inadequate it was. The inadequacy of the
teaching, however, was not the primal cause of the characteristic.
There is a far deeper explanation, yet very simple, namely, the nature
of the social order. The old social order was feudal, and not
industrial or commercial. History shows that industrial and commercial
nations develop the virtue of truthfulness far in advance of military
nations. For these virtues are essential to them; without them they
could not long continue to prosper.

So in regard to all the aspects of business morality, it must be
admitted that, from the Occidental standpoint, Old Japan was very
deficient. But it must also be stated that new ideals are rapidly
forming. Buying and selling with a view to making profit, though not
unknown in Old Japan, was carried on by a despised section of the
community. Compared with the present, the commercial community of
feudal times was mean and small. Let us note somewhat in detail the
attitude of the samurai toward the trader in olden times, and the
ideals they reveal.

The pursuit of business was considered necessarily degrading, for he
who handled money was supposed to be covetous. The taking of profit
was thought to be ignoble, if not deceitful. They who condescended to
such an occupation were accordingly despised and condemned to the
lowest place in the social scale. These ideas doubtless helped to make
business degrading; traders were doubtless sordid and covetous and
deceitful. In the presence of the samurai they were required to take
the most abject postures. In addressing him, they must never stand,
but must touch the ground with their foreheads; while talking with him
they must remain with their hands on the ground. Even the children of
samurai always assumed the lordly attitude toward tradesmen. The sons
of tradesmen might not venture into a quarrel with the sons of
samurai, for the armed children of the samurai were at liberty to cut
down and kill the children of