Chapter XXVII

Real enlightenment and emperor-worship are hardly compatible, complains a missionary in Formosa. He should have had no difficulty in recognizing, in far less time than he has probably spent there, that for all its outward garb the government of the island, if not of Japan itself, is a real shogunate still, a feudal type of thing, in which all men bow low before their official superiors, in which there is never any of the hearty frankness of modern life. The slowest-minded people ever to reach high estate are also the tightest little people on earth; compared to the Japanese the Chinese are open and aboveboard, as well as brilliant and overflowing with the sense of humor.

There is no free press in Taiwan; the barriers against one are mainly secrecy and dictatorship. If the government is concerned, there is virtually no chance of getting any news, or at least correct news; if it is outside news, and in the slightest degree concerns the government, a strict censorship will see that it is not shared with the public. Such information as one may find in Formosan papers, therefore, is true in just so far as the government wishes the truth to be known. “It is undesirable,” said a recent governor-general, “to see in newspapers comments and criticisms concerning the administration.” No doubt American politicians often feel the same way about it. The same mikado-appointed autocrat dissolved a society of Formosans who planned to introduce governmental reforms, with the placid remark: “To establish a legislature in Taiwan is against the constitution of Japan, and the constitution has never been amended. Any movement aiming at the conclusion of the laws of Japan from this island is against peace and order. The constitution of Japan allows freedom of speech and the organization of political societies, _but_ people under a constitutional government should be moral and gentlemanly in their acts, and it is accordingly the duty of the state to correct persons who are unable to take such a gentlemanly and moral attitude.” A number of such persons, whose lack of gentlemanly morals consisted in attempting to organize one of the political societies permitted by the constitution, are being corrected in the big “model” prison of Taihoku, and incidentally learning to work with their hands instead of their heads.

In other words, though the Japanese have copied the constitutions of the West, by way of that of Bavaria, those of them at least who are governing Formosa have no real conception of what a modern free government with the consent of the governed means. Compare Japanese rule in their semi-tropical isle with Porto Rico or the Philippines, where even legislation and the courts are in Spanish! It is rather a pity that the group of islands not far south of Formosa over which the American flag still flutters cannot have a sample of Formosan rule to offset their complaints at their present status, and as a reminder of what may very easily happen to them if they win that independence for which certain of their political-minded citizens are clamoring.

But to come back to the complaining missionary and his charge of mikado-worship. “The Japanese constitution,” he continues, “guarantees to all citizens religious liberty; how then can the government require its officials, and every child in its government schools, be they Formosans or Koreans, to bow down before the picture of the emperor and to worship him in Shinto shrines? For certainly this is nothing more nor less than worship, so far as the word has any meaning in English or to the mere Western mentality, in spite of the clever but ineffectual explanation that ‘the government declares that all ceremonial observances which are officially obligatory shall not be regarded as religious but as patriotic.’”

It is easy enough for a stern government to order men to believe thus and so, but the human mind is sometimes perverse in its workings. Shintoism is taught in the schools of Formosa; gleaming new Shinto shrines are to be found throughout the pacified part of the island; but I have yet to see a Formosan enter one of them as a voluntary worshiper or to hear of one who has given his free-will adherence to the Japanese doctrine. The Chinese type of temples still holds the allegiance of the great non-Japanese mass of the population; and the majority of us are inclined to sympathize with them in their choice, even though their mainly devil-propitiating form of worship may be a lower one than pure Shintoism.

But is the charge of mikado-worship justified? I took the trouble one day to ask one of the most intelligent Japanese officials it has been my fortune to meet, a man educated in the West and with as liberal views as such officials ever seem to attain, what the more cultured Japanese thought of the suicide of General Nogi and his wife, that they might accompany the late mikado to the other world. He showed immense surprise that such a question could occur to me at all, and promptly assured me that “every” Japanese considered it a noble act, and one to be emulated. The house in which this ancient Nipponese sacrifice was committed was set aside by the government as a national museum, and squads of school-children were constantly being shown through it when we were in Tokyo, while their teachers preached to them on the ideal patriotism of Nogi’s life, and particularly of his death, striving to inculcate into their plastic minds, probably with considerable success, the same more than medieval ideas. The authorities are tireless in their attempts to bring the younger generation of Formosans to the same point of view, though there is no evidence that these efforts have thus far borne any fruit.

Not long ago the prince regent of Japan made an official visit to Formosa, partly no doubt for this very purpose. There were months of preparation for the “epoch-making” occasion, preparations so intensive that neither the governor-general nor the government had much time left for less important matters. The group of buildings on the hilltop above Takao, of which I have already spoken, were specially constructed for the housing of the royal visitors. They are of wood, but spacious enough to accommodate a dozen large families. The prince spent two nights there, leaving them so sacred that no one else can enter, much less inhabit them. I had the luck to see translations of articles on the princely visit as they appeared in Formosan papers, though it was not, of course, intended that this evidence of the essentially shogunal character of modern Japan should be given out to the world at large. Among this mass of evidence unconsciously tending to bear out the charge that the Japanese consider their supreme ruler virtually a god a few are especially amusing. For, remember, this was merely the son of the divine mikado, not yet quite deified himself, I suppose, so that one can only surmise how much nearer the focus of absurdity matters might have gone if the sacred emperor had been mentally capacitated to make the visit himself. One horrified writer reports that the imperial personage “seemed to be most interested in water-buffaloes and sedan-chairs”! How that must have broken the hearts of the improvement-showing officials! Two hundred and seventy police in plain clothes were stationed along the road by which the prince traveled, but “they hid themselves behind trees and other things, because the authorities wished them to be so inconspicuous, if possible, as not to catch the imperial eye at all.” A long list of instructions were issued to the people of Formosa, a few of which will give the atmosphere of the occasion quite as fully as the whole document. The population was ordered:

1. Not to get sick and start an epidemic during the imperial visit.

2. To fly the Japanese flag from every building along the prince’s
route, on penalty of severe punishment.

3. To dress neatly and wear footwear; to take off their hats when the
procession was passing; not to use telescopes or look upon the
procession from up-stairs or any other elevated place—and so on,
into the very depths of the proper conduct of mere man toward his
gods. Obviously unofficial photography would have been almost a
capital offense.