Chapter VIII: Act IV: Scene: Interior of Ichirō's house. Three persons kneeling in (2)

Other photographs show still more curious results of foreign influences. Here are samurai who refuse to adopt the Western fashions, but who have compromised with the new mania by having their haori and hakama made of the heaviest and costliest English broadcloth,--a material utterly unsuited for such use both because of its weight and its inelasticity. Already you can see that creases have been formed which no hot iron can ever smooth away.

It is certainly an æsthetic relief to turn from these portraits to those of a few conservatives who paid no attention to the mania at all, and clung to their native warrior garb to the very last. Here are nagabakama worn by horsemen,--and jin-baori, or war-coats, superbly embroidered,--and kamishimo,--and shirts of mail,--and full suits of armor. Here also are various forms of kaburi,--the strange but imposing head-dresses anciently worn on state occasions by princes and by samurai of high rank,--curious cobwebby structures, of some light black material. In all this there is dignity, beauty, or the terrible grace of war.

But everything is totally eclipsed by the last photograph of the collection,--a handsome youth with the sinister, splendid gaze of a falcon,--Matsudaira Buzen-no-Kami, in full magnificence of feudal war costume. One hand bears the tasseled signal-wand of a leader of armies; the other rests on the marvelous hilt of his sword. His helmet is a blazing miracle; the steel upon his breast and shoulders was wrought by armorers whose names are famed in all the museums of the West. The cords of his war-coat are golden; and a wondrous garment of heavy silk--all embroidered with billowings and dragonings of gold--flows from his mailed waist to his feet, like a robe of fire. And this is no dream;--this was!--I am gazing at a solar record of one real figure of mediæval life! How the man flames in his steel and silk and gold, like some splendid iridescent beetle,--but a War beetle, all horns and mandibles and menace despite its dazzlings of jewel-color!

IV

From the princely magnificence of feudal costume as worn by Matsudaira--Buzen-no-Kami to the nondescript garments of the transition period, how vast a fall! Certainly the native dress and the native taste in dress might well have seemed doomed to pass away forever. And when even the Imperial Court had temporarily adopted Parisian modes, few foreigners could have doubted that the whole nation was about to change garb. As a fact, there then began in the chief cities that passing mania for Western fashions which was reflected in the illustrated journals of Europe, and which created for a while the impression that picturesque Japan had become transformed into a land of "loud" tweeds, chimney-pot hats, and swallow-tail coats. But in the capital itself to-day, among a thousand passers-by, you may see scarcely one in Western dress, excepting, of course, the uniformed soldiers, students, and police. The former mania really represented a national experiment; and the results of that experiment were not according to Western expectation. Japan has adopted various styles of Western uniform,[1] with some excellent modifications, for her army, her navy, and her police, simply because such attire is the best possible for such callings. Foreign civil costume has been adopted by the Japanese official world, but only to be worn during office-hours in buildings of Western construction furnished with modern desks and chairs.[2] At home even the general, the admiral, the judge, the police-inspector, resume the national garb. And, finally, both teachers and students in all but the primary schools are expected to wear uniform, as the educational training is partly military. This obligation, once stringent, has, however, been considerably relaxed; in many schools the uniform being now obligatory only during drill-time and upon certain ceremonial occasions. In all Kyūshū schools, except the Normal, the students are free to wear their robes, straw sandals, and enormous straw hats, when not on parade. But everywhere after class-hours both teachers and students return at home to their kimono and their girdles of white crape silk.

In brief, then, Japan has fairly resumed her national dress; and it is to be hoped that she will never again abandon it. Not only is it the sole attire perfectly adapted to her domestic habits; it is also, perhaps, the most dignified, the most comfortable, and the most healthy in the world. In some respects, indeed, the native fashions have changed during the era of Meiji much more than in previous eras; but this was largely due to the abolition of the military caste. As to forms, the change has been slight; as to color, it has been great. The fine taste of the race still appears in the beautiful tints and colors and designs of those silken or cotton textures woven for apparel. But the tints are paler, the colors are darker, than those worn by the last generation;--the whole national costume, in all its varieties, not excepting even the bright attire of children and of young girls, is much more sober of tone than in feudal days. All the wondrous old robes of dazzling colors have vanished from public life: you can study them now only in the theatres, or in those marvelous picture-books reflecting the fantastic and beautiful visions of the Japanese classic drama, which preserves the Past.

[1] What seems to be the only serious mistake Japan has made in this regard is the adoption of leather shoes for her infantry. The fine feet of young men accustomed to the freedom of sandals, and ignorant of the existence of what we call corns and bunions, are cruelly tortured by this unnatural footgear. On long marches they are allowed to wear sandals, however; and a change in footgear may yet be made. With sandals, even a Japanese boy can easily walk his thirty miles a day, almost unfatigued.

[2] A highly educated Japanese actually observed to a friend of mine: "The truth is that we dislike Western dress. We have been temporarily adopting it only as certain animals take particular colors in particular seasons,--_for protective reasons_".

V

Indeed, to give up the native dress would involve the costly necessity of changing nearly all the native habits of life. Western costume is totally unsuited to a Japanese interior; and would render the national squatting, or kneeling, posture extremely painful or difficult for the wearer. The adoption of Western dress would thus necessitate the adoption of Western domestic habits: the introduction into home of chairs for resting, tables for eating, stoves or fireplaces for warmth (since the warmth of the native robes alone renders these Western comforts at present unnecessary), carpets for floors, glass for windows,--in short, a host of luxuries which the people have always been well able to do without. There is no furniture (according to the European sense of the term) in a Japanese home,--no beds, tables, or chairs. There may be one small book-case, or rather "book-box;" and there are nearly always a pair of chests of drawers in some recess hidden by sliding paper screens; but such articles are quite unlike any Western furniture. As a rule, you will see nothing in a Japanese room except a small brazier of bronze or porcelain, for smoking purposes; a kneeling-mat, or cushion, according to season; and in the alcove only, a picture or a flower vase. For thousands of years Japanese life has been on the floor. Soft as a hair mattress and always immaculately clean, the floor is at once the couch, the dining-table, and most often the writing-table; although there exist tiny pretty writing-tables about one foot high. And the vast economy of such habits of life renders it highly improbable they will ever be abandoned, especially while the pressure of population and the struggle of life continue to increase. It should also be remembered that there exists no precedent of a highly civilized people--such as were the Japanese before the Western aggression upon them--abandoning ancestral habits out of a mere spirit of imitation. Those who imagine the Japanese to be merely imitative also imagine them to be savages. As a fact, they are not imitative at all: they are assimilative and adoptive only, and that to the degree of genius.

It is probable that careful study of Western experience with fire-proof building-material will eventually result in some changes in Japanese municipal architecture. Already, in some quarters of Tōkyō, there are streets of brick houses. But these brick dwellings are matted in the ancient manner; and their tenants follow the domestic habits of their ancestors. The future architecture of brick or stone is not likely to prove a mere copy of Western construction; it is almost certain to develop new and purely Oriental features of rare interest.

Those who believe the Japanese dominated by some blind admiration for everything Occidental might certainly expect at the open ports to find less of anything purely Japanese (except curios) than in the interior: less of Japanese architecture; less of national dress, manners, and customs; less of native religion, and shrines, and temples. But exactly the reverse is the fact. Foreign buildings there are, but, as a general rule, in the foreign concessions only, and for the use of foreigners. The usual exceptions are a fire-proof post-office, a custom-house, and perhaps a few breweries and cotton-mills. But not only is Japanese architecture excellently represented at all the foreign ports: it is better represented there than in almost any city of the interior. The edifices heighten, broaden, expand; but they remain even more Oriental than elsewhere. At Kobe, at Nagasaki, at Ōsaka, at Yokohama, everything that is essentially and solely Japanese (except moral character) accentuates as if in defiance of foreign influence. Whoever has looked over Kobe from some lofty roof or balcony will have seen perhaps the best possible example of what I mean,--the height, the queerness, the charm of a Japanese port in the nineteenth century, the blue-gray sea of tile-slopes ridged and banded with white, the cedar world of gables and galleries and architectural conceits and whimsicalities indescribable. And nowhere outside of the Sacred City of Kyōto, can you witness a native religious festival to better advantage than in the open ports; while the multitude of shrines, of temples, of torii, of all the sights and symbols of Shintō and of Buddhism, are scarcely paralleled in any city of the interior except Nikko, and the ancient capitals of Nara and Saikyō. No! the more one studies the characteristics of the open ports, the more one feels that the genius of the race will never voluntarily yield to Western influence, beyond the rules of jiujutsu.

VI

The expectation that Japan would speedily announce to the world her adoption of Christianity was not so unreasonable as some other expectations of former days. Yet it might well seem to have been more so. There were no precedents upon which to build so large a hope. No Oriental race has ever yet been converted to Christianity. Even under British rule, the wonderful labors of the Catholic propaganda in India have been brought to a standstill. In China, after centuries of missions, the very name of Christianity is detested,--and not without cause, since no small number of aggressions upon China have been made in the name of Western religion. Nearer home, we have made even less progress in our efforts to convert Oriental races. There is not the ghost of a hope for the conversion of the Turks, the Arabs, the Moors, or of any Islamic people; and the memory of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews only serves to create a smile. But, even leaving the Oriental races out of the question, we have no conversions whatever to boast of. Never within modern history has Christendom been able to force the acceptance of its dogmas upon a people able to maintain any hope of national existence. The nominal[1] success of missions among a few savage tribes, or the vanishing Maori races, only proves the rule; and unless we accept the rather sinister declaration of Napoleon that missionaries may have great political usefulness, it is not easy to escape the conclusion that the whole work of the foreign mission societies has been little more than a vast expenditure of energy, time, and money, to no real purpose.

In this last decade of the nineteenth century, at all events, the reason should be obvious. A religion means much more than mere dogma about the supernatural: it is the synthesis of the whole ethical experience of a race, the earliest foundation, in many cases, of its wiser laws, and the record, as well as the result, of its social evolution. It is thus essentially a part of the race-life, and cannot possibly be replaced in any natural manner by the ethical and social experience of a totally alien people,--that is to say, by a totally alien religion. And no nation in a healthy social state can voluntarily abandon the faith so profoundly identified with its ethical life. A nation may reshape its dogmas: it may willingly even accept another faith; but it will not voluntarily cast away its older belief, even when the latter has lost all ethical or social usefulness. When China accepted Buddhism, she gave up neither the moral codes of her ancient sages, nor her primitive ancestor-worship; when Japan accepted Buddhism, she did not forsake the Way of the Gods. Parallel examples are yielded by the history of the religions of antique Europe. Only religions the most tolerant can be voluntarily accepted by races totally alien to those that evolved them; and even then only as an addition to what they already possess, never as a substitute for it. Wherefore the great success of the ancient Buddhist missions. Buddhism was an absorbing but never a supplanting power: it incorporated alien faiths into its colossal system, and gave them new interpretation. But the religion of Islam and the religion of Christianity--Western Christianity--have always been religions essentially intolerant, incorporating nothing and zealous to supplant everything. To introduce Christianity, especially into an Oriental country, necessitates the destruction not only of the native faith but of the native social systems as well. Now the lesson of history is that such wholesale destruction, can be accomplished only by force, and, in the case of a highly complex society, only by the most brutal force. And force, the principal instrument of Christian propagandism in the past, is still the force behind our missions. Only we have, or affect to have, substituted money power and menace for the franker edge of the sword; occasionally fulfilling the menace for commercial reasons in proof of our Christian professions. We force missionaries upon China, for example, under treaty clauses extorted by war; and pledge ourselves to support them with gunboats, and to exact enormous indemnities for the lives of such as get themselves killed. So China pays blood-money at regular intervals, and is learning more and more each year to understand the value of what we call Christianity. And the saying of Emerson, that by some a truth can never be comprehended until its light happens to fall upon a fact, has been recently illustrated by some honest protests against the immorality of missionary aggressions in China,--protests which would never have been listened to before it was discovered that the mission troubles were likely to react against purely commercial interests.

But in spite of the foregoing considerations there was really at one time fair reason for believing the nominal conversion of Japan quite possible. Men could not forget that after the Japanese Government had been forced by political necessity to extirpate the wonderful Jesuit missions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the very word Christian had become a term of hatred and scorn.[2]

But the world had changed since then; Christianity had changed; and more than thirty different Christian sects were ready to compete for the honor of converting Japan. Out of so large a variety of dogmas, representing the principal shades both of orthodoxy and of heterodoxy, Japan might certainly be able to choose a form of Christianity to her own taste! And the conditions of the country were more propitious than ever before for the introduction of some Western religion. The whole social system had been disorganized to the very core; Buddhism had been disestablished, and was tottering under the blow; Shintō appeared to be incapable of resistance; the great military caste had been abolished; the system of rule had been changed; the provinces had been shaken by war; the Mikado, veiled for centuries, had shown himself to his astonished people; the tumultuous flood of new ideas threatened to sweep away all customs and to wreck all beliefs; and the preaching of Christianity had been once more tolerated by law. Nor was this all. In the hour of its prodigious efforts to reconstruct society, the Government had actually considered the question of Christianity--just as shrewdly and as impartially as it had studied the foreign educational, military, and naval systems. A commission was instructed to report upon the influence of Christianity in checking crime and vice abroad. The result confirmed the impartial verdict of Kaempffer, in the seventeenth century, upon the ethics of the Japanese: "They profess a great respect and veneration for their Gods, and worship them in various ways. And I think I may affirm that, in the practice of virtue, in purity of life, and outward devotion, they far outdo the Christians."

In short, it was wisely decided that the foreign religion, besides its inappropriateness to the conditions of Oriental society, had proved itself less efficacious as an ethical influence in the West than Buddhism had done in the East. Certainly, in the great jiujutsu there could have been little to gain, but much to lose, by a patriarchal society established on the principle of reciprocal duties, through the adoption of the teaching that a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife.[3]

The hope of making Japan Christian by Imperial edict has passed; and with the reorganization of society, the chances of making Christianity, by any means whatever, the national religion, grow less and less. Probably missionaries must be tolerated for some time longer, in spite of their interference in matters altogether outside of their profession; but they will accomplish no moral good, and in the interim they will be used by those whom they desire to use. In 1894 there were in Japan some eight hundred Protestant, ninety-two Roman Catholic, and three Greek Catholic missionaries; and the total expenditure for all the foreign missions in Japan must represent not much less than a million dollars a year,--probably represents more. As a result of this huge disbursement, the various Protestant sects claim to have made about 50,000 converts, and the Catholics an equal number; leaving some thirty-nine million nine hundred thousand unconverted souls. Conventions, and very malignant ones, forbid all unfavorable criticism of mission reports; but in spite of them I must express my candid opinion that even the above figures are not altogether trustworthy. Concerning the Roman Catholic missions, it is worthy of note that they profess with far smaller means to have done as much work as their rivals; and that even their enemies acknowledge a certain solidity in that work--which begins, rationally enough, with the children. But it is difficult not to feel skeptical as to mission reports: when one knows that among the lowest classes of Japanese there are numbers ready to profess conversion for the sake of obtaining pecuniary assistance or employment; when one knows that poor boys pretend to become Christians for the sake of obtaining instruction in some foreign language; when one hears constantly of young men, who, after professing Christianity for a time, openly return to their ancient gods; when one sees--immediately after the distribution by missionaries of foreign contributions for public relief in time of flood, famine, or earthquake--sudden announcement of hosts of conversions, one is obliged to doubt not only the sincerity of the converted, but the morality of the methods. Nevertheless, the expenditure of one million dollars a year in Japan for one hundred years might produce very large results, the nature of which may be readily conceived, though scarcely admired; and the existing weakness of the native religions, both in regard to educational and financial means of self-defense, tempts aggression. Fortunately there now seems to be more than a mere hope that the Imperial Government will come to the aid of Buddhism in matters educational. On the other hand, there is at least a faint possibility that Christendom, at no very distant era, may conclude that her wealthiest missions are becoming transformed into enormous mutual benefit societies.

[1] Nominal, because the simple fact is that the real object of missions is impossible. This whole question has been very strongly summed up in a few lines by Herbert Spencer:--

"Everywhere, indeed, the special theological bias, accompanying a special set of doctrines, inevitably prejudges many sociological questions. One who holds a creed to be absolutely true, and who by implication holds the multitudinous other creeds to be absolutely false in so far as they differ from his own, cannot entertain the supposition that the value of a creed is relative. That each religious system is, in its general characters, a natural part of the society in which it is found, is an entirely alien conception, and indeed a repugnant one. His system of dogmatic theology he thinks good for all places and all times. He does not doubt that, when planted among a horde of savages, it will be duly understood by them, duly appreciated by them, and will work upon them results such as those he experiences from it. Thus prepossessed, he passes over the proofs that a people is no more capable of receiving a higher form of religion than it is capable of receiving a higher form of government; and that inevitably along with such religion, as with such government, there will go on a degradation which presently reduces it to one differing but nominally from its predecessor. In other words, his special theological bias blinds him to an important class of sociological truths."

[2] The missionary work was begun by St. Francis Xavier, who landed at Kagoshima in Kyūshū on the 15th of August, 1549. A curious fact is that the word _Bateren,_ a corruption of the Portuguese or Spanish _padre_, and so adopted into the language two centuries ago, still lingers among the common people in some provinces as a synonym for "wicked magician." Another curious fact worth mentioning is that a particular kind of bamboo screen--from behind which a person can see all that goes on outside the house without being himself seen--is still called a _Kirishitan_ (Christian).

Griffis explains the larger success of the Jesuit missions of the sixteenth century partly by the resemblance between the outer forms of Roman Catholicism and the outer forms of Buddhism. This shrewd judgment has been confirmed by the researches of Ernest Satow (see _Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan_, vol. ii. part 2), who has published facsimiles of some documents proving that the grant to the foreign missionaries by the Lord of Yamaguchi was made that they might "_preach the law of Buddha,_"--the new religion being at first taken for a higher form of Buddhism. But those who have read the old Jesuit letters from Japan, or even the more familiar compilation of Charlevoix, must recognize that the success of the missions could not be thus entirely explained. It presents us with psychological phenomena of a very remarkable order,--phenomena perhaps never again to be repeated in the history of religion, and analogous to those strange forms of emotionalism classed by Hecker as contagious (see his _Epidemics of the Middle Ages_). The old Jesuits understood the deeper emotional character of the Japanese infinitely better than any modern missionary society: they studied with marvelous keenness all the springs of the race-life, and knew how to operate them. Where they failed, our modern Evangelical propagandists need not hope to succeed. Still, even in the most flourishing period of the Jesuit missions, only six hundred thousand converts were claimed.

[3] A recent French critic declared that the comparatively small number of public charities and benevolent institutions in Japan proved the race deficient in humanity! Now the truth is that in Old Japan the principle of mutual benevolence rendered such institutions unnecessary. And another truth is that the vast number of such institutions in the West testifies much more strongly to the inhumanity than to the charity of our own civilization.

VII

The idea that Japan would throw open her interior to foreign industrial enterprise, soon after the beginning of Meiji, proved as fallacious as the dream of her sudden conversion to Christianity. The country remained, and still remains, practically closed against foreign settlement. The Government itself had never seemed inclined to pursue a conservative policy, and had made various attempts to bring about such a revision of treaties as would have made Japan a new field for large investments of Western capital Events, however, proved that the national course was not to be controlled by statecraft only, but was to be directed by something much less liable to error,--the Race-Instinct.

The world's greatest philosopher, writing in 1867, uttered this judgment: "Of the way in which disintegrations are liable to be set up in a society that has evolved to the limit of its type, and reached a state of moving equilibrium, a good illustration is furnished by Japan. The finished fabric into which its people had organized themselves maintained an almost constant state so long as it was preserved from fresh external forces. But as soon as it received an impact from European civilization,--partly by armed aggression, partly by commercial impulse, partly by the influence of ideas,--this fabric began to fall to pieces. There is now in progress a political dissolution. Probably a political reorganization will follow; but, be this as it may, the change thus far produced by outer action is a change towards dissolution,--a change from integrated motions to disintegrated motions."[1]

The political reorganization suggested by Mr. Spencer not only followed rapidly, but seemed more than likely to prove all that could be desired, providing the new formative process were not seriously and suddenly interfered with. Whether it would be interfered with by treaty revision, however, appeared a very doubtful question. While some Japanese politicians worked earnestly for the removal of every obstacle to foreign settlement in the interior, others felt that such settlement would mean a fresh introduction into the yet unstable social organism of disturbing elements sure to produce new disintegrations. The argument of the former was that by the advocated revision of existing treaties the revenue of the Empire could be much increased, and that the probable number of foreign settlers would be quite small. But conservative thinkers considered that the real danger of opening the country to foreigners was not the danger of the influx of numbers; and on this point the Race-Instinct agreed with them. It comprehended the peril only in a vague way, but in a way that touched the truth.

One side of that truth ought to be familiar to Americans,--the Occidental side. The Occidental has discovered that, under any conditions of fair play, he cannot compete with the Oriental in the struggle for life: he has fully confessed the fact, both in Australia and in the United States, by the passage of laws to protect himself against Asiatic emigration. For outrages upon Chinese or Japanese immigrants he has nevertheless offered a host of absurd "moral reasons." The only true reason can be formulated in six words: _The Oriental can underlive the Occidental._ Now in Japan the other face of the question was formulated thus: _The Occidental can overlive the Oriental[2] under certain favorable conditions_. One condition would be a temperate climate; the other, and the more important, that, in addition to full rights of competition, the Occidental should have power for aggression. Whether he _would_ use such power was not a common-sense question: the real question was, _could_ he use it? And this answered in the affirmative, all discussion as to the nature of his possible future policy of aggrandizement--whether industrial, financial, political, or all three in one--were pure waste of time. It was enough to know that he might eventually find ways and means to master, if not to supplant, the native race; crushing opposition, paralyzing competition by enormous combinations of capital, monopolizing resources, and raising the standard of living above the native capacity. Elsewhere various weaker races had vanished or were vanishing under Anglo-Saxon domination. And in a country so poor as Japan, who could give assurance that the mere admission of foreign capital did not constitute a national danger? Doubtless Japan would never have to fear conquest by any single Western power: she could hold her own, on her own soil, against any one foreign nation. Neither would she have to face the danger of invasion by a combination of military powers: the mutual jealousies of the Occident would render impossible any attack for the mere purpose of territorial acquisition. But she might reasonably fear that, by prematurely opening her interior to foreign settlement, she would condemn herself to the fate of Hawaii,--that her land would pass into alien ownership, that her politics would be regulated by foreign influence, that her independence would become merely nominal, that her ancient empire would eventually become transformed into a sort of cosmopolitan industrial republic.

Such were the ideas fiercely discussed by opposite parties until the eve of the war with China. Meanwhile the Government had been engaged upon difficult negotiations. To open the country in the face of the anti-foreign reaction seemed in the highest degree dangerous; yet to have the treaties revised without opening the country seemed impossible. It was evident that the steady pressure of the Western powers upon Japan was to be maintained unless their hostile combination could be broken either by diplomacy or by force. The new treaty with England, devised by the shrewdness of Aoki, met the dilemma. By this treaty the country is to be opened; but British subjects cannot own land. They can even hold land only on leases terminating, according to Japanese law, _ipso facto_ with the death of the lessor. No coasting-trade is permitted them--not even to some of the old treaty ports; and all other trade is to be heavily taxed. The foreign concessions are to revert to Japan; British settlers pass under Japanese jurisdiction; England, in fact, loses everything, and Japan gains all by this treaty.

The first publication of the articles stupefied the English merchants, who declared themselves betrayed by the mother-country,--legally tied hand and foot and delivered into Oriental bondage. Some declared their resolve to leave the country before the treaty should be put in force. Certainly Japan may congratulate herself upon her diplomacy. The country is, indeed, to be opened; but the conditions have been made such as not only to deter foreign capital seeking investment, but as even to drive existing capital away. Should similar conditions be obtained from other powers, Japan will have much more than regained all that she lost by former treaties contrived to her disadvantage. The Aoki document surely represents the highest possible feat of jiujutsu in diplomacy.

But no one can well predict what may occur before this or any other new treaty be put into operation. It is still uncertain whether Japan will ultimately win all her ends by jiujutsu, although never in history did any race display such courage and such genius in facing colossal odds. Within the memory of men not yet old, Japan has developed her military power to a par with that of more than one country of Europe; industrially she is fast becoming a competitor of Europe in the markets of the East; educationally she has placed herself also in the front rank of progress, having established a system of schools less costly but scarcely less efficient than those of any Western country. And she has done this in spite of being steadily robbed each year by unjust treaties, in spite of enormous losses by floods and earthquakes, in spite of political troubles at home, in spite of the efforts of foreign proselytizers to sap the national spirit, and in spite of the extraordinary poverty of her people.

[1] _First Principles_, 2d Ed., § 178.

[2] That is, of course, the Japanese. I do not believe that under any circumstances the Occidentals could overlive the Chinese,--no matter what might be the numerical disproportion. Even the Japanese acknowledge their incapacity to compete with the Chinese; and one of the best arguments against the unreserved opening of the country is the danger of Chinese immigration.

VII

Should Japan fail in her glorious purpose, her misfortune will certainly not be owing to any lack of national spirit. That quality she possesses in a degree without existing modern parallel,--in a degree that so trite a word as "patriotism" is utterly powerless to represent. However psychologists may theorize on the absence or the limitations of personal individuality among the Japanese, there can be no question at all that, as a nation, Japan possesses an individuality much stronger than our own. Indeed we may doubt whether Western civilization has not cultivated the qualities of the individual even to the destruction of national feeling.

On the topic of duty the entire people has but one mind. Any schoolboy will say to you, if questioned about this subject: "The duty of every Japanese to our Emperor is to help to make our country strong and wealthy, and to help to defend and preserve our national independence." All know the danger. All are morally and physically trained to meet it. Every public school gives its students a preparatory course of military discipline; every town has its _bataillons scolaires_. Even the children too young to be regularly drilled are daily taught to sing in chorus the ancient songs of loyalty and the modern songs of war. And new patriot songs are composed at regular intervals, and introduced by Government approval into the schools and the camps. It is quite an experience to hear four hundred students chanting one of these at the school in which I teach. The young men are all in uniform on such occasions, and marshaled in military rank. The commanding officer gives the order to "mark time," and all the feet begin to beat the ground together, with a sound as of a drum-roll. Then the leader sings a verse, and the students repeat it with surprising spirit, throwing a peculiar emphasis always _on the last syllable_ of each line, so that the vocal effect is like a crash of musketry. It is a very Oriental, but also a very impressive manner of chanting: you can hear the fierce heart of Old Japan beating through every Word. But still more impressive is the same kind of singing by the soldiery. And at this very moment, while writing these lines, I hear from the ancient castle of Kumamoto, like a pealing of thunder, the evening song of its garrison of eight thousand men, mingled with the long, sweet, melancholy calling of a hundred bugles.[1]

The Government never relaxes its efforts to keep aglow the old sense of loyalty and love of country. New festivals have lately been established to this noble end; and the old ones are celebrated with increasing fervor each succeeding year. Always on the Emperor's birthday, His Imperial Majesty's photograph is solemnly saluted in all the public schools and public offices of the Empire, with appropriate songs and ceremonies.[2] Occasionally some students, under missionary instigation, refuse this simple tribute of loyalty and gratitude, on the extraordinary ground that they are "Christians," and thus get themselves ostracized by their comrades--sometimes to such an extent that they find it unpleasant to remain in the school. Then the missionaries write home to sectarian papers some story about the persecution of Christians in Japan, "_for refusing to worship an Idol of the Emperor_"![3] Such incidents are, of course, infrequent, and serve only to indicate those methods by which the foreign evangelizers manage to defeat the real purpose of their mission.

Probably their fanatical attacks, not only upon the native spirit, the native religion, and the native code of ethics, but even upon the native dress and customs, may partly account for some recent extraordinary displays of national feeling by the Japanese Christians themselves. Some have openly expressed their desire to dispense altogether with the presence of foreign proselytizers, and to create a new and peculiar Christianity, to be essentially Japanese and essentially national in spirit. Others have gone much further,--demanding that all mission schools, churches, and other property, now held (to satisfy or evade law) in Japanese names, shall be made over in fact as well as name to Japanese Christians, as a proof of the purity of the motives professed. And in sundry cases it has already been found necessary to surrender mission schools altogether to native direction.

I spoke in a former paper of the splendid enthusiasm with which the entire nation had seconded the educational efforts and purposes of the Government.[4] Not less zeal and self-denial have been shown in aid of the national measures of self-defense. The Emperor himself having set the example, by devoting a large part of his private income to the purchase of ships-of-war, no murmur was excited by the edict requiring one tenth of all government salaries for the same purpose. Every military or naval officer, every professor or teacher, and nearly every employee of the Civil Service[5] thus contributes monthly to the naval defense. Minister, peer, or member of Parliament, is no more exempt than the humblest post-office clerk. Besides these contributions by edict, to continue for six years, generous donations are voluntarily made by rich land-owners, merchants, and hankers throughout the Empire. For, in order to save herself, Japan must become strong quickly: the outer pressure upon her is much too serious to admit of delay. Her efforts are almost incredible, and their success is not improbable. But the odds against her are vast; and she may--stumble. Will she stumble? It is very hard to predict. But a future misfortune could scarcely be the result of any weakening of the national spirit. It would be far more likely to occur as a result of political mistakes,--of rash self-confidence.

[1] This was written in 1893.

[2] The ceremony of saluting His Majesty's picture is only a repetition of the ceremony required on presentation at court. A bow; three steps forward; a deeper how; three more steps forward, and a very low how. On retiring from the Imperial presence, the visitor walks backward, bowing again three times as before.

[3] This is an authentic text.

[4] See _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan_.

[5] Letter-carriers and ordinary policemen are exempted. But the salary of a policeman is only about six yen a month; that of a letter-carrier much less.

IX

It still remains to ask what is the likely fate of the old morality in the midst of all this absorption, assimilation, and reaction. And I think an answer is partly suggested in the following conversation which I had recently with a student of the University. It is written from memory, and is therefore not exactly verbatim, but has interest as representing the thought of the new generation---witnesses of the vanishing of the gods:--

"Sir, what was your opinion when you first came to this country, about the Japanese? Please to be quite frank with me."

"The young Japanese of to-day?"

"No."

"Then you mean those who still follow the ancient customs, and maintain the ancient forms of courtesy,--the delightful old men, like your former Chinese teacher, who still represent the old samurai spirit?"

"Yes. Mr. A---- is an ideal samurai. I mean such as he."

"I thought them all that is good and noble. They seemed to me just like their own gods."

"And do you still think so well of them?"

"Yes. And the more I see the Japanese of the new generation, the more I admire the men of the old."

"We also admire them. But, as a foreigner, you must also have observed their defects."

"What defects?"

"Defects in practical knowledge of the Western kind."

"But to judge the men of one civilization by the standard requirements of another, which is totally different in organization, would be unjust. It seems to me that the more perfectly a man represents his own civilization, the more we must esteem him as a citizen, and as a gentleman. And judged by their own standards, which were morally very high, the old Japanese appear to me almost perfect men."

"In what respect?"

"In kindness, in courtesy, in heroism, in self-control, in power of self-sacrifice, in filial piety, in simple faith, and in the capacity to be contented with a little."

"But would such qualities be sufficient to assure practical success in the struggle of Western life?"

"Not exactly; but some of them would assist."

"The qualities really necessary for practical success in Western life are just those qualities wanting to the old Japanese--are they not?"

"I think so."

"And our old society cultivated those qualities of unselfishness, and courtesy, and benevolence which you admire, at the sacrifice of the individual. But Western society cultivates the individual by unrestricted competition,--competition in the power of thinking and acting."

"I think that is true."

"But in order that Japan be able to keep her place among nations, she must adopt the industrial and commercial methods of the West. Her future depends upon her industrial development; but there can be no development if we continue to follow our ancient morals and manners."

"Why?"

"Not to be able to compete with the West means ruin; but to compete with the West we must follow the methods of the West; and these are quite contrary to the old morality."

"Perhaps."

"I do not think it can be doubted. To do any kind of business upon a very large scale, men must not be checked by the idea that no advantage should be sought which could injure the business of others. And on the other hand, wherever there is no restraint on competition, men who hesitate to compete because of mere kindliness of heart, must fail. The law of the struggle is that the strong and active shall win, the weak and the foolish and the indifferent lose. But our old morality condemned such competition."

"That is true."

"Then, Sir, no matter how good the old morality, we cannot make any great industrial progress, nor even preserve our national independence, by following it. We must forsake our past. We must substitute law for morality."

"But it is not a good substitute."

"It has been a good substitute in the West, if we can judge by the material greatness and power of England. We must learn in Japan to be moral by reason, instead of being moral by emotion. A knowledge of the moral reason of law is itself a moral knowledge."

"For you, and those who study cosmic law, perhaps. But what of the common people?"

"They will try to follow the old religion; they will continue to trust in their gods. But life will, perhaps, become more difficult for them. They were happy in the ancient days."

* * * * *

The foregoing essay was written two years ago. Later political events and the signing of new treaties obliged me to remodel it last year; and now, while the proofs are passing through my hands, the events of the war with China compel some further remarks. What none could have predicted in 1893 the whole world recognizes in 1895 with astonishment and with admiration. Japan has won in her jiujutsu. Her autonomy is practically restored, her place among civilized nations seems to be assured: she has passed forever out of Western tutelage. What neither her arts nor her virtues could ever have gained for her, she has obtained by the very first display of her new scientific powers of aggression and destruction.

Not a little has been hastily said about long secret preparation for the war made by Japan, and about the flimsiness of her pretexts for entering upon it. I believe that the purposes of her military preparations were never other than those indicated in the preceding chapter. It was to recover her independence that Japan steadily cultivated her military strength for twenty-five years. But successive pulses of popular reaction against foreign influence during that period--each stronger than the preceding--warned the Government of the nation's growing consciousness of power and of its ever-increasing irritation against the treaties. The reaction of 1893-94 took so menacing a form through the House of Representatives that the dissolution of the Diet became an immediate necessity. But even repeated parliamentary dissolutions could only have postponed the issue. It has since been averted partly by the new treaties, and partly by the sudden loosening of the Empire's military force against China. Should it not be obvious that only the merciless industrial and political pressure exercised by a combined Occident against Japan really compelled this war,--as a manifestation of force in the direction of least resistance? Happily that manifestation has been effectual. Japan has proved herself able to hold her own against the world. She has no wish to break her industrial relations with the Occident unless further imposed upon; but with the military revival of her Empire it is almost certain that the day of Occidental influence upon her--whether direct or indirect--is definitely over. Further anti-foreign reaction may be expected in the natural order of things,--not necessarily either violent or unreasonable, but embodying the fullest reassertion of national individuality. Some change even in the form of government is not impossible, considering the questionable results of experimentation with Constitutional Government made by a people accustomed for untold centuries to autocratic rule. But the fallacy of Sir Harry Parkes's prediction that Japan would become "a South American republic" warns against ventures to anticipate the future of this wonderful and enigmatic race.

It is true that the war is not yet over;--but the ultimate triumph of Japan seems beyond doubt,--even allowing for the formidable chances of a revolution in China. The world is already asking with some anxiety what will come next? Perhaps the compulsion of the most peaceable and most conservative of all nations, under both Japanese and Occidental pressure, to really master our arts of war in self-defense. After that perhaps a great military awakening of China, who would be quite likely, under the same circumstances as made New Japan, to turn her arms _South and West_. For possible ultimate consequences, consult Dr. Pearson's recent book, _National Character_.

It is to be remembered that the art of jiujutsu was invented in China. And the West has yet to reckon with China,--China, the ancient teacher of Japan,--China, over whose changeless millions successive storms of conquest have passed only as a wind over reeds. Under compulsion, indeed, she may be forced, like Japan, to defend her integrity by jiujutsu. But the end of that prodigious jiujutsu might have results the most serious for the entire world. It might be reserved for China to avenge all those aggressions, extortions, exterminations, of which the colonizing West has been guilty in dealing with feebler races.

Already thinkers, summarizing the experience of the two great colonizing nations,--thinkers not to be ignored, both French and English,--have predicted that the earth will never be fully dominated by the races of the West, and that the future belongs to the Orient. Such, too, are the convictions of many who have learned by long sojourn in the East to see beneath the surface of that strange humanity so utterly removed from us in thought,--to comprehend the depth and force of its tides of life,--to understand its immeasurable capacities of assimilation,--to discern its powers of self-adaptation to almost any environment between the arctic and antarctic circles. And in the judgment of such observers nothing less than the extermination of a race comprising more than one third of the world's population could now assure us even of the future of our own civilization.

Perhaps, as has been recently averred by Dr. Pearson, the long history of Western expansion and aggression is even now approaching its close. Perhaps our civilization has girdled the earth only to force the study of our arts of destruction and our arts of industrial competition upon races much more inclined to use them against us than for us. Even to do this we had to place most of the world under tribute,--so colossal were the powers needed. Perhaps we could not have attempted less, because the tremendous social machinery we have created, threatens, like the Demon of the old legend, to devour us in the same hour that we can find no more tasks for it.

A wondrous creation, indeed, this civilization of ours,--ever growing higher out of an abyss of ever-deepening pain; but it seems also to many not less monstrous than wonderful. That it may crumble suddenly in a social earthquake has long been the evil dream of those who dwell in its summits. That as a social structure it cannot endure, by reason of its moral foundation, is the teaching of Oriental wisdom.

Certainly the results of its labors cannot pass away till man shall have fully played out the drama of his existence upon this planet. It has resurrected the past;--it has revived the languages of the dead;--it has wrested countless priceless secrets from Nature;--it has analyzed suns and vanquished space and time;--it has compelled the invisible to become visible;--it has torn away all veils save the veil of the Infinite;--it has founded ten thousand systems of knowledge;--it has expanded the modern brain beyond the cubic capacity of the mediæval skull;--it has evolved the most noble, even if it has also evolved the most detestable, forms of individuality;--it has developed the most exquisite sympathies and the loftiest emotions known to man, even though it has developed likewise forms of selfishness and of suffering impossible in other eras. Intellectually it has grown beyond the altitude of the stars. That it must, in any event, bear to the future a relation incomparably vaster than that of Greek civilization to the past, is impossible to disbelieve.

But more and more each year it exemplifies the law that the greater the complexity of an organism, the greater also its susceptibility to fatal hurt Always, as its energies increase, is there evolved within it a deeper, a keener, a more exquisitely ramified sensibility to every shock or wound,--to every exterior force of change. Already the mere results of a drought or a famine in the remotest parts of the earth, the destruction of the smallest centre of supply, the exhaustion of a mine, the least temporary stoppage of any commercial vein or artery, the slightest pressure upon any industrial nerve, may produce disintegrations that carry shocks of pain into every portion of the enormous structure. And the wondrous capacity of that structure to oppose exterior forces by corresponding changes within itself would appear to be now endangered by internal changes of a totally different character. Certainly our civilization is developing the individual more and more. But is it not now developing him much as artificial heat and colored light and chemical nutrition might develop a plant under glass? Is it not rapidly evolving millions into purely special fitness for conditions impossible to maintain,--of luxury without limit for the few, of merciless servitude to steel and steam for the many? To such doubts the reply has been given that social transformations will supply the means of providing against perils, and of recuperating all losses. That, for a time at least, social reforms will work miracles is much more than a hope. But the ultimate problem of our future seems to be one that no conceivable social change can happily solve,--not even supposing possible the establishment of an absolutely perfect communism,--because the fate of the higher races seems to depend upon their true value in the future economy of Nature. To the query, "Are we not the Superior Race?"--we may emphatically answer "Yes;" but this affirmative will not satisfactorily answer a still more important question, "Are we the fittest to survive?"

Wherein consists the fitness for survival? In the capacity of self-adaptation to any and every environment;--in the instantaneous ability to face the unforeseen;--in the inherent power to meet and to master all opposing natural influences. And surely not in the mere capacity to adapt ourselves to factitious environments of our own invention, or to abnormal influences of our own manufacture,--but only in the simple power to live. Now in this simple power of living, our so-called higher races are immensely inferior to the races of the Far East. Though the physical energies and the intellectual resources of the Occidental exceed those of the Oriental, they can be maintained only at an expense totally incommensurate with the racial advantage. For the Oriental has proved his ability to study and to master the results of our science upon a diet of rice, and on as simple a diet can learn to manufacture and to utilize our most complicated inventions. But the Occidental cannot even live except at a cost sufficient for the maintenance of twenty Oriental lives. In our very superiority lies the secret of our fatal weakness. Our physical machinery requires a fuel too costly to pay for the running of it in a perfectly conceivable future period of race-competition and pressure of population.