Front matter (continued 5)

In the early ages it appears to have been the custom for the wives of officials condemned to death to kill themselves the ancient chronicles are full of examples. But this custom is perhaps to be partly accounted for by the ancient law, which held the household of the offender equally responsible with him for the offence, independently of the facts in the case. However, it was certainly also common enough for a bereaved wife to perform suicide, not through despair, but through the wish to follow her [289] husband into the other world, and there to wait upon him as in life. Instances of female suicide, representing the old ideal of duty to a dead husband, have occurred in recent times. Such suicides are usually performed according to the feudal rules,—the woman robing herself in white for the occasion. At the time of the late war with China there occurred in Tokyo one remarkable suicide of this kind; the victim being the wife of Lieutenant Asada, who had fallen in battle. She was only twenty-one. On hearing of her husband's death, she at once began to make preparations for her own,—writing letters of farewell to her relatives, putting her affairs in order, and carefully cleaning the house, according to old-time rule. Thereafter she donned her death-robe; laid mattings down opposite to the alcove in the guest-room; placed her husband's portrait in the alcove, and set offerings before it. When everything had been arranged, she seated herself before the portrait, took up her dagger, and with a single skilful thrust divided the arteries of her throat.

Besides the duty of suicide for the sake of preserving honour, there was also, for the samurai woman, the duty of suicide as a moral protest. I have already said that among the highest class of retainers it was thought a moral duty to perform harakiri as a remonstrance against shameless conduct on the part of one's lord, when all other means of persuasion [290] had been tried in vain. Among samurai women—taught to consider their husbands as their lords, in the feudal meaning of the term—it was held a moral obligation to perform jigai, by way of protest, against disgraceful behaviour upon the part of a husband who would not listen to advice or reproof. The ideal of wifely duty which impelled such sacrifice still survives; and more than one recent example might be cited of a generous life thus laid down in rebuke of some moral wrong. Perhaps the most touching instance occurred in 1892, at the time of the district elections in Nagano prefecture. A rich voter named Ishijima, after having publicly pledged himself to aid in the election of a certain candidate, transferred his support to the rival candidate. On learning of this breach of promise, the wife of Ishijima, robed herself in white, and performed jigai after the old samurai manner. The grave of this brave woman is still decorated with flowers by the people of the district; and incense is burned before her tomb.

To kill oneself at command—a duty which no loyal samurai would have dreamed of calling in question—appears to us much less difficult than another duty, also fully accepted: the sacrifice of children, wife, and household for the sake of the lord. Much of Japanese popular tragedy is devoted to incidents of such sacrifice made by retainers or [291] dependents of daimyo,—men or women who gave their children to death in order to save the children of their masters.* [*See, for a good example, the translation of the drama Terakoya, published, with admirable illustrations, by T. Hasegawa (Tokyo).] Nor have we any reason to suppose that the facts have been exaggerated in these dramatic compositions, most of which are based upon feudal history. The incidents, of course, have been rearranged and expanded to meet theatrical requirements; but the general pictures thus given of the ancient society are probably even less grim than the vanished reality. The people still love these tragedies; and the foreign critic of their dramatic literature is wont to point out only the blood-spots, and to comment upon them as evidence of a public taste for gory spectacles,—as proof of some innate ferocity in the race. Rather, I think, is this love of the old tragedy proof of what foreign critics try always to ignore as—much as possible,—the deeply religious character of the people. These plays continue to give delight,—not because of their horror, but because of their moral teaching,—because of their exposition of the duty of sacrifice and courage, the religion of loyalty. They represent the martyrdoms of feudal society for its noblest ideals.

All down through that society, in varying forms, the same spirit—of loyalty had its manifestations. As the samurai to his liege-lord, so the apprentice was bound to the patron, and the clerk to the [292] merchant. Everywhere there was trust, because everywhere there existed the like sentiment of mutual duty between servant and master. Each industry and occupation had its religion of loyalty,—requiring, on the one side, absolute obedience and sacrifice at need; and on the other, kindliness and aid. And the rule of the dead was over all.

Not less ancient than the duty of dying for parent or lord was the social obligation to avenge the killing of either. Even before the beginnings of settled society, this duty is recognized. The oldest chronicles of Japan teem with instances of obligatory vengeance. Confucian ethics more than affirmed the obligation,—forbidding a man to live "under the same heaven" with the slayer of his lord, or parent, or brother; and fixing all the degrees of kinship, or other relationship, within which the duty of vengeance was to be considered imperative. Confucian ethics, it will be remembered, became at an early date the ethics of the Japanese ruling-classes, and so remained down to recent times. The whole Confucian system, as I have remarked elsewhere, was founded upon ancestor-worship, and represented scarcely more than an amplification and elaboration of filial piety: it was therefore in complete accord with Japanese moral experience. As the military power developed in Japan, the Chinese code of vengeance became universally accepted; and it was sustained [293] by law as well as by custom in later ages. Iyeyasu himself maintained it—exacting only that preliminary notice of an intended vendetta should be given in writing to the district criminal court. The text of his article on the subject is interesting:—

"In respect to avenging injury done to master or father, it is acknowledged by the Wise and Virtuous [Confucius] that you and the injurer cannot live together under the canopy of heaven. A person harbouring such vengeance shall give notice in writing to the criminal court; and although no check or hindrance may be offered to the carrying out of his design within the period allowed for that purpose, it is forbidden that the chastisement of an enemy be attended with riot. Fellows who neglect to give notice of their intended revenge are like wolves of pretext:* their punishment or pardon should depend upon the circumstances of the case."

[*Or "hypocritical wolves."—that is to say brutal murderers seeking to excuse their crime on the pretext justifiable vengeance. (The translation is by Lowder.)]

Kindred, as well as parents; teachers, as well as lords, were to be revenged. A considerable proportion of popular romance and drama is devoted to the subject of vengeance taken by women; and, as a matter of fact, women, and even children, sometimes became avengers when there were no men of a wronged family left to perform the duty. Apprentices avenged their masters; and even sworn friends were bound to avenge each other.

[294] Why the duty of vengeance was not confined to the circle of natural kinship is explicable, of course, by the peculiar organization of society. We have seen that the patriarchal family was a religious corporation; and that the family-bond was not the bond of natural affection, but the bond of the cult. We have also seen that the relation of the household to the community, and of the community to the clan, and of the clan to the tribe, was equally a religious relation. As a necessary consequence, the earlier customs of vengeance were regulated by the bond of the family, communal, or tribal cult, as well as by the bond of blood; and with the introduction of Chinese ethics, and the development of militant conditions, the idea of revenge as duty took a wider range. The son or the brother by adoption was in respect of obligation the same as the son or brother by blood; and the teacher stood to his pupil in the relation of father to child. To strike one's natural parent was a crime punishable by death: to strike one's teacher was, before the law, an equal offence. This notion of the teacher's claim to filial reverence was of Chinese importation: an extension of the duty of filial piety to "the father of the mind." There were other such extensions; and the origin of all, Chinese or Japanese, may be traced alike to ancestor-worship.

Now, what has never been properly insisted upon, in any of the books treating of ancient [295] Japanese customs, is the originally religious significance of the kataki-uchi. That a religious origin can be found for all customs of vendetta established in early societies is, of course, well known; but a peculiar interest attaches to the Japanese vendetta in view of the fact that it conserved its religious character unchanged down to the present era. The kataki-uchi was essentially an act of propitiation, as is proved by the rite with which it terminated,—the placing of the enemy's head upon the tomb of the person avenged, as an offering of atonement. And one of the most impressive features of this rite, as formerly practised, was the delivery of an address to the ghost of the person avenged. Sometimes the address was only spoken; sometimes it was also written, and the manuscript left upon the tomb.

There is probably none of my readers unacquainted with Mitford's ever-delightful Tales of Old Japan, and his translation of the true story of the "Forty-Seven Ronins." But I doubt whether many persons have noticed the significance of the washing of Kira Kotsuke-no-Suke's severed head, or the significance of the address inscribed to their dead lord by the brave men who had so long waited and watched for the chance to avenge him. This address, of which I quote Mitford's translation, was laid upon the tomb of the Lord Asano. It is still preserved at the temple called Sengakuji:—

[296] "The fifteenth year of Genroku [17031, the twelfth month, the fifteenth day.—We have come this day to do homage here: forty-seven men in all, from Oishi Kuranosuke down to the foot-soldier Terasaka Kichiyemon,—all cheerfully about to lay down our lives on your behalf. We reverently announce this to the honoured spirit of our dead master. On the fourteenth day of the third month of last year, our honoured master was pleased to attack Kira Kotsuke-no-Suke, for what reason we know not. Our honoured master put an end to his own life; but Kira Kotsuke-no-Suke lived. Although we fear that after the decree issued by the Government, this plot of ours will be displeasing to our honoured master, still we, who have eaten of your food, could not without blushing repeat the verse, "Thou shalt not live under the same heaven, nor tread the same earth with the enemy of thy father or lord," nor could we have dared to leave hell [Hades] and present ourselves before you in Paradise, unless we had carried out the vengeance which you began. Every day that we waited seemed as three autumns to us. Verily we have trodden the snow for one day, nay, for two days, and have tasted food but once. The old and decrepit, the sick and the ailing, have come forth gladly to lay down their lives. Men might laugh at us, as at grasshoppers trusting in the strength of their arms, and thus shame our honoured lord; but we could not halt in our deed of vengeance. Having taken counsel together last night, we have escorted my Lord Kotsuke-no-Suke hither to your tomb. This dirk, by which our honoured lord set great store last year, and entrusted to our care, we now bring back. If your noble spirit be now present before this tomb, we pray you, as a [297] sign, to take the dirk, and, striking the head of your enemy with it a second time, to dispel your hatred forever. This is the respectful statement of forty-seven men."

It will be observed that the Lord Asano is addressed as if he were present and visible. The head of the enemy has been carefully washed, according to the rule concerning the presentation of heads to a living superior. It is laid upon the tomb together with the nine-inch sword, or dagger, originally used by the Lord Asano in performing harakiri at Government command, and afterwards used by Oishi Kuranosuke in cutting off the head of Kira Kotsuke-no-Suke;—and the spirit of the Lord Asano is requested to take up the weapon and to strike the head, so that the pain of ghostly anger may be dissipated forever. Then, having been themselves all sentenced to perform harakiri, the forty-seven retainers join their lord in death, and are buried in front of his tomb. Before their graves the smoke of incense, offered by admiring visitors, has been ascending daily for two hundred years.*

[*It has been long the custom also for visitors to leave their cards upon the tombs of the Forty-seven Ronin. When I last visited Sengakuji, the ground about the tombs was white with visiting-cards.]

One must have lived in Japan, and have been able to feel the true spirit of the old Japanese life, in order to comprehend the whole of this romance of loyalty; but I think that whoever carefully reads Mr. Mitford's version of it, and his translation of the [298] authentic documents relating to it, will confess himself moved. That address especially touches,—because of the affection and the faith to which it testifies, and the sense of duty beyond this life. However much revenge must be condemned by our modern ethics, there is a noble side to many of the old Japanese stories of loyal vengeance; and these stories affect us by the expression of what has nothing to do with vulgar revenge,—by their exposition of gratitude, self-denial, courage in facing death, and faith in the unseen. And this means, of course, that we are, consciously or unconsciously, impressed by their religious quality. Mere individual revenge—the postponed retaliation for some personal injury—repels our moral feeling: we have learned to regard the emotion inspiring such revenge as simply brutal —something shared by man with lower forms of animal life. But in the story of a homicide exacted by the sentiment of duty or gratitude to a dead master, there may be circumstances which can make appeal to our higher moral sympathies,—to our sense of the force and beauty of unselfishness, unswerving fidelity, unchanging affection. And the story of the Forty-Seven Ronin is one of this class….

Yet it must be borne in mind that the old Japanese religion of loyalty, which found its supreme manifestation in those three terrible customs of [299] junshi, harakiri, and kataki-uchi, was narrow in its range. It was limited by the very constitution of society. Though the nation was ruled, through all its groups, by notions of duty everywhere similar in character, the circle of that duty, for each individual, did not extend beyond the clan-group to which he belonged. For his own lord the retainer was always ready to die; but he did not feel equally bound to sacrifice himself for the military government, unless he happened to belong to the special military following of the Shogun. His fatherland, his country, his world, extended only to the boundary of his chief's domain. Outside of that domain he could be only a wanderer,—a ronin, or "wave-man," as the masterless samurai was termed. Under such conditions that larger loyalty which identifies itself with love of king and country,—which is patriotism in the modern, not in the narrower antique sense,—could not fully evolve. Some common peril, some danger to the whole race—such as the attempted Tartar conquest of Japan—might temporarily arouse the true sentiment of patriotism; but otherwise that sentiment had little opportunity for development. The Ise cult represented, indeed, the religion of the nation, as distinguished from the clan or tribal worship; but each man had been taught to believe that his first duty was to his lord. One cannot efficiently serve two masters; and feudal government practically [300] suppressed any tendencies in that direction. The lordship so completely owned the individual, body and soul, that the idea of any duty to the nation, outside of the duty to the chief, had neither time nor chance to define itself in the mind of the vassal. To the ordinary samurai, for example, an imperial order would not have been law: he recognized no law above the law of his daimyo. As for the daimyo, he might either disobey or obey an imperial command according to circumstances: his direct superior was the shogun; and he was obliged to make for himself a politic distinction between the Heavenly Sovereign as deity, and the Heavenly Sovereign as a human personality. Before the ultimate centralization of the military power, there were many instances of lords sacrificing themselves for their emperor; but there were even more cases of open rebellion by lords against the imperial will. Under the Tokugawa rule, the question of obeying or resisting an imperial command would have depended upon the attitude of the shogun; and no daimyo would have risked such obedience to the court at Kyoto as might have signified disobedience to the court at Yedo. Not at least until the shogunate had fallen into decay. In Iyemitsu's time the daimyo were strictly forbidden to approach the imperial palace on their way to Yedo,—even in response to an imperial command; and they were also forbidden to make any direct appeal to the [301] Mikado. The policy of the shogunate was to prevent all direct communication between the Kyoto court and the daimyo. This policy paralyzed intrigue for two hundred years; but it prevented the development of patriotism.

And for that very reason, when Japan at last found herself face to face with the unexpected peril of Western aggression, the abolition of the dairmates was felt to be a matter of paramount importance. The supreme danger required that the social units should be fused into one coherent mass, capable of uniform action,—that the clan and tribal groupings should be permanently dissolved,—that all authority should immediately be centred in the representative of the national religion,—that the duty of obedience to the Heavenly Sovereign should replace, at once and forever, the feudal duty of obedience to the territorial lord. The religion of loyalty, evolved by a thousand years of war, could not be cast away—properly utilized, it would prove a national heritage of incalculable worth,—a moral power capable of miracles if directed by one wise will to a single wise end. Destroyed by reconstruction it could not be; but it could be diverted and transformed. Diverted, therefore, to nobler ends —expanded to larger needs,—it became the new national sentiment of trust and duty: the modern sense of patriotism. What wonders it has wrought, within the space of thirty years, the world is now obliged to confess: what [302] more it may be able to accomplish remains to be seen. One thing at least is certain,—-that the future of Japan must depend upon the maintenance of this new religion of loyalty, evolved, through the old, from the ancient religion of the dead.

[303]

THE JESUIT PERIL

The second half of the sixteenth century is the most interesting period in Japanese history—for three reasons. First, because it witnessed the apparition of those mighty captains, Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu,—types of men that a race seems to evolve for supreme emergencies only,—types requiring for their production not merely the highest aptitudes of numberless generations, but likewise an extraordinary combination of circumstances. Secondly, this period is all-important because it saw the first complete integration of the ancient social system,—the definitive union of all the clan-lordships under a central military government. And lastly, the period is of special interest because the incident of the first attempt to christianize Japan—the story of the rise and fall of the Jesuit power—properly belongs to it.

The sociological significance of this episode is instructive. Excepting, perhaps, the division of the imperial house against itself in the twelfth century, the greatest danger that ever threatened Japanese national integrity was the introduction of Christianity [304] by the Portuguese Jesuits. The nation saved itself only by ruthless measures, at the cost of incalculable suffering and of myriads of lives.

It was during the period of great disorder preceding Nobunaga's effort to centralize authority, that this unfamiliar disturbing factor was introduced by Xavier and his followers. Xavier landed at Kagoshima in 1549; and by 1581 the Jesuits had upwards of two hundred churches in the country. This fact alone sufficiently indicates the rapidity with which the new religion spread; and it seemed destined to extend over the entire empire. In 1585 a Japanese religious embassy was received at Rome; and by that date no less than eleven daimyo,—or "kings," as the Jesuits not inaptly termed them—had become converted. Among these were several very powerful lords. The new creed had made rapid way among the common people also: it was becoming "popular," in the strict meaning of the word.

When Nobunaga rose to power, he favoured the Jesuits in many ways—not because of any sympathy with their creed, for he never dreamed of becoming a Christian, but because he thought that their influence would be of service to him in his campaign against Buddhism. Like the Jesuits themselves, Nobunaga had no scruple about means in his pursuit of ends. More ruthless than William the Conqueror, he did not hesitate to put to death [305] his own brother and his own father-in-law, when they dared to oppose his will. The aid and protection which he extended to the foreign priests, for merely political reasons, enabled them to develop their power to a degree which soon gave him cause for repentance. Mr. Gubbins, in his "Review of the Introduction of Christianity into China and Japan," quotes from a Japanese work, called Ibuki Mogusa, an interesting extract on the subject:—

"Nobunaga now began to regret his previous policy in permitting the introduction of Christianity. He accordingly assembled his retainers, and said to them:—'The conduct of these missionaries in persuading people to join them by giving money, does not please me. How would it be, think you, if we were to demolish Nambanji [The "Temple of the Southern Savages"—so the Portuguese church was called]?' To this Mayeda Tokuzenin replied. 'It is now too late to demolish the Temple of the Namban. To endeavour to arrest the power of this religion now is like trying to arrest the current of the ocean. Nobles, both great and small, have become adherents of it. If you would exterminate this religion now, there is fear that disturbance should be created among your own retainers. I am therefore of opinion that you should abandon your intention of destroying Nambanji.' Nobunaga in consequence regretted exceedingly his previous action in regard to the Christian religion, and set about thinking how he could root it out."

The assassination of Nobunaga in 1586 may have prolonged the period of toleration. His successor [306] Hideyoshi, who judged the influence of the foreign priests dangerous, was for the moment occupied with the great problem of centralizing the military power, so as to give peace to the country. But the furious intolerance of the Jesuits in the southern provinces had already made them many enemies, eager to avenge the cruelties of the new creed. We read in the histories of the missions about converted daimyo burning thousands of Buddhist temples, destroying countless works of art, and slaughtering Buddhist priests;—and we find the Jesuit writers praising these crusades as evidence of holy zeal. At first the foreign faith had been only persuasive; afterwards, gathering power under Nobunaga's encouragement, it became coercive and ferocious. A reaction against it set in about a year after Nobunaga's death. In 1587 Hideyoshi destroyed the mission churches in Kyoto, Osaka, and Sakai, and drove the Jesuits from the capital; and in the following year he ordered them to assemble at the port of Hirado, and prepare to leave the country. They felt themselves strong enough to disobey: instead of leaving Japan, they scattered through the country, placing themselves under the protection of various Christian daimyo. Hideyoshi probably thought it impolitic to push matters further: the priests kept quiet, and ceased to preach publicly; and their self-effacement served them well until 1591. In that year the advent of [307] certain Spanish Franciscans changed the state of affairs. These Franciscans arrived in the train of an embassy from the Philippines, and obtained leave to stay in the country on condition that they were not to preach Christianity. They broke their pledge, abandoned all prudence, and aroused the wrath of Hideyoshi. He resolved to make an example; and in 1597 he had six Franciscans, three Jesuits, and several other Christians taken to Nagasaki and there crucified. The attitude of the great Taiko toward the foreign creed had the effect of quickening the reaction against it,—a reaction which had already begun to show itself in various provinces. But Hideyoshi's death in 1598 enabled the Jesuits to hope for better fortune. His successor, the cold and cautious Iyeyasu, allowed them to hope, and even to reestablish themselves in Kyoto, Osaka, and elsewhere. He was preparing for the great contest which was to be decided by the battle of Sekigahara;—he knew that the Christian element was divided,—some of its leaders being on his own side, and some on the side of his enemies;—and the time would have been ill chosen for any repressive policy. But in 1606, after having solidly established his power, Iyeyasu for the first time showed himself decidedly opposed to Christianity by issuing an edict forbidding further mission work, and proclaiming that those who had adopted the foreign religion must abandon it. Nevertheless the propaganda [308] went on—conducted no longer by Jesuits only, but also by Dominicans and Franciscans. The number of Christians then in the empire is said, with gross exaggeration, to have been nearly two millions. But Iyeyasu neither took, nor caused to be taken, any severe measures of repression until 1614,—from which date the great persecution may be said to have begun. Previously there had been local persecutions only, conducted by independent daimyo,—not by the central government. The local persecutions in Kyushu, for example, would seem to have been natural consequences of the intolerance of the Jesuits in the days of their power, when converted daimyo burned Buddhist temples and massacred Buddhist priests; and these persecutions were most pitiless in those very districts such as Bungo, Omura, and Higo —where the native religion had been most fiercely persecuted at Jesuit instigation. But from 1614—at which date there remained only eight, out of the total sixty-four provinces of Japan, into which Christianity had not been introduced—the suppression of the foreign creed became a government matter; and the persecution was conducted systematically and uninterruptedly until every outward trace of Christianity had disappeared.

The fate of the missions, therefore, was really settled by Iyeyasu and his immediate successors; [309] and it is the part taken by Iyeyasu that especially demands attention. Of the three great captains, all had, sooner or later, become suspicious of the foreign propaganda; but only Iyeyasu could find both the time and the ability to deal with the social problem which it had aroused. Even Hideyoshi had been afraid to complicate existing political troubles by any rigorous measures of an extensive character. Iyeyasu long hesitated. The reasons for his hesitation were doubtless complex, and chiefly diplomatic. He was the last of men to act hastily, or suffer himself to be influenced by prejudice of any sort; and to suppose him timid would be contrary to all that we know of his character. He must have recognized, of course, that to extirpate a religion which could claim, even in exaggeration, more than a million of adherents, was no light undertaking, and would involve an immense amount of suffering. To cause needless misery was not in his nature: he had always proved himself humane, and a friend of the common people. But he was first of all a statesman and patriot; and the main question for him must have been the probable relation of the foreign creed to political and social conditions in Japan. This question required long and patient investigation; and he appears to have given it all possible attention. At last he decided that Roman Christianity constituted a grave political danger and that its extirpation would be an unavoidable necessity. [310] The fact that the severe measures which he and his successors enforced against Christianity—measures steadily maintained for upwards of two hundred years—failed to completely eradicate the creed, proves how deeply the roots had struck. Superficially, all trace of Christianity vanished to Japanese eyes; but in 1865 there were discovered near Nagasaki some communities which had secretly preserved among themselves traditions of the Roman forms of worship, and still made use of Portuguese and Latin words relating to religious matters.

To rightly estimate the decision of Iyeyasu—one of the shrewdest, and also one of the most humane statesmen that ever lived,—it is necessary to consider, from a Japanese point of view, the nature of the evidence upon which he was impelled to act. Of Jesuit intrigues in Japan he must have had ample knowledge—several of them having been directed against himself;—but he would have been more likely to consider the ultimate object and probable result of such intrigues, than the mere fact of their occurrence. Religious intrigues were common among the Buddhists, and would scarcely attract the notice of the military government except when they interfered with state policy or public order. But religious intrigues having for their object the overthrow of government, and a sectarian domination of the country, would be gravely considered. [311] Nobunaga had taught Buddhism a severe lesson about the danger of such intriguing. Iyeyasu decided that the Jesuit intrigues had a political object of the most ambitious kind; but he was more patient than Nobunaga. By 1603 he, had every district of Japan under his yoke; but he did not issue his final edict until eleven years later. It plainly declared that the foreign priests were plotting to get control of the government, and to obtain possession of the country:—

"The Kirishitan band have come to Japan, not only sending their merchant-vessels to exchange commodities, but also longing to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow right doctrine, so that they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land. This is the germ of great disaster, and must be crushed…..

"Japan is the country of the gods and of the Buddha: it honours the gods, and reveres the Buddha…. The faction of the Bateren* disbelieve in the Way of the Gods, and blaspheme the true Law, —violate right-doing, and injure the good…. They truly are the enemies of the gods and of the Buddha…. If this be not speedily prohibited, the safety of the state will, assuredly hereafter be imperilled; and if those who are charged with ordering its affairs do not put a stop to the evil, they will expose themselves to Heaven's rebuke.

[*Bateren, a corruption of the Portuguese padre, is still the term used for Roman Catholic priests, of any denomination.]

"These [missionaries] must be instantly swept out, so that not an inch of soil remains to them in Japan on which [312] to plant their feet; and if they refuse to obey this command, they shall suffer the penalty…. Let Heaven and the Four Seas hear this. Obey!"*

[*The entire proclamation, which is of considerable length, has been translated by Satow, and may be found in Vol. VI, part I, of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.]

It will be observed that there are two distinct charges made against the Bateren in this document,—that of political conspiracy under the guise of religion, with a view to getting possession of the government; and that of intolerance, towards both the Shinto and the Buddhist forms of native worship. The intolerance is sufficiently proved by the writings of the Jesuits themselves. The charge of conspiracy was less easy to prove; but who could reasonably have doubted that, were opportunity offered, the Roman Catholic orders would attempt to control the general government precisely as they had been able to control local government already in the lordships of converted daimyo. Besides, we may be sure that by the time at which the edict was issued, Iyeyasu must have heard of many matters likely to give him a most evil opinion of Roman Catholicism:—the story of the Spanish conquests in America, and the extermination of the West Indian races; the story of the persecutions in the Netherlands, and of the work of the Inquisition elsewhere; the story of the attempt of Philip II to conquer England, and of the loss of the two great [313] Armadas. The edict was issued in 1614, and Iyeyasu had found opportunity to inform himself about some of these matters as early as 1600. In that year the English pilot Will Adams had arrived at Japan in charge of a Dutch ship, Adams had started on this eventful voyage in the year 1598,—that is to say, just ten years after the defeat of the first Spanish Armada, and one year after the ruin of the second. He had seen the spacious times of great Elizabeth—who was yet alive;—he had very probably seen Howard and Seymour and Drake and Hawkins and Frobisher and Sir Richard Grenville, the hero of 1591. For this Will Adams was a Kentish man, who had "serued for Master and Pilott in her Majesties ships …" The Dutch vessel was seized immediately upon her arrival at Kyushu; and Adams and his shipmates were taken into custody by the daimyo of Bungo, who reported the fact to Iyeyasu. The advent of these Protestant sailors was considered an important event by the Portuguese Jesuits, who had their own reasons for dreading the results of an interview between such heretics and the ruler of Japan. But Iyeyasu also happened to think the event an important one; and he ordered that Adams should be sent to him at Osaka. The malevolent anxiety of the Jesuits about the matter had not escaped Iyeyasu's penetrating observation. They endeavoured again and again to have the sailors killed, according to the [314] written statement of Adams himself, who was certainly no liar; and they had been able—in Bungo to frighten two scoundrels of the ship's company into giving false testimony.* "The Iesuites and the Portingalls," wrote Adams, "gaue many euidences against me and the rest to the Emperour [Iyeyasu], that we were theeues and robbers of all nations,—and [that] were we suffered to liue,—it should be against the profit of his Highnes, and the land." But Iyeyasu was perhaps all the more favourably inclined towards Adams by the eagerness of the Jesuits to have him killed—"crossed [crucified]," as Adams called it,—"the custome of iustice in Japan, as hanging is in our land." He gave them answer, says Adams, "that we had as yet not doen to him nor to none of his lande any harme or dammage: therefore against Reason and Iustice to put vs to death." … And there came to pass precisely what the Jesuits had most feared,—what they had vainly endeavoured by intimidation, by slander, by all possible intrigue to prevent,—an interview between Iyeyasu and the heretic Adams. [315] "Soe that as soon as I came before him," wrote Adams, "he demanded of me of what countrey we were: so I answered him in all points; for there was nothing that he demanded not, both concerning warre and peace between countrey and countrey: so that the particulars here to wryte would be too tedious. And for that time I was commanded to prison, being well vsed, with one of our mariners that cam with me to serue me." From another letter of Adams it would seem that this interview lasted far into the night, and that Iyeyasu's questions referred especially to politics and religion. "He asked," says Adams, "whether our countrey had warres? I answered him yea, with the Spaniards and Portugals—beeing in peace with all other nations. Further he asked me in what I did beleeue? I said, in God, that made heauen and earth. He asked me diverse other questions of things of religion, and many other things: As, what way we came to the country? Having a chart of the whole world, I shewed him through the Straight of Magellan. At which he wondred, and thought me to lie. Thus, from one thing to another, I abode with him till midnight." … The two men liked each other at sight, it appears. Of Iyeyasu, Adams significantly observes: "He viewed me well, and seemed to be wonderful favourable." Two days later Iyeyasu again sent for Adams, and cross-questioned him just about those matters which the [316] Jesuits wanted to remain in the dark. "He demaunded also as conserning the warres between the Spaniard or Portingall and our countrey, and the reasons: the which I gaue him to vnderstand of all things, which he was glad to heare, as it seemed to me. In the end I was commaunded to prisson agein, but my lodging was bettered." Adams did not see Iyeyasu again for nearly six weeks: then he was sent for, and cross-questioned a third time. The result was liberty and favour. Thereafter, at intervals, Iyeyasu used to send for him; and presently we hear of him teaching the great statesman "some points of jeometry, and understanding of the art of mathematickes, with other things." … Iyeyasu gave him many presents, as well as a good living, and commissioned him to build some ships for deep-sea sailing. Eventually, the poor pilot was created a samurai, and given an estate. "Being employed in the Emperour's seruice," he wrote, "he hath given me a liuing, like vnto a lordship in England, with eightie or ninetie husbandmen that be as my slaues or seruents: the which, or the like president [precedent], was neuer here before geven to any stranger." … Witness to the influence of Adams with Iyeyasu is furnished by the correspondence of Captain Cock, of the English factory, who thus wrote home about him in 1614: "The truth is the Emperour esteemeth hym much, and he may goe in and speake with hym at all times, when [317] kynges and princes are kept ovt."** It was through this influence that the English were allowed to establish their factory at Hirado. There is no stranger seventeenth-century romance than that of this plain English pilot,—with only his simple honesty and common-sense to help him,—rising to such extraordinary favour with the greatest and shrewdest of all Japanese rulers. Adams was never allowed, however, to return to England,—perhaps because his services were deemed too precious to lose. He says himself in his letters that Iyeyasu never refused him anything that he asked for,*** except the privilege of revisiting England: when he asked that, once too often, the "ould Emperour" remained silent.

[*"Daily more and more the Portugalls incensed the justices and the people against vs. And two of our men, as traytors, gaue themselves in seruice to the king [daimyo], beeing all in all with the Portugals, hauing by them their liues warranted. The one was called Gilbert de Conning, whose mother dwelleth at Middleborough, who gaue himself out to be marchant of all the goods in the shippe. The other was called Iobn Abelson Van Owater. These traitours sought all manner of wayes to get the goods into their hands, and made known vnto them all things that had passed in our voyage. Nine dayes after our arriuall, the great king of the land [Iyeyasu] sent for me to come vnto him. "—Letter of Will Adams to his wife.]

**"It has plessed God to bring things to pass, so as in ye eyes of ye world [must seem] strange; for the Spaynnard and Portingall hath bin my bitter enemies to death; and now theay must seek to me, an unworthy wretch; for the Spaynard as well as the Portingall must haue all their negosshes [negotiations] go thorough my hand.—" Letter of Adams dated January 12, 1613.

***Even favours for the people who had sought to bring about his death. "I pleased him so," wrote Adams, "that what I said he would not contrarie. At which my former enemies did wonder; and at this time must entreat me to do them a friendship, which to both Spaniards and Portingals have I doen: recompencing them good for euill. So, to passe my time to get my liuing, it hath cost mee great labour and trouble at the first, but God hath blessed my labour."]

The correspondence of Adams proves that Iyeyasu disdained no means of obtaining direct information about foreign affairs in regard to religion and politics. As for affairs in Japan, he had at his disposal the most perfect system of espionage ever [318] established; and he knew all that was going on. Yet he waited, as we have seen, fourteen years before he issued his edict. Hideyoshi's edict was, indeed, renewed by him in 1606; but that referred particularly to the public preaching of Christianity; and while the missionaries outwardly conformed to the law, he continued to suffer them within his own dominions. Persecutions were being carried on elsewhere; but the secret propaganda was also being carried on, and the missionaries could still hope. Yet there was menace in the air, like the heaviness preceding storms. Captain Saris, writing from Japan in 1613, records a pathetic incident which is very suggestive. "I gaue leaue," he says, "to divers women of the better sort to come into my Cabbin, where the picture of Venus, with her sonne Cupid, did hang somewhat wantonly set out in a large frame. They, thinking it to bee Our Ladie and her sonne, fell downe and worshipped it, with shewes of great deuotion, telling me in a whispering manner (that some of their own companions, which were not so, might not heare), that they were Christianos: whereby we perceived them to be Christians, conuerted by the Portugall Iesuits." … When Iyeyasu first took strong measures, they were directed, not against the Jesuits, but against a more imprudent order,—as we know from Adams's correspondence. "In the yeer 1612," he says, "is put downe all the sects of the Franciscannes. The Jesouets hau [319] what priuiledge … theare beinge in Nangasaki, in which place only may be so manny as will of all sectes: in other places not so many permitted…." Roman Catholicism was given two more years' grace after the Franciscan episode.

Why Iyeyasu should have termed it a "false and corrupt religion," both in his Legacy and elsewhere, remains to be considered. From the Far-Eastern point of view he could scarcely have judged it otherwise, after an impartial investigation. It was essentially opposed to all the beliefs and traditions upon which Japanese society had been founded. The Japanese State was an aggregate of religious communities, with a God-King at its head;—the customs of all these communities had the force of religious laws, and ethics were identified with obedience to custom; filial piety was the basis of social order, and loyalty itself was derived from filial piety. But this Western creed, which taught that a husband should leave his parents and cleave to his wife, held filial piety to be at best an inferior virtue. It proclaimed that duty to parents, lords, and rulers remained duty only when obedience involved no action opposed to Roman teaching, and that the supreme duty of obedience was not to the Heavenly Sovereign at Kyoto, but to the Pope at Rome. Had not the Gods and the Buddhas been called devils by these missionaries from Portugal and Spain? Assuredly such doctrines were subversive, [320] no matter how astutely they might be interpreted by their apologists. Besides, the worth of a creed as a social force might be judged from its fruits. This creed in Europe had been a ceaseless cause of disorders, wars, persecutions, atrocious cruelties. This creed, in Japan, had fomented great disturbances, had instigated political intrigues, had wrought almost immeasurable mischief. In the event of future political trouble, it would justify the disobedience of children to parents, of wives to husbands, of subjects to lords, of lords to shogun. The paramount duty of government was now to compel social order, and to maintain those conditions of peace and security without which the nation could never recover from the exhaustion of a thousand years of strife. But so long as this foreign religion was suffered to attack and to sap the foundations of order, there never could be peace…. Convictions like these must have been well established in the mind of Iyeyasu when he issued his famous edict. The only wonder is that he should have waited so long.

Very possibly Iyeyasu, who never did anything by halves, was waiting until Christianity should find itself without one Japanese leader of ability. In 1611 he had information of a Christian conspiracy in the island of Sado (a convict mining-district) whose governor, Okubo, had been induced to adopt Christianity, and was to be made ruler of the country if [321] the plot proved successful. But still Iyeyasu waited. By 1614 Christianity had scarcely even an Okubo to lead the forlorn hope. The daimyo converted in the sixteenth century were dead or dispossessed or in banishment; the great Christian generals had been executed; the few remaining converts of importance had been placed under surveillance, and were practically helpless.

The foreign priests and native catechists were not cruelly treated immediately after the proclamation of 1614. Some three hundred of them were put into ships and sent out of the country,—together with various Japanese suspected of religious political intrigues, such as Takayama, former daimyo of Akashi, who was called "Justo Ucondono" by the Jesuit writers, and who had been dispossessed and degraded by Hideyoshi for the same reasons. Iyeyasu set no example of unnecessary severity. But harsher measures followed upon an event which took place in 1615,—the very year after the issuing of the edict. Hideyori, the son of Hideyoshi, had been supplanted—fortunately for Japan—by Iyeyasu, to whose tutelage the young man had been confided. Iyeyasu took all care of him, but had no intention of suffering him to direct the government of the country,—a task scarcely within the capacity of a lad of twenty-three. In spite of various political intrigues in which Hideyori was known to have taken part, Iyeyasu had left him in possession [322] of large revenues, and of the strongest fortress in Japan,—that mighty castle of Osaka, which Hideyoshi's genius had rendered almost impregnable. Hideyori, unlike his father, favoured the Jesuits: and he made the castle a refuge for adherents of the "false and corrupt sect." Informed by government spies of a dangerous intrigue there preparing, Iyeyasu resolved to strike; and he struck hard. In spite of a desperate defence, the great fortress was stormed and burnt—Hideyori perishing in the conflagration. One hundred thousand lives are said to have been lost in this siege. Adams wrote thus quaintly of Hideyori's fate, and the results of his conspiracy:—

"Hee mad warres with the Emperour … allso by the Jessvits and Ffriers, which mad belleeue he should be fauord with mirrackles and wounders; but in fyne it proued the contrari. For the ould Emperour against him pressentlly maketh his forces reddy by sea and land, and compasseth his castell that he was in; although with loss of multitudes on both sides, yet in the end rasseth the castell walles, setteth it on fyre, and burneth hym in it. Thus ended the warres. Now the Emperour heering of thees Jessvets and friers being in the castell with his ennemis, and still from tym to tym agaynst hym, coumandeth all romische sorte of men to depart ovt of his countri—thear churches pulld dooun, and burned. This folowed in the ould Emperour's [323] daies. Now this yeear, 1616, the old Emperour he died. His son raigneth in his place, and hee is more hot agaynste the romish relligion then his ffather wass: for he hath forbidden thorough all his domynions, on paine of deth, none of his subjects to be romish christiane; which romish seckt to prevent eueri wayes that he maye, he hath forbidden that no stranger merchant shall abid in any of the great citties." …

The son here referred to was Hidetada, who, in 1617, issued an ordinance sentencing to death every Roman priest or friar discovered in Japan,—an ordinance provoked by the fact that many priests expelled from the country had secretly returned, and that others had remained to carry on their propaganda under various disguises. Meanwhile, in every city, town, village, and hamlet throughout the empire, measures had been taken for the extirpation of Roman Christianity. Every community was made responsible for the existence in it of any person belonging to the foreign creed; and special magistrates, or inquisitors, were appointed, called Kirishitan-bugyo, to seek out and punish members of the prohibited religion.* Christians [324] who freely recanted were not punished, but only kept under surveillance: those who refused to recant, even after torture, were degraded to the condition of slaves, or else put to death. In some parts of the country, extraordinary cruelty was practised, and every form of torture used to compel recantation. But it is tolerably certain that the more atrocious episodes of the persecution were due to the individual ferocity of local governors or magistrates—as in the case of Takenaka Uneme-no-Kami, who was compelled by the government to perform harakiri for abusing his powers at Nagasaki, and making persecution a means of extorting money. Be that as it may, the persecution at last either provoked, or helped to bring about a Christian rebellion in the daimiate of Arima,—historically remembered as the Shimabara Revolt. In 1636 a host of peasants, driven to desperation by the tyranny of their lords—the daimyo of Arima and the daimyo of Karatsu (convert-districts)—rose in arms, burnt all the Japanese temples in their vicinity, and proclaimed religious war. Their banner bore a cross; their leaders were converted samurai. They were soon [325] joined by Christian refugees from every part of the country, until their numbers swelled to thirty or forty thousand. On the coast of the Shimabara peninsula they seized an abandoned castle, at a place called Hara, and there fortified themselves. The local authorities could not cope with the uprising; and the rebels more than held their own until government forces, aggregating over 160,000 men, were despatched against them. After a brave defence of one hundred and two days, the castle was stormed in 1638, and its defenders, together with their women and children, put to the sword. Officially the occurrence was treated as a peasant revolt; and the persons considered responsible for it were severely punished;—the lord of Shimabara (Arima) was further sentenced to perform harakiri. Japanese historians state that the rising was first planned and led by Christians, who designed to seize Nagasaki, subdue Kyushu, invite foreign military help, and compel a change of government;—the Jesuit writers would have us believe there was no plot. One thing certain is that a revolutionary appeal was made to the Christian element, and was largely responded to with alarming consequences. A strong castle on the Kyushu coast, held by thirty or forty thousand Christians, constituted a serious danger,—a point of vantage from which a Spanish invasion of the country might have been attempted with some [326] chance of success. The government seems to have recognized this danger, and to have despatched in consequence an overwhelming force to Shimabara. If foreign help could have been sent to the rebels, the result might have been a prolonged civil war. As for the wholesale slaughter, it represented no more than the enforcement of Japanese law: the punishment of the peasant revolting against his lord, under any circumstances whatever, being death. So far as concerns the policy of such massacre, it may be remembered that, with less provocation, Nobunaga exterminated the Tendai Buddhists at Hiyei-san. We have every reason to pity the brave men who perished at Shimabara, and to sympathize with their revolt against the atrocious cruelty of their rulers. But it is necessary, as a simple matter of justice, to consider the whole event from the Japanese political point of view.

[*It should be borne in mind that none of these edicts were directed against Protestant Christianity: the Dutch were not considered Christians in the sense of the ordinances, nor were the English. The following extract from a typical village, Kumicho, or code of communal regulations, shows the responsibility imposed upon all communities regarding the presence in their midst of Roman Catholic converts or believers:—

"Every year, between the first and the third month, we will renew our Shumon-cho If we know of any person who belongs to a prohibited sect, we will immediately inform the Daikwan…. Servants and labourers shall give to their masters a certificate declaring that they are not Christians. In regard to persons who have been Christians, but have recanted,—if such persons come to or leave the village, we promise to report it."—See Professor Wigmore's Notes on Land-Tenure and Local Institutions in Old Japan.]

The Dutch have been denounced for helping to crush the rebellion with ships and cannon: they fired, by their own acknowledgment, 426 shot into the castle. However, the extant correspondence of the Dutch factory at Hirado proves beyond question that they were forced, under menace, to thus act. In any event, it would be difficult to discover a good reason for the merely religious denunciations of their conduct,—although that conduct would be open to criticism from the humane [327] point of view. Dutchmen could not reasonably have refused to assist the Japanese authorities in suppressing a revolt, merely because a large proportion of the rebels happened to profess the religion which had been burning alive as heretics the men and women of the Netherlands. Very possibly, not a few persons of kin to those very Dutch had suffered in the days of Alva. What would have happened to all the English and Dutch in Japan, if the Portuguese and Spanish clergy could have got full control of government, ought to be obvious.

With the massacre of Shimabara ends the real history of the Portuguese and Spanish missions. After that event, Christianity was slowly, steadily, implacably stamped out of visible existence. It had been tolerated, or half-tolerated, for only sixty-five years: the entire history of its propagation and destruction occupies a period of scarcely ninety years. People of nearly every rank, from prince to pauper, suffered for it; thousands endured tortures for its sake—tortures so frightful that even three of those Jesuits who sent multitudes to useless martyrdom were forced to deny their faith under the infliction;* and tender women, sentenced to, the stake, carried [328] their little ones with them into the fire, rather than utter the words that would have saved both mother and child. Yet this religion, for which thousands vainly died, had brought to Japan nothing but evil disorders, persecutions, revolts, political troubles, and war. Even those virtues of the people which had been evolved at unutterable cost for the protection and conservation of society,—their self-denial, their faith, their loyalty, their constancy and courage,—were by this black creed distorted, diverted, and transformed into forces directed to the destruction of that society. Could that destruction have been accomplished, and a new Roman Catholic empire have been founded upon the ruins, the forces of that empire would have been used for the further extension of priestly tyranny, the spread of the Inquisition, the perpetual Jesuit warfare against freedom of conscience and human progress. Well may we pity the victims of this pitiless faith, and justly admire their useless courage: yet who can regret that their cause was lost? … Viewed from another standpoint than that of religious bias, and simply judged by its results, the Jesuit effort to Christianize Japan must be regarded as a crime against humanity, a labour of devastation, a calamity comparable only,—by reason of the misery and destruction which it wrought,—to an earthquake, a tidal-wave, a volcanic eruption.

[*Francisco Cassola, Pedro Marquez, and Giuseppe Chiara. Two of these—probably under compulsion—married Japanese women. For their after-history, see a paper by Satow in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. VI, Part I.]

[329] The policy of isolation,—of shutting off Japan from the rest of the world,—as adopted by Hidetada and maintained by his successors, sufficiently indicates the fear that religious intrigues had inspired. Not only were all foreigners, excepting the Dutch traders, expelled from the country; all half-breed children of Portuguese or Spanish blood were also expatriated, Japanese families being forbidden to adopt or conceal any of them, under penalties to be visited upon all the members of the household disobeying. In 1636 two hundred and eighty-seven half-breed children were shipped to Macao. It is possible that the capacity of half-breed children to act as interpreters was particularly dreaded; but there can be little doubt that, at the time when this ordinance was issued, race-hatred had been fully aroused by religious antagonism. After the Shimabara episode all Western foreigners, without exception, were regarded with unconcealed distrust.* [*The Chinese traders, however, were allowed much more liberty than the Dutch.] The Portuguese and Spanish traders were replaced by the Dutch (the English factory having been closed some years previously); but even in the case of these, extraordinary precautions were taken. They were compelled to abandon their good quarters at Hirado, and transfer their factory to Deshima,—a tiny island only six hundred feet long, by two hundred and forty feet wide. There they were kept under constant guard, like prisoners; they were not [330] permitted to go among the people; no man could visit them without permission, and no woman, except a prostitute, was allowed to enter their reservation under any circumstances. But they had a monopoly of the trade of the country; and Dutch patience endured these conditions, for the profit's sake, during more than two hundred years. Other commerce with foreign countries than that maintained by the Dutch factory, and by the Chinese, was entirely suppressed. For any Japanese to leave Japan was a capital offence; and any one who might succeed in leaving the country by stealth, was to be put to death upon his return. The purpose of this law was to prevent Japanese, sent abroad by the Jesuits for missionary training, from returning to Japan in the disguise of laymen. It was forbidden also to construct ships capable of long voyages; and all ships exceeding a dimension fixed by the government were broken up, Lookouts were established along the coast to watch for strange vessels; and any European ships entering a Japanese port, excepting the ships of the Dutch company, were to be attacked and destroyed.

The great success at first achieved by the Portuguese missions remains to be considered. In our present comparative ignorance of Japanese social history, it is not easy to understand the whole of the Christian episode. There are plenty of Jesuit-missionary [331] records; but the Japanese contemporary chronicles yield us scanty information about the missions—probably for the reason that an edict was issued in the seventeenth century interdicting, not only all books on the subject of Christianity, but any book containing the words Christian or Foreign. What the Jesuit books do not explain, and what we should rather have expected Japanese historians to explain, had they been allowed, is how a society founded on ancestor-worship, and apparently possessing immense capacity for resistance to outward assault, could have been so quickly penetrated and partly dissolved by Jesuit energy. The question of all questions that I should like to see answered, by Japanese evidence, is this: To what extent did the missionaries interfere with the ancestor-cult? It is an important question. In China, the Jesuits were quick to perceive that the power of resistance to proselytism lay in ancestor-worship; and they shrewdly endeavoured to tolerate it, somewhat as Buddhism before them had been obliged to do. Had the Papacy supported their policy, the Jesuits might have changed the history of China; but other religious orders fiercely opposed the compromise, and the chance was lost. How far the ancestor-cult was tolerated by the Portuguese missionaries in Japan is a matter of much sociological interest for investigation. The supreme cult was, of course, left alone, for obvious reasons. It is difficult to suppose that the [332] domestic cult was attacked then as implacably as it is attacked now by Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries alike;—is difficult to suppose, for example, that Converts were compelled to cast away or to destroy their ancestral tablets. On the other hand, we are yet in doubt as to whether many of the poorer converts—servants and other common folk—possessed a domestic ancestor-cult. The outcast classes, among whom many converts were made, need not be considered, of course, in this relation. Before the matter can be fairly judged, much remains to be learned about the religious condition of the heimin during the sixteenth century. Anyhow, whatever methods were followed, the early success of the missions was astonishing. Their work, owing to the particular character of the social organization, necessarily began from the top: the subject could change his creed only by permission of his lord. From the outset this permission was freely granted. In some cases the people were officially notified that they were at liberty to adopt the new religion; in other cases, converted lords ordered them to do so. It would seem that the foreign faith was at first mistaken for a new kind of Buddhism; and in the extant official grant of land at Yamaguchi to the Portuguese mission, in 1552, the Japanese text plainly states that the grant (which appears to have included a temple called Daidoji) was made to the strangers that they might preach [333] the Law of Buddha "—Buppo shoryo no tame. The original document is thus translated by Sir Ernest Satow, who reproduced it in facsimile:—

"With respect to Daidoji in Yamaguchi Agata, Yoshiki department, province of Suwo. This deed witnesses that I have given permission to the priests who have come to this country from the Western regions, in accordance with their request and desire, that they may found and erect a monastery and house in order to develope the Law of Buddha.

"The 28th day of the 8th month of the 21st year of Tembun.

"SUWO NO SUKE.

[August Seal]"*

[*In the Latin and Portuguese translations, or rather pretended translations of this document, there is nothing about preaching the Law of Buddha; and there are many things added which do not exist in the Japanese text at all. See Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan (Vol. VIII, Part II) for Satow's comment on this document and the false translation made of it.]

If this error [or deception?] could have occurred at Yamaguchi, it is reasonable to suppose that it also occurred in other places. Exteriorly the Roman rites resembled those of popular Buddhism: the people would have observed but little that was unfamiliar to them in the forms of the service, the vestments, the beads, the prostrations, the images, the bells, and the incense. The virgins and the saints would have been found to resemble the aureoled Boddhisattvas and Buddhas; the angels and the demons would have been at once identified with the Tennin [334] and the Oni. All that pleased popular imagination in the Buddhist ceremonial could be witnessed, under slightly different form, in those temples which had been handed over to the Jesuits, and consecrated by them as churches or chapels. The fathomless abyss really separating the two faiths could not have been perceived by the common mind; but the outward resemblances were immediately observable. There were furthermore some attractive novelties. It appears, for example, that the Jesuits used to have miracle-plays performed in their churches for the purpose of attracting popular attention…. But outward attractions of whatever sort, or outward resemblances to Buddhism, could only assist the spread of the new religion; they could not explain the rapid progress of the propaganda.

Coercion might partly explain it,—coercion exercised by converted daimyo upon their subjects. Populations of provinces are known to have followed, under strong compulsion, the religion of their converted lords; and hundreds—perhaps thousands—of persons must have done the same thing through mere habit of loyalty. In these cases it is worth while to consider what sort of persuasion was used upon the daimyo. We know that one great help to the missionary work was found in Portuguese commerce,—especially the trade in firearms and ammunition. In the disturbed state of the country [335] preceding the advent to power of Hideyoshi, this trade was a powerful bribe in religious negotiation with provincial lords. The daimyo able to use firearms would necessarily possess some advantage over a rival lord having no such weapons; and those lords able to monopolize the trade could increase their power at the expense of their neighbours. Now this trade was actually offered for the privilege of preaching; and sometimes much more than that privilege was demanded and obtained. In 1572 the Portuguese presumed to ask for the whole town of Nagasaki, as a gift to their church,—with power of jurisdiction over the same; threatening, in case of refusal, to establish themselves elsewhere. The daimyo, Omura, at first demurred, but eventually yielded; and Nagasaki then became Christian territory, directly governed by the Church. Very soon the fathers began to prove the character of their creed by furious attacks upon the local religion. They set fire to the great Buddhist temple, Jinguji, and attributed the fire to the "wrath of God,"—after which act, by the zeal of their converts, some eighty other temples, in or about Nagasaki, were burnt. Within Nagasaki territory Buddhism was totally suppressed,—its priests being persecuted and driven away. In the province of Bungo the Jesuit persecution of Buddhism was far more violent, and conducted upon an extensive scale. Otomo Sorin Munechika, the reigning daimyo, not [336] only destroyed all the Buddhist temples in his dominion (to the number, it is said, of three thousand), but had many of the Buddhist priests put to death. For the destruction of the great temple of Hikozan, whose priests were reported to have prayed for the tyrant's death, he is said to have maliciously chosen the sixth day of the fifth month (1576),—the festival of the Birthday of the Buddha!

Coercion, exercised by their lords upon a docile people trained to implicit obedience, would explain something of the initial success of the missions; but it would leave many other matters unexplained: the later success of the secret propaganda, the fervour and courage of the converts under persecution, the long-continued indifference of the chiefs of the ancestor-cult to the progress of the hostile faith…. When Christianity first began to spread through the Roman empire, the ancestral religion had fallen into decay, the structure of society had lost its original form, and there was no religious conservatism really capable of successful resistance. But in the Japan of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the religion of the ancestors was very much alive; and society was only entering upon the second period of its yet imperfect integration. The Jesuit conversions were not made among a people already losing their ancient faith, but in one of the most intensely religious and conservative societies that ever existed. Christianity of any sort could not [337] have been introduced into such a society without effecting structural disintegrations,—disintegrations, at least, of a local character. How far these disintegrations extended and penetrated we do not know; and we have yet no adequate explanation of the long inertia of the native religious instinct in the face of danger.

But there are certain historical facts which appear to throw at least a side-light upon the subject. The early Jesuit policy in China, as established by Ricci, had been to leave converts free to practise the ancestral rites. So long as this policy was followed, the missions prospered. When, in consequence of this compromise, dissensions arose, the matter was referred to Rome. Pope Innocent X decided for intolerance by a bull issued in 1645; and the Jesuit missions were thereby practically ruined in China. Pope Innocent's decision was indeed reversed the very next year by a bull of Pope Alexander VIII; but again and again contests were raised by the religious bodies over this question of ancestor-worship, until in 1693 Pope Clement XI definitively prohibited converts from practising the ancestral rites under any form whatsoever…. All the efforts of all the missions in the Far East have ever since then failed to advance the cause of Christianity. The sociological reason is plain.

We have seen, then, that up to the year 1645 the ancestor-cult had been tolerated by the Jesuits [338] in China, with promising results; and it is probable that an identical policy of tolerance was maintained in Japan during the second half of the sixteenth century. The Japanese missions began in 1549, and their history ends with the Shimabara slaughter in 1638,—about seven years before the first Papal decision against the tolerance of ancestor-worship. The Jesuit mission-work seems to have prospered steadily, in spite of all opposition, until it was interfered with by less cautious and more uncompromising zealots. By a bull issued in 1585 by Gregory XIII, and confirmed in 1600 by Clement III, the Jesuits alone were authorized to do missionary-work in Japan; and it was not until after their privileges had been ignored by Franciscan zeal that trouble with the government began. We have seen that in 1593 Hideyoshi had six Franciscans executed. Then the issue of a new Papal bull in 1608, by Paul V, allowing Roman Catholic missionaries of all orders to work in Japan, probably ruined the Jesuit interests. It will be remembered that Iyeyasu suppressed the Franciscans in 1612,—a proof that their experience with Hideyoshi had profited them little. On the whole, it appears more than likely that both Dominicans and Franciscans recklessly meddled with matters which the Jesuits (whom they accused of timidity) had been wise enough to leave alone, and that this interference hastened the inevitable ruin of the missions.

[339] We may reasonably doubt whether there were a million Christians in Japan at the beginning of the seventeenth century: the more probable claim of six hundred thousand can be accepted. In this era of toleration the efforts of all the foreign missionary bodies combined, and the yearly expenditure of immense sums in support of their work, have enabled them to achieve barely one-fifth f the success attributed to their Portuguese predecessors, upon a not incredible estimate. The sixteenth-century Jesuits were indeed able to exercise, through various lords, the most forcible sort of coercion upon whole populations of provinces; but the modern missions certainly enjoy advantages educational, financial, and legislative, much outweighing the doubtful value of the power to coerce; and the smallness of the results which they have achieved seems to require explanation. The explanation is not difficult. Needless attacks upon the ancestor-cult are necessarily attacks upon the constitution of society; and Japanese society instinctively resists these assaults upon its ethical basis. For it is an error to suppose that this Japanese society has yet arrived even at such a condition as Roman society presented in the second or third century of our era. Rather it remains at a stage resembling that of a Greek or Latin society many centuries before Christ. The introduction of railroads, telegraphs, modern arms of precision, modern applied science of all kinds, has not yet [340] sufficed to change the fundamental order of things, Superficial disintegrations are rapidly proceeding; new structures are forming; but the social condition still remains much like that which, in southern Europe, long preceded the introduction of Christianity.

Though every form of religion holds something of undying truth, the evolutionist must classify religions. He must regard a monotheistic faith as representing, in the progress of human thought, a very considerable advance upon any polytheistic creed; monotheism signifying the fusion and expansion of countless ghostly beliefs into one vast concept of unseen omnipotent power. And, from the standpoint of psychological evolution, he must of course consider pantheism as an advance upon monotheism, and must further regard agnosticism as an advance upon both. But the value of a creed is necessarily relative, and the question of its worth is to be decided, not by its adaptability to the intellectual developments of a single cultured class, but by its larger emotional relation to the whole society of which it embodies the moral experience. Its value to any other society must depend upon its power of self-adaptation to the ethical experience of that society. We may grant that Roman Catholicism was, by sole virtue of its monotheistic conception, a stage in advance of the primitive ancestor-worship. But it was adapted only to a form of society at [341] which neither Chinese nor Japanese civilization had arrived,—a form of society in which the ancient family had been dissolved, and the religion of filial piety forgotten. Unlike that subtler and incomparably more humane creed of India, which had learned the secret of missionary-success a thousand years before Loyola, the religion of the Jesuits could never have adapted itself to the social conditions of Japan; and by the fact of this incapacity the fate of the missions was really decided in advance. The intolerance, the intrigues, the savage persecutions carried on,—all the treacheries and cruelties of the Jesuits,—may simply be considered as the manifestations of such incapacity; while the repressive measures taken by Iyeyasu and his successors signify sociologically no more than the national perception of supreme danger. It was recognized that the triumph of the foreign religion would involve the total disintegration of society, and the subjection of the empire to foreign domination.

Neither the artist nor the sociologist, at least, can regret the failure of the missions. Their extirpation, which enabled Japanese society to evolve to its type-limit, preserved for modern eyes the marvellous world of Japanese art, and the yet more marvellous world of its traditions, beliefs, and customs. Roman Catholicism, triumphant, would have swept all this out of existence. The natural antagonism [342] of the artist to the missionary may be found in the fact that the latter is always, and must be, an unsparing destroyer. Everywhere the developments of art are associated in some sort with religion; and by so much as the art of a people reflects their beliefs, that art will be hateful to the enemies of those beliefs. Japanese art, of Buddhist origin, is especially an art of religious suggestion,—not merely as regards painting and sculpture, but likewise as regards decoration, and almost every product of aesthetic taste. There is something of religious feeling associated even with the Japanese delight in trees and flowers, the charm of gardens, the love of nature and of nature's voices,—with all the poetry of existence, in short. Most assuredly the Jesuits and their allies would have ended all this, every detail of it, without the slightest qualm. Even could they have understood and felt the meaning of that world of strange beauty,—result of a race-experience never to be repeated or replaced,—they would not have hesitated a moment in the work of obliteration and effacement. To-day, indeed, that wonderful art-world is being surely and irretrievably destroyed by Western industrialism. But industrial influence, though pitiless, is not fanatic; and the destruction is not being carried on with such ferocious rapidity but that the fading story of beauty can be recorded for the future benefit of human civilization.

[343]

FEUDAL INTEGRATION

It was under the later Tokugawa Shogun—during the period immediately preceding the modern regime—that Japanese civilization reached the limit of its development. No further evolution was possible, except through social reconstruction. The conditions of this integration chiefly represented the reinforcement and definition of conditions preexisting,—scarcely anything in the way of fundamental change. More than ever before the old compulsory systems of cooperation were strengthened; more than ever before all details of ceremonial convention were insisted upon with merciless exactitude. In preceding ages there had been more harshness; but at no previous period had there been less liberty. Nevertheless, the results of this increased restriction were not without ethical value: the time was yet far off at which personal liberty could prove a personal advantage; and the paternal coercion of the Tokugawa rule helped to develop and to accentuate much of what is most attractive in the national character. Centuries of warfare had previously allowed small opportunity for the cultivation of the more delicate qualities of that character: the refinements, the [344] ingenuous kindliness, the joy in life that afterward lent so rare a charm to Japanese existence. But during two hundred years of peace, prosperity, and national isolation, the graceful and winning side of this human nature found chance to bloom; and the multiform restraints of law and custom then quickened and curiously shaped the blossoming,—as the gardener's untiring art evolves the flowers of the chrysanthemum into a hundred forms of fantastic beauty…. Though the general social tendency under pressure was toward rigidity, constraint left room, in special directions, for moral and aesthetic cultivation.

In order to understand the social condition, it will be necessary to consider the nature of the paternal rule in its legal aspects. To modern imagination the old Japanese laws may well seem intolerable; but their administration was really less uncompromising than that of our Western laws. Besides, although weighing heavily upon all classes, from the highest to the lowest, the legal burden was proportioned to the respective strength of the bearers; the application of law being made less and less rigid as the social scale descended. In theory at least, from the earliest times, the poor and unfortunate had been considered as entitled to pity; and the duty of showing them all possible mercy was insisted upon in the oldest extant moral code of Japan,—the Laws of Shotoku Taishi. [345] But the most striking example of such discrimination appears in the Legacy of Iyeyasu, which represents the conception of justice in a time when society had become much more developed, its institutions more firmly fixed, and all its bonds tightened. This stern and wise ruler, who declared that "the people are the foundation of the Empire," commanded leniency in dealing with the humble. He ordained that any lord, no matter what his rank, convicted of breaking laws "to the injury of the people," should be punished by the confiscation of his estates. Perhaps the humane spirit of the legislator is most strongly shown in his enactments regarding crime, as, for example, where he deals with the question of adultery—necessarily a crime of the first magnitude in any society based on ancestor-worship. By the 50th article of the Legacy, the injured husband is confirmed in his ancient right to kill,—but with this important provision, that should he kill but one of the guilty parties, he must himself be held as guilty as either of them. Should the offenders be brought up for trial, Iyeyasu advises that, in the case of common people, particular deliberation be given to the matter: he remarks upon the weakness of human nature, and suggests that, among the young and simple-minded, some momentary impulse of passion may lead to folly even when the parties are not naturally depraved. But in the next article, [346] No. 51, he orders that no mercy whatever be shown to men and women of the upper classes when convicted of the same crime. "These," he declares, "are expected to know better than to occasion disturbance by violating existing regulations; and such persons, breaking the laws by lewd trifling or illicit intercourse, shall at once be punished without deliberation or consultation.* [*That is to say, immediately put to death.] It is not the same in this case as in the case of farmers, artizans, and traders." … Throughout the entire code, this tendency to tighten the bonds of law in the case of the military classes, and to loosen them mercifully for the lower classes, is equally visible. Iyeyasu strongly disapproved of unnecessary punishments; and held that the frequency of punishments was proof, not of the ill-conduct of subjects, but of the ill-conduct of officials. The 91st article of his code puts the matter thus plainly, even as regarded the Shogunate: "When punishments and executions abound in the Empire, it is a proof that the military ruler is without virtue and degenerate." He devised particular enactments to protect the peasantry and the poor from the cruelty or the rapacity of powerful lords. The great daimyo were strictly forbidden, when making their obligatory journeys to Yedo, "to disturb or harass the people at the post-houses," or suffer themselves "to be puffed up with military pride." [347] The private, not less than the public conduct of these great lords, was under Government surveillance; and they were actually liable to punishment for immorality! Concerning debauchery among them, the legislator remarked that "even though this can hardly be pronounced insubordination," it should be judged and punished according to the degree in which it constitutes a bad example for the lower classes (Art. 88).* As to veritable insubordination there was no pardon: the severity of the law on this subject allowed of no exception or mitigation. The 53rd section of the Legacy proves this to have been regarded as the supreme crime: "The guilt of a vassal murdering his suzerain is in principle the same as that of an arch-traitor to the Emperor. His immediate companions, his relations,—all even to his most distant connexions,—shall be cut off, hewn to atoms, root and fibre. The guilt of a vassal only lifting his hand against his master, even though he does not assassinate him, is the same." In strong contrast to this grim ordinance is the spirit of all the regulations touching the administration of law among the lower classes. Forgery, incendiarism, and poisoning were indeed crimes justifying the penalty of burning or crucifixion; but judges were instructed to act with as much leniency as circumstances permitted in the case of ordinary offences. "With regard to minute details affecting individuals of the inferior classes," says the 73d article of the code, "learn the wide benevolence of Koso of the Han [Chinese] dynasty." It was further ordered that magistrates of the criminal and civil courts should be chosen only from "a class of men who are upright and pure, distinguished for charity and benevolence." All magistrates were kept under close supervision, and their conduct regularly reported by government spies.

[*Though even daimyo were liable to suffer for debauchery, Iyeyasu did not believe in the expediency of attempting to suppress all vice by law. There is a strangely modern ring in his remarks upon this subject, in the 73d section of the Legacy: "Virtuous men have said, both in poetry and in classic works, that houses of debauch, for women of pleasure and for street-walkers, are the worm-eaten spots of cities and towns. But these are necessary evils, and if they be forcibly abolished, men of unrighteous principles will become like ravelled thread, and there will be no end to daily punishments and floggings." In many castle-towns, however, such houses were never allowed—probably in view of the large military force, assembled in such towns, which had to be maintained under iron discipline.]

[348] Another humane aspect of Tokugawa legislation is furnished by its dictates in regard to the relations of the sexes. Although concubinage was tolerated in the Samurai class, for reasons relating to the continuance of the family-cult, Iyeyasu denounces the indulgence of the privilege for merely selfish reasons: "Silly and ignorant men neglect their true wives for the sake of a loved mistress, and thus disturb the most important relation…. Men so far sunk as this may always be known as Samurai without fidelity or sincerity." Celibacy, condemned by public [349] opinion,—except in the case of Buddhist priests,—was equally condemned by the code. "One should not live alone after sixteen years of age," declares the legislator; "all mankind recognize marriage as the first law of nature." The childless man was obliged to adopt a son; and the 47th article of the Legacy ordained that the family estate of a person dying without male issue, and without having adopted a son, should be "forfeited without any regard to his relatives or connexions." This law, of course, was made in support of the ancestor-cult, the continuance of which it was deemed the paramount duty of each man to provide for; but the government regulations concerning adoption enabled everybody to fulfil the legal requirement, without difficulty.

Considering that this code which inculcated humanity, repressed moral laxity, prohibited celibacy, and rigorously maintained the family-cult, was drawn up in the time of the extirpation of the Jesuit missions, the position assumed in regard to religious freedom appears to us one of singular liberality. "High and low alike," proclaims the 31st article, "may follow their own inclinations with respect to religious tenets which have obtained down to the present time, except as regards the false and corrupt school [Roman Catholicism]. Religious disputes have ever proved the bane and misfortune of this Empire, and must be firmly, suppressed." … But the seeming liberality of this article must not be misinterpreted: [350] the legislator who made so rigid an enactment in regard to the religion of the family was not the man to proclaim that any Japanese was free to abandon the faith of his race for an alien creed. One must carefully read the entire Legacy in order to understand Iyeyasu's real position,—which was simply this: that any man was free to adopt any religion tolerated by the State, in addition to his ancestor-cult. Iyeyasu was himself a member of the Jodo sect of Buddhism, and a friend of Buddhism in general. But he was first of all a Shintoist; and the third article of his code commands devotion to the Kami as the first of duties:—"Keep your heart pure; and so long as your body shall exist, be diligent in paying honour and veneration to the Gods." That he placed the ancient cult above Buddhism should be evident from the text of the 52d article of the Legacy, in which he declares that no one should suffer himself to neglect the national faith because of a belief in any other form of religion. This text is of particular interest:

"My body, and the bodies of others, being born in the Empire of the Gods, to accept unreservedly the teachings of other countries,—such as Confucian, Buddhist, or Taoist doctrines,—and to apply one's whole and undivided attention to them, would be, in short, to desert one's own master, and transfer one's loyalty to another. Is not this to forget the origin of one's being?"

[351] Of course the Shogun, professing to derive his authority from the descendant of the elder gods, could not with consistency have proclaimed the right of freedom to doubt those gods: his official religious duty permitted of no compromise. But the interest attaching to his opinions, as expressed in the Legacy, rests upon the fact that the Legacy was not a public, but a strictly private document, intended for the perusal and guidance of his successors only. Altogether his religious position was much like that of the liberal Japanese statesman of to-day,—respect for whatever is good in Buddhism, qualified by the patriotic conviction that the first religious duty is to the cult of the ancestors, the ancient creed of the race…. Iyeyasu had preferences regarding Buddhism; but even in this he showed no narrowness. Though he wrote in his Legacy, "Let my posterity ever be of the honoured sect of Jodo," he greatly reverenced the high-priest of the Tendai temple, Yeizan, who had been one of his instructors, and obtained for him the highest court-office possible for a Buddhist priest to obtain, as well as the headship of the Tendai sect. Moreover the Shogun visited Yeizan to make there official prayer for the prosperity of the country.

There is every reason to believe that within the territories of the Shogunate proper, comprising the greater part of the Empire, the administration of [352] ordinary criminal law was humane, and that the infliction of punishment was made, in the case of the common people, to depend largely upon circumstances. Needless severity was a crime before the higher military law, which, in such cases, made no distinctions of rank. Although the ring-leaders of a peasant-revolt, for example, would be sentenced to death, the lord through whose oppression the uprising was provoked, would be deprived of a part or the whole of his estates, or degraded in rank, or perhaps even sentenced to perform harakiri. Professor Wigmore, whose studies of Japanese law first shed light upon the subject, has given us an excellent review of the spirit of the ancient legal methods. He points out that the administration of law was never made impersonal in the modern sense; that unbending law did not, for the people at least, exist in relation to minor offences. The Anglo-Saxon idea of inflexible law is the idea of a justice impartial and pitiless as fire: whoever breaks the law must suffer the consequence, just as surely as the person who puts his hand into fire must experience pain. But in the administration of the old Japanese law, everything was taken into consideration: the condition of the offender, his intelligence, his degree of education, his previous conduct, his motives, suffering endured, provocation received, and so forth; and final judgment was decided by moral common sense rather than by legal enactment [353] or precedent. Friends and relatives were allowed to make plea for the offender, and to help him in whatever honest way they could. If a man were falsely accused, and proved innocent upon trial, he would not only be consoled by kind words, but, would probably receive substantial compensation; and it appears that judges were accustomed, at the end of important trials, to reward good conduct as well as to punish crime.* … On the other hand, litigation was officially discouraged. Everything possible was done to prevent any cases from being taken into court, which could be settled or compromised by communal arbitration; and the people were taught to consider the court only as the last possible resort.

[*The following extracts from a sentence said to have been passed by the famous judge, Ooka Tadasuke, at the close of a celebrated criminal trial, are illustrative: "Musashiya Chobei and Goto Hanshiro, these actions of yours are worthy of the highest praise: as a remuneration I award ten silver ryo to each of you…. Tami, you, for maintaining your brother, are to be commended: for this you are to receive the amount of five kwammon. Ko, daughter of Chohachi, you are obedient to your parents: in consideration of this, the sum of five silver ryo is awarded to you."—(See Dening's Japan in Days of Yore.) The good old custom of rewarding notable cases of filial piety, courage, generosity, etc., though not now practised in the courts, is still maintained by the local governments. The rewards are small; but the public honour which they confer upon the recipient is very great.]

The general character of the Tokugawa rule can be to some degree inferred from the foregoing facts. It was in no sense a reign of terror that compelled peace and encouraged industry for two hundred and [354] fifty years. Though the national civilization was restrained, pruned, clipped in a thousand ways, it was at the same time cultivated, refined, and strengthened. The long peace established throughout the Empire what had never before existed,—a universal feeling of security. The individual was bound more than ever by law and custom; but he was also protected: he could move without anxiety to the length of his chains. Though coerced by his fellows, they helped him to bear the coercion cheerfully: everybody aided everybody else to fulfil the obligations and to support the burdens of communal life. Conditions tended, therefore, toward the general happiness as well as toward the general prosperity. There was not, in those years, any struggle for existence,—not at least in our modern meaning of the phrase. The requirements of life were easily satisfied; every man had a master to provide for him or to protect him; competition was repressed or discouraged; there was no need for supreme effort of any sort,—no need for the straining of any faculty. Moreover, there was little or nothing to strive after: for the vast majority of the people, there were no prizes to win. Ranks and incomes were fixed; occupations were hereditary; and the desire to accumulate wealth must have been checked or numbed by those regulations which limited the rich man's right to use his money as he might please. Even a great lord—even the Shogun himself [355] —could not do what he pleased. As for any common person,—farmer, craftsman, or shopkeeper,—he could not build a house as he liked, or furnish it as he liked, or procure for himself such articles of luxury as his taste might incline him to buy. The richest heimin, who attempted to indulge himself in any of these ways, would at once have been forcibly reminded that he must not attempt to imitate the habits, or to assume the privileges, of his betters. He could not even order certain kinds of things to be made for him. The artizans or artists who created objects of luxury, to gratify aesthetic taste, were little disposed to accept commissions from people of low rank: they worked for princes, or great lords, and could scarcely afford to take the risk of displeasing their patrons. Every man's pleasures were more or less regulated by his place in society, and to pass from a lower into a higher rank was no easy matter. Extraordinary men were sometimes able to do this, by attracting the favour of the great. But many perils attended upon such distinction; and the wisest policy for the heimin was to remain satisfied with his position, and try to find as much happiness in life as the law allowed.

Personal ambition being thus restrained, and the cost of existence reduced to a minimum much below our Western ideas of the necessary, there were really established conditions highly favourable to certain forms of culture, in despite of sumptuary [356] regulations. The national mind was obliged to seek solace for the monotony of existence, either in amusement or study. Tokugawa policy had left imagination partly free in the directions of literature and art—the cheaper art; and within those two directions repressed personality found means to utter itself, and fancy became creative. There was a certain amount of danger attendant upon even such intellectual indulgences; and much was dared. Aesthetic taste, however, mostly followed the line of least resistance. Observation concentrated itself upon the interest of everyday life,—upon incidents which might be watched from a window, or studied in a garden,—upon familiar aspects of nature in various seasons,—upon trees, flowers, birds, fishes, or reptiles,—upon insects and the ways of them, —upon all kinds of small details, delicate trifles, amusing curiosities. Then it was that the race-genius produced most of that queer bric-a-brac which still forms the delight of Western collectors. The painter, the ivory-carver, the decorator, were left almost untroubled in their production of fairy-pictures, exquisite grotesqueries, miracles of liliputian art in metal and enamel and lacquer-of-gold. In all such small matters they could feel free; and the results of that freedom are now treasured in the museums of Europe and America. It is true that most of the arts (nearly all of Chinese origin) were considerably developed before the Tokugawa era; but it was then that they [357] began to assume those inexpensive forms which placed aesthetic gratification within reach of the common people. Sumptuary legislation or rule might yet apply to the use and possession of costly production, but not to the enjoyment of form; and the beautiful, whether shaped in paper or in ivory, in clay or gold, is always a power for culture. It has been said that in a Greek city of the fourth century before Christ, every household utensil, even the most trifling object, was in respect of design an object of art; and the same fact is true, though in another and a stranger way, of all things in a Japanese home: even such articles of common use as a bronze candlestick, a brass lamp, an iron kettle, a paper lantern, a bamboo curtain, a wooden pillow, a wooden tray, will reveal to educated eyes a sense of beauty and fitness entirely unknown to Western cheap production. And it was especially during the Tokugawa period that this sense of beauty began to inform everything in common life. Then also was developed the art of illustration; then came into existence those wonderful colour-prints (the most beautiful made in any age or country) which are now so eagerly collected by wealthy dilettanti. Literature also ceased, like art, to be the enjoyment of the upper classes only: it developed a multitude of popular forms. This was the age of popular fiction, of cheap books, of popular drama, of storytelling for young and old…. We may certainly [358] call the Tokugawa period the happiest in the long life of the nation. The mere increase of population and of wealth would prove the fact, irrespective of the general interest awakened in matters literary and aesthetic. It was an age of popular enjoyment, also of general culture and social refinement.