Front matter (continued 6)

Customs spread downward from the top of society. During the Tokugawa period, various diversions or accomplishments, formerly fashionable in upper circles only, became common property. Three of these were of a sort indicating a high degree of refinement: poetical contests, tea-ceremonies, and the complex art of flower-arrangement. All were introduced into Japanese society long before the Tokugawa regime;—the fashion of poetical competitions must be as old as Japanese authentic history. But it was under the Tokugawa Shogunate that such amusements and accomplishments became national. Then the tea-ceremonies were made a feature of female education throughout the country. Their elaborate character could be explained only by the help of many pictures; and it requires years of training and practice to graduate in the art of them. Yet the whole of this art, as to detail, signifies no more than the making and serving of a cup of tea. However, it is a real art—a most exquisite art. The actual making of the infusion is a matter of no consequence in itself: the supremely important matter is that the act be performed in the most perfect, [359] most polite, most graceful, most charming manner possible. Everything done—from the kindling of the charcoal fire to the presentation of the tea—must be done according to rules of supreme etiquette: rules requiring natural grace as well as great patience to fully master. Therefore a training in the tea-ceremonies is still held to be a training in politeness, in self-control, in delicacy,—a discipline in deportment…. Quite as elaborate is the art of arranging flowers. There are many different schools; but the object of each system is simply to display sprays of leaves and flowers in the most beautiful manner possible, and according to the irregular graces of Nature herself. This art also requires years to learn; and the teaching of it has a moral as well as an aesthetic value.

It was in this period also that etiquette was cultivated to its uttermost,—that politeness became diffused throughout all ranks, not merely as a fashion, but as an art. In all civilized societies of the militant type politeness becomes a national characteristic at an early period; and it must have been a common obligation among the Japanese, as their archaic tongue bears witness, before the historical epoch. Public enactments on the subject were made as early as the seventh century by the founder of Japanese Buddhism, the prince-regent, Shotoku Taishi. "Ministers and functionaries," he proclaimed, [360] "should make decorous behaviour* their leading principle; for their leading principle of the government of the people consists in decorous behaviour. If the superiors do not behave with decorum, the inferiors are disorderly: if inferiors are wanting in proper behaviour, there must necessarily be offences. Therefore it is that when lord and vassal behave with propriety, the distinctions of rank are not confused when the people behave with propriety, the government of the Commonwealth proceeds of itself." Something of the same old Chinese teaching we find reechoed, a thousand years later, in the Legacy of Iyeyasu: "The art of governing a country consists in the manifestation of due deference on the part of a suzerain to his vassals. Know that if you turn your back upon this, you will be assassinated; and the Empire will be lost." We have already seen that etiquette was rigidly enforced upon all classes by the military rule: for at least ten centuries before Iyeyasu, the nation had been disciplined in politeness, under the edge of the sword. But under the Tokugawa Shogunate politeness became particularly a popular characteristic,—a rule of conduct maintained by even the lowest classes in their daily relations. Among the higher classes it became the art of beauty in life. All the taste, the grace, the [361] nicety which then informed artistic production in precious material, equally informed every detail of speech and action. Courtesy was a moral and aesthetic study, carried to such incomparable perfection that every trace of the artificial disappeared. Grace and charm seemed to have become habit,—inherent qualities of the human fibre,—and doubtless, in the case of one sex at least, did so become.

[*Or, "ceremony": the Chinese term used signifying everything relating to gentlemanly and upright conduct. The translation is Mr. Aston's (see Vol. II, p, 130, of his translation of the Nihongi).]

For it has well been said that the most wonderful aesthetic products of Japan are not its ivories, nor its bronzes, nor its porcelains, nor its swords, nor any of its marvels in metal or lacquer—but its women. Accepting as partly true the statement that woman everywhere is what man has made her, we might say that this statement is more true of the Japanese woman than of any other. Of course it required thousands and thousands of years to make her; but the period of which I am speaking beheld the work completed and perfected. Before this ethical creation, criticism should hold its breath; for there is here no single fault save the fault of a moral charm unsuited to any world of selfishness and struggle. It is the moral artist that now commands our praise,—the realizer of an ideal beyond Occidental reach. How frequently has it been asserted that, as a moral being, the Japanese woman does not seem to belong to the same race as the Japanese man! Considering that heredity is limited by sex, there is reason in the assertion: the Japanese woman is an ethically different [362] being from the Japanese man. Perhaps no such type of woman will appear again in this world for a hundred thousand years: the conditions of industrial civilization will not admit of her existence. The type could not have been created in any society shaped on modern lines, nor in any society where the competitive struggle takes those unmoral forms with which we have become too familiar. Only a society under extraordinary regulation and regimentation,—a society in which all self-assertion was repressed, and self-sacrifice made a universal obligation,—a society in which personality was clipped like a hedge, permitted to bud and bloom from within, never from without,—in short, only a society founded upon ancestor-worship, could have produced it. It has no more in common with the humanity of this twentieth century of ours—perhaps very much less—than has the life depicted upon old Greek vases. Its charm is the charm of a vanished world—a charm strange, alluring, indescribable as the perfume of some flower of which the species became extinct in our Occident before the modern languages were born. Transplanted successfully it cannot be: under a foreign sun its forms revert to something altogether different, its colours fade, its perfume passes away. The Japanese woman can be known only in her own country,—the Japanese woman as prepared and perfected by the old-time education for that strange society in which the charm [363] of her moral being,—her delicacy, her supreme unselfishness, her child-like piety and trust, her exquisite tactful perception of all ways and means to make happiness about her,—can be comprehended and valued.

I have spoken only of her moral charm: it requires time for the unaccustomed foreign eye to discern the physical charm. Beauty, according to our Western standards, can scarcely be said to exist in this race,—or, shall we say that it has never yet been developed? One seeks in vain for a facial angle satisfying Western aesthetic canons. It is seldom that one meets even with a fine example of that physical elegance,—that manifestation of the economy of force,—which we call grace, in the Greek meaning of the word. Yet there is charm—great charm—both of face and form: the charm of childhood—childhood with its every feature yet softly and vaguely outlined (efface, as a French artist would call it),—childhood before the limbs have fully lengthened,—slight and, dainty, with admirable little hands and feet. The eyes at first surprise us, by the strangeness of their lids, so unlike Aryan eyelids, and folding upon another plan. Yet they are often very charming; and a Western artist would not fail to appreciate the graceful terms, invented by Japanese or Chinese art, to designate particular beauties in the lines of the eyelids. Even if she cannot be called handsome, according to Western [364] standards, the Japanese woman must be confessed pretty,—pretty like a comely child; and if she be seldom graceful in the Occidental sense, she is at least in all her ways incomparably graceful: her every motion, gesture, or expression being, in its own Oriental manner, a perfect thing,—an act performed, or a look conferred, in the most easy, the most graceful, the most modest way possible. By ancient custom, she is not permitted to display her grace in the street: she must walk in a particular shrinking manner, turning her feet inward as she patters along upon her wooden sandals. But to watch her at home, where she is free to be comely,—merely to see her performing any household duty, or waiting upon guests, or arranging flowers, or playing with her children,—is an education in Far Eastern aesthetics for whoever has the head and the heart to learn…. But is she not, then, one may ask, an artificial product,—a forced growth of Oriental civilization? I would answer both "Yes" and "No." She is an artificial product in only the same evolutional sense that all character is an artificial product; and it required tens of centuries to mould her. She is not, on the other hand, an artificial type, because she has been particularly trained to be her true self at all times when circumstances allow,—or, in other words, to be delightfully natural. The old-fashioned education of her sex was directed to the development [365] of every quality essentially feminine, and to the suppression of the opposite quality. Kindliness, docility, sympathy, tenderness, daintiness—these and other attributes were cultivated into incomparable blossoming. "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever: do noble things, not dream them, all day long"—those words of Kingsley really embody the central idea in her training. Of course the being, formed by such training only, must be protected by society; and by the old Japanese society she was protected. Exceptions did not affect the rule. What I mean is that she was able to be purely herself, within certain limits of emotional etiquette, in all security. Her success in life was made to depend on her power to win affection by gentleness, obedience, kindliness;—not the affection merely of a husband, but of the husband's parents and grandparents, and brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law,—in short of all the members of a strange household. Thus to succeed required angelic goodness and patience; and the Japanese woman realized at least the ideal of a Buddhist angel. A being working only for others, thinking only for others, happy only in making pleasure for others,—a being incapable of unkindness, incapable of selfishness, incapable of acting contrary to her own inherited sense of right,—and in spite of this softness and gentleness ready, at any moment, to lay down her life, to [366] sacrifice everything at the call of duty: such was the character of the Japanese woman. Most strange may seem the combination, in this child-soul, of gentleness and force, tenderness and courage,—yet the explanation is not far to seek. Stronger within her than wifely affection or parental affection or even maternal affection,—stronger than any womanly emotion, was the moral conviction born of her great faith. This religious quality of character can be found among ourselves only within the shadow of cloisters, where it is cultivated at the expense of all else; and the Japanese woman has been therefore compared to a Sister of Charity. But she had to be very much more than a Sister of Charity,—daughter-in-law and wife and mother, and to fulfil without reproach the multiform duties of her triple part. Rather might she be compared to the Greek type of noble woman,—to Antigone, to Alcestis. With the Japanese woman, as formed by the ancient training, each act of life was an act of faith: her existence was a religion, her home a temple, her every word and thought ordered by the law of the cult of the dead…. This wonderful type is not extinct—though surely doomed to disappear. A human creature so shaped for the service of gods and men that every beat of her heart is duty, that every drop of her blood is moral feeling, were not less out of place in the future world of competitive selfishness, than an angel in hell.

[367]

THE SHINTO REVIVAL

The slow weakening of the Tokugawa Shogunate was due to causes not unlike those which had brought about the decline of previous regencies: the race degenerated during that long period of peace which its rule had inaugurated; the strong builders were succeeded by feebler and feebler men. Nevertheless the machinery of administration, astutely devised by Iyeyasu, and further perfected by Iyemitsu, worked so well that the enemies of the Shogunate could find no opportunity for a successful attack until foreign aggression unexpectedly came to their aid. The most dangerous enemies of the government were the great clans of Satsuma and Choshu. Iyeyasu had not ventured to weaken them beyond a certain point: the risks of the undertaking would have been great; and, on the other hand, the alliance of those clans was for the time being a matter of vast political importance. He only took measures to preserve a safe balance of power, placing between those formidable allies new lordships in whose rulers he could put trust,—a trust based first upon interest, secondly upon kinship. But he always felt that danger to the Shogunate [368] might come from Satsuma and Choshu; and he left to his successors careful instructions about the policy to be followed in dealing with such possible enemies. He felt that his work was not perfect,—that certain outlying blocks of the structure had not been properly clamped to the rest. He could not do more in the direction of consolidation, simply because the material of society had not yet sufficiently evolved, had not yet become plastic enough, to permit of perfect and permanent cohesion. In order to effect that, it would have been necessary to dissolve the clans. But Iyeyasu did all that human foresight could have safely attempted under the circumstances; and no one was more keenly conscious than himself of the weak points in his wonderful organization.

For more than two hundred years the Satsuma and Choshu clans, and several others ready to league with them, submitted to the discipline of the Tokugawa rule. But they chafed under it, and watched for a chance to break the yoke. All the while this chance was being slowly created for them—not by any political changes, but by the patient toil of Japanese men of letters. Three among these—the greatest scholars that Japan ever produced—especially prepared the way, by their intellectual labours, for the abolition of the Shogunate. They were Shinto scholars; and they represented the not unnatural reaction of native conservatism against the [309] long tyranny of alien ideas and alien beliefs,—against the literature and philosophy and bureaucracy of China,—against the preponderant influence upon education of the foreign religion of Buddhism. To all this they opposed the old native literature of Japan, the ancient poetry, the ancient cult, the early traditions and rites of Shinto. The names of these three remarkable men were Mabuchi (1697-1769), Motowori (1730-1801), and Hirata (1776-1843). Their efforts actually resulted in the disestablishment of Buddhism, and in the great Shinto revival of 1871.

The intellectual revolution made by these scholars could have been prepared only during a long era of peace, and by men enjoying the protection and patronage of members of the ruling class. By a strange chance, it was the house of Tokugawa itself which first gave to literature such encouragement and aid as made possible the labours of the Shinto scholars. Iyeyasu had been a lover of learning; and had devoted the later years of his life—passed in retirement at Shidzuoka—to the collection of ancient books and manuscripts. He bequeathed his Japanese books to his eighth son, the Prince of Owari; and his Chinese books to another son, the Prince of Kishu. The Prince of Owari himself composed several works upon Japanese early literature. Other descendants of Iyeyasu, inherited the great [370] Shogun's love of letters: one of his grandsons, Mitsukuni, the second Prince of Mito (1622-1700), compiled, with the aid of various scholars, the first, important history of Japan,—the Dai-Nihon-Shi, in 240 books. Also he compiled a work of 500 volumes upon the ceremonies and the etiquette of the Imperial Court, and set aside from his revenues a sum equal to about 30,000 pounds per annum, to cover the cost of publishing the splendid productions…. Under the patronage of great lords like these—collectors of libraries—there gradually developed a new school of men-of-letters: men who turned away from Chinese literature to the study of the Japanese classics. They reedited the ancient poetry and chronicles; they republished the sacred records, with ample commentaries. They produced whole libraries of works upon religious, historical, and philological subjects; they made grammars and dictionaries; they wrote treatises on the art of poetry, on popular errors, on the nature of the gods, on government, on the manners and customs of ancient days…. The foundations of this new scholarship were laid by two Shinto priests,—Kada and Mabuchi.

The high patrons of learning never suspected the possible results of those researches which they had encouraged and aided. The study of the ancient records, the study of Japanese literature, the study of the early political and religious conditions, [371] naturally led men to consider the history of those foreign literary influences which had well-nigh stifled native learning, and to consider also the history of the foreign creed which had overwhelmed the religion of the ancestral gods. Chinese ethics, Chinese ceremonial, and Chinese Buddhism had reduced the ancient faith to the state of a minor belief—almost to the state of a superstition. "The Shinto gods," exclaimed one of the scholars of the new school, "have become the servants of the Buddhas!" But those Shinto gods were the ancestors of the race,—the fathers of its emperors and princes,—and their degradation could not but involve the degradation of the imperial tradition. Already, indeed, the emperors had been deprived not only of their immemorial rights and privileges, but of their revenues: many had been deposed and banished and insulted. Just as the gods had been admitted only as inferior personages to the Buddhist pantheon, so their living descendants were now permitted to reign only as the dependants of military usurpers. By sacred law the whole soil of the empire belonged to the Heavenly Sovereign: yet there had been great poverty at times in the imperial palace; and the revenues, allotted for the maintenance of the Mikado, had often been insufficient to relieve his family from want. Assuredly all this was wrong. The Shogunate had indeed established peace and inaugurated prosperity; but who could forget that [372] it had originated in a military usurpation of imperial rights? Only by the restoration of the Son of Heaven to his ancient position of power, and by the relegation of the military chiefs to their proper state of subordination, could the best interests of the nation be really served….

All this was thought and felt and strongly suggested; but not all of it was openly proclaimed. To have publicly preached against the military government as a usurpation would have been to invite destruction. The Shinto scholars dared only so much as the politics and the temper of their time seemed to permit,—though they closely approached the danger-line. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, their teaching had created a strong party in favour of the official revival of the ancient religion, the restoration of the Mikado to supreme power, and the repression, if not suppression, of the military power. Yet it was not until the year 1841 that the Shogunate took alarm, and proclaimed its disquiet by banishing from the capital the great scholar Hirata, and forbidding him to write anything more. Not long afterwards he died. But he had been able to teach for forty years; he had written and published several hundred volumes; and the school of which he was the last and greatest theologian already exerted far-reaching influence. The restive lords of Choshu, Satsuma, Tosa, and Hizen were watching and waiting. They perceived [373] the worth of the new ideas to their own policy; they encouraged the new Shintoism; they felt that a time was coming when they could hope to shake off the domination of the Tokugawa. And their opportunity came at last with the advent to Japan of Commodore Perry's fleet.

The events of that time are well known, and need not here be dwelt upon at any length. Suffice to say that after the Shogunate had been terrified into making commercial treaties with the United States and other powers, and practically compelled to open sundry ports to foreign trade, great discontent arose and was fomented as much as possible by the enemies of the military government. Meanwhile the Shogunate had ascertained for itself the impossibility of resisting foreign aggression: it was fairly well informed as to the strength of Western countries. The imperial court was nowise informed; and the Shogunate naturally dreaded to furnish the information. To acknowledge incapacity to resist Occidental aggression would be to invite the ruin of the Tokugawa house; to resist, on the other hand, would be to invite the destruction of the Empire. The enemies of the Shogunate then persuaded the imperial court to order the expulsion of the foreigners; and this order—which, it must be remembered, was essentially a religious order, emanating from the source of all acknowledged authority—placed the military government in a serious dilemma. [374] It tried to effect by diplomacy what it could not accomplish by force; but while it was negotiating for the withdrawal of the foreign' settlers, matters were suddenly forced to a crisis by the Prince of Choshu, who fired upon various ships belonging to the foreign powers. This action provoked the bombardment of Shimonoseki, and the demand of an indemnity of three million dollars. The Shogun Iyemochi attempted to chastise the daimyo of Choshu for this act of hostility; but the attempt only proved the weakness of the military government. Iyemochi died soon after this defeat; and his successor Hitotsubashi had no chance to do anything,—for the now evident feebleness of the Shogunate gave its enemies courage to strike a fatal blow. Pressure was brought upon the imperial court to proclaim the abolition of the Shogunate; and the Shogunate was abolished by decree. Hitotsubashi submitted; and the Tokugawa regime thus came to an end,—although its more devoted followers warred for two years afterwards, against hopeless odds, to reestablish it. In 1867 the entire administration was reorganized; the supreme power, both military and civil, being restored to the Mikado. Soon afterward the Shinto cult, officially revived in its primal simplicity, was declared the Religion of State; and Buddhism was disendowed. Thus the Empire was reestablished upon the ancient lines; and all that the literary party had [375] hoped for seemed to be realized—except one thing….

Be it here observed that the adherents of the literary party wanted to go much further than the great founders of the new Shintoism had dreamed of going. These later enthusiasts were not satisfied with the abolition of the Shogunate, the restoration of imperial power, and the revival of the ancient cult: they wanted a return of all society to the simplicity of primitive times; they desired that all foreign influence should be got rid of, and that the official ceremonies, the future education, the future literature, the ethics, the laws, should be purely Japanese. They were not even satisfied with the disendowment of Buddhism: there was a vigorous proposal made for its total suppression! And all this would have signified, in more ways than one, a social retrogression towards barbarism. The great scholars had never proposed to cast away Buddhism and all Chinese learning; they had only insisted that the native religion and culture should have precedence. But the new literary party desired what would have been equivalent to the destruction of a thousand years' experience. Happily the clansmen who had broken down the Shogunate saw both past and future in another light. They understood that the national existence was in peril, and that resistance to foreign pressure would be hopeless. Satsuma had witnessed the bombardment of Kagoshima in [376] 1863; Choshu, the bombardment of Shimonoseki in 1864. Evidently the only chance of being able to face Western power would be through the patient study of Western science; and the survival of the Empire depended upon the Europeanization of society. By 1871 the daimiates were abolished; in 1873 the edicts against Christianity were withdrawn; in 1876 the wearing of swords was prohibited. The samurai, as a military body, were suppressed; and all classes were declared thenceforward equal before the law. New codes were compiled; a new army and navy organized; a new police system established; a new system of education introduced at Government expense; and a new constitution promised. Finally, in 1891, the first Japanese parliament (strictly speaking) was convoked. By that time the entire framework of society had been remodelled, so far as laws could remodel it, upon a European pattern. The nation had fairly entered upon its third period of integration. The clan had been legally dissolved; the family was no longer the legal unit of society: by the new constitution the individual had been recognized.

When we consider the history of some vast and sudden political change in its details only,—the factors of the movement, the combinations of immediate cause and effect, the influences of strong personality, the conditions impelling individual action, [377]—then the transformation is apt to appear to us the work and the triumph of a few superior minds. We forget, perhaps, that those minds themselves were the product of their epoch, and that every such rapid change must represent the working of a national or race-instinct quite as much as the operation of individual intelligence. The events of the Meiji reconstruction strangely illustrate the action of such instinct in the face of peril,—the readjustment of internal relations to sudden changes of environment. The nation had found its old political system powerless before the new conditions; and it transformed that system. It had found its military organization incapable of defending it; and it reconstructed that organization. It had found its educational system useless in the presence of unforeseen necessities; and it replaced that system,—simultaneously crippling the power of Buddhism, which might otherwise have offered serious opposition to the new developments required. And in that hour of greatest danger the national instinct turned back at once to the moral experience upon which it could best rely,—the experience embodied in its ancient cult, the religion of unquestioning obedience. Relying upon Shinto tradition, the people rallied about their ruler, descendant of the ancient gods, and awaited his will with unconquerable zeal of faith. By strict obedience to his commands the peril might be averted,—never otherwise: this was [378] the national conviction. And the imperial order was simply that the nation should strive by study to make itself, as far as possible, the intellectual equal of its enemies. How faithfully that command was obeyed,—how well the old moral discipline of the race served it in the period of that supreme emergency,—I need scarcely say. Japan, by right of self-acquired strength, has entered into the circle of the modern civilized powers,—formidable by her new military organization, respectable through her achievements in the domain of practical science. And the force to effect this astonishing self-improvement, within the time of thirty years, she owes assuredly to the moral habit derived from her ancient cult,—the religion of the ancestors. To fairly measure the feat, we should remember that Japan was evolutionally younger than any modern European nation, by at least twenty-seven hundred years, when she went to school! …

Herbert Spencer has shown that the great value to society of ecclesiastical institutions lies in their power to give cohesion to the mass,—to strengthen rule by enforcing obedience to custom, and by opposing innovations likely to supply any element of disintegration. In other words, the value of a religion, from the sociological standpoint, lies in its conservatism. Various writers have alleged that the [379] Japanese national religion proved itself weak by incapacity to resist the overwhelming influence of Buddhism. I cannot help thinking that the entire social history of Japan yields proof to the contrary. Though Buddhism did for a long period appear to have almost entirely absorbed Shinto, by the acknowledgment of the Shinto scholars themselves; though Buddhist emperors reigned who neglected or despised the cult of their ancestors; though Buddhism directed, during ten centuries, the education of the nation, Shinto remained all the while so very much alive that it was able not only to dispossess its rival at last, but to save the country from foreign domination. To assert that the Shinto revival signified no more than a stroke of policy imagined by a group of statesmen, is to ignore all the antecedents of the event. No such change could have been wrought by mere decree had not the national sentiment welcomed it…. Moreover, there are three important facts to be remembered in regard to the former Buddhist predomination: (1) Buddhism conserved the family-cult, modifying the forms of the rite; (2) Buddhism never really supplanted the Ujigami cults, but maintained them; (3) Buddhism never interfered with the imperial cult. Now these three forms of ancestor-worship,—the domestic, the communal, and the national,—constitute all that is vital in Shinto. No single essential of the ancient faith had ever been weakened, [380] much less abolished, under the long pressure of Buddhism.

The Supreme Cult is not now the State Religion by request of the chiefs of Shinto, it is not even officially classed as a religion. Obvious reasons of state policy decided this course. Having fulfilled its grand task, Shinto abdicated. But as representing all those traditions which appeal to race-feeling, to the sentiment of duty, to the passion of loyalty, and the love of country, it yet remains an immense force, a power to which appeal will not be vainly made in another hour of national peril.

[381]

SURVIVALS

In the gardens of certain Buddhist temples there are trees which have been famous for centuries,—trees trained and clipped into extraordinary shapes. Some have the form of dragons; others have the form of pagodas, ships, umbrellas. Supposing that one of these trees were abandoned to its own natural tendencies, it would eventually lose the queer shape so long imposed upon it; but the outline would not be altered for a considerable time, as the new leafage would at first unfold only in the direction of least resistance: that is to say, within limits originally established by the shears and the pruning-knife. By sword and law the old Japanese society had been pruned and clipped, bent and bound, just like such a tree; and after the reconstructions of the Meiji period,—after the abolition of the daimiates, and the suppression of the military class, it still maintained its former shape, just as the tree would continue to do when first abandoned by the gardener. Though delivered from the bonds of feudal law, released from the shears of military rule, the great bulk of the social structure preserved its ancient [382] aspect; and the rare spectacle bewildered and delighted and deluded the Western observer. Here indeed was Elf-land,—the strange, the beautiful, the grotesque, the very mysterious,—totally unlike aught of strange and attractive ever beheld elsewhere. It was not a world of the nineteenth century after Christ, but a world of many centuries before Christ: yet this fact—the wonder of wonders—remained unrecognized; and it remains unrecognized by most people even to this day.

Fortunate indeed were those privileged to enter this astonishing fairyland thirty odd years ago, before the period of superficial change, and to observe the unfamiliar aspects of its life: the universal urbanity, the smiling silence of crowds, the patient deliberation of toil, the absence of misery and struggle. Even yet, in those remoter districts where alien influence has wrought but little change, the charm of the old existence lingers and amazes; and the ordinary traveller can little understand what it means. That all are polite, that nobody quarrels, that everybody smiles, that pain and sorrow remain invisible, that the new police have nothing to do, would seem to prove a morally superior humanity. But for the trained sociologist it would prove something different, and suggest something very terrible. It would prove to him that this society had been moulded under immense coercion, and that the coercion must have been exerted uninterruptedly [383] for thousands of years. He would immediately perceive that ethics and custom had not yet become dissociated, and that the conduct of each person was regulated by the will of the rest. He would know that personality could not develop in such a social medium,—that no individual superiority dare assert itself, that no competition would be tolerated. He would understand that the outward charm of this life—its softness, its smiling silence as of dreams—signified the rule of the dead. He would recognize that between those minds and the minds of his own epoch no kinship of thought, no community of sentiment, no sympathy whatever could exist,—that the separating gulf was not to be measured by thousands of leagues, but only by thousands of years,—that the psychological interval was hopeless as the distance from planet to planet. Yet this knowledge probably would not—certainly should not—blind him to the intrinsic charm of things. Not to feel the beauty of this archaic life is to prove oneself insensible to all beauty. Even that Greek world, for which our scholars and poets profess such loving admiration, must have been in many ways a world of the same kind, whose daily mental existence no modern mind could share.

Now that the great social tree, so wonderfully clipped and cared for during many centuries, [384] is losing its fantastic shape, let us try to see how much of the original design can still be traced.

Under all the outward aspects of individual activity that modern Japan presents to the visitor's gaze, the ancient conditions really persist to an extent that no observation could reveal. Still the immemorial cult rules all the land. Still the family-law, the communal law, and (though in a more irregular manner) the clan-law, control every action of existence. I do not refer to any written law, but only to the old unwritten religious law, with its host of obligations deriving from ancestor-worship. It is true that many changes—and, in the opinion of the wise, too many changes—have been made in civil legislation; but the ancient proverb, "Government-laws are only seven-day laws," still represents popular sentiment in regard to hasty reforms. The old law, the law of the dead, is that by which the millions prefer to act and think. Though ancient social groupings have been officially abolished, re-groupings of a corresponding sort have been formed, instinctively, throughout the country districts. In theory the individual is free; in practice he is scarcely more free than were his forefathers. Old penalties for breach of custom have been abrogated; yet communal opinion is able to compel the ancient obedience. Legal enactments can nowhere effect immediate [385] change of sentiment and long-established usage,—least of all among a people of such fixity of character as the Japanese. Young persons are no more at liberty now, than were their fathers and mothers under the Shogunate, to marry at will, to invest their means and efforts in undertakings not sanctioned by family approval, to consider themselves in any way enfranchised from family authority; and it is probably better for the present that they are not. No man is yet complete master of his activities, his time, or his means.

Though the individual is now registered, and made directly accountable to the law, while the household has been relieved from its ancient responsibility for the acts of its members, still the family practically remains the social unit, retaining its patriarchal organization and its particular cult. Not unwisely, the modern legislators have protected this domestic religion: to weaken its bond at this time were to weaken the foundations of the national moral life,—to introduce disintegrations into the most deeply seated structures of the social organism. The new codes forbid the man who becomes by succession the head of a house to abolish that house: he is not permitted to suppress a cult. No legal presumptive heir to the headship of a family can enter into another family as adopted son or husband; nor can he abandon the paternal house to establish an independent [386] family of his own.* Provision has been made to meet extraordinary cases; but no individual is allowed, without good and sufficient reason, to free himself from those traditional obligations which the family-cult imposes. As regards adoption, the new law maintains the spirit of the old, with fresh provision for the conservation of the family religion,—permitting any person of legal age to adopt a son, on the simple condition that the person adopted shall be younger than the adopter. The new divorce-laws do not permit the dismissal of a wife for sterility alone (and divorce for such cause had long been condemned by Japanese sentiment); but, in view of the facilities given for adoption, this reform does not endanger the continuance of the cult. An interesting example of the manner in which the law still protects ancestor-worship is furnished by the fact that an aged and childless widow, last representative of her family, is not permitted to remain without an heir. She must adopt a son if she can: if she cannot, because of poverty, or for other reasons, [387] the local authorities will provide a son for her,—that is to say, a male heir to maintain the family-worship. Such official interference would seem to us tyrannical: it is simply paternal, and represents the continuance of an ancient regulation intended to protect the bereaved against what Eastern faith still deems the supreme misfortune,—the extinction of the home-cult…. In other respects the later codes allow of individual liberty unknown in previous generations. But the ordinary person would not dream of attempting to claim a legal right opposed to common opinion. Family and public sentiment are still more potent than law. The Japanese newspapers frequently record tragedies resulting from the prevention or dissolution of unions; and these tragedies afford strong proof that most young people would prefer even suicide to the probable consequence of a successful appeal to law against family decision.

[*That is to say, he cannot separate himself from the family in law; but he is free to live in a separate house. The tendency to further disintegration of the family is shown by a custom which has been growing of late years,—especially in Tokyo: the custom of demanding, as a condition of marriage, that the bride shall not be obliged to live in the same house with the parents of the bridegroom. This custom is yet confined to certain classes, and has been adversely criticised. Many young men, on marrying, leave the parental home to begin independent housekeeping,—though remaining legally attached to their parents' families, of course…. It will perhaps be asked, What becomes of the cult in such cases? The cult remains in the parental home. When the parents die, then the ancestral tablets are transferred to the home of the married son.]

The communal form of coercion is less apparent in the large cities; but everywhere it endures to some extent, and in the agricultural districts it remains supreme. Between the new conditions and the old there is this difference, that the man who finds the yoke of his district hard to bear can flee from it: he could not do so fifty years ago. But he can flee from it only to enter into another state of subordination of nearly the same kind. Full [388] advantage, nevertheless, has been taken of this modern liberty of movement: thousands yearly throng to the cities; other thousands travel over the country, from province to province; working for a year or a season in one place, then going to another, with little more to hope for than experience of change. Emigration also has been taking place upon an extensive scale; but for the common class of emigrants, at least, the advantage of emigration is chiefly represented by the chance of earning larger wages. A Japanese emigrant community abroad organizes itself upon the home-plan;* and the individual emigrant probably finds himself as much under communal coercion in Canada, Hawaii, or the Philippine Islands, as he could ever have been in his native province. Needless to say that in foreign countries such coercion is more than compensated by the aid and protection which the communal organization insures. But with the constantly increasing number of restless spirits at home, and the ever widening experience of Japanese emigrants abroad, it would seem likely that the power of the commune for compulsory cooperation must become considerably weakened in the near future.

[*Except as regards the communal cult, perhaps. The domestic cult is transplanted; emigrants who go abroad, accompanied by their families, take the ancestral tablets with them. To what extent the communal cult may have been established in emigrant communities, I have not yet been able to learn. It would appear, however, that the absence of Ujigami in certain emigrant settlements is to be accounted for solely by the pecuniary difficulty of constructing such temples and maintaining competent officials. In Formosa, for example, though the domestic ancestor-cult is maintained in the homes of the Japanese settlers, Ujigami have not yet been established. The government, however, has erected several important Shinto temples; and I am told that some of these will probably be converted into Ujigami when the Japanese population has increased enough to justify the measure.]

[389] As for the tribal or clan law, it survives to the degree of remaining almost omnipotent in administrative circles, and in all politics. Voters, officials, legislators, do not follow principles in our sense of the word: they follow men, and obey commands. In these spheres of action the penalties of disobedience to orders are endless as well as serious: by a single such offence one may array against oneself powers that will continue their hostile operation for years and years,—unreasoningly, implacably, blindly, with the weight and persistence of natural forces,—of winds or tides. Any comprehension of the history of Japanese politics during the last fifteen years is not possible without some knowledge of clan-history. A political leader, fully acquainted with the history of clan-parties, and their offshoots, can accomplish marvellous things; and even foreign residents, with long experience of Japanese life, have been able, by pressing upon clan-interests, to exercise a very real power in government circles. But to the ordinary foreigner, Japanese contemporary politics must appear a chaos, a disintegration, a hopeless flux. The truth is that most things remain, under varying outward forms, "as all were ordered, ages since,"—though the [390] shiftings have become more rapid, and the results less obvious, in the haste of an era of steam and electricity.

The greatest of living Japanese statesmen, the Marquis Ito, long ago perceived that the tendency of political life to agglomerations, to clan-groupings, presented the most serious obstacle to the successful working of constitutional government. He understood that this tendency could be opposed only by considerations weightier than clan-interests, considerations worthy of supreme sacrifice. He therefore formed a party of which every member was pledged to pass over clan-interests, clique-interests, personal and every other kind of interests, for the sake of national interests. Brought into collision with a hostile cabinet in 1903, this party achieved the feat of controlling its animosities even to the extent of maintaining its foes in power; but large fragments broke off in the process. So profoundly is the grouping-tendency, the clan-sentiment, identified with national character, that the ultimate success of Marquis Ito's policy must still be considered doubtful. Only a national danger—the danger of war,—has yet been able to weld all parties together, to make all wills work as one.

Not only politics, but nearly all phases of modern life, yield evidence that the disintegration of the old society has been superficial rather than fundamental. Structures dissolved have recrystallized, taking forms [391] dissimilar in aspect to the original forms, but inwardly built upon the same plan. For the dissolutions really effected represented only a separation of masses, not a breaking up of substance into independent units; and these masses, again cohering, continue to act only as masses. Independence of personal action, in the Western sense, is still almost inconceivable. The individual of every class above the lowest must continue to be at once coercer and coerced. Like an atom within a solid body, he can vibrate; but the orbit of his vibration is fixed. He must act and be acted upon in ways differing little from those of ancient time.

As for being acted upon, the average man is under three kinds of pressure: pressure from above, exemplified in the will of his superiors; pressure about him, represented by the common will of his fellows and equals; pressure from below, represented by the general sentiment of his inferiors. And this last sort of coercion is not the least formidable.

Individual resistance to the first kind of pressure—that represented by authority—is not even to be thought of; because the superior represents a clan, a class, an exceedingly multiple power of some description; and no solitary individual, in the present order of things, can strive against a combination. To resist injustice he must find ample support, in [392] which case his resistance does not represent individual action.

Resistance to the second kind of pressure—communal coercion —signifies ruin, loss of the right to form a part of the social body.

Resistance to the third sort of pressure, embodied in the common sentiment of inferiors, may result in almost anything,—from momentary annoyance to sudden death,—according to circumstances.

In all forms of society these three kinds of pressure are exerted to some degree; but in Japanese society, owing to inherited tendency, and traditional sentiment, their power is tremendous.

Thus, in every direction, the individual finds himself confronted by the despotism of collective opinion: it is impossible for him to act with safety except as one unit of a combination. The first kind of pressure deprives him of moral freedom, exacting unlimited obedience to orders; the second kind of pressure denies him the right to use his best faculties in the best way for his own advantage (that is to say, denies him the right of free competition); the third kind of pressure compels him, in directing the actions of others, to follow tradition, to forbear innovations, to avoid making any changes, however beneficial, which do not find willing acceptance on the part of his inferiors.

These are the social conditions which, under [393] normal circumstances, make for stability, for conservation; and they represent the will of the dead. They are inevitable to a militant state; they make the strength of that state; they render facile the creation and maintenance of formidable armies. But they are not conditions favourable to success in the future international competition,—in the industrial struggle for existence against societies incomparably more plastic, and of higher mental energy.

[394]

[395]

MODERN RESTRAINTS

For even a vague understanding of modern Japan, it will be necessary to consider the effect of the three forms of social coercion, mentioned in the preceding chapter, as restraints upon individual energy and capacity. All three represent survivals of the ancient religious responsibility. I shall treat of them in order inverse, beginning with the under-pressure.

It has often been asserted by foreign observers that the real power in Japan is exercised not from above, but from below. There is some truth in this assertion, but not all the truth: the conditions are much too complex to be covered by any general statement. What cannot be gainsaid is that superior authority has always been more or less restrained by tendencies to resistance from below…. At no time in Japanese history, for example, do the peasants appear to have been left without recourse against excessive oppression,—notwithstanding all the humiliating regulations imposed on their existence. They were suffered to frame their own village-laws, to estimate the possible amount of [396] their tax-payments,—and to make protest—through official channels—against unmerciful exaction. They were made to pay as much as they could; but they were not reduced to bankruptcy or starvation; and their holdings were mostly secured to them by laws forbidding the sale or alienation of family property. Such was at least the general rule. There were, however, wicked daimyo, who treated their farmers with extreme cruelty, and found ways to prevent complaints or protests from reaching the higher authorities. The almost invariable result of such tyranny was revolt; and the tyrant was then made responsible for the disorder, and punished. Though denied in theory, the right of the peasant to rebel against oppression was respected in practice; the revolt was punished, but the oppressor was likewise punished. Daimyo were obliged to reckon with their farmers in regard to any fresh imposition of taxes or forced labour. We also find that although heimin were made subject to the military class, it was possible for artizans and commercial folk to form, in the great cities, strong associations by which military tyranny was kept in check. Everywhere the reverential deference of the common people to authority, as exercised in usual directions, seems to have been accompanied by an extraordinary readiness to defy authority exercised in other directions.

It may seem strange that a society in which religion [397] and government, ethics and custom, were practically identical, should furnish striking examples of resistance to authority. But the religious fact itself supplies the explanation. From the earliest period there was firmly established, in the popular mind, the conviction that implicit obedience to authority was the universal duty under all ordinary circumstances. But with this conviction there was united another,—that resistance to authority (excepting the sacred authority of the Supreme Ruler) was equally a duty under extraordinary circumstances. And these seemingly opposed convictions were not really inconsistent. So long as rule followed precedent,—so long as its commands, however harsh, did not conflict with sentiment and tradition,—that rule was regarded as religious, and there was absolute submission. But when rulers presumed to break with ethical usage,—in a spirit of reckless cruelty or greed,—then the people might feel it a religious obligation to resist with all the zeal of voluntary martyrdom. The danger-line for every form of local tyranny was departure from precedent. Even the conduct of regents and princes was much restrained by the common opinion of their retainers, and by the knowledge that certain kinds of arbitrary conduct were likely to provoke assassination.

Deference to the sentiment of vassals and retainers was from ancient time a necessary policy with Japanese rulers,—not merely because of the peril involved [398] by needless oppression, but much more because of the recognition that duties are well performed only when subordinates feel assured that their efforts will be fairly considered, and that sudden needless changes will not be made to their disadvantage. This old policy still characterizes Japanese administration; and the deference of high authority to collective opinion astonishes and puzzles the foreign observer. He perceives only that the conservative power of sentiment, as exercised by groups of subordinates, remains successfully opposed to those conditions of discipline which we think indispensable to social progress. Just as in Old Japan the ruler of a district was held, responsible for the behaviour of his subjects, so to-day, in New Japan, every official in charge of a department is held responsible for the smooth working of its routine. But this does not mean that he is responsible only for the efficiency of a service: it means that he is held responsible likewise for failure to satisfy the wishes of his subordinates, or at least the majority of his subordinates. If this majority be displeased with their minister, governor, president, manager, chief, or director, the fact is considered proof of administrative incompetency…. Perhaps educational circles afford the most curious examples of this old idea of responsibility. A student-revolt is commonly supposed to mean, not that the students are intractable, but that the superintendent or teacher does not know [399] his business. Thus the principal of a college, the director of a school, holds his office only on the condition that his rule gives satisfaction to a majority of the students. In the higher government institutions, each professor or lecturer is made responsible for the success of his lectures. No matter how great may be his ability in other directions, the official instructor, unable to make himself liked by his pupils, will be got rid of in short order—unless some powerful protectors interfere on his behalf. The efforts of the man will never be judged (officially) by any accepted standard of excellence,—never estimated by their intrinsic worth; they will be considered only according to their direct effect upon the average of minds.* Almost everywhere this antique system of responsibility is maintained. A minister of state is by public sentiment made responsible not only for the results of his administration, but likewise for any scandals or troubles that may occur in his department, independently of the question whether he could or could not have prevented them. To a considerable degree, therefore, it is true that the ultimate [400] power is below. The highest official is not able with impunity to impose his personal will in certain directions; and, for the time being, it is probably better that his powers are thus restrained.

[*Unjust as this policy must appear to the Western reader (a policy which certainly presupposes ethical conditions very different from our own), it was probably at one time the best possible under the new order. Considering the extraordinary changes suddenly made in the educational system, it will be obvious that a teacher's immediate value was likely—-twenty years ago—to depend on his ability to make his teaching attractive. If he attempted to teach either above or below the average capacity of his pupils, or if he made his instruction unpalatable to minds greedy for new knowledge, but innocent as to method, his inexperience could be corrected by the will of his class.]

From above downwards through all the grades of society, the same system of responsibility, and the same restraints upon individual exercise of will, persist under varying forms. The conditions within the household differ but little in this regard from the conditions in a government department: no householder, for example, can impose his will, beyond certain fixed limits, even upon his own servants or dependents. Neither for love nor money can a good servant be induced to break with traditional custom; and the old opinion, that the value of a servant is proved by such inflexibility, has been justified by the experience of centuries. Popular sentiment remains conservative; and the apparent zeal for superficial innovation affords no indication of the real order of existence. Fashions and formalities, house-interiors and street-vistas, habits and methods, and all the outer aspects of life are changed; but the old regimentation of society persists under all these surface-shiftings; and the national character remains little affected by all the transformations of Meiji.

The second kind of coercion to which the individual is subjected —the communal, or communistic—[401] seems likely to prove mischievous in the near future, as it signifies practical suppression of the right to compete…. The everyday life of any Japanese city offers numberless suggestions of the manner in which the masses continue to think and to act by groups. But no more familiar and forcible illustration of the fact can be cited than that which is furnished by the code of the kurumaya or jinrikisha-men. According to its terms, one runner must not attempt to pass by another going in the same direction. Exceptions have been made, grudgingly, in favour of runners in private employ,—men selected for strength and speed, who are expected to use their physical powers to the utmost. But among the tens of thousands of public kurumaya, it is the rule that a young and active man must not pass by an old and feeble man, nor even by a needlessly slow and lazy man. To take advantage of one's own superior energy, so as to force competition, is an offence against the calling, and certain to be resented. You engage a good runner, whom you order to make all speed: he springs away splendidly, and keeps up the pace until he happens to overtake some weak or lazy puller, who seems to be moving as slowly as the gait permits. Therewith, instead of bounding by, your man drops immediately behind the slow-going vehicle, and slackens his pace almost to a walk. For half an hour, or more, you may be thus delayed by the regulation which obliges the strong and [402] swift to wait for the weak and slow. An angry appeal is made to the runner who dares to pass another; and the idea behind the words might be thus expressed:—"You know that you are breaking the rule,—that you are acting to the disadvantage of your comrades! This is a hard calling; and our lives would be made harder than they are, if there were no rules to prevent selfish competition!" Of course there is no thought of the consequences of such rules to business interests at large…. Now it is not unjust to say that this moral code of the kurumaya exemplifies an unwritten law which has been always imposed, in varying forms, upon every class of workers in Japan: "You must not try, without special authorization, to pass your fellows." … La carriere est ouverte aux talents—mais la concurrence est defendue!

Of course the modern communal restraint upon free competition represents the survival and extension of that altruistic spirit which ruled the ancient society,—not the mere continuance of any fixed custom. In feudal times there were no kurumaya; but all craftsmen and all labourers formed guilds or companies; and the discipline maintained by those guilds or companies prohibited competition as undertaken for merely personal advantage. Similar or nearly similar forms of organization are maintained by artizans and labourers to-day; and the relation [403] of any outside employer to skilled labour is regulated, by the guild or company, in the old communistic manner…. Let us suppose, for instance, that you wish to have a good house built. For that undertaking, you will have to deal with a very intelligent class of skilled labour; for the Japanese house-carpenter may be ranked with the artist almost as much as with the artizan. You may apply to a building-company; but, as a general rule, you will do better by applying to a master-carpenter, who combines in himself the functions of architect, contractor, and builder. In any event you cannot select and hire workmen: guild-regulations forbid. You can only make your contract; and the master-carpenter, when his plans have been approved, will undertake all the rest,—purchase and transport of material,—hire of carpenters, plasterers, tilers, mat-makers, screen-fitters, brass-workers, stone-cutters, locksmiths, and glaziers. For each master-carpenter represents much more than his own craft-guild: he has his clients in every trade related to house-building and house-furnishing; and you must not dream of trying to interfere with his claims and privileges. He builds your house according to contract; but that is only the beginning of the relation. You have really made with him an agreement which you must not break, without good and sufficient reason, for the rest of your life. Whatever afterwards may happen to any part [404] of your house,—walls, floor, ceiling, roof, foundation,—you must arrange for repairs with him, never with anybody else. Should the roof leak, for instance, you must not send for the nearest tiler or tinsmith; if the plaster cracks, you must not send for a plasterer. The man who built your house holds himself responsible for its condition; and he is jealous of that responsibility: none but he has the right to send for the plasterer, the roofer, the tinsmith. If you interfere with that right, you may have some unpleasant surprises. If you make appeal to the law against that right, you will find that you can get no carpenter, tiler, or plasterer to work for you at any terms. Compromise is always possible; but the guilds will resent a needless appeal to the law. And after all, these craft-guilds are usually faithful performers, and well worth conciliating.

Or take the occupation of landscape-gardening. You want a pretty garden; and you hire a professional gardener who comes to you well recommended. He makes the garden; and you pay his price. But your gardener really represents a company; and by engaging him it is understood that either he, or some other member of the gardeners' corporation to which he belongs, will continue to take care of your garden as long as you own it. At each season he will pay your garden a visit, and put everything to rights—he will clip the hedges, prune the fruit trees, [405] repair the fences, train the climbing-plants, look after the flowers,—putting up paper awnings to protect delicate shrubs from the sun during the hot season, or making little tents of straw to shelter them in time of frost;—he will do a hundred useful and ingenious things for a very small remuneration. You cannot dismiss him, however, without good reason, and hire another gardener to take his place. No other gardener would serve you at any price, unless assured that the original relation had been dissolved by mutual consent. If you have just cause for complaint, the matter can be settled through arbitration; and the guild will see that you have no further trouble. But you cannot dismiss your gardener without cause, merely to engage another.

The above examples will suffice to show the character of the old communistic organization which is yet maintained in a hundred forms. This communism suppressed competition, except as between groups; but it insured good work, and secured easy conditions for the workman. It was the best system possible in those ages of isolation when there was no such thing as want, and when the population, for yet undetermined causes, appears to have remained always below the numerical level at which serious pressure begins…. Another interesting survival is represented by existing conditions of apprenticeship [406] and service,—conditions which also originated in the patriarchal organization, and imposed other kinds of restraint upon competition. Under the old regime service was, for the most part, unsalaried. Boys taken into a commercial house to learn the business, or apprentices bound to a master-workman, were boarded, lodged, clothed, and even educated by their patron, with whom they might hope to pass the rest of their lives. But they were not paid wages until they had learned the business or the trade of their employer, and were fully capable of managing a business or a workshop of their own. To a considerable degree these conditions still prevail in commercial centres,—though the merchant or patron seldom now finds it necessary to send his clerk or apprentice to school. Many of the great commercial houses pay salaries only to men of great experience: other employes are only trained and cared for until their term of service ends, when the most clever among them will be reengaged as experts, and the others helped to start in business for themselves. In like manner the apprentice to a trade, when his term expires, may be reengaged by his master as a hired journeyman, or helped to find permanent employ elsewhere. These paternal and filial relations between employer and employed have helped to make life pleasant and labour cheerful; and the quality of all industrial production must suffer much when they disappear.

[407] Even in private domestic service the patriarchal system still prevails to a degree that is little imagined; and this subject deserves more than a passing mention. I refer especially to female service. The maid-servant, according to the old custom, is not primarily responsible to her employers, but to her own family; and the terms of her service must be arranged with her family, who pledge themselves for their daughter's good behaviour. As a general rule, a nice girl does not seek domestic service for the sake of the wages (which it is now the custom to pay), nor for the sake of a living, but chiefly to prepare herself for marriage; and this preparation is desired as much in the hope of doing credit to her own family, as in the hope of better fitting herself for membership in the family of her future husband. The best servants are country girls; and they are sometimes put out to service very young. Parents are careful about choosing the family into which their daughter thus enters: they particularly desire that the house be one in which a girl can learn nice ways,—therefore a house in which things are ordered according to the old etiquette. A good girl expects to be treated rather as a helper than as a hireling,—to be kindly considered, and trusted, and liked. In an old-fashioned household the maid is indeed so treated; and the relation is not a brief one—from three to five years being the term of service usually agreed upon. But when a girl is [408] taken into service at the age of eleven or twelve, she will probably remain for eight or ten years. Besides wages, she is entitled to receive from her employers the gift of a dress, twice every year, besides other necessary articles of clothing; and she is entitled also to a certain number of holidays. Such wages, or presents in money, as she receives, should enable her to provide herself, by degrees, with a good wardrobe. Except in the event of some extraordinary misfortune, her parents will make no claim upon her wages; but she remains subject to them; and when she is called home to be married, she must go. During the period of her service, the services of her family are also at the disposal of her employers. Even if the mistress or master desire no recognition of the interest taken in the girl, some recognition will certainly be made. If the servant be a farmer's daughter, it is probable that gifts of vegetables, fruits, or fruit trees, garden-plants or other country products, will be sent to the house at intervals fixed by custom;—if the parents belong to the artizan-class, it is likely that some creditable example of handicraft will be presented as a token of gratitude. The gratitude of the parents is not for the wages or the dresses given to their daughter, but for the practical education she receives, and for the moral and material care taken of her, as a temporarily adopted child of the house. The employers may reciprocate such attentions [409] on the part of the parents by contributing to the girl's wedding outfit. The relation, it will be observed, is entirely between families, not between individuals; and it is a permanent relation. Such a relation, in feudal ages, might continue through many generations.

The patriarchal conditions which these survivals exemplify helped to make existence easy and happy. Only from a modern point of view is it possible to criticise them. The worst that can be said about them is that their moral value was chiefly conservative, and that they tended to repress effort in new directions. But where they still endure, Japanese life keeps something of its ancient charm; and where they have disappeared, that charm has vanished forever.

There remains to be considered a third form of restraint,—that exercised upon the individual by official authority. This also presents us with various survivals, which have their bright as well as their dark aspects.

We have seen that the individual has been legally freed from most of the obligations imposed by the ancient law. He is no longer obliged to follow a particular occupation; he is able to travel; he is at liberty to marry into a higher or a lower class than his own; he is not even forbidden to change his religion; he can do a great many things—at his own [410] risk. But where the law leaves him free, the family and the community do not; and the persistence of old sentiment and custom nullifies many of the rights legally conferred. Precisely in the same way, his relations to higher authority are still controlled by traditions which maintain, in despite of constitutional law, many of the ancient restraints, and not a little of the ancient coercion. In theory any man of great talent and energy may rise, from rank to rank, up to the highest positions. But as private life is still controlled to no small degree by the old communism, so public life is yet controlled by survivals of class or clan despotism. The chances for ability to rise without assistance, to win its way to rank and power, are extraordinarily small; since to contend alone against an opposition that thinks by groups, and acts by masses, must be almost hopeless. Only commercial or industrial life now offers really fair opportunities to capable men. The few talented persons of humble origin who do succeed in official directions owe their success chiefly to party-help or clan-patronage: in order to force any recognition of personal ability, group must be opposed to group. Alone, no man is likely to accomplish anything by mere force of competition, outside of trade or commerce…. It is true, of course, that individual talent must in every country encounter many forms of opposition. It is likewise true that the malevolence of envy and the brutalities of class-prejudice [411] have their sociological worth: they help to make it impossible for any but the most gifted to win and to keep success. But in Japan the peculiar constitution of society lends excessive power to social intrigues directed against obscure ability, and makes them highly injurious to the interests of the nation;—for at no previous time in her history has Japan needed, so much as now, the best capacities of her best men, irrespective of class or condition.

But all this was inevitable in the period of reconstruction. More significant is the fact that in no single department of its multitudinous service does the Government yet offer substantial reward to rising merit. No matter how well a man may strive to win Government approbation, he must strive for little more than honour and the bare means of existence. The costliest efforts are no more highly paid in proportion to their worth than the cheapest; the most invaluable services are scarcely better recognized than those most easily dispensed with or replaced. (There have been some remarkable exceptions: I am stating only the general rule.) By extraordinary energy, patience, and cleverness, one may reach, with class-help, some position which in Europe would assure comfort as well as honour; but the emoluments of such a position in Japan will scarcely cover the actual cost of living. Whether in the army or in the navy, in the departments of justice, of education, of communications, or of [412] home affairs,—the differences in remuneration nowhere represent the differences in capacity and responsibility. To rise from grade to grade signifies pecuniarily almost nothing,—for the expenses of each higher position augment out of all proportion to the salaries fixed by law. The general rule has been to exact everywhere the greatest possible amount of service for the least possible amount of pay.* Any one unacquainted with the social history [413] of the country might suppose that the policy of the Government toward its employes consisted in substituting empty honours for material advantages. But the truth is that the Government has simply maintained, under modern forms, the ancient feudal condition of service,—service in exchange for the means of simple but honourable living. In feudal times the farmer was expected to pay all that he could pay for the right to exist; the artist or artizan was expected to content himself with the good fortune of having a distinguished patron; even the ordinary samurai were supplied with barely more than the necessary by their liege-lords. To receive considerably more than the necessary signified extraordinary favour; and the gift was usually accompanied by promotion. But although the same policy is yet successfully maintained by Government, under the modern system of money-payments, the conditions everywhere, outside of commercial life, are incomparably harder than in feudal times. Then the poorest samurai was secured against want, and not liable to be dismissed from his post without fault. Then the teacher received no salary; but the respect of the community and the gratitude of his pupils assured him of the means to live [414] respectably. Then the artizans were patronized by great lords who vied with each other in the encouragement of humble genius. They might expect the genius to be satisfied with merely nominal payment, so far as money was concerned; but they secured him against want or discomfort, allowed him ample leisure to perfect his work, made him happy in the certainty that his best would be prized and praised. But now that the cost of living has tripled or quadrupled, even the artist and the artizan have small encouragement to do their best: cheap rapid work is replacing the beautiful leisurely work of the old days; and the best traditions of the crafts are doomed to perish. It cannot even be said that the state of the agricultural classes to-day is happier or better than in the time when a farmer's land could not legally be taken from him. And as the cost of life continues always to increase, it is evident that at no distant time, the present patient order of things will become impossible.

[*Salaries of judges range from 70 pounds to 500 pounds per annum,—the latter figure representing the highest possible emolument. The highest salary allowed to a Japanese professor in the imperial universities has been fixed at 120 pounds. The wages of employees in the postal departments is barely sufficient to meet the cost of living. The police are paid from 1 pound to 1 pound 10s. per month, according to locality; and the average pay of school-teachers is yet lower (being 9 yen 50 sen, or about 19s. per month),—many receiving less than 7s. a month.

Readers may be interested in the following table of army-payments (1904):—

MONTHLY PAY ALLOWANCE FOR TOTAL HOUSE-RENT yen yen yen

General 500 (50 pounds) 25:00 525:00 Lieutenant-General 333 18:75 351:75 Major-General 263 12:50 275:50 Colonel 179 10:00 189:00 Lieutenant-Colonel 146 8:75 154:75 Major 102 7:50 109:50 Captain (1st grade) 70 4:75 74:75 (2nd grade) 60 4:75 64:75 Lieutenant (1st grade) 45 4:00 49:00 (2nd grade) 34 4:00 38:00 Second Lieutenant 30 3:50 33:50

When these rates of pay were fixed, about twenty years ago, house-rent was cheap: a good house could be rented anywhere at 3 Yen or 4 Yen per month. To-day in Tokyo an officer can scarcely rent even a very small house at less than 19 yen or 20 yen; and prices of food-stuffs have tripled. Yet there have been very few complaints. Officers whose pay will not allow them to rent houses hire rooms wherever they can. Many suffer hardship; but all are proud of the privilege of serving, and no one dreams of resigning.]

To many it would seem that a wise government must recognize the impracticability of indefinitely maintaining its present demand for self-sacrifice, must perceive the necessity of encouraging talent, inviting fair competition, and making the prizes of life large enough to stimulate healthy egoism. But it is possible that the Government has been acting more wisely than outward appearances would indicate. Several years ago a Japanese official made in [415] my presence this curious observation: "Our Government does not wish to encourage competition beyond the necessary. The people are not prepared for it; and if it were strongly encouraged, the worst side of character would came to the surface." How far this statement really expressed any policy I do not know. But every one is aware that free competition can be made as cruel and as pitiless as war,—though we are apt to forget what experience must have been undergone before Occidental free competition could become as comparatively merciful, as it is. Among a people trained for centuries to regard all selfish competition as criminal, and all profit-seeking despicable, any sudden stimulation of effort for purely personal advantage might well be impolitic. Evidence as to how little the nation was prepared, twelve or thirteen years ago, for Western forms of free government, has been furnished by the history of the earlier district-elections and of the first parliamentary sessions. There was really no personal enmity in those furious election-contests, which cost so many lives; there was scarcely any personal antagonism in those parliamentary debates of which the violence astonished strangers. The political struggles were not really between individuals, but between clan-interests, or party-interests; and the devoted followers of each clan or party understood the new politics only as a new kind of war,—a war of loyalty to be fought for the leader's sake, [416]—a war not to be interfered with by any abstract notions of right or justice. Suppose that a people have been always accustomed to think of loyalty in relation to persons rather than to principles,—loyalty as involving the duty of self-sacrifice regardless of consequence,—it is obvious that the first experiments of such a people with parliamentary government will not reveal any comprehension of fair play in the Western sense. Eventually that comprehension may come; but it will not come quickly. And if you can persuade such a people that in other matters every man has a right to act according to his own convictions, and for his own advantage, independently of any group to which he may belong, the immediate result will not be fortunate,—because the sense of individual moral responsibility has not yet been sufficiently cultivated outside of the group-relation.

The probable truth is that the strength of the government up to the present time has been chiefly due to the conservation of ancient methods, and to the survival of the ancient spirit of reverential submission. Later on, no doubt, great changes will have to be made; meanwhile, much must be bravely endured. Perhaps the future history of modern civilization will hold record of nothing more touching than the patient heroism of those myriads of Japanese patriots, content to accept, under legal [417] conditions of freedom, the official servitude of feudal days,—satisfied to give their talent, their strength, their utmost effort, their lives, for the simple privilege of obeying a government that still accepts all sacrifices in the feudal spirit—as a matter of course,—as a national duty. And as a national duty, indeed, the sacrifices are made. All know that Japan is in danger, between the terrible friendship of England and the terrible enmity of Russia,—that she is poor,—that the cost of maintaining her armaments is straining her resources,—that it is everybody's duty to be content with as little as possible. So the complaints are not many…. Nor has the simple obedience of the nation at large been less touching,—especially, perhaps, as regards the imperial order to acquire Western knowledge, to learn Western languages, to imitate Western ways. Only those who have lived in Japan during or before the early nineties are qualified to speak of the loyal eagerness that made self-destruction by over-study a common form of death,—the passionate obedience that impelled even children to ruin their health in the effort to master tasks too difficult for their little minds (tasks devised by well-meaning advisers with no knowledge of Far-Eastern psychology),—and the strange courage of persistence in periods of earthquake and conflagration, when boys and girls used the tiles of their ruined homes for school-slates, and bits of fallen plaster for pencils. What [418] tragedies I might relate even of the higher educational life of universities!—of fine brains giving way under pressure of work beyond the capacity of the average European student,—of triumphs won in the teeth of death,—of strange farewells from pupils in the time of the dreaded examinations, as when one said to me: "Sir, I am very much afraid that my paper is bad, because I came out of the hospital to make it—there is something the matter with my heart." (His diploma was placed in his hands scarcely an hour before he died.) … And all this striving—striving not only against difficulties of study, but in most cases against difficulties of poverty, and underfeeding, and discomfort—has been only for duty, and the means to live. To estimate the Japanese student by his errors, his failures, his incapacity to comprehend sentiments and ideas alien to the experience of his race, is the mistake of the shallow: to judge him rightly one must have learned to know the silent moral heroism of which he is capable.

[419]

OFFICIAL EDUCATION

The extent to which national character has been fixed by the discipline of centuries, and the extent or its extraordinary capacity to resist change, is perhaps most strikingly indicated by certain results of State education. The whole nation is being educated, with Government help, upon a European plan; and the full programme includes the chief subjects of Western study, excepting Greek and Latin classics. From Kindergarten to University the entire system is modern in outward seeming; yet the effect of the new education is much less marked in thought and sentiment than might be supposed. This fact is not to be explained merely by the large place which old Chinese study still occupies in the obligatory programme, nor by differences of belief—it is much more due to the fundamental difference in the Japanese and the European conceptions of education as means to an end. In spite of new system and programme the whole of Japanese education is still conducted upon a traditional plan almost the exact opposite of the Western plan. With us, the repressive part of moral training begins in early childhood—the European or American teacher is strict with the little [420] ones; we think that it is important to inculcate the duties of behaviour,—the "must" and the "must not" of individual obligation,—as soon as possible. Later on, more liberty is allowed. The well-grown boy is made to understand that his future will depend upon his personal effort and capacity; and he is thereafter left, in a great measure, to take care of himself, being occasionally admonished or warned, as seems needful. Finally, the adult student of promise and character may become the intimate, or, under happy circumstances, even the friend of his tutor, to whom he can look for counsel in all difficult situations. And throughout the whole course of mental and moral training competition is not only expected, but required. But it is more and more required as discipline is more and more relaxed, with the passing of boyhood into manhood. The aim of Western education is the cultivation of individual ability and personal character,—the creation of an independent and forceful being.

Now Japanese education has always been conducted, and, in spite of superficial appearances, is still being conducted, mostly upon the reverse plan. Its object never has been to train the individual for independent action, but to train him for cooperative action,—to fit him to occupy an exact place in the mechanism of a rigid society. Constraint among ourselves begins with childhood, and gradually relaxes; constraint in Far-Eastern training begins later, [421] and thereafter gradually tightens; and it is not a constraint imposed directly by parents or teachers—which fact, as we shall presently see, makes an enormous difference in results. Not merely up to the age of school-life,—supposed to begin at six years,—but considerably beyond it, a Japanese child enjoys a degree of liberty far greater than is allowed to Occidental children. Exceptional cases are common, of course; but the general rule is that the child be permitted to do as he pleases, providing that his conduct can cause no injury to himself or to others. He is guarded, but not constrained; admonished, but rarely compelled. In short, he is allowed to be so mischievous that, as a Japanese proverb says, "even the holes by the roadside hate a boy of seven or eight years old"* [*By former custom a newly-born child was said to be one year old; and in this case the words "seven or eight years old" mean "six or seven years old."] (Nanatsu, yatsu—michibata no ana desaimon nikumu). Punishment is administered only when absolutely necessary; and on such occasions, by ancient custom, the entire household—servants and all—intercede for the offender; the little brothers and sisters, if any there be, begging in turn to bear the penalty instead. Whipping is not a common punishment, except among the roughest classes; the moxa is preferred as a deterrent; and it is a severe one. To frighten a child by loud harsh words, or angry looks, is condemned by general opinion: all punishment ought [422] to be inflicted as quietly as possible, the punisher calmly admonishing the while. To slap a child about the head, for any reason, is a proof of vulgarity and ignorance. It is not customary to punish by restraining from play, or by a change of diet, or by any denial of accustomed pleasures. To be perfectly patient with children is the ethical law. At school the discipline begins; but it is at first so very light that it can hardly be called discipline: the teacher does not act as a master, but rather as an elder brother; and there is no punishment beyond a public admonition. Whatever restraint exists is chiefly exerted on the child by the common opinion of his class; and a skilful teacher is able to direct that opinion. Also each class is nominally governed by one or two little captains, selected for character and intelligence; and when a disagreeable order has to be given, it is the child-captain, the kyucho, who is commissioned with the duty of giving it. (These little details are worthy of note: I cite them only to show how early in school-life begins the discipline of opinion, the pressure of the common will, and how perfectly this policy accords with the ethical traditions of the race.) In higher classes the pressure slightly increases; and in higher schools it is very much stronger; the ruling power always being class-sentiment, not the individual will of the teacher. In middle schools the pupils become serious: class-opinion there attains a force to which the teacher [423] himself must bend, as it is quite capable of expelling him for any attempt to override it. Each middle-school class has its elected officers, who represent and enforce the moral code of the majority,—the traditional standard of conduct. (This moral standard is deteriorating; but it survives everywhere to some degree.) Fighting or bullying are yet unknown in Japanese schools of this grade for obvious reasons: there can be little indulgence of personal anger, and no attempt at personal domination, under a discipline enforcing a uniform manner of behaviour. It is never the domination of the one over the many that regulates class-life: it is always the rule of the many over the one,—and the power is formidable. The student who consciously or unconsciously offends class-sentiment will suddenly find himself isolated,—condemned to absolute solitude. No one will speak to him or notice him even outside of the school, until such time as he decides to make a public apology, when his pardon will depend upon a majority-vote.

Such temporary ostracism is not unreasonably feared, because it is regarded even outside of student-circles as a disgrace; and the memory of it will cling to the offender during the rest of his career. However high he may rise in official or professional life in after years, the fact that he was once condemned by the general opinion of his schoolmates will not be forgotten,—though circumstances may occur [424] which will turn the fact to his credit…. In the great Government schools—to one of which the student may proceed after graduating from a middle-school—class-discipline is still more severe. The instructors are mostly officials looking for promotion: the students are grown men, preparing for the University, and destined, with few exceptions, for public office. In this quietly and coldly ordered world there is little place for the joy of youth, and small opportunity for sympathetic expansion. There are gatherings and societies; but these are arranged or established for practical purposes—chiefly in relation to particular branches of study; there is little time for merry-making, and less inclination. Under all circumstances, a certain formal demeanour is exacted by tradition,—a tradition older by far than any public school. Everybody watches everybody: eccentricities or singularities are quickly marked and quietly suppressed. The results of this class-discipline, as maintained in some institutions, must seem to the foreign observer discomforting. What most impressed me about these higher official schools was the sinister silence of them. In one where I taught for several years—the most conservative school in the country—there were more than a thousand young men, full of life and energy; yet during the intervals between classes, or during recreation-hours in the playground, the garden, and the gymnastic hall, the general hush gave one a strange sense of [425] oppression. One might watch a game of foot-ball being played, and hear nothing but the thud of the kicking; or one might watch wrestling-contests in the jiujutsu-room, and hear no word spoken for half an hour at a time. (The rules of jiujutsu, it is true, require not only silence, but the total suppression of all visible emotional interest on the part of the spectators.) All this repression at first seemed to me very strange—though I knew that thirty years previously, the training at samurai-schools compelled the same impassiveness and reticence.

At last the University is reached,—the great gate of ceremony to public office. Here the student finds himself released from the restraints previously imposed upon his private life,* though the class-will continues to rule him in certain directions. As a rule, the student passes into official life after having graduated, marries, and becomes the head, or the [426] prospective head, of a household. How sudden the transformation of the man at this epoch of his career, only those who have observed the transformation can imagine. It is then that the full significance of Japanese education reveals itself.

[*This release is of recent date; and the results, by the acknowledgment of the students themselves, have not been good. Twenty-five years ago, University study was so seriously thought about that a scholar who failed, through his own fault, would have been considered a criminal. There was then a Chinese poem in vogue, which used to be sung at the departure of youths for the University of that time (Daigaku Nanko) by their friends and relations:—

Danji kokorozashi wo tatete, kyokwan wo idzu; Gaku moshi narazunba, shisudomo kaeradzu,

[The young man, having made a firm resolve, leaves his native home. If he fail to acquire learning, then, even though he die, he must never return.]

In those years also it was obligatory upon students to live and dress simply, and to abstain from all self-indulgence.]

Few incidents of Japanese life are more surprising than the metamorphosis of the gawky student into the dignified, impassive, easy-mannered official. But a little time ago he was respectfully asking, cap in hand, the explanation of some text, the meaning of some foreign idiom; to-day, perhaps, he is judging cases in some court, or managing diplomatic correspondence under ministerial supervision, or directing the management of some public school. Whatever you may have thought of his particular capacity as a student, you will scarcely doubt his particular fitness for the position to which he has been called. Success in study was at best a secondary consideration in the matter of his appointment,—though he had to succeed. He was put through some special course, under high protection, after having been selected for certain qualities of character,—or at least for the promise of such qualities. There may have been favouritism in his case; but, generally speaking, capable men are appointed to positions of trust: the Government seldom makes serious mistakes. This man has value beyond what mere study could make for him,—some capacity in the direction of management or of organization, [427]—some natural force or talent which his training has served to cultivate. According to the quality of his worth, his position was chosen for him in advance. His long, hard schooling has taught him more than books can teach, and more than a stupid person can ever learn: how to read minds and motives,—how to remain impassive under all circumstances,—how to reach a truth quickly by simple questioning,—how to live upon his guard (even against the most intimate of old acquaintances),—how to remain, even when most amiable, secretive and inscrutable. He has graduated in the art of worldly wisdom. He is really a wonderful person, a highly developed type of his race; and no inexperienced Occidental is capable of judging him, because his visible acquirements count for very little in the measure of his relative value. His University study—his English or French or German knowledge—serves him only as so much oil to make easy the working of certain official machinery: he esteems this learning only as means to some administrative end; his real learning, considerably deeper, represents the development of the Japanese soul of him. Between that mind and any Western mind the distance has become immeasurable. And now, less than ever before, does he belong to himself. He belongs to a family, to a party, to a government: privately he is bound by custom; publicly he must act according to order only, and never dream of yielding to [428] any impulses at variance with order, however generous or sensible such impulses may be. A word might ruin him: he has learned to use no words unnecessarily. By silent submission and tireless observance of duty he may rise, and rise quickly: he may become Governor, Chief justice, Minister of State, Minister Plenipotentiary; but the higher he rises, the heavier will his bonds become.

Long training in caution and self-control is indeed an indispensable preparation for official existence; the ability either to keep a position won, or to resign it with honour, depending much upon such training. The most sinister circumstance of official life is the absence of moral freedom,—the absence of the right to act according to one's own convictions of justice. The subordinate, who desires above all things to keep his place, is not supposed to have personal convictions or sympathies—save by permission. He is not the slave of a man, but of a system—a system as old as China. Were human nature perfect, that system would be perfect; but so long as human nature remains what it is now, the system leaves much to be desired. Everything may depend upon the personal character of those temporarily intrusted with higher power; and the only choice left for the most capable servant under a bad master may be to resign or to do wrong. The strong man faces the problem bravely and resigns; but for one strong man there are fifty timid ones. [429] Probably the prospect of a broken career is much less terrifying than the ancient idea of crime attaching to any form of insubordination. As the forms of a religion survive after the faith in doctrine has passed away, so the power of Government to coerce even conscience still remains, though religion is no longer identified with Government. The system of secrecy, implacably enforced, helps to maintain the vague awe that has always attached to the idea of administrative authority; and such authority is practically omnipotent within those limits which I have already indicated. To be favoured by authority means to experience all the illusive pleasure of a suddenly created popularity: an entire community, a whole city, is made by a word to turn all the amiable side of its human nature toward the favourite,—to charm him into the belief that he is worthy of the best that the world can give him. But suppose that the moving powers happen, latter on, to find the favoured man in the way of some policy—lo! at another whispered word he finds himself, without knowing why, the public enemy. None speak to him or salute him or smile upon him—save ironically: long-esteemed friends pass him by without recognition, or, if pursued, reply to his most earnest questions with all possible brevity and caution. Most likely they do not know the "why" of the matter: they only know that orders have been given, and that into the [430] reason of orders it is not good to enquire. Even the street-children know this much, and mock the despondent victim of fortune; even the dogs seem instinctively to divine the change and bark at him as he passes by…. Such is the power of official displeasure; and the penalty of a blunder or a breach of discipline may extend considerably further—but in feudal times the offender would have been simply told to perform harakiri. Sometimes, when the wrong men get into power, the force of authority may be used for malevolent ends; and in such event it requires not a little courage to disobey an order to act against conscience. What saved Japanese society in former ages from the worst results of this form of tyranny, was the moral sentiment of the mass,—the common feeling that underlay all submission to authority, and remained always capable, if pressed upon too brutally, of compelling a reaction. Conditions to-day are more favourable to justice; but it requires much tact, steadiness, and resolution on the part of a rising official to steer himself safely among the reefs and the whirlpools of the new political life.