So far as we can see, the religion founded by one who deserted his wife

and babe did nothing to check concubinage or polygamy. It simply allowed

these things, or ameliorated their ancient barbaric conditions through

the law of kindness. Nevertheless, it brought education and culture

within the family as well as within the court. It would be an

interesting question to discuss how far the age of classic vernacular

prose or the early mediaeval literature of romance, which is almost

wholly the creation of woman,[57] is due to Buddhism, or how far the

credit belongs, by induction or reaction, to the Chinese movement in

favor of learning. Certainly, the faith of India touches and feeds the

imagination far more than does that of China. Certainly also, the

animating spirit of most of the popular literature is due to Buddhistic

culture. The Shin sect, which permits the marriage of the priests and

preaches the salvation of woman, probably leads all others in according

honor to her as well as in elevating her social position.

Buddhism, like Roman Catholicism, and as compared to Confucianism which

is protestant and masculine, is feminine in its type. In Japan the place

of the holy Virgin Mary is taken by Kuannon, the goddess of mercy; and

her shrine is one of the most popular of all. Much the same may be said

of Benten, the queen of the heaven and mistress of the seas. The angels

of Buddhism are always feminine, and, as in the unscriptural and pagan

conception of Christian angels, have wings.[58] So also in the legends

of Gautama, in the Buddhist lives of the saints, and in legendary lore

as well as in glyptic and pictorial art, the female being transfigured

in loveliness is a striking figure. Nevertheless, after all is summed up

that can possibly be said in favor of Buddhism, the position it accords

to woman is not only immeasurably beneath that given by Christianity,

but is below that conceded by Shintō, which knows not only goddesses

and heroines, but also priestesses and empresses.[59]

According to the popular ethical view as photographed in language,

literature and art, jealousy is always represented by a female demon.

Indeed, most of the tempters, devils, and transformations of humanity

into malign beings, whether pretas, asuras, oni, foxes, badgers, or

cats, are females. As the Chinese ideographs associate all things weak

or vile with women, so the tell-tale words of Japanese daily speech are

but reflections of the dogmas coined in the Buddhist mint. In Japanese,

chastity means not moral cleanliness without regard to sex, but only

womanly duties. For, while the man is allowed a loose foot, the woman is

expected not only to be absolutely spotless, but also never to show any

jealousy, however wide the husband may roam, or however numerous may be

the concubines in his family. In a word, there is the double standard of

morals, not only of priest and laity, but of man and woman. The position

of the Japanese woman even of to-day, despite that eagerness once shown

to educate her--an eagerness which soon cooled in the government

schools, but which keeps an even pulse in the Christian home and

college--is still relatively one of degradation as compared with that of

her sister in Christendom. For this, the mid-Asian religion is not

wholly responsible, yet it is largely so.

Influence on the Japanese Character.

In regard to the influence of Buddhism upon the morals and character of

the Japanese, there is much to be said in praise, and much also in

criticism. It has aided powerfully to educate the people in habits of

gentleness and courtesy, but instead of aspiration and expectancy of

improvement, it has given to them that spirit of hopeless resignation

which is so characteristic of the Japanese masses. Buddhism has so

dominated common popular literature, daily life and speech, that all

their mental procedure and their utterance is cast in the moulds of

Buddhist doctrine. The fatalism of the Moslem world expressed in the

idea of Kismet, has its analogue in the Japanese Ingwa, or "cause and

effect,"--the notion of an evolution which is atheistic, but viewed from

the ethical side. This idea of Ingwa is the key to most Japanese novels

as well as dramas of real life.[60] While Buddhism continually preaches

this doctrine of Karma or Ingwa,[61] the law of cause and effect, as

being sufficient to explain all things, it shows its insufficiency and

emptiness by leaving out the great First Cause of all. In a word,

Buddhism is law, but not gospel. It deals much with man, but not with

man's relations with his Creator, whom it utterly ignores. Christianity

comes not to destroy its ethics, beautiful as they are, nor to ignore

its metaphysics; but to fulfil, to give a higher truth, and to reveal a

larger Universe and One who fills it all--not only law, but a Law-giver.

CHAPTER XI - A CENTURY OF ROMAN CHRISTIANITY

"_Sicut cadaver._"

"Et fiet unum ovile et unus pastor."--Vulgate, John x. 16.

"He (Xavier) has been the moon of that 'Society of Jesus' of

which Ignatius Loyola was the guiding sun."--S.W. Duffield.

"My God I love Thee; not because I hope for Heaven thereby,

Nor yet because, who love Thee not, must, die eternally.

So would I love Thee, dearest Lord, and in Thy praise will sing;

Solely because thou art my God, and my eternal King."

--Hymn attributed to Francis Xavier.

"Half hidden, stretching in a lengthened line

In front of China, which its guide shall be,

Japan abounds in mines of Silver fine,

And shall enlighten'd be by holy faith divine."

--Camoens

"The people of this Iland of Japon are good of nature, curteous

aboue measure, and valiant in warre; their justice is seuerely

executed without any partialitie vpon transgressors of the law.

They are gouerned in great ciuilitie. I meane, not a land better

gouerned in the world by ciuill policie. The people be verie

superstitious in their religion, and are of diuers

opinions."--Will Adams, October 22, 1611.

"A critical history of Japan remains to be written ... We should

know next to nothing of what may be termed the Catholic episode

of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had we access to

none but the official Japanese sources. How can we trust those

sources when they deal with times yet more remote?"--Chamberlain.

"The annals of the primitive Church furnish no instances of

sacrifice or heroic constancy, in the Coliseum or the Roman

arenas, that were not paralleled on the dry river-beds or

execution-grounds of Japan."

"They ... rest from their labors; and their works do follow

them. "--Revelation.

CHAPTER XI - A CENTURY OF ROMAN CHRISTIANITY

Darkest Japan.

The story of the first introduction and propagation of Roman

Christianity in Japan, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

has been told by many writers, both old and new, and in many languages.

Recent research upon the soil,[1] both natives and foreigners making

contributions, has illustrated the subject afresh. Relics and memorials

found in various churches, monasteries and palaces, on both sides of the

Pacific and the Atlantic, have cast new light upon the fascinating

theme. Both Christian and non-Christian Japanese of to-day, in their

travels in the Philippines, China, Formosa, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and

Italy, being keenly alert for memorials of their countrymen, have met

with interesting trovers. The descendants of the Japanese martyrs and

confessors now recognize their own ancestors, in the picture galleries

of Italian nobles, and in Christian churches see lettered tombs bearing

familiar names, or in western museums discern far-eastern works of art

brought over as presents or curiosities, centuries ago.

Roughly speaking, Japanese Christianity lasted phenomenally nearly a

century, or more exactly from 1542 to 1637, During this time, embassies

or missions crossed the seas not only of Chinese and Peninsular Asia,

circumnavigating Africa and thus reaching Europe, but also sailed across

the Pacific, and visited papal Christendom by way of Mexico and the

Atlantic Ocean.

This century of Southern Christianity and of commerce with Europe

enabled Japan, which had previously been almost unheard of, except

through the vague accounts of Marco Polo and the semi-mythical stories

by way of China, to leave a conspicuous mark, first upon the countries

of southern Europe, and later upon Holland and England. As in European

literature Cathay became China, and Zipango or Xipangu was recognized as

Japan, so also the curiosities, the artistic fabrics, the strange things

from the ends of the earth, soon became familiar in Europe. Besides the

traffic in mercantile commodities, there were exchanges of words. The

languages of Europe were enriched by Japanese terms, such as soy, moxa,

goban, japan (lacquer or varnish), etc., while the tongue of Nippon

received an infusion of new terms,[2] and a notable list of inventions

was imported from Europe.

We shall merely outline, with critical commentary, the facts of history

which have been so often told, but which in our day have received

luminous illustration. We shall endeavor to treat the general phenomena,

causes and results of Christianity in Japan in the same judicial spirit

with which we have considered Buddhism.

Whatever be the theological or political opinions of the observer who

looks into the history of Japan at about the year 1540, he will

acknowledge that this point of time was a very dark moment in her known

history. Columbus, who was familiar with the descriptions of Marco Polo,

steered his caravels westward with the idea of finding Xipangu, with its

abundance of gold and precious gems; but the Genoese did not and could

not know the real state of affairs existing in Dai Nippon at this time.

Let us glance at this.

The duarchy of Throne and Camp, with the Mikado in Kiōto and the

Shōgun at Kamakura, with the elaborate feudalism under it, had fallen

into decay. The whole country was split up into a thousand warring

fragments. To these convulsions of society, in which only the priest and

the soldier were in comfort, while the mass of the people were little

better than serfs, must be added the frequent violent earthquakes,

drought and failure of crops, with famine and pestilence. There was

little in religion to uplift and cheer. Shintō had sunk into the

shadow of a myth. Buddhism had become outwardly a system of political

gambling rather than the ordered expression of faith. Large numbers of

the priests were like the mercenaries of Italy, who sold their influence

and even their swords or those of their followers, to the highest

bidder. Besides being themselves luxurious and dissolute, their

monasteries were fortresses, in which only the great political gamblers,

and not the oppressed people, found comfort and help. Millions of once

fertile acres had been abandoned or left waste. The destruction of

libraries, books and records is something awful to contemplate; and "the

times of Ashikaga" make a wilderness for the scapegoat of chronology.

Kiōto, the sacred capital, had been again and again plundered and

burnt. Those who might be tempted to live in the city amid the ruins,

ran the risk of fire, murder, or starvation. Kamakura, once the

Shō-gun's seat of authority, was, a level waste of ashes.

Even China, Annam and Korea suffered from the practical dissolution of

society in the island empire; for Japanese pirates ravaged their coasts

to steal, burn and kill. Even as for centuries in Europe, Christian

churches echoed with that prayer in the litanies: "From the fury of the

Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us," so, along large parts of the deserted

coasts of Chinese Asia, the wretched inhabitants besought their gods to

avenge them against the "Wojen." To this day in parts of Honan in China,

mothers frighten their children and warn them to sleep by the fearful

words "The Japanese are coming."

First Coming of Europeans.

This time, then, was that of darkest Japan. Yet the people who lived in

darkness saw great light, and to them that dwelt in the shadow of death,

light sprang up.

When Pope Alexander VI. bisected the known world, assigning the western

half, including America to Spain, and the eastern half, including Asia

and its outlying archipelagos to the Portuguese, the latter sailed and

fought their way around Africa to India, and past the golden Chersonese.

In 1542, exactly fifty years after the discovery of America, Dai Nippon

was reached. Mendez Pinto, on a Chinese pirate junk which had been

driven by a storm away from her companions, set foot upon an island

called Tanégashima. This name among the country folks is still

synonymous with guns and pistols, for Pinto introduced fire-arms, and

powder.[3]

During six months spent by the "mendacious" Pinto on the island, the

imitative people made no fewer than six hundred match-locks or

arquebuses. Clearing twelve hundred per cent. on their cargo, the three

Portuguese loaded with presents, returned to China. Their countrymen

quickly flocked to this new market, and soon the beginnings of regular

trade with Portugal were inaugurated. On the other hand, Japanese began

to be found as far west as India. To Malacca, while Francis Xavier was

laboring there, came a refugee Japanese, named Anjiro. The disciple of

Loyola, and this child of the Land of the Rising Sun met. Xavier, ever

restless and ready for a new field, was fired with the idea of

converting Japan. Anjiro, after learning Portuguese and becoming a

Christian, was baptized with the name of Paul. The heroic missionary of

the cross and keys then sailed with his Japanese companion, and in 1549

landed at Kagoshima,[4] the capital of Satsuma. As there was no central

government then existing in Japan, the entrance of the foreigners, both

lay and clerical, was unnoticed.

Having no skill in the learning of languages, and never able to master

one foreign tongue completely, Xavier began work with the aid of an

interpreter. The jealousy of the daimiō, because his rivals had been

supplied with fire-arms by the Portuguese merchants, and the plots and

warnings of those Buddhist priests (who were later crushed by the

Satsuma clansmen as traitors), compelled Xavier to leave this province.

He went first to Hirado,[5] next to Nagatō, and then to Bungo, where

he was well received. Preaching and teaching through his Japanese

interpreter, he formed Christian congregations, especially at

Yamaguchi.[6] Thus, within a year, the great apostle to the Indies had

seen the quick sprouting of the seed which he had planted. His ambition

was now to go to the imperial capital, Kiōto, and there advocate the

claims of Christ, of Mary and of the Pope.

Thus far, however, Xavier had seen only a few seaports of comparatively

successful daimiōs. Though he had heard of the unsettled state of the

country because of the long-continued intestine strife, he evidently

expected to find the capital a splendid city. Despite the armed bands of

roving robbers and soldiers, he reached Kiōto safely, only to find

streets covered with ruins, rubbish and unburied corpses, and a general

situation of wretchedness. He was unable to obtain audience of either

the Shōgun or the Mikado. Even in those parts of the city where he

tried to preach, he could obtain no hearers in this time of war and

confusion. So after two weeks he turned his face again southward to

Bungo, where he labored for a few months; but in less than two years

from his landing in Japan, this noble but restless missionary left the

country, to attempt the spiritual conquest of China. One year later,

December 2, 1551, he died on the island of Shanshan, or Sancian, in the

Canton River, a few miles west of Macao.

Christianity Flourishes.

Nevertheless, Xavier's inspiring example was like a shining star that

attracted scores of missionaries. There being in this time of political

anarchy and religious paralysis none to oppose them, their zeal, within

five years, bore surprising fruits. They wrote home that there were

seven churches in the region around Kiōto, while a score or more of

Christian congregations had been gathered in the southwest. In 1581

there were two hundred churches and one hundred and fifty thousand

native Christians. Two daimiōs had confessed their faith, and in the

Mikado's minister, Nobunaga (1534-1582), the foreign priests found a

powerful supporter.[7] This hater and scourge of the Buddhist priesthood

openly welcomed and patronized the Christians, and gave them eligible

sites on which to build dwellings and churches. In every possible way he

employed the new force, which he found pliantly political, as well as

intellectually and morally a choice weapon for humbling the bonzes, whom

he hated as serpents. The Buddhist church militant had become an army

with banners and fortresses. Nobunaga made it the aim of his life to

destroy the military power of the hierarchy, and to humble the priests

for all time. He hoped at least to extract the fangs of what he believed

to be a politico-religious monster, which menaced the life of the

nation. Unfortunately, he was assassinated in 1582. To this day the

memory of Nobunaga is execrated by the Buddhists. They have deified Kato

Kiyomasa and Iyéyasŭ, the persecutors of the Christians. To Nobunaga

they give the title of Bakadono, or Lord Fool.

In 1583, an embassy of four young noblemen was despatched by the

Christian daimiōs of Kiushiu, the second largest island in the

empire, to the Pope to declare themselves spiritual--though as some of

their countrymen suspected, political--vassals of the Holy See. It was

in the three provinces of Bungo, Omura and Arima, that Christianity was

most firmly rooted. After an absence of eight years, in 1590, the envoys

from the oriental to the occidental ends of the earth, returned to

Nagasaki, accompanied by seventeen more Jesuit fathers--an important

addition to the many Portuguese "religious" of that order already in

Japan.

Yet, although there was to be still much missionary activity, though

printing presses had been brought from Europe for the proper diffusion

of Christian literature in the Romanized colloquial,[8] though there

were yet to be built more church edifices and monasteries, and Christian

schools to be established, a sad change was nigh. Much seed which was

yet to grow in secret had been planted,--like the exotic flowers which

even yet blossom and shed their perfume in certain districts of Japan,

and which the traveller from Christendom instantly recognizes, though

the Portuguese Christian church or monastery centuries ago disappeared

in fire, or fell to the earth and disappeared. Though there were to be

yet wonderful flashes of Christian success, and the missionaries were to

travel over Japan even up to the end of the main island and accompany

the Japanese army to Korea; yet it may be said that with the death of

Nobunaga at the hands of the traitor Akéchi, we see the high-water mark

of the flood-tide of Japanese Christianity. "Akéchi reigned three days,"

but after him were to arise a ruler and central government jealous and

hostile. After this flood was to come slowly but surely the ebb-tide,

until it should leave, outwardly at least, all things as before.

The Jesuit fathers, with instant sensitiveness, felt the loss of their

champion and protector, Nobunaga. The rebel and assassin, Akéchi,

ambitious to imitate and excel his master, promised the Christians to do

more for them even than Nobunaga had done, provided they would induce

the daimiō Takayama to join forces with his. It is the record of

their own friendly historian, and not of an enemy, that they, led by the

Jesuit father Organtin, attempted this persuasion. To the honor of the

Christian Japanese Takayama, he refused.[9] On the contrary, he marched

his little army of a thousand men to Kiōto, and, though opposed to a

force of eight thousand, held the capital city until Hidéyoshi, the

loyal general of the Mikado, reached the court city and dispersed the

assassin's band. Hidéyoshi soon made himself familiar with the whole

story, and his keen eye took in the situation.

This "man on horseback," master of the situation and moulder of the

destinies of Japan, Hidéyoshi (1536-1598), was afterward known as the

Taikō, or Retired Regent. The rarity of the title makes it applicable

in common speech to this one person. Greater than his dead master,

Nobunaga, and ingenious in the arts of war and peace, Hidéyoshi

compelled the warring daimiōs, even the proud lord of Satsuma,[10] to

yield to his power, until the civil minister of the emperor, reverently

bowing, could say: "All under Heaven, Peace." Now, Japan had once more a

central government, intensely jealous and despotic, and with it the new

religion must sooner or later reckon. Religion apart from politics was

unknown in the Land of the Gods.

Yet, in order to employ the vast bodies of armed men hitherto accustomed

to the trade of war, and withal jealous of China and hostile to Korea,

Hidéyoshi planned the invasion of the little peninsular kingdom by these

veterans whose swords were restless in their scabbards. After months of

preparation, he despatched an army in two great divisions, one under the

Christian general Konishi, and one under the Buddhist general Kato.

After a brilliant campaign of eighteen days, the rivals, taking

different routes, met in the Korean capital. In the masterly campaign

which followed, the Japanese armies penetrated almost to the extreme

northern boundary of the kingdom. Then China came to the rescue and the

Japanese were driven southward.

During the six or seven years of war, while the invaders crossed swords

with the natives and their Chinese allies, and devastated Korea to an

extent from which she has never recovered, there were Jesuit

missionaries attending the Japanese armies. It is not possible or even

probable, however, that any seeds of Christianity were at this time left

in the peninsula. Korean Christianity sprang up nearly two centuries

later, wind-wafted from China.[11]

During the war there was always more or less of jealousy, mostly

military and personal, between Konishi and Kato, which however was

aggravated by the priests on either side. Kato, being then and afterward

a fierce champion of the Buddhists, glorified in his orthodoxy, which

was that of the Nichiren sect. He went into battle with a banneret full

of texts, stuck in his back and flying behind him. His example was

copied by hundreds of his officers and soldiers. On their flags and

guidons was inscribed the famous apostrophe of the Nichiren sect, so

often heard in their services and revivals to-day (Namu miyō ho ren

gé kiō), and borrowed from the Saddharma Pundarika: "Glory be to the

salvation-bringing Lotus of the True Law."

The Hostility of Hidéyoshi.

Konishi, on the other hand, was less numerously and perhaps less

influentially backed by, and made the champion of, the European

brethren; and as all the negotiations between the invaders and the

allied Koreans and Chinese had to be conducted in the Chinese script,

the alien fathers were, as secretaries and interpreters, less useful

than the native Japanese bonzes.

Yet this jealousy and hostility in the camps of the invaders proved to

be only correlative to the state of things in Japan. Even supposing the

statistics in round numbers, reported at that time, to be exaggerated,

and that there were not as many as the alleged two hundred thousand

Christians, yet there were, besides scores of thousands of confessing

believers among the common people, daimiōs, military leaders, court

officers and many persons of culture and influence. Nevertheless, the

predominating influence at the Kiōto court was that of Buddhism; and

as the cult that winks at polygamy was less opposed to Hidéyoshi's

sensualism and amazing vanity, the illustrious upstart was easily made

hostile to the alien faith. According to the accounts of the Jesuits, he

took umbrage because a Portuguese captain would not please him by

risking his ship in coming out of deep water and nearer land, and

because there were Christian maidens of Arima who scorned to yield to

his degrading proposals. Some time after these episodes, an edict

appeared, commanding every Jesuit to quit the country within twenty

days. There were at this time sixty-five foreign missionaries in the

country.

Then began a series of persecutions, which, however, were carried on

spasmodically and locally, but not universally or with system. Bitter in

some places, they were neutralized or the law became a dead letter, in

other parts of the realm. It is estimated that ten thousand new converts

were made in the single year, 1589, that is, the second year after the

issue of the edict, and again in the next year, 1590. It might even be

reasonable to suppose that, had the work been conducted wisely and

without the too open defiance of the letter of the law, the awful sequel

which history knows, might not have been.

Let us remember that the Duke of Alva, the tool of Philip II., failing

to crush the Dutch Republic had conquered Portugal for his master. The

two kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula were now united under one crown.

Spain longed for trade with Japan, and while her merchants hoped to

displace their Portuguese rivals, the Spanish Franciscans not scrupling

to wear a political cloak and thus override the Pope's bull of

world-partition, determined to get a foothold alongside of the Jesuits.

So, in 1593 a Spanish envoy of the governor of the Philippine Islands

came to Kiōto, bringing four Spanish Franciscan priests, who were

allowed to build houses in Kiōto, but only on the express

understanding that this was because of their coming as envoys of a

friendly power, and with the explicitly specified condition that they

were not to preach, either publicly or privately. Almost immediately

violating their pledge and the hospitality granted them, these

Spaniards, wearing the vestments of their order, openly preached in the

streets. Besides exciting discord among the Christian congregations

founded by the Jesuits, they were violent in their language.

Hidéyoshi, to gratify his own mood and test his power as the actual

ruler for a shadowy emperor, seized nine preachers while they were

building churches at Kiōto and Osaka. They were led to the

execution-ground in exactly the same fashion as felons, and executed by

crucifixion, at Nagasaki, February 5, 1597. Three Portuguese Jesuits,

six Spanish Franciscans and seventeen native Christians were stretched

on bamboo crosses, and their bodies from thigh to shoulder were

transfixed with spears. They met their doom uncomplainingly.

In the eye of the Japanese law, these men were put to death, not as

Christians, but as law-breakers and as dangerous political conspirators.

The suspicions of Hidéyoshi were further confirmed by a Spanish

sea-captain, who showed him a map of the world on which were marked the

vast dominions of the King of Spain; the Spaniard informing the

Japanese, in answer to his shrewd question, that these great conquests

had been made by the king's soldiers following up the priests, the work

being finished by the native and foreign allies.

The Political Character of Roman Christianity.

The Roman Catholic "Histoire del' Église Chrétienne" shows the political

character of the missionary movement in Japan, a character almost

inextricably associated with the papal and other political Christianity

of the times, when State and Church were united in all the countries of

Europe, both Catholic and Protestant. Even republican Holland, leader of

toleration and forerunner of the modern Christian spirit, permitted,

indeed, the Roman Catholics to worship in private houses or in sacred

edifices not outwardly resembling churches, but prohibited all public

processions and ceremonies, because religion and politics at that time

were as Siamese twins. Only the Anabaptists held the primitive Christian

and the American doctrine of the separation of politics from

ecclesiasticism. Except in the country ruled by William the Silent, all

magistrates meddled with men's consciences.[12]

In 1597, Hidéyoshi died, and the missionaries took heart again. The

Christian soldiers returning by thousands from Korea, declared

themselves in favor of Hidéyori, son of the dead Taikō. Encouraged by

those in power, and by the rising star Iyéyasŭ (1542-1616), the

fathers renewed their work and the number of converts increased.

Though peace reigned, the political situation was one of the greatest

uncertainty, and with two hundred thousand soldiers gathered around

Kiōto, under scores of ambitious leaders, it was hard to keep the

sword in the sheath. Soon the line of cleavage found Iyéyasŭ and his

northern captains on one side, and most of the Christian leaders and

southern daimiōs on the other. In October, 1600, with seventy-five

thousand men, the future unifier of Japan stood on the ever-memorable

field of Sékigahara. The opposing army, led largely by Christian

commanders, left their fortress to meet the one whom they considered a

usurper, in the open field. In the battle which ensued, probably the

most decisive ever fought on the soil of Japan, ten thousand men lost

their lives. The leading Christian generals, beaten, but refusing out of

principle because they were Christians, to take their own lives by

_hara-kiri_, knelt willingly at the common blood-pit and had their heads

stricken off by the executioner.

Then began a new era in the history of the empire, and then were laid by

Iyéyasŭ the foundation-lines upon which the Japan best known to

Europe has existed for nearly three centuries. The creation of a central

executive government strong enough to rule the whole empire, and hold

down even the southern and southwestern daimiōs, made it still worse

for the converts of the European teachers, because in the Land of the

Gods government is ever intensely pagan.

In adjusting the feudal relations of his vassals in Kiushiu, Iyéyasŭ

made great changes, and thus the political status of the Christians was

profoundly altered. The new daimiōs, carrying out the policy of their

predecessors who had been taught by the Jesuits, but reversing its

direction, began to persecute their Christian subjects, and to compel

them to renounce their faith. One of the leading opposers of the

Christians and their most cruel persecutor, was Kato, the zealous

Nichirenite. Like Brandt, the famous Iroquois Indian, who, in the Mohawk

Valley is execrated as a bloodthirsty brute, and on the Canadian side is

honored with a marble statue and considered not only as the translator

of the prayer-book but also as a saint; even also as Claverhouse, who,

in Scotland is looked upon as a murderous demon, but in England as a

conscientious and loyal patriot; so Kato, the _vir ter execrandus_ of

the Jesuits, is worshipped in his shrine at the Nichiren temple at

Ikégami, near Tōkiō,[13] and is praised by native historians as

learned, brave and true.

The Christians of Kiushiu, in a few cases, actually took up arms against

their new rulers and oppressors, though it was a new thing under the

Japanese sun for peasantry to oppose not only civil servants of the law,

but veterans in armor. Iyéyasŭ, now having time to give his attention

wholly to matters of government and to examine the new forces that had

entered Japanese life, followed Hidéyoshi in the suspicion that, under

the cover of the western religion, there lurked political designs. He

thought he saw confirmation of his theories, because the foreigners

still secretly or openly paid court to Hidéyori, and at the same time

freely disbursed gifts and gold as well as comfort to the persecuted.

Resolving to crush the spirit of independence in the converts and to

intimidate the foreign emissaries, Iyéyasŭ with steel and blood put

down every outbreak, and at last, in 1606, issued his edict[14]

prohibiting Christianity.

The Quarrels of the Christians.

About the same time, Protestant influences began to work against the

papal emissaries. The new forces from the triumphant Dutch republic,

which having successfully defied Spain for a whole generation had

reached Japan even before the Great Truce, were opposed to the Spaniards

and to the influence of both Jesuits and Franciscans. Hollanders at

Lisbon, obtaining from the Spanish archives charts and geographical

information, had boldly sailed out into the Eastern seas, and carried

the orange white and blue flag to the ends of the earth, even to Nippon.

Between Prince Maurice, son of William the Silent, and the envoys of

Iyéyasŭ, there was made a league of commerce as well as of peace and

friendship. Will Adams,[15] the English pilot of the Dutch ships, by his

information given to Iyéyasŭ, also helped much to destroy the Jesuits

influence and to hurt their cause, while both the Dutch and English were

ever busy in disseminating both correct information and polemic

exaggeration, forging letters and delivering up to death by fire the

_padres_ when captured at sea.

In general, however, it may be said that while Christian converts and

the priests were roughly handled in the South, yet there was

considerable missionary activity and success in the North. Converts were

made and Christian congregations were gathered in regions remote from

Kiōto and Yedo, which latter place, like St. Petersburg in the West,

was being made into a large city. Even outlying islands, such as Sado,

had their churches and congregations.

The Anti-Christian Policy of the Tokugawas.

The quarrels between the Franciscans and Jesuits,[16] however, were

probably more harmful to Christianity than were the whispers of the

Protestant Englishmen or Hollanders. In 1610, the wrath of the

government was especially aroused against the _bateren_, as the people

called the _padres_, by their open and persistent violation of Japanese

law. In 1611, from Sado, to which island thousands of Christian exiles

had been sent to work the mines, Iyéyasŭ believed he had obtained

documentary proof in the Japanese language, of what he had long

suspected--the existence of a plot on the part of the native converts

and the foreign emissaries to reduce Japan to the position of a subject

state.[17] Putting forth strenuous measures to root out utterly what he

believed to be a pestilential breeder of sedition and war, the Yedo

Shōgun advanced step by step to that great proclamation of January

27, 1614,[18] in which the foreign priests were branded as triple

enemies--of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This

proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come

to Japan to change the government of the country, and to usurp

possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof

of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in

this state paper, Iyéyasŭ shrewdly touched the springs of Japanese

patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood or provoke war, he

tried transportation. Three hundred persons, namely, twenty-two

Franciscans, Dominicans and Augustines, one hundred and seventeen

foreign Jesuits, and nearly two hundred native priests and catechists,

were arrested, sent to Nagasaki, and thence shipped like bundles of

combustibles to Macao.

Yet, as many of the foreign and native Christian teachers hid themselves

in the country and as others who had been banished returned secretly and

continued the work of propaganda, the crisis had not yet come. Some of

the Jesuit priests, even, were still hoping that Hidéyori would mount to

power; but in 1615, Iyéyasŭ, finding a pretext for war,[19] called

out a powerful army and laid siege to the great castle of Osaka, the

most imposing fortress in the country. In the brief war which ensued, it

is said by the Jesuit fathers, that one hundred thousand men perished.

On June 9, 1615, the castle was captured and the citadel burned. After

thousands of Hidéyori's followers had committed _hara-kiri_, and his own

body had been burned into ashes, the Christian cause was irretrievably

ruined.

Hidétada, the successor of Iyéyasŭ in Yedo, who ruled from 1605 to

1622, seeing that his father's peaceful methods had failed in

extirpating the alien politico-religious doctrine, now pronounced

sentence of death on every foreigner, priest, or catechist found in the

country. The story of the persecutions and horrible sufferings that

ensued is told in the voluminous literature which may be gathered from

every country in Europe;[20] though from the Japanese side "The Catholic

martyrology of Japan is still an untouched field for a [native]

historian."[21] All the church edifices which the last storm had left

standing were demolished, and temples and pagodas were erected upon

their ruins. In 1617, foreign commerce was restricted to Hirado and

Nagasaki. In 1621, Japanese were forbidden ever to leave the country. In

1624, all ships having a capacity of over twenty-five hundred bushels

were burned, and no craft, except those of the size of ordinary junks,

were allowed to be built.

The Books of the Inferno Opened.

For years, at intervals and in places, the books of the Inferno were

opened, and the tortures devised by the native pagans and Buddhists

equalled in their horror those which Dante imagines, until finally, in

1636, even Japanese human nature, accustomed for ages to subordination

and submission, could stand it no longer. Then a man named Nirado Shiro

raised the banner of the Virgin and called on all Christians and others

to follow him. Probably as many as thirty thousand men, women and

children, but without a single foreigner, lay or clerical, among them,

gathered from parts of Kiushiu. After burning Shintō and Buddhist

temples, they fortified an old abandoned castle at Shimabara, resolving

to die rather than submit. Against an army of veterans, led by skilled

commanders, the fortress held out during four months. At last, after a

bloody assault, it was taken, and men, women and children were

slaughtered.[22] Thousands suffered death at the point of the spear and

sword; many were thrown into the sea; and others were cast into boiling

hot springs, emblems of the eight Buddhist Hells.

All efforts were now put forth to uproot not only Christianity but also

everything of foreign planting. The Portuguese were banished and the

death penalty declared against all who should return, The ai no ko, or

half-breed children, were collected and shipped by hundreds to Macao.

All persons adopting or harboring Eurasians were to be banished, and

their relatives punished. The Christian cause now became like the doomed

city of Babylon or like the site of Nineveh, which, buried in the sand

and covered with the desolation and silence of centuries, became lost to

the memory of the world, so that even the very record of scripture was

the jest of the infidel, until the spade of Layard brought them again to

resurrection. So, Japanese Christianity, having vanished in blood, was

supposed to have no existence, thus furnishing Mr. Lecky with arguments

to prove the extirpative power of persecution.[23]

Yet in 1859, on the opening of the country by treaty, the Roman Catholic

fathers at Nagasaki found to their surprise that they were re-opening

the old mines, and that their work was in historic continuity with that

of their predecessors. The blood of the martyrs had been the seed of the

church. Amid much ignorance and darkness, there were thousands of people

who, through the Virgin, worshipped God; who talked of Jesus, and of the

Holy Spirit; and who refused to worship at the pagan shrines[24].

Summary of Roman Christianity in Japan.

Let us now strive impartially to appraise the Christianity of this era,

and inquire what it found, what it attempted to do, what it did not

strive to attain, what was the character of its propagators, what was

the mark it made upon the country and upon the mind of the people, and

whether it left any permanent influence.

The gospel net which had gathered all sorts of fish in Europe brought a

varied quality of spoil to Japan. Among the Portuguese missionaries,

beginning with Xavier, there are many noble and beautiful characters,

who exemplified in their motives, acts, lives and sufferings some of the

noblest traits of both natural and redeemed humanity. In their praise,

both the pagan and the Christian, as well as critics biased by their

prepossessions in favor either of the Reformed or the Roman phase of the

faith, can unite.

The character of the native converts is, in many instances, to be

commended, and shows the direct truth of Christianity in fields of life

and endeavor, in ethics and in conceptions, far superior to those which

the Japanese religious systems have produced. In the teaching that there

should be but one standard of morality for man and woman, and that the

male as well as the female should be pure; in the condemnation of

polygamy and licentiousness; in the branding of suicide as both wicked

and cowardly; in the condemnation of slavery; and in the training of men

and women to lofty ideals of character, the Christian teachers far

excelled their Buddhist or Confucian rivals.

The benefits which Japan received through the coming of the Christian

missionaries, as distinct and separate from those brought by commerce

and the merchants, are not to be ignored. While many things of value and

influence for material improvement, and many beneficent details and

elements of civilization were undoubtedly imported by traders, yet it

was the priests and itinerant missionaries who diffused the knowledge of

the importance of these things and taught their use throughout the

country. Although in the reaction of hatred and bitterness, and in the

minute, universal and long-continued suppression by the government, most

of this advantage was destroyed, yet some things remained to influence

thought and speech, and to leave a mark not only on the language, but

also on the procedure of daily life. One can trace notable modifications

of Japanese life from this period, lasting through the centuries and

even until the present time.

Christianity, in the sixteenth century, came to Japan only in its papal

or Roman Catholic form. While in it was infused much of the power and

spirit of Loyola and Xavier, yet the impartial critic must confess that

this form was military, oppressive and political.[25] Nevertheless,

though it was impure and saturated with the false principles, the vices

and the embodied superstitions of corrupt southern Europe, yet, such as

it was, Portuguese Christianity confronted the worst condition of

affairs, morally, intellectually and materially, which Japan has known

in historic times. Defective as the critic must pronounce the system of

religion imported from Europe, it was immeasurably superior to anything

that the Japanese had hitherto known.

It must be said, also, that Portuguese Christianity in Japan tried to do

something more than the mere obtaining of adherents or the nominal

conversion of the people.[26] It attempted to purify and exalt their

life, to make society better, to improve the relations between rulers

and ruled; but it did not attempt to do what it ought to have done. It

ignored great duties and problems, while it imitated too fully, not only

the example of the kings of this world in Europe but also of the rulers

in Japan. In the presence of soldier-like Buddhist priests, who had made

war their calling, it would have been better if the Christian

missionaries had avoided their bad example, and followed only in the

footsteps of the Prince of Peace; but they did not. On the contrary,

they brought with them the spirit of the Inquisition then in full blast

in Spain and Portugal, and the machinery with which they had been

familiar for the reclamation of native and Dutch "heretics." Xavier,

while at Goa, had even invoked the secular arm to set up the Inquisition

in India, and doubtless he and his followers would have put up this

infernal enginery in Japan if they could have done so. They had stamped

and crushed out "heresy" in their own country, by a system of hellish

tortures which in its horrible details is almost indescribable. The

rusty relics now in the museums of Europe, but once used in church

discipline, can be fully appreciated only by a physician or an

anatomist. In Japan, with the spirit of Alva and Philip II., these

believers in the righteousness of the Inquisition attacked violently the

character of native bonzes, and incited their converts to insult the

gods, destroy the Buddhist images, and burn or desecrate the old

shrines. They persuaded the daimiōs, when these lords had become

Christians, to compel their subjects to embrace their religion on pain

of exile or banishment. Whole districts were ordered to become

Christian. The bonzes were exiled or killed, and fire and sword as well

as preaching, were employed as means of conversion. In ready imitation

of the Buddhists, fictitious miracles were frequently got up to utilize

the credulity of the superstitious in furthering the faith--all of which

is related not by hostile critics, but by admiring historians and by

sympathizing eye-witnesses.[27]

The most prominent feature of the Roman Catholicism of Japan, was its

political animus and complexion. In writings of this era, Japanese

historians treat of the Christian missionary movement less as something

religious, and more as that which influenced government and polities,

rather than society on its moral side. So also, the impartial historian

must consider that, on the whole, despite the individual instances of

holy lives and unselfish purposes, the work of the Portuguese and

Spanish friars and "fathers" was, in the main, an attempt to bring Japan

more or less directly within the power of the Pope or of those rulers

called Most Catholic Majesties, Christian Kings, etc., even as they had

already brought Mexico, South America, and large portions of India under

the same control. The words of Jesus before the Roman procurator had not

been apprehended:--"My kingdom is not of this world."

CHAPTER XII - TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE

"The frog in the well knows not the great ocean"

--Sanskrit and Japanese Proverb.

"When the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch."

--Japanese Proverb.

"The little island of Déshima, well and prophetically signifying

Fore-Island, was Japan's window, through which she looked at the

whole Occident ... We are under obligation to Holland for the

arts of engineering, mining, pharmacy, astronomy, and medicine

... 'Rangaku' (i.e., Dutch learning) passed almost as a synonym

for medicine," [1615-1868].--Inazo Nitobé.

"The great peace, of which we are so proud, was more like the

stillness of stagnant pools than the calm surface of a clear

lake."--Mitsukuri.

"The ancestral policy of self-contentment must be done away

with. If it was adopted by your forefathers, because it was wise

in their time, why not adopt a new policy if it in sure to prove

wise in your time."--Sakuma Shozan, wrote in 1841, assassinated

1864.

"And slowly floating onward go

Those Black Ships, wave-tossed to and fro."

--Japanese Ballad of the Black Ship, 1845.

"The next day was Sunday (July 10th), and, as usual, divine

service was held on board the ships, and, in accordance with

proper reverence for the day, no communication was held with the

Japanese authorities."

--Perry's Narrative.

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,

Praise Him, all creatures here below,

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

--Sung on U.S.S.S. Mississippi, in Yedo Bay, July 10, 1853.

"I refuse to see anyone on Sunday, I am resolved to set an

example of a proper observance of the Sabbath ... I will try to

make it what I believe it was intended to be--a day of

rest."--Townsend Harris's Diary, Sunday, August 31, 1856.

"I have called thee by thy name. I have surnamed thee, though

thou hast not known me. I am the LORD, and there is none else;

besides me there is no God."--Isaiah.

"I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had been

slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they

held."--John.

"That they should seek God, If haply they might feel after him,

though he is not far from each one of us."--Paul.

"Other sheep have I which are not of this fold: them also I must

bring, and they shall hear my voice; and they shall become one

flock, one shepherd"--Jesus.

CHAPTER XII - TWO CENTURIES OF SILENCE

The Japanese Shut In.

Sincerely regretting that we cannot pass more favorable judgments upon

the Christianity of the seventeenth century in Japan, let us look into

the two centuries of silence, and see what was the story between the

paling of the Christian record in 1637, and the glowing of the

palimpsest in 1859, when the new era begins.

The policy of the Japanese rulers, after the supposed utter extirpation

of Christianity, was the double one of exclusion and inclusion. A

deliberate attempt, long persisted in and for centuries apparently

successful, was made to insulate Japan from the shock of change. The

purpose was to draw a whole nation and people away from the currents and

movements of humanity, and to stereotype national thought and custom.

This was carried out in two ways: first, by exclusion, and then by

inclusion. All foreign influences were shut off, or reduced to a

minimum. The whole western world, especially Christendom, was put under

ban.

Even the apparent exception made in favor of the Dutch was with the

motive of making isolation more complete, and of securing the perfect

safety which that isolation was expected to bring. For, having built,

not indeed with brick and mortar, but by means of edict and law, both

open and secret, a great wall of exclusion more powerful than that of

China's, it was necessary that there should be a port-hole, for both

sally and exit, and a slit for vigilant scrutiny of any attempt to force

seclusion or violate the frontier. Hence, the Hollanders were allowed to

have a small place of residence in front of a large city and at the head

of a land-locked harbor. There, the foreigners being isolated and under

strict guard, the government could have, as it were, a nerve which

touched the distant nations, and could also, as with a telescope, sweep

the horizon for signs of danger.

So, in 1640, the Hollanders were ordered to evacuate Hirado, and occupy

the little "outer island" called Déshima, in front of the city of

Nagasaki, and connected therewith by a bridge. Any ships entering this

hill-girdled harbor, it was believed, could be easily managed by the

military resources possessed by the government. Vessels were allowed

yearly to bring the news from abroad and exchange the products of Japan

for those of Europe. The English, who had in 1617 opened a trade and

conducted a factory for some years,[1] were unable to compete with the

Dutch, and about 1624, after having lost in the venture forty thousand

pounds sterling, withdrew entirely from the Japanese trade. The Dutch

were thus left without a rival from Christendom.

Japan ceased her former trade and communications with the Philippine

Islands, Annam, Siam, the Spice Islands and India,[2] and begun to

restrict trade and communication with Korea and China. The Koreans, who

were considered as vassals, or semi-vassals, came to Japan to present

their congratulations on the accession of each new Shōgun; and some

small trade was done at Fusan under the superintendence of the daimiō

of Tsushima. Even this relation with Korea was rather one of

watchfulness. It sprang from the pride of a victor rather than from any

desire to maintain relations with the rest of the world. As for China,

the communication with her was astonishingly little, only a few junks

crossing yearly between Nankin and Nagasaki; so that, with the exception

of one slit in their tower of observation, the Japanese became well

isolated from the human family.

This system of exclusion was accompanied by an equally vigorous policy

of inclusiveness. It was deliberately determined to keep the people from

going abroad, either in their bodies or minds. All seaworthy ships were

destroyed. Under pain of imprisonment and death, all natives were

forbidden to go to a foreign country, except in the rare cases of urgent

government service. By settled precedents it was soon made to be

understood that those who were blown out to sea or carried away in

stress of weather, need not come back; if they did, they must return

only on Chinese and Korean vessels, and even then would be grudgingly

allowed to land. It was given out, both at home and to the world, that

no shipwrecked sailors or waifs would be welcomed when brought on

foreign vessels.

This inclusive policy directed against physical exportation, was still

more stringently carried out when applied to imports affecting the minds

of the Japanese. The "government deliberately attempted to establish a

society impervious to foreign ideas from without, and fostered within by

all sorts of artificial legislation. This isolation affected every

department of private and public life. Methods of education were cast in

a definite mould; even matters of dress and household architecture were

strictly regulated by the State, and industries were restricted or

forced into specified channels, thus retarding economic

developments."[3]

Starving of the Mind.

In the science of keeping life within stunted limits and artificial

boundaries, the Japanese genius excels. It has been well said that "the

Japanese mind is great in little things and little in great things." To

cut the tap-root of a pine-shoot, and, by regulating the allowance of

earth and water, to raise a pine-tree which when fifty years old shall

be no higher than a silver dollar, has been the proud ambition of many

an artist in botany. In like manner, the Tokugawa Shōguns (1604-1868)

determined to so limit the supply of mental food, that the mind of Japan

should be of those correctly dwarfed proportions of puniness, so admired

by lovers of artificiality and unconscious caricature. Philosophy was

selected as a chief tool among the engines of oppression, and as the

main influence in stunting the intellect. All thought must be orthodox

according to the standards of Confucianism, as expounded by Chu Hi.

Anything like originality in poetry, learning or philosophy must be

hooted down. Art must follow Chinese, Buddhist and Japanese traditions.

Any violation of this order would mean ostracism. All learning must be

in the Chinese and Japanese languages--the former mis-pronounced and in

sound bearing as much resemblance to Pekingise speech as "Pennsylvania

Dutch" does to the language of Berlin. Everything like thinking and

study must be with a view of sustaining and maintaining the established

order of things. The tree of education, instead of being a lofty or

wide-spreading cryptomeria, must be the measured nursling of the teacup.

If that trio of emblems, so admired by the natives, the bamboo, pine and

plum, could produce glossy leaves, ever-green needles and fragrant

blooms within a space of four cubic inches, so the law, the literature

and the art of Japan must display their normal limit of fresh fragrance,

of youthful vigor and of venerable age, enduring for aye, within the

vessel of Japanese inclusion so carefully limited by the Yedo

authorities.

Such a policy, reminds one of the Amherst agricultural experiment in

which bands of iron were strapped around a much-afflicted squash, in

order to test vital potency. It recalls the pretty little story of

Picciola, in which a tender plant must grow between the interstices of

the bricks in a prison yard. Besides the potent bonds of the only

orthodox Confucian philosophy which was allowed and the legally

recognized religions, there was gradually formed a marvellous system of

legislation, that turned the whole nation into a secret society in which

spies and hypocrites flourished like fungus on a dead log. Besides the

unwritten code of private law,[4] that is, the local and general customs

founded on immemorial usage, there was that peculiar legal system framed

by Iyéyasŭ, bequeathed as a legacy and for over two hundred years

practically the supreme law of the land.

What this law was, it was exceedingly difficult, if not utterly

impossible, for the aliens dwelling in the country at Nagasaki ever to

find out. Keenly intellectual, as many of the physicians,

superintendents and elect members of the Dutch trading company were,

they seem never to have been able to get hold of what has been called

"The Testament of Iyéyasŭ."[5] This consisted of one hundred laws or

regulations, based on a home-spun sort of Confucianism, intended to be

orthodoxy "unbroken for ages eternal."

To a man of western mode of thinking, the most astonishing thing is that

this law was esoteric.[6] The people knew of it only by its irresistible

force, and by the constant pressure or the rare easing of its iron hand.

Those who executed the law were drilled in its routine from childhood,

and this routine became second nature. Only a few copies of the original

instrument were known, and these were kept with a secrecy which to the

people became a sacred mystery guarded by a long avenue of awe.

The Dutchmen at Déshima.

The Dutchmen who lived at Déshima for two centuries and a half, and the

foreigners who first landed at the treaty ports in 1859, on inquiring

about the methods of the Japanese Government, the laws and their

administration, found that everything was veiled behind a vague

embodiment of something which was called "the Law." What that law was,

by whom enacted, and under what sanctions enforced, no one could tell;

though all seemed to stand in awe of it as something of superhuman

efficiency. Its mysteriousness was only equalled by the abject

submission which it received.

Foreign diplomatists, on trying to deal with the seat and source of

authority, instead of seeing the real head of power, played, as it were,

a game of chess against a mysterious hand stretched out from behind a

curtain. Morally, the whole tendency of such a dual system of exclusion

and of inclusion was to make a nation of liars, foster confirmed habits

of deceit, and create a code of politeness vitiated by insincerity.

With such repression of the natural powers of humanity, it was but in

accordance with the nature of things that licentiousness should run

riot, that on the fringes of society there should be the outcast and the

pariah, and that the social waste of humanity by prostitution, by

murder, by criminal execution under a code that prescribed the death

penalty for hundreds of offences, should be enormous. It is natural also

that in such a state of society population[7] should be kept down within

necessary limits, not only by famine, by the restraints of feudalism, by

legalized murder in the form of vendetta, by a system of prostitution

that made and still makes Japan infamous, by child murder, by lack of

encouragement given to feeble or malformed children to live, and by

various devices known to those who were ingenious in keeping up so

artificial a state of society.

That there were many who tried to break through this wall, from both the

inside and the outside, and to force the frontiers of exclusion and

inclusion, is not to be wondered at. Externally, there were bold spirits

from Christendom who burned to know the secrets of the mysterious land.

Some even yearned to wear the ruby crown. The wonderful story of past

Christian triumphs deeply stirred the heart of more than one fiery

spirit, and so we find various attempts made by the clerical brethren of

southern Europe to enter the country. Bound by their promises, the Dutch

captains could not introduce these emissaries of a banned religion

within the borders; yet there are several notable instances of Roman

Catholic "religious"[8] getting themselves left by shipmasters on the

shores of Japan. The lion's den of reality was Yedo. Like the lion's den

of fable, the footprints all led one way, and where these led the bones

of the victims soon lay.

Besides these men with religious motives, the ships of the West came

with offers of trade and threats of invasion. These were English,

French, Russian and American, and the story of the frequent episodes has

been told by Hildreth, Aston,[9] Nitobé, and others. There is also a

considerable body of native literature which gives the inside view of

these efforts to force the seclusion of the hermit nation, and coax or

compel the Japanese to be more sociable and more human. All were in vain

until the peaceful armada, under the flag of thirty-one stars, led by

Matthew Calbraith Perry,[10] broke the long seclusion of this Thorn-rose

of the Pacific, and the unarmed diplomacy of Townsend Harris,[11]

brought Japan into the brotherhood of commercial and Christian nations.

Within the isolating walls and the barred gates the story of the seekers

after God is a thrilling one. The intellect of choice spirits, beating

like caged eagles the bars of their prisons, yearned for more light and

life. "Though an eagle be starving," says the Japanese proverb, "it will

not eat grain;" and so, while the mass of the people and even the

erudite, were content with ground food--even the chopped straw and husks

of materialistic Confucianism and decayed Buddhism--there were noble

souls who soared upward to exercise their God-given powers, and to seek

nourishment fitted for that human spirit which goeth upward and not

downward, and which, ever in restless discontent, seeks the Infinite.

Protests of Inquiring Spirits.

There is no stronger proof of the true humanity and the innate

god-likeness of the Japanese, of their worthiness to hold and their

inherent power to win a high place among the nations of the earth, than

this longing of a few elect ones for the best that earth could give and

Heaven bestow. We find men in travail of spirit, groping after God if

haply they might find Him, following the ways of the Spirit along lines

different, and in pathways remote, from those laid down by Confucius and

his materialistic commentators, or by Buddha and his parodists or

caricaturists. The story of the philosophers, who mutinied against the

iron clamps and governmentally nourished system of the Séido College

expounders, is yet to be fully told.[12] It behooves some Japanese

scholar to tell it.

How earnest truth-seeking Japanese protested and rebelled against the

economic fallacies, against the political despotism, against the

abominable usurpations, against the false strategies and against the

inherent immoralities of the Tokugawa system, has of late years been set

forth with tantalizing suggestiveness, but only in fragments, by the

native historians. Heartrending is the narrative of these men who

studied, who taught, who examined, who sifted the mountains of chaff in

the native literature and writings, who made long journeys on foot all

over the country, who furtively travelled in Korea and China, who

boarded Dutch and Russian vessels, who secretly read forbidden books,

who tried to improve their country and their people. These men saw that

their country was falling behind not only the nations of the West, but,

as it seemed to them, even the nations of the East. They felt that

radical changes were necessary in order to reform the awful poverty,

disease, licentiousness, national weakness, decay of bodily powers, and

the creeping paralysis of the Samurai intellect and spirit. How they

were ostracized, persecuted, put under ban, hounded by the spies, thrown

into prison; how they died of starvation or of disease; how they were

beheaded, crucified, or compelled to commit _hara-kiri_; how their books

were purged by the censors, or put under ban or destroyed,[13] and their

maps, writings and plates burned, has not yet been told. It is a story

that, when fully narrated, will make a volume of extraordinary interest.

It is a story which both Christian and human interests challenge some

native author to tell. During all this time, but especially during the

first half of the nineteenth century, there was one steady goal to which

the aspiring student ever kept his faith, and to which his feet tended.

There was one place of pilgrimage, toward which the sons of the morning

moved, and which, despite the spy and the informer and the vigilance of

governors, fed their spirits, and whence they carried the sacred fire,

or bore the seed whose harvest we now see. That goal of the pilgrim band

was Nagasaki, and the place where the light burned and the sacred flames

were kindled was Déshima. The men who helped to make true patriots,

daring thinkers, inquirers after truth, bringers in of a better time,

yes, and even Christians and preachers of the good news of God, were

these Dutchmen of Déshima.

A Handful of Salt in a Stagnant Mass.

The Nagasaki Hollanders were not immaculate saints, neither were they

sooty devils. They did not profess to be Christian missionaries. On the

other hand, they were men not devoid of conscience nor of sympathy with

aspiring and struggling men in a hermit nation, eager for light and

truth. The Dutchman during the time of hermit Japan, as we see him in

the literature of men who were hostile in faith and covetous rivals in

trade, is a repulsive figure. He seems to be a brutal wretch, seeking

only gain, and willing to sell conscience, humanity and his religion,

for pelf. In reality, he was an ordinary European, probably no better,

certainly no worse, than his age or the average man of his country or of

his continent. Further, among this average dozen of exiles in the

interest of commerce, science or culture, there were frequently

honorable men far above the average European, and shining examples of

Christianity and humanity. Even in his submission to the laws of the

country, the Dutchman did no more, no less, but exactly as the

daimiōs,[14] who like himself were subject to the humiliations

imposed by the rulers in Yedo.

It was the Dutch, who, for two hundred years supplied the culture of

Europe to Japan, introduced Western science, furnished almost the only

intellectual stimulant, and were the sole teachers of medicine and

science.[15] They trained up hundreds of Japanese to be physicians who

practised rational medicine and surgery. They filled with needed courage

the hearts of men, who, secretly practising dissection of the bodies of

criminals, demonstrated the falsity of Chinese ideas of anatomy. It was

Dutch science which exploded and drove out of Japan that Chinese system

of medicine, by means of which so many millions have, during the long

ages, been slowly tortured to death.

The Déshima Dutchman was a kindly adviser, helper, guide and friend, the

one means of communication with the world, a handful of salt in the

stagnant mass. Long before the United States, or Commodore Perry, the

Hollanders advised the Yodo government in favor of international

intercourse. The Dutch language, nearest in structure and vocabulary to

the English, even richer in the descriptive energy of its terms, and

saturated withal with Christian truth, was studied by eager young men.

These speakers of an impersonal language which in psychological

development was scarcely above the grade of childhood, were exercised in

a tongue that stands second to none in Europe for purity, vigor,

personality and philosophical power. The Japanese students of Dutch held

a golden key which opened the treasures of modern thought and of the

world's literature. The minds of thinking Japanese were thus made

plastic for the reception of the ideas of Christianity. Best of all,

though forbidden by their contracts to import Bibles into Japan, the

Dutchmen, by means of works of reference, pointed more than one

inquiring spirit to the information by which the historic Christ became

known. The books which they imported, the information which they gave,

the stimulus which they imparted, were as seeds planted within

masonry-covered earth, that were to upheave and overthrow the fabric of

exclusion and inclusion reared by the Tokugawa Shōguns.

Time and space fail us to tell how eager spirits not only groped after

God, but sought the living Christ--though often this meant to them

imprisonment, suicide enforced by the law, or decapitation. Yet over all

Japan, long before the broad pennant of Perry was mirrored on the waters

of Yedo Bay, there were here and there masses of leavened opinion, spots

of kindled light, and fields upon which the tender green sprouts of new

ideas could be detected. To-day, as inquiry among the oldest of the

Christian leaders and scores of volumes of modern biography shows, the

most earnest and faithful among the preachers, teachers and soldiers in

the Christian army, were led into their new world of ideas through Dutch

culture. The fact is revealed in repeated instances, that, through

father, grandfather, uncle, or other relative--some pilgrim to the Dutch

at Nagasaki--came their first knowledge, their initial promptings, the

environment or atmosphere, which made them all sensitive and ready to

receive the Christian truth when it came in its full form from the

living missionary and the vital word of God. Some one has well said that

the languages of modern Europe are nothing more than Christianity

expressed with differing pronunciation and vocabulary. To him who will

receive it, the mastery of any one of the languages of Christendom, is,

in a large sense, a revelation of God in Christ Jesus.

Seekers after God.

Pathetic, even to the compulsion of tears, is the story of these seekers

after God. We, who to-day are surrounded by every motive and inducement

to Christian living and by every means and appliance for the practice of

the Christian life, may well consider for a moment the struggle of

earnest souls to find out God. Think of this one who finds a Latin Bible

cast up on the shore from some broken ship, and bearing it secretly in

his bosom to the Hollander, gains light as to the meaning of its

message. Think of the nobleman, Watanabé Oboru,[16] who, by means of the

Japanese interpreter of Dutch, Takano Choyéi, is thrilled with the story

of Jesus of Nazareth who helped and healed and spake as no other man

spake, teaching with an authority above that of the masters Confucius or

Buddha. Think of the daimiō of Mito,[17] who, proud in lineage,

learned and scholarly, and surrounded by a host of educated men, is yet

unsatisfied with what the wise of his own country could give him, and

gathers around him the relics unearthed from the old persecutions. From

a picture of the Virgin, a fragment of a litany, or it may be a part of

a breviary, he tries to make out what Christianity is.

Think of Yokoi Héishiro,[18] learned in Confucius and his commentators,

who seeks better light, sends to China for a Chinese translation of the

New Testament, and in his lectures on the Confucian ethics, to the

delight and yet to the surprise of his hearers who hear grander truth

than they are able to find in text or commentary, really preaches

Christ, and prophesies that the time will come when the walls of

isolation being levelled, the brightest intellects of Japan will welcome

this same Jesus and His doctrine. Think of him again, when unable to

purify the Augean stables of Yedo's moral corruption, because the time

was at hand for other cleansing agencies, he retires to his home,

content awhile with his books and flowers. Again, see him summoned to

the capital, to sit at Kiōto--like aged Franklin among the young

statesmen of the Constitution in Philadelphia--with the Mikado's

youthful advisers in the new government of 1868. Think of him pleading

for the elevation of the pariah Eta, accursed and outcast through

Buddhism, to humanity and citizenship. Then hear him urge eloquently the

right of personal belief, and argue for toleration under the law, of

opinions, which the Japanese then stigmatized as "evil" and devilish,

but which we, and many of them now, call sound and Christian. Finally,

behold him at night in the public streets, assaulted by assassins, and

given quick death by their bullet and blades. See his gray head lying

severed from his body and in its own gore, the wretched murderers

thinking they have stayed the advancing tide of Christianity; but at

home there dwells a little son destined in God's providence to become an

earnest Christian and one of the brilliant leaders of the native

Christianity of Japan in our day.

The Buddhist Inquisitors.

During the nation's period of Thorn-rose-like seclusion, the three

religions recognized by the law were Buddhism, Shintō and

Confucianism. Christianity was the outlawed sect. All over the country,

on the high-roads, at the bridges, and in the villages, towns and

cities, the fundamental laws of the country were written on wooden

tablets called kosatsŭ. These, framed and roofed for protection from

the weather, but easily before the eyes of every man, woman and child,

and written in a style and language understood of all, denounced the

Christian religion as an accursed "sect," and offered gold to the spy

and informer;[19] while once a year every Samurai was required to swear

on the true faith of a gentleman that he had nothing to do with

Christianity. From the seventeenth century, the country having been

divided into parishes, the inquisition was under the charge of the

Buddhist priests who penetrated into the house and family and guarded

the graveyards, so that neither earth nor fire should embrace the

carcass of a Christian, nor his dust or ashes defile the ancestral

graveyards. Twice--in 1686 and in 1711--were the rewards increased and

the Buddhist bloodhounds of Japan's Inquisition set on fresh trails. On

one occasion, at Osaka, in 1839,[20] a rebellion broke out which was

believed, though without evidence, to have been instigated in some way

by men with Christian ideas, and was certainly led by Oshio, the bitter

opponent of Buddhism, of Tokugawa, and of the prevalent Confucianism.

Possibly, the uprising was aided by refugees from Korea. Those

implicated were, after speedy trial, crucified or beheaded. In the

southern part of the country the ceremony of Ebumi or trampling on the

cross,[21] was long performed. Thousands of people were made to pass

through a wicket, beneath which and on the ground lay a copper plate

engraved with the image of the Christ and the cross. In this way it was

hoped to utterly eradicate the very memory of Christianity, which, to

the common people, had become the synonym for sorcery.

But besides the seeking after God by earnest souls and the protest of

philosophers, there was, amid the prevailing immorality and the

agnosticism and scepticism bred by decayed Buddhism and the

materialistic philosophy based on Confucius, some earnest struggles for

the purification of morals and the spiritual improvement of the people.

The Shingaku Movement.

One of the most remarkable of the movements to this end was that of the

Shingaku or New Learning. A class of practical moralists, to offset the

prevailing tendency of the age to much speculation and because Buddhism

did so little for the people, tried to make the doctrines of Confucius a

living force among the great mass of people. This movement, though

Confucian in its chief tone and color, was eclectic and intended to

combine all that was best in the Chinese system with what could be

utilized from Shintō and Buddhism. With the preaching was combined a

good deal of active benevolence. Especially in the time of famine, was

care for humanity shown. The effect upon the people was noticeable,

followers multiplied rapidly, and it is said that even the government in

many instances made them, the Shingaku preachers, the distributors of

rice and alms for the needy. Some of the preachers became famous and

counted among their followers many men of influence. The literary side

of the movement[22] has been brought to the attention of English readers

through Mr. Mitford's translation of three sermons from the volume

entitled Shingaku Dōwa. Other discourses have been from time to time

rendered into English, those by Shibata, entitled The Sermons of the

Dove-like Venerable Master, being especially famous.

This movement, interesting as it was, came to an end when the country

began to be convulsed by the approaching entrance of foreigners, through

the Perry treaty; but it serves to show, what we believe to be the

truth, that the moral rottenness as well as the physical decay of the

Japanese people reached their acme just previous to the apparition of

the American fleet in 1853.

The story of nineteenth century Reformed Christianity in Japan does not

begin with Perry, or with Harris, or with the arrival of Christian

missionaries in 1859; for it has a subterranean and interior history, as

we have hinted; while that of the Roman form and order is a story of

unbroken continuity, though the life of the tunnel is now that of the

sunny road. The parable of the leaven is first illustrated and then that

of the mustard-seed. Before Christianity was phenomenal, it was potent.

Let us now look from the interior to the outside.

On Perry's flag-ship, the Mississippi, the Bible lay open, a sermon was

preached, and the hymn "Before Jehovah's Awful Throne" was sung, waking

the echoes of the Japan hills. The Christian day of rest was honored on

this American squadron. In the treaty signed in 1854, though it was

made, indeed, with use of the name of God and terms of Christian

chronology, there was nothing upon which to base, either by right or

privilege, the residence of missionaries in the country. Townsend

Harris, the American Consul-General, who hoisted his flag and began his

hermit life at Shimoda, in September, 1855, had as his only companion a

Dutch secretary, Mr. Heusken, who was later, in Yedo, to be assassinated

by ronins.

Without ship or soldier, overcoming craft and guile, and winning his way

by simple honesty and perseverance, Mr. Harris obtained audience[23] of

"the Tycoon" in Yedo, and later from the Shōgun's daring minister Ii,

the signature to a treaty which guaranteed to Americans the rights of

residence, trade and commerce. Thus Americans were enabled to land as

citizens, and pursue their avocation as religious teachers. As the

government of the United States of America knows nothing of the religion

of American citizens abroad, it protects all missionaries who are

law-abiding citizens, without regard to creed.[24]

Japan Once More Missionary Soil.

The first missionaries were on the ground as soon as the ports were

open. Though surrounded by spies and always in danger of assassination

and incendiarism, they began their work of mastering the language. To do

this without trained teachers or apparatus of dictionary and grammar,

was then an appalling task. The medical missionary began healing the

swarms of human sufferers, syphilitic, consumptive, and those scourged

by small-pox, cholera and hereditary and acute diseases of all sorts.

The patience, kindness and persistency of these Christian men literally

turned the edge of the sword, disarmed the assassin, made the spies'

occupation useless, shamed away the suspicious, and conquered the nearly

invincible prejudices of the government. Despite the awful under-tow in

the immorality of the sailor, the adventurer and the gain-greedy

foreigner, the tide of Christianity began steadily to rise.

Notwithstanding the outbursts of the flames of persecution, the torture

and imprisonment of Christian captives and exiles, and the slow worrying

to death of the missionary's native teachers, inquirers came and

converts were made. In 1868, after revolution and restoration, the old

order changed, and duarchy and feudalism passed away. Quick to seize the

opportunity, Dr. J.C. Hepburn, healer of bodies and souls of men,

presented a Bible to the Emperor, and the gift was accepted.

No sooner had the new government been established in safety, and the

name of Yedo, the city of the Baydoor, been changed into that of

Tōkiō, the Eastern Capital, than an embassy[25] of seventy persons

started on its course round the world. At its head were three cabinet

ministers of the new government and the court noble, Iwakura, of

immemorial lineage, in whose veins ran the blood of the men called gods.

Across the Pacific to the United States they went, having their initial

audience of the President of the Republic that knows no state church,

and whose Christianity had compelled both the return of the shipwrecked

Japanese and the freedom of the slave.

This embassy had been suggested and its course planned by a Christian

missionary, who found that of the seventy persons, one-half had been his

pupils.[26]

The Imperial Embassy Round the World.

The purpose of these envoys was, first of all, to ask of the nations of

Christendom equal rights, to get removed the odious extra-territoriality

clause in the treaties, to have the right to govern aliens on their

soil, and to regulate their own tariff. Secondarily, its members

went to study the secrets of power and the resources of civilization in

the West, to initiate the liberal education of their women by leaving in

American schools a little company of maidens, to enlarge the system of

education for their own country, and to send abroad with approval others

of their young men who, for a decade past had, in spite of every ban and

obstacle, been furtively leaving the country for study beyond the seas.

In the lands of Christendom, the eyes of ambassadors, ministers,

secretaries and students were opened. They saw themselves as others saw

them. They compared their own land and nation, mediaeval in spirit and

backward in resources, and their people untrained as children, with the

modern power, the restless ambition, the stern purpose, the intense life

of the western nations, with their mighty fleets and armaments, their

inventions and machinery, their economic and social theories and forces,

their provision for the poor, the sick, and the aged, the peerless

family life in the Christian home. They found, further yet, free

churches divorced from politics and independent of the state; that the

leading force of the world was Christianity, that persecution was

barbarous, and that toleration was the law of the future, and largely

the condition of the present. It took but a few whispers over the

telegraphic wire, and the anti-Christian edicts disappeared from public

view like snowflakes melting on the river. The right arm of persecution

was broken.

The story of the Book of Acts of the modern apostles in Japan is told,

first in the teaching of inquirers, preaching to handfuls, the gathering

of tiny companies, the translation of the Gospel, and then prayer and

waiting for the descent of the Holy Spirit. A study of the Book of the

Acts of the Apostles, followed in order to find out how the Christian

Church began. On the 10th day of March, in the year of our Lord and of

the era of Meiji (Enlightened Peace) the fifth, 1872, at Yokohama, in

the little stone chapel built on part of Commodore Perry's treaty

ground, was formed the first Reformed or Protestant Christian Church in

Japan.

At this point our task is ended. We cannot even glance at the native

Christian churches of the Roman, Reformed, or Greek order, or attempt to

appraise the work of the foreign missionaries. He has read these pages

in vain, however, who does not see how well, under Providence, the

Japanese have been trained for higher forms of faith.

The armies of Japan are upon Chinese soil, while we pen our closing

lines. The last chains of purely local and ethnic dogma are being

snapped asunder. May the sons of Dai Nippon, as they win new horizons of

truth, see more clearly and welcome more loyally that Prince of Peace

whose kingdom is not of this world.

May the age of political conquest end, and the era of the

self-reformation of the Asian nations, through the gospel of Jesus

Christ, be ushered in.

NOTES, AUTHORITIES, AND ILLUSTRATIONS

The few abbreviations used in these pages stand for well-known works:

T.A.S.J., for Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan; Kojiki, for

Supplement to Volume X., T.A.S.J., Introduction, Translation, Notes,

Map, etc., by Professor Basil Hall Chamberlain; T.J., for Things

Japanese (2d ed.), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; S. and H., for Satow

and Hawes's Hand-book for Japan, now continued in new editions (4th,

1894), by Professor B.H. Chamberlain; C.R.M., for Mayers's Chinese

Reader's Manual; M.E., The Mikado's Empire (7th ed.); B.N., for Mr.

Bunyiu Nanjio's A Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects,

Tōkiō, 1887.

CHAPTER I

PRIMITIVE FAITH: RELIGION BEFORE BOOKS

[Footnote 1: The late Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, LL.D., who

applied the principles of electro-magnetism to telegraphy, was the son

of the Rev. Jedediah Morse, D.D., the celebrated theologian, geographer,

and gazetteer. In memory of his father, Professor Morse founded this

lectureship in Union Theological Seminary, New York, on "The Relation of

the Bible to the Sciences," May 20,1865, by the gift of ten thousand

dollars.]

[Footnote 2: An American Missionary in Japan, p. 209, by Rev. M.L.

Gordon, M.D., Boston, 1892.]

[Footnote 3: Lucretia Coftin Mott.]

[Footnote 4: "I remember once making a calculation in Hong Kong, and

making out my baptisms to have amounted to about six hundred.... I

believe with you that the study of comparative religion is important for

all missionaries. Still more important, it seems to me, is it that

missionaries should make themselves thoroughly proficient in the

languages and literature of the people to whom they are sent."--Dr.

Legge's Letter to the Author, November 27, 1893.]

[Footnote 5: The Religions of China, p. 240, by James Legge, New York,

1881.]

[Footnote 6: The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, p. 22, Boston editions

of 1859 and 1879.]

[Footnote 7: One of the many names of Japan is that of the Country Ruled

by a Slender Sword, in allusion to the clumsy weapons employed by the

Chinese and Koreans. See, for the shortening and lightening of the

modern Japanese sword (_katana_) as compared with the long and heavy

(_ken_) of the "Divine" (_kami_) or uncivilized age, "The Sword of

Japan; Its History and Traditions," T.A.S.J., Vol. II., p. 58.]

[Footnote 8: The course of lectures on The Religions of Chinese Asia

(which included most of the matter in this book), given by the author in

Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, Me., in April, 1894, was upon the

Bond foundation, founded by alumni and named after the chief donor, Rev.

Ellas Bond, D.D., of Kohala, long an active missionary in Hawaii.]

[Footnote 9: This is the contention of Professor Kumi, late of the

Imperial University of Japan; see chapter on Shintō.]

[Footnote 10: In illustration, comical or pitiful, the common people in

Satsuma believe that the spirit of the great Saigo Takamori, leader of

the rebellion of 1877, "has taken up its abode in the planet Mars,"

while the spirits of his followers entered into a new race of frogs that

attack man and fight until killed--Mounsey's The Satsuma Rebellion, p.

217. So, also, the _Heiké-gani_, or crabs at Shimonoséki, represent the

transmigration of the souls of the Heiké clan, nearly exterminated in

1184 A.D., while the "Hōjō bugs" are the avatars of the execrated

rulers of Kamakura (1219-1333 A.D.).--Japan in History, Folk-lore, and

Art, Boston, 1892, pp. 115, 133.]

[Footnote 11: The Future of Religion in Japan. A paper read at the

Parliament of Religions by Nobuta Kishimoto.]

[Footnote 12: The Ainos, though they deify all the chief objects of

nature, such as the sun, the sea, fire, wild beasts, etc., often talk of

a Creator, _Kotan kara kamui_, literally the God who made the World. At

the fact of creation they stop short.... One gathers that the creative

act was performed not directly, but through intermediaries, who were

apparently animals."--Chamberlain's Aino Studies, p. 12. See also on the

Aino term "Kamui," by Professor B.H. Chamberlain and Rev. J. Batchelor,

T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI.]

[Footnote 13: See Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, by Isabella Bird (Bishop),

Vol. II.; The Ainu of Japan, by Rev. John Batchelor; B. Douglas Howard's

Life With Trans-Siberian Savages; Ripley Hitchcock's Report, Smithsonian

Institute, Washington. Professor B. H. Chamberlain's invaluable "Aino

Studies," Tōkiō, 1887, makes scholarly comparison of the Japanese

and Aino language, mythology, and geographical nomenclature.]

[Footnote 14: M.E., The Mythical Zoölogy of Japan, pp. 477-488. C.R.M.,

_passim_.]

[Footnote 15: See the valuable article entitled Demoniacal Possession,

T.J., p. 106, and the author's Japanese Fox Myths, _Lippincott's

Magazine_, 1873.]

[Footnote 16: See the Aino animal stories and evidences of beast worship

in Chamberlain's Aino Studies. For this element in Japanese life, see

the Kojiki, and the author's Japanese Fairy World.]

[Footnote 17: The proprietor of a paper-mill in Massachusetts, who had

bought a cargo of rags, consisting mostly of farmers' cast off clothes,

brought to the author a bundle of scraps of paper which he had found in

this cheap blue-dyed cotton wearing apparel. Besides money accounts and

personal matters, there were numerous temple amulets and priests'

certificates. See also B.H. Chamberlain's Notes on Some Minor Japanese

Religious Practices, _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, May,

1893.]

[Footnote 18: M.E., p. 440.]

[Footnote 19: See the Lecture on Buddhism in its Doctrinal

Development.--The Nichiren Sect.]

[Footnote 20: The phallus was formerly a common emblem in all parts of

Japan, Hondo, Kiushiu, Shikoku, and the other islands. Bayard Taylor

noticed it in the Riu Kiu (Loo Choo) Islands; Perry's Expedition to

Japan, p. 196; Bayard Taylor's Expedition in Lew Chew; M.E., p. 33,

note; Rein's Japan, p. 432; Diary of Richard Cocks, Vol. I., p. 283. The

native guide-books and gazetteers do not allude to the subject.

Although the author of this volume has collected considerable data from

personal observations and the testimony of personal friends concerning

the vanishing nature-worship of the Japanese, he has, in the text,

scarcely more than glanced at the subject. In a work of this sort,

intended both for the general reader as well as for the scientific

student of religion, it has been thought best to be content with a few

simple references to what was once widely prevalent in the Japanese

archipelago.

Probably the most thorough study of Japanese phallicism yet made by any

foreign scholar is that of Edmund Buckley, A.M., Ph.D., of the Chicago

University, Lecturer on Shintō, the Ethnic Faith of Japan, and on the

Science of Religion. Dr. Buckley spent six years in central and

southwestern Japan, most of the time as instructor in the Doshisha

University, Kiōto. He will publish the results of his personal

observations and studios in a monograph on phallicism, which will be on

sale at Chicago University, in which the Buckley collection illustrating

Shintō-worship has been deposited.]

[Footnote 21: Mr. Takahashi Gorō, in his Shintō Shin-ron, or New

Discussion of Shintō, accepts the derivation of the word _kami_ from

_kabé_, mould, mildew, which, on its appearance, excites wonder. For

Hirata's discussion, see T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 48. In a

striking paper on the Early Gods of Japan, in a recent number of the

Philosophical Magazine, published in Tōkiō, a Japanese writer, Mr.

Kenjirō Hiradé, states also that the term kami does not necessarily

denote a spiritual being, but is only a relative term meaning above or

high, but this respect toward something high or above has created many

imaginary deities as well as those having a human history. See also

T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part I., p. 55, note.]

[Footnote 22: "There remains something of the Shintō heart after

twelve hundred years of foreign creeds and dress. The worship of the

marvellous continues.... Exaggerated force is most impressive.... So the

ancient gods, heroes, and wonders are worshipped still. The simple

countryfolk clap their hands, bow their heads, mumble their prayers, and

offer the fraction of a cent to the first European-built house they

see."--Philosophy in Japan, Past and Present, by Dr. George Wm. Knox.]

[Footnote 23: M.E., p. 474. Honda the Samurai, pp. 256-267.]

[Footnote 24: Kojiki, pp. 127, 136, 213, 217.]

[Footnote 25: See S. and H., pp. 39, 76.

"The appearance of anything unusual at a particular spot is hold to be a

sure sign of the presence of divinity. Near the spot where I live in

Ko-ishi-kawa, Tōkiō, is a small Miya, built at the foot of a very

old tree, that stands isolated on the edge of a rice-field. The spot

looks somewhat insignificant, but upon inquiring why a shrine has been

placed there, I was told that a white snake had been found at the foot

of the old tree." ...

"As it is, the religion of the Japanese consists in the belief that the

productive ethereal spirit, being expanded through the whole universe,

every part is in some degree impregnated with it; and therefore, every

part is in some measure the seat of the Deity."--Legendre's Progressive

Japan, p. 258.]

[Footnote 26: De Verflauwing der Grenzen, by Dr. Abraham Kuyper,

Amsterdam, 1892; translated by Rev. T. Hendrik de Vries, in the

Methodist Review, New York, July-Sept., 1893.]

CHAPTER II

SHINTŌ; MYTHS AND RITUAL

[Footnote 1: The scholar who has made profound researches in all

departments of Japanese learning, but especially in the literature of

Shintō, is Mr. Ernest Satow, now the British Minister at Tangier. He

received the degree of B.A. from the London University. After several

years' study and experience in China, Mr. Satow came to Japan in 1861 as

student-interpreter to the British Legation, receiving his first drill

under Rev. S.R. Brown, D.D., author of A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese.

To ceaseless industry, this scholar, to whom the world is so much

indebted for knowledge of Japan, has added philosophic insight. Besides

unearthing documents whose existence was unsuspected, he has cleared the

way for investigators and comparative students by practically removing

the barriers reared by archaic speech and writing. His papers in the

T.A.S.J., on The Shintō Shrines at Isé, the Revival of Pure

Shintō, and Ancient Japanese Rituals, together with his Hand-book for

Japan, form the best collection of materials for the study of the

original and later forms of Shintō.]

[Footnote 2: The scholar who above all others has, with rare acumen

united to laborious and prolonged toil, illuminated the subject of

Japan's chronology and early history is Mr. W.G. Aston of the British

Civil Service. He studied at the Queen's University, Ireland, receiving

the degree of M.A. He was appointed student-interpreter in Japan, August

6, 1864. He is the author of a Grammar of the Written Japanese Language,

and has been a student of the comparative history and speech and writing

of China, Korea, and Japan, during the past thirty years. See his

valuable papers in the T.A.S.J., and the learned societies in Great

Britain. In his paper on Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI.,

pp. 39-75, he recapitulates the result of his researches, in which he

is, in the main, supported by critical native scholars, and by the late

William Bramsen, in his Japanese Chronological Tables, Tōkiō,

1880. He considers A.D. 461 as the first trustworthy date in the

Japanese annals. We quote from his paper, Early Japanese History,

T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 73.

1. The earliest date of the accepted Japanese Chronology, the accuracy

of which is confirmed by external evidence, is A.D. 461.

2. Japanese History, properly so called, can hardly be said to exist

previous to A.D. 500. (A cursory examination leads me to think that the

annals of the sixth century must also be received with caution.)

3. Korean History and Chronology are more trustworthy than those of

Japan during the period previous to that date.

4. While there was an Empress of Japan in the third century A.D., the

statement that she conquered Korea is highly improbable.

5. Chinese learning was introduced into Japan from Korea 120 years later

than the date given in Japanese History.

6. The main fact of Japan having a predominant influence in some parts

of Korea during the fifth century is confirmed by the Korean and Chinese

chronicles, which, however, show that the Japanese accounts are very

inaccurate in matters of detail.]

[Footnote 3: Basil Hall Chamberlain, who has done the world of learning

such signal service by his works on the Japanese language, and

especially by his translation, with critical introduction and

commentary, of the Kojiki, is an English gentleman, born at Southsea,

Hampshire, England, on the 18th day of October, 1830. His mother was a

daughter of the well-known traveller and author, Captain Basil Hall,

R.N., and his father an Admiral in the British Navy. He was educated for

Oxford, but instead of entering, for reasons of health, he spent a

number of years in western Mid southern Europe, acquiring a knowledge of

various languages and literatures. His coming to Japan (in May, 1873)

was rather the result of an accident--a long sea voyage and a trial of

the Japanese climate having been recommended. The country and the field

of study suited the invalid well. After teaching for a time in the Naval

College the Japanese honored themselves and this scholar by making him,

in April, 1886, Professor of Philology at the Imperial University. His

works, The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, his various grammars and

hand-books for the acquisition of the language, his Hand-book for Japan,

his Aino Studies, Things Japanese, papers in the T.A.S.J. and his

translation of the Kojiki are all of a high order of value. They are

marked by candor, fairness, insight, and a mastery of difficult themes

that makes his readers his constant debtors.]

[Footnote 4: "If the term 'Altaic' be held to include Korean and

Japanese, then Japanese assumes prime importance as being by far the

oldest living representative of that great linguistic group, its

literature antedating by many centuries the most ancient productions of

the Manchus, Mongols, Turks, Hungarians, or Finns."--Chamberlain,

Simplified Grammar, Introd., p. vi.]

[Footnote 5: Corea, the Hermit Nation, pp. 13-14; Mr. Pom K. Soh's paper

on Education in Korea; Report of U.S. Commissioner of Education,

1890-91.]

[Footnote 6: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 74; Bramsen's Chronological Tables,

Introd., p. 34; T.J., p. 32.]

[Footnote 7: The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I., p. 531.]

[Footnote 8: "The frog in the well knows not the great ocean." This

proverb, so freely quoted throughout Chinese Asia, and in recent years

so much applied to themselves by the Japanese, is of Hindu origin and is

found in the Sanskrit.]

[Footnote 9: This is shown with literary skill and power in a modern

popular work, the title of which, Dai Nippon Kai-biyaku Yurai-iki,

which, very freely indeed, may be translated Instances of Divine

Interposition in Behalf of Great Japan. A copy of this work was

presented to the writer by the late daimiō of Echizen, and was read

with interest as containing the common people's ideas about their

country and history. It was published in Yedo in 1856, while Japan was

still excited over the visits of the American and European fleets. On

the basis of the information furnished in this work General Le Gendre

wrote his influential book, Progressive Japan, in which a number of

quotations from the _Kai-biyaku_ may be read.]

[Footnote 10: In the Kojiki, pp. 101-104, we have the poetical account

of the abdication of the lord of Idzumo in favor of the Yamato

conqueror, on condition that the latter should build a temple and have

him honored among the gods. One of the rituals contains the

congratulatory address of the chieftains of Idzumo, on their surrender

to "the first Mikado, Jimmu Tennō." See also T.J., p. 206.]

[Footnote 11: "The praying for Harvest, or Toshigoi no Matsuri, was

celebrated on the 4th day of the 2d month of each year, at the capital

in the Jin-Gi-Kuan or office for the Worship of the Shintō gods, and

in the provinces by the chiefs of the local administrations. At the

Jin-Gi-Kuan there were assembled the ministers of state, the

functionaries of that office, the priests and priestesses of 573

temples, containing 737 shrines, which were kept up at the expense of

the Mikado's treasury, while the governors of the provinces

superintended in the districts under their administration the

performance of rites in honor of 2,395 other shrines. It would not be

easy to state the exact number of deities to whom these 3,132 shrines

were dedicated. A glance over the list in the 9th and 10th books of the

Yengishiki shows at once that there were many gods who were worshipped

in more than half-a-dozen different localities at the same time; but

exact calculation is impossible, because in many cases only the names of

the temples are given, and we are left quite in the dark as to the

individuality of the gods to whom they were sacred. Besides these 3,132

shrines, which are distinguished as Shikidai, that is contained in the

catalogue of the Yengishiki, there were a large number of enumerated

shrines in temples scattered all over the country, in every village or

hamlet, of which it was impossible to take any account, just as at the

present day there are temples of Hachiman, Kompira, Tenjin sama, San-no

sama and Sengen sama, as they are popularly called, wherever twenty or

thirty houses are collected together. The shrines are classed as great

and small, the respective numbers being 492 and 2,640, the distinction

being twofold, firstly in the proportionately larger quantity of

offerings made at the great shrines, and secondly that the offerings in

the one case were arranged upon tables or altars, while in the other

they were placed on mats spread upon the earth. In the Yengishiki the

amounts and nature of the offerings are stated with great minuteness,

but it will be sufficient if the kinds of articles offered are alone

mentioned here. It will be seen, by comparison with the text of the

norito, that they had varied somewhat since the date when the ritual was

composed. The offerings to a greater shrine consisted of coarse woven

silk (_ashiginu_), thin silk of five different colors, a kind of stuff

called _shidori_ or _shidzu_, which is supposed by some to have been a

striped silk, cloth of broussonetia bark or hemp, and a small quantity

of the raw materials of which the cloth was made, models of swords, a

pair of tables or altars (called _yo-kura-oki_ and _ya-kura-oki_), a

shield or mantlet, a spear-head, a bow, a quiver, a pair of stag's

horns, a hoe, a few measures of saké or rice-beer, some haliotis and

bonito, two measures of _kituli_ (supposed to be salt roe), various

kinds of edible seaweed, a measure of salt, a saké jar, and a few feet

of matting for packing. To each of the temples of Watarai in Isé was

presented in addition a horse; to the temple of the Harvest god Mitoshi

no kami, a white horse, cock, and pig, and a horse to each of nineteen

others.

"During the fortnight which preceded the celebration of the service, two

smiths and their journeymen, and two carpenters, together with eight

inbe [or hereditary priests] were employed in preparing the apparatus

and getting ready the offerings. It was usual to employ for the Praying

for Harvest members of this tribe who held office in the Jin-Gi-Kuan,

but if the number could not he made up in that office, it was supplied

from other departments of state. To the tribe of quiver-makers was

intrusted the special duty of weaving the quivers of wistaria tendrils.

The service began at twenty minutes to seven in the morning, by our

reckoning of time. After the governor of the province of Yamashiro had

ascertained that everything was in readiness, the officials of the

Jin-Gi-Kuan arranged the offerings on the tables and below them,

according to the rank of the shrines for which they were intended. The

large court of the Jin-Gi-Kuan where the service was held, called the

Sai-in, measured 230 feet by 370. At one end were the offices and on the

west side were the shrines of the eight Protective Deities in a row,

surrounded by a fence, to the interior of which three sacred archways

(torii) gave access. In the centre of the court a temporary shed was

erected for the occasion, in which the tables or altars were placed. The

final preparations being now complete, the ministers of state, the

virgin priestesses and priests of the temples to which offerings were

sent by the Mikado, entered in succession, and took the places severally

assigned to them. The horses which formed a part of the offerings were

next brought in from the Mikado's stable, and all the congregation drew

near, while the reader recited or read the norito. This reader was a

member of the priestly family or tribe of Nakatomi, who traced their

descent back to Ameno-koyané, one of the principal advisers attached to

the sun-goddess's grandchild when he first descended on earth. It is a

remarkable evidence of the persistence of certain ideas, that up to the

year 1868 the nominal prime-minister of the Mikado, after he came of

age, and the regent during his minority, if he had succeeded young to

the throne, always belonged to this tribe, which changed its name from

Nakatomi to Fujiwara in the seventh century, and was subsequently split

up into the Five Setsuké or governing families. At the end of each

section the priests all responded 'O!' which was no doubt the equivalent

of 'Yes' in use in those days. As soon as he had finished, the Nakatomi

retired, and the offerings were distributed to the priests for

conveyance and presentation to the gods to whose service they were

attached. But a special messenger was despatched with the offerings

destined to the temples at Watarai. This formality having been

completed, the President of the Jin-Gi-Kuan gave the signal for breaking

up the assembly." Ancient Japanese Rituals, T.A.S.J., Vol. VII, pp.

104-107.]

[Footnote 12: S. and H., p. 461.]

[Footnote 13: Consult Chamberlain's literal translations of the name in

the Kojiki, and p. lxv. of his Introduction.]

[Footnote 14: The parallel between the Hebrew and Japanese accounts of

light and darkness, day and night, before the sun, has been noticed by

several writers. See the comments of Hirata, a modern Shintō

expounder.--T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 72.]

[Footnote 15: Westminster Review, July, 1878, p. 19.]

CHAPTER III

"THE KOJIKI" AND ITS TEACHINGS

[Footnote 1: Kojiki, pp. 9-18; T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 20.]

[Footnote 2: M.E., p. 43; McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, Art.

Shintō; in T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, is to be found Mr. Satow's

digest of the commentaries of the modern Shintō revivalists; in Mr.

Chamberlain's translation of the Kojiki, the text with abundant notes.

See also Mr. Twan-Lin's Account of Japan up to A.D. 1200, by E.H.

Parker. T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part I.]

[Footnote 3: "The various abstractions which figure at the commencement

of the 'Records' (Kojiki) and of the 'Chronicles' (Nihongi) were

probably later growths, and perhaps indeed were inventions of individual

priests."--Kojiki, Introd., p. lxv. See also T.A.S.J., Vol. XXII., Part

I, p. 56. "Thus, not only is this part of the Kojiki pure twaddle, but

it is not even consistent twaddle."]

[Footnote 4: Kojiki, Section IX.]

[Footnote 5: Dr. Joseph Edkins, D.D., author of Chinese Buddhism, who

believes that the primeval religious history of men is recoverable, says

in Early Spread of Religious Ideas, Especially in the Far East, p. 29,

"In Japan Amatérasŭ, ... in fact, as I suppose, Mithras written in

Japanese, though the Japanese themselves are not aware of this

etymology." Compare Kojiki, Introduction, pp. lxv.-lxvii.]

[Footnote 6: Kojiki, p. xlii.]

[Footnote 7: T.A.S.J., Vol. III., Appendix, p. 67.]

[Footnote 8: E. Satow, Revival of Pure Shintō, pp. 67-68.]

[Footnote 9: This curious agreement between the Japanese and other

ethnic traditions in locating "Paradise," the origin of the human family

and of civilization, at the North Pole, has not escaped the attention of

Dr. W.F. Warren, President of Boston University, who makes extended

reference to it in his interesting and suggestive book, Paradise Found:

The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole; A Study of the

Prehistoric World, Boston, 1885.]

[Footnote 10: The pure Japanese numerals equal in number the fingers;

with the borrowed Chinese terms vast amounts can be expressed.]

[Footnote 11: This custom was later revived, T.A.S.J., pp. 28, 31.

Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. II., p. 57; M.E., pp. 156, 238.]

[Footnote 12: See in Japanese Fairy World, "How the Sun-Goddess was

enticed out of her Cave." For the narrative see Kojiki, pp. 54-59;

T.A.S.J., Vol. II., 128-133.]

[Footnote 13: See Choméi and Wordsworth, A Literary Parallel, by J.M.

Dixon, T.A.S.J., Vol. XX., pp. 193-205; Anthologie Japonaise, by Leon de

Rosny; Chamberlain's Classical Poetry of the Japanese; Suyématsŭ's

Genji Monogatari, London, 1882.]

[Footnote 14: Oftentimes in studying the ancient rituals, those who

imagine that the word Kami should be in all cases translated gods, will

be surprised to see what puerility, bathos, or grandiloquence, comes out

of an attempt to express a very simple, it may be humiliating,

experience.]

[Footnote 15: Mythology and Religious Worship of the Japanese,

Westminster Review, July, 1878; Ancient Japanese Rituals, T.A.S.J.,

Vols. VII., IX.; Esoteric Shintō, by Percival Lowell, T.A.S.J, Vol.

XXI.]

[Footnote 16: Compare Sections IX. and XXIII. of the Kojiki.]

[Footnote 17: This indeed seems to be the substance of the modern

official expositions of Shintō and the recent Rescripts of the

Emperor, as well as of much popular literature, including the

manifestoes or confessions found on the persons of men who have

"consecrated" themselves as "the instruments of Heaven for punishing the

wicked," i.e., assassinating obnoxious statesmen. See The Ancient

Religion, M.E., pp. 96-100; The Japan Mail, _passim_.]

[Footnote 18: Revival of Pure Shintō, pp. 25-38.]

[Footnote 19: Japanese Homes, by E.S. Morse, pp. 228-233, note, p. 832.]

[Footnote 20: Chamberlain's Aino Studies, p. 12.]

[Footnote 21: Geological Survey of Japan, by Benj. S. Lyman, 1878-9.]

[Footnote 22: The Shell Mounds of Omori; and The Tokio Times, Jan. 18,

1879, by Edward S. Morse; Japanese Fairy World, pp. I78, 191, 196.]

[Footnote 23: Kojiki, pp. 60-63.]

[Footnote 24: S. and H., pp. 58, 337, etc.]

[Footnote 25: This study in comparative religion by a Japanese, which

cost the learned author his professorship in the Téi-Koku Dai Gaku or

Imperial University (lit. Theocratic Country Great Learning Place), has

had a tendency to chill the ardor of native investigators. His paper was

first published in the Historical Magazine of the University, but the

wide publicity and popular excitement followed only after republication,

with comments by Mr. Taguchi, in the Kéizai Zasshi (Economical Journal).

The Shintōists denounced Professor Kumi for "making our ancient

religion a branch of Christianity," and demanded and secured his

"retirement" by the Government. See Japan Mail, April 2, 1892, p. 440.]

[Footnote 26: T.A.S.J., Vol. XXI., p. 282.]

[Footnote 27: Kojiki, p. xxviii.]

[Footnote 28: For the use of salt in modern "Esoteric" Shintō, both

in purification and for employment as of salamandrine, see T.A.S.J., pp.

125, 128.]

[Footnote 29: In the official census of 1893, nine Shintō sects are

named, each of which has its own Kwancho or Presiding Head, recognized

by the government. The sectarian peculiarities of Shintō have been

made the subject of study by very few foreigners. Mr. Satow names the

following:

The Yui-itsu sect was founded by Toshida Kané-tomo. His signature

appears as the end of a ten-volume edition, issued A.D. 1503, of the

liturgies extracted from the Yengishiki or Book of Ceremonial Law, first

published in the era of Yengi (or En-gi), A.D. 901-922. He is supposed

to be the one who added the _kana_, or common vernacular script letters,

to the Chinese text and thus made the norito accessible to the people.

The little pocket prayer-books, folded in an accordeon-like manner, are

very cheap and popular. The sect is regarded as heretical by strict

Shintōists, as the system Yuwiitsu consists "mainly of a Buddhist

superstructure on a Shintō foundation." Yoshida applied the tenets of

the Shingon or True Word sect of Buddhists to the understanding and

practice of the ancient god-way.

The Suiga sect teaches a system which is a combination of Yuwiitsu and

of the modern philosophical form of Confucianism as elaborated by Chu

Hi, and known in Japan as the Téi-shu philosophy. The founder was

Yamazaki Ansai, who was born in 1618 and died in 1682. By combining the

forms of the Yoshida sect, which is based on the Buddhism of the Shingon

sect, with the materialistic philosophy of Chu Hi, he adapted the old

god-way to what he deemed modern needs.

In the Déguchi sect, the ancient belief is explained by the Chinese Book

of Changes (or Divination). Déguchi Nobuyoshi, the founder, was

god-warden or _kannushi_ of the Géiku or Outer Palace Temple at Isé. He

promulgated his views about the year 1660, basing them upon the book

called Éki by the Japanese and Yi-king by the Chinese. This Yi-king,

which Professor Terrien de Laeouporie declares is only a very ancient

book of pronunciation of comparative Accadian and Chinese Syllabaries,

has been the cause of incredible waste of labor, time, and brains in

China--enough to have diked the Yellow River or drained the swamps of

the Empire. It is the chief basis of Chinese superstition, and the

greatest literary barrier to the advance of civilization. It has also

made much mischief in Japan. Déguchi explained the myths of the age of

the gods by divination or éki, based on the Chinese books. As late as

1893 there was published in Tōkiō a work in Japanese, with good

translation info English, on Scientific Morality, or the practical

guidance of life by means of divination--The Takashima Ékidan (or

Monograph on the Éki of Mr. Takashima), by S. Sugiura.

The Jikko sect, according to its representative at the World's

Parliament of Religions at Chicago, is "the practical." It lays stress

less upon speculation and ritual, and more upon the realization of the

best teachings of Shintō. It was founded by Haségawa Kakugiō, who

was born at Nagasaki in 1541. Living in a cave in Fuji-yama, "he

received inspiration through the miraculous power of the mountain." It

believes in one absolute Deity, often mentioned in the Kojiki, which,

self-originated, took the embodiment of two deities, one with the male

nature and the other female, though these two deities are nothing but

forms of the one substance and unite again in the absolute deity. These

gave birth to the Japanese Archipelago, the sun and moon, the mountains

and streams, the divine ancestors, etc. According to the teachings of

this sect, the peerless mountain, Fuji, ought to be reverenced as the

sacred abode of the divine lord, and as "the brains of the whole globe."

The believer must make Fuji the example and emblem of his thought and

action. He must be plain and simple, as the form of the mountain, making

his body and mind pure and serene, as Fuji itself. The present world

with all its practical works must be respected more than the future

world. We must pray for the long life of the country, lead a life of

temperance and diligence, cooperating with one another in doing good.

* * * * *

_Statistics of Shintōism._

From the official Résumé Statistique de l'Empire du Japon, 1894. In 1801

there were nine administrative heads of sects; 75,877 preachers,

priests, and shrine-keepers, with 1,158 male and 228 female students.

There were 163 national temples of superior rank and 136,652 shrines or

temples in cities and prefectures; a total of 193,153, served by 14,700

persons of the grade of priests. Most of the expenses, apart from

endowments and local contributions, are included in the first item of

the annual Treasury Budget, "Civil List, Appanage and Shintō

Temples."]

CHAPTER IV

THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN

[Footnote 1: "He was fond of saying that Princeton had never originated

a new idea; but this meant no more than that Princeton was the advocate

of historical Calvinism in opposition to the modified and provincial

Calvinism of a later day."--Francis L. Patton, in Schaff-Herzog

Encyclopædia, Article on Charles Hodge.]

[Footnote 2: We use Dr. James Legge's spelling, by whom these classics

have been translated into English. See Sacred Books of the East, edited

by Max Müller.]

[Footnote 3: The Canon or Four Classics has a somewhat varied literary

history of transmission, collection, and redaction, as well as of

exposition, and of criticism, both "lower" and "higher." As arranged

under the Han Dynasty (B.C. 206-A.D. 23) it consisted of--I. The

Commentary of Tso Kinming (a disciple who expounded Confucius's book,

The Annals of State of Lu); II. The Commentary of Kuh-liang upon the

same work of Confucius; III. The Old Text of the Book of History; IV.

The Odes, collected by Mao Chang, to whom is ascribed the test of the

Odes as handed down to the present day. The generally accepted

arrangement is that made by the mediaeval schoolmen of the Sung Dynasty

(A.D. 960-1341), Cheng Teh Sio and Chu Hi, in the twelfth century: I.

The Great Learning; II. The Doctrine of the Mean; III. Conversations of

Confucius; IV. The Sayings of Mencius.--C.R.M., pp. 306-309.]

[Footnote 4: See criticisms of Confucius as an author, in Legge's

Religions of China, pp. 144, 145.]

[Footnote 5: Religions of China, by James Legge, p. 140.]

[Footnote 6: See Article China, by the author, Cyclopaedia of Political

Science, Chicago, 1881.]

[Footnote 7: This subject is critically discussed by Messrs. Satow,

Chamberlain, and others in their writings on Shintō and Japanese

history. On Japanese chronology, see Japanese Chronological Tables, by

William Bramsen, Tōkiō, 1880, and Dr. David Murray's Japan (p.

95), in the series Story of the Nations, New York.]

[Footnote 8: The absurd claim made by some Shintōists that the

Japanese possessed an original native alphabet called the Shingi

(god-letters) before the entrance of the Chinese or Buddhist learning in

Japan, is refuted by Aston, Japanese Grammar, p. 1; T.A.S.J., Vol. III.,

Appendix, p. 77. Mr. Satow shows "their unmistakable identity with the

Corean alphabet."]

[Footnote 9: For the life, work, and tombs of the Chinese scholars who

fled to Japan on the fall of the Ming Dynasty, see M.E., p. 298; and

Professor E.W. Clement's paper on The Tokugawa Princes of Mito,

T.A.S.J., Vol. XVIII., and his letters in The Japan Mail.]

[Footnote 10: "We have consecrated ourselves as the instruments of

Heaven for punishing the wicked man,"--from the document submitted to

the Yedo authorities, by the assassins of Ii Kamon no Kami, in Yedo,

March 23, 1861, and signed by seventeen men of the band. For numerous

other instances, see the voluminous literature of the Forty-seven

Rōnins, and the Meiji political literature (1868-1893), political and

historical documents, assassins' confessions, etc., contained in that

thesarus of valuable documents, The Japan Mail; Kinsé Shiriaku, or Brief

History of Japan, 1853-1869, Yokohama, 1873, and Nihon Guaishi,

translated by Mr. Ernest Satow; Adams's History of Japan; T.A.S.J., Vol.

XX., p. 145; Life and Letters of Yokoi Héishiro; Life of Sir Harry

Parkes, London, 1893, etc., for proof of this assertion.]

[Footnote 11: For proof of this, as to vocabulary, see Professor B.H.

Chamberlain's Grammars and other philological works; Mr. J.H. Gubbins's

Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Words, with Introduction, three vols.,

Tōkiō 1892; and for change in structure, Rev. C. Munzinger, on The

Psychology of the Japanese Language in the Transactions of the Gorman

Asiatic Society of Japan. See also Mental Characteristics of the

Japanese, T.A.S.J., Vol. XIX., pp. 17-37.]

[Footnote 12: See The Ghost of Sakura, in Mitfoid's Tales of Old Japan,

Vol. II, p. 17.]

[Footnote 13: M.E., 277-280. See an able analysis of Japanese feudal

society, by M.F. Dickins, Life of Sir Harry Parkes, pp. 8-13; M.E., pp.

277-283.]

[Footnote 14: This subject is discussed in Professor Chamberlain's

works; Mr. Percival Lowell's The Soul of the Far East; Dr. M.L. Gordon's

An American Missionary in Japan; Dr. J.H. De Forest's The Influence of

Pantheism, in The Japan Evangelist, 1894.]

[Footnote 15: T.A.S.J., Vol. XVII., p. 96.]

[Footnote 16: The Forty Seven-Rōnins, Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I.;

Chiushiugura, by F.V. Dickens; The Loyal Rōnins, by Edward Greey;

Chiushiugura, translated by Enouyé.]

[Footnote 17: See Dr. J.H. De Forest's article in the Andover Review,

May, June, 1893, p. 309. For details and instances, see the Japanese

histories, novels, and dramas; M.E.; Rein's Japan; S. and H.; T.A.S.J.,

etc. Life of Sir Harry Parkes, p. 11 _et passim_.]

[Footnote 18: M.E. pp. 180-192, 419. For the origin and meaning of

hara-kiri, see T.J., pp. 199-201; Mitford's Tales of Old Japan, Vol. I.,

Appendix; Adams's History of Japan, story of Shimadzŭ.]

[Footnote 19: M.E., p. 133.]

[Footnote 20: For light upon the status of the Japanese family, see F.O.

Adams's History of Japan, Vol. II., p. 384; Kinsé Shiriaku, p. 137;

Naomi Tamura, The Japanese Bride, New York, 1893; E.H. House, Yoné

Santo, A Child of Japan, Chicago, 1888; Japanese Girls and Women, by

Miss A.M. Bacon, Boston, 1891; T.J., Article Woman, and in Index,

Adoption, Children, etc.; M.E., 1st ed., p. 585; Marriage in Japan,

T.A.S.J., Vol. XIII., p. 114; and papers in the German Asiatic Society

of Japan.]

[Footnote 21: See Mr. F.W. Eastlake's papers in the Popular Science

Monthly.]

[Footnote 22: See Life of Sir Harry Parkes, Vol. II, pp. 181-182. "It is

to be feared, however, that this reform [of the Yoshiwara system], like

many others in Japan, never got beyond paper, for Mr. Norman in his

recent book, The Real Japan [Chap. XII.], describes a scarcely modified

system in full vigor." See also Japanese Girls and Women, pp. 289-292.]