enormous social changes are taking place; in both, Eastern and Western
civilizations are in contact and in conflict. The differences,
however, are even more striking than the likenesses. Most conspicuous
is the fact that whereas, in India, the changes in civilization are
due almost wholly to the force and rule of the conquering race, in
Japan these changes are spontaneous, attributable entirely to the
desire and initiative of the native rulers. This difference is
fundamental and vital. The evolution of society in India is to a large
degree compulsory; in a true sense it is an artificial evolution. In
Japan, on the other hand, evolution is natural. There has not been
the slightest physical compulsion laid on her from without. With two
rare exceptions, Japan has never heard the boom of foreign cannon
carrying destruction to her people. During these years of change,
there have been none but Japanese rulers, and such has been the case
throughout the entire period of Japanese history. Their native rulers
have introduced changes such as foreign rulers would hardly have
ventured upon. The adoption of the Chinese language, literature, and
religions from ten to twelve centuries ago, was not occasioned by a
military occupancy of Japanese soil by invaders from China. It was due
absolutely to the free choice of their versatile people, as free and
voluntary as was the adoption by Rome of Greek literature and
standards of learning. The modern choice of Western material
civilization no doubt had elements of fear as motive power. But
impulsion through a knowledge of conditions differs radically from
compulsion exercised by a foreign military occupancy. India
illustrates the latter; Japan, the former.
Japan and her people manifest amazing contrasts. Never, on the one
hand, has a nation been so free from foreign military occupancy
throughout a history covering more than fifteen centuries, and at the
same time, been so influenced by and even subject to foreign psychical
environment. What was the fact in ancient times is the fact to-day.
The dominance of China and India has been largely displaced by that of
Europe. Western literature, language, and science, and even customs,
are being welcomed by Japan, and are working their inevitable effects.
But it is all perfectly natural, perfectly spontaneous. The present
choice by Japan of modern science and education and methods and
principles of government and nineteenth-century literature and
law,--in a word, of Occidental civilization,--is not due to any
artificial pressure or military occupancy. But the choice and the
consequent evolution are wholly due to the free act of the people. In
this, as in several other respects, Japan reminds us of ancient
Greece. Dr. Menzies, in his "History of Religion," says: "Greece was
not conquered from the East, but stirred to new life by the
communication of new ideas." Free choice has made Japan reject Chinese
astronomy, surgery, medicine, and jurisprudence. The early choice to
admit foreigners to Japan to trade may have been made entirely through
fear, but is now accepted and justified by reason and choice.
The true explanation, therefore, of the recent and rapid rise of Japan
to power and reputation, is to be found, not in the externals of her
civilization, not in the pressure of foreign governments, but rather
in the inherited mental and temperamental characteristics, reacting on
the new and stimulating environment, and working along the lines of
true evolution. Japan has not "jumped out of her skin," but a new
vitality has given that skin a new color.
II
HISTORICAL SKETCH
How many of the stories of the Kojiki (written in 712 A.D.) and
Nihongi (720 A.D.) are to be accepted is still a matter of dispute
among scholars. Certain it is, however, that Japanese early history is
veiled in a mythology which seems to center about three prominent
points: Kyushu, in the south; Yamato, in the east central, and Izumo
in the west central region. This mythological history narrates the
circumstances of the victory of the southern descendants of the gods
over the two central regions. And it has been conjectured that these
three centers represent three waves of migration that brought the
ancestors of the present inhabitants of Japan to these shores. The
supposition is that they came quite independently and began their
conflicts only after long periods of residence and multiplication.
Though this early record is largely mythological, tradition shows us
the progenitors of the modern Japanese people as conquerors from the
west and south who drove the aborigines before them and gradually took
possession of the entire land. That these conquerors were not all of
the same stock is proved by the physical appearance of the Japanese
to-day, and by their language. Through these the student traces an
early mixture of races--the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Ural-Altaic.
Whether the early crossing of these races bears vital relation to the
plasticity of the Japanese is a question which tempts the scholar.
Primitive, inter-tribal conflicts of which we have no reliable records
resulted in increasing intercourse. Victory was followed by
federation. And through the development of a common language, of
common customs and common ideas, the tribes were unified socially and
psychically. Consciousness of this unity was emphasized by the
age-long struggle against the Ainu, who were not completely conquered
until the eighteenth century.
With the dawn of authentic history (500-600 A.D.) we find amalgamation
of the conquering tribes, with, however, constantly recurring
inter-clan and inter-family wars. Many of these continued for scores
and even hundreds of years--proving that, in the modern sense, of the
word, the Japanese were not yet a nation, though, through
inter-marriage, through the adoption of important elements of
civilization brought from China and India via Korea, through the
nominal acceptance of the Emperor as the divinely appointed ruler of
the land, they were, in race and in civilization, a fairly homogeneous
people.
The national governmental system was materially affected by the need,
throughout many centuries, of systematic methods of defense against
the Ainu. The rise of the Shogunate dates back to 883 A.D., when the
chief of the forces opposing the Ainu was appointed by the Emperor and
bore the official title, "The Barbarian-expelling Generalissimo." This
office developed in power until, some centuries later, it usurped in
fact, if not in name, all the imperial prerogatives.
It is probable that the Chinese written language, literature, and
ethical teachings of Confucius came to Japan from Korea after the
Christian era. The oldest known Japanese writings (Japanese written
with Chinese characters) date from the eighth century. In this period
also Buddhism first came to Japan. For over a hundred years it made
relatively little progress. But when at last in the ninth and tenth
centuries native Japanese Buddhists popularized its doctrines and
adopted into its theogony the deities of the aboriginal religion, now
known as Shinto, Buddhism became the religion of the people, and
filled the land with its great temples, praying priests, and gorgeous
rituals.
Even in those early centuries the contact of Japan with her Oriental
neighbors revealed certain traits of her character which have been
conspicuous in recent times--great capacity for acquisition, and
readiness to adopt freely from foreign nations. Her contact with
China, at that time so far in advance of herself in every element of
civilization, was in some respects disastrous to her original growth.
Instead of working out the problems of thought and life for herself,
she took what China and Korea had to give. The result was an arrest in
the development of everything distinctively native. The native
religion was so absorbed by Buddhism that for a thousand years it lost
all self-consciousness. Indeed the modern clear demarcation between
the native and the imported religions is a matter of only a few
decades, due to the researches of native scholars during the latter
part of the last and the early part of this century. Even now,
multitudes of the common people know no difference between the various
elements of the composite religion of which they are the heirs.
Moreover, early contact with China and her enormous literature checked
the development of the native language and the growth of the native
literature. The language suffered arrest because of the rapid
introduction of Chinese terms for all the growing needs of thought and
civilization. Modern Japanese is a compound of the original tongue and
Japonicized Chinese. Native speculative thought likewise found little
encouragement or stimulus to independent activity in the presence of
the elaborate and in many respects profound philosophies brought from
India and China.
From earliest times the government of Japan was essentially feudal.
Powerful families and clans disputed and fought for leadership, and
the political history of Japan revolves around the varying fortunes of
these families. While the Imperial line is never lost to sight, it
seldom rises to real power.
When, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Japan's conquering arm
reached across the waters, to ravage the coast of China, to extend her
influence as far south as Siam, and even to invade Korea with a large
army in 1592, it looked as if she were well started on her career as a
world-power. But that was not yet to be. The hegemony of her clans
passed into the powerful and shrewd Tokugawa family, the policy of
which was peace and national self-sufficiency.
The representatives of the Occidental nations (chiefly of Spain and
Portugal) were banished. The Christian religion (Roman Catholic),
which for over fifty years had enjoyed free access and had made great
progress, was forbidden and stamped out, not without much bloodshed.
Foreign travel and commerce were strictly interdicted. A particular
school of Confucian ethics was adopted and taught as the state
religion. Feudalism was systematically established and intentionally
developed. Each and every man had his assigned and recognized place in
the social fabric, and change was not easy. It is doubtful if any
European country has ever given feudalism so long and thorough a
trial. Never has feudalism attained so complete a development as it
did in Japan under the Tokugawa régime of over 250 years.
During this period no influences came from other lands to disturb the
natural development. With the exception of three ships a year from
Holland, an occasional stray ship from other lands, and from fifteen
to twenty Dutchmen isolated in a little island in the harbor of
Nagasaki, Japan had no communication with foreign lands or alien
peoples.
Of this period, extending to the middle of the present century, the
ordinary visitor and even the resident have but a superficial
knowledge. All the changes that have taken place in Japan, since the
coming of Perry in 1854, are attributed by the easy-going tourist to
the external pressure of foreign nations. But such travelers know
nothing of the internal preparations that had been making for
generations previous to the arrival of Perry. The tourist is quite
ignorant of the line of Japanese scholars that had been undermining
the authority of the military rulers, "the Tokugawa," in favor of the
Imperial line which they had practically supplanted.
The casual student of Japan has been equally ignorant of the real
mental and moral caliber of the Japanese. Dressed in clothing that
appeared to us fantastic, and armed with cumbersome armor and
old-fashioned guns, it was easy to jump to the conclusion that the
people were essentially uncivilized. We did not know the intellectual
discipline demanded of one, whether native or foreign, who would
master the native language or the native systems of thought. We forgot
that we appeared as grotesque and as barbarous to them as they to us,
and that mental ability and moral worth are qualities that do not show
on the surface of a nation's civilization. While they thought us to be
"unclean," "dogs," "red-haired devils," we perhaps thought them to be
clever savages, or at best half-civilized heathen, without moral
perceptions or intellectual ability.
Of Old Japan little more needs to be said. Without external commerce,
there was little need for internal trade; ships were small; roads were
footpaths; education was limited to the samurai, or military class,
retainers of the daimyo, "feudal lords"; inter-clan travel was limited
and discouraged; Confucian ethics was the moral standard. From the
beginning of the seventeenth century Christianity was forbidden by
edict, and was popularly known as the "evil way"; Japan was thought to
be especially sacred, and the coming of foreigners was supposed to
pollute the land and to be the cause of physical evils. Education, as
in China, was limited to the Chinese classics. Mathematics, general
history, and science, in the modern sense, were of course wholly
unknown. Guns and powder were brought from the West in the sixteenth
century by Spaniards and Portuguese, but were never improved.
Ship-building was the same in the middle of the nineteenth century as
in the middle of the sixteenth, perhaps even less advanced.
Architecture had received its great impulse from the introduction of
Buddhism in the ninth and tenth centuries and had made no material
improvement thereafter.
But while there was little progress in the external and mechanical
elements of civilization, there was progress in other respects. During
the "great peace," first arose great scholars. Culture became more
general throughout the nation. Education was esteemed. The corrupt
lives of the priests were condemned and an effort was made to reform
life through the revival of a certain school of Confucian teachers
known as "Shin-Gaku"--"Heart-Knowledge." Art also made progress, both
pictorial and manual. It would almost seem as if modern artificers and
painters had lost the skill of their forefathers of one or two hundred
years ago.
Many reasons explain the continuance of the old political and social
order: the lack of a foreign foe to compel abandonment of the tribal
organisation; the mountainous nature of the country with its slow,
primitive means of intercommunication; the absence of all idea of a
completely centralized nation. Furthermore, the principle of complete
subordination to superiors and ancestors had become so strong that
individual innovations were practically impossible. Japan thus lacked
the indispensable key to further progress, the principle of
individualism. The final step in the development of her nationality
has been taken, therefore, only in our own time.
Old Japan seemed absolutely committed to a thorough-going antagonism
to everything foreign. New Japan seems committed to the opposite
policy. What are the steps by which she has effected this apparent
national reversal of attitude?
We should first note that the absolutism of the Tokugawa Shogunate
served to arouse ever-growing opposition because of its stern
repression of individual opinion. It not only forbade the Christian
religion, but also all independent thought in religious philosophy and
in politics. The particular form of Confucian moral philosophy which
it held was forced on all public teachers of Confucianism. Dissent was
not only heretical, but treasonable. Although, by its military
absolutism, the Tokugawa rule secured the great blessing of peace,
lasting over two hundred years, and although the curse of Japan for
well-nigh a thousand preceding years had been fierce inter-tribal and
inter-family wars and feuds, yet it secured that peace at the expense
of individual liberty of thought and act. It thus gradually aroused
against itself the opposition of many able minds. The enforced peace
rendered it possible for these men to devote themselves to problems of
thought and of history. Indeed, they had no other outlet for their
energies. As they studied the history of the past and compared their
results with the facts of the present, it gradually dawned on the
minds of the scholars of the eighteenth century, that the Tokugawa
family were exercising functions of government which had never been
delegated to them; and that the Emperor was a poverty-stricken puppet
in the hands of a family that had seized the military power and had
gradually absorbed all the active functions of government, together
with its revenues.
It is possible for us to see now that these early Japanese scholars
idealized their ancient history, and assigned to the Emperor a place
in ancient times which in all probability he has seldom held. But,
however that may be, they thought their view correct, and held that
the Emperor was being deprived of his rightful rule by the Tokugawa
family.
These ideas, first formulated in secret by scholars, gradually
filtered down, still in secrecy, and were accepted by a large number
of the samurai, the military literati of the land. Their opposition to
the actual rulers of the land, aroused by the individual-crushing
absolutism of the Tokugawa rule, naturally allied itself to the
religious sentiment of loyalty to the Emperor. Few Westerners can
appreciate the full significance of this fact. Throughout the
centuries loyalty to the Emperor has been considered a cardinal
virtue. With one exception, according to the popular histories, no one
ever acknowledged himself opposed to the Emperor. Every rebellion
against the powers in actual possession made it the first aim to gain
possession of the Emperor, and proclaim itself as fighting for him.
When, therefore, the scholars announced that the existing government
was in reality a usurpation and that the Emperor was robbed of his
rightful powers, the latent antagonism to the Tokugawa rule began to
find both intellectual and moral justification. It could and did
appeal to the religious patriotism of the people. It is perhaps not
too much to say that the overthrow of the Tokugawa family and the
restoration of the Imperial rule to the Imperial family would have
taken place even though there had been no interference of foreign
nations, no extraneous influences. But equally certain is it that
these antagonisms to the ruling family were crystallized, and the
great internal changes hastened by the coming in of the aggressive
foreign nations. How this external influence operated must and can be
told in a few words.
When Admiral Perry negotiated his treaty with the Japanese, he
supposed he was dealing with responsible representatives of the
government. As was later learned, however, the Tokugawa rulers had not
secured the formal assent of the Emperor to the treaty. The Tokugawa
rulers and their counselors, quite as much as the clan-rulers, wished
to keep the foreigners out of the country, but they realized their
inability. The rulers of the clans, however, felt that the Tokugawa
rulers had betrayed the land; they were, accordingly, in active
opposition both to the foreigners and to the national rulers. When the
foreigners requested the Japanese government, "the Tokugawa
Shogunate," to carry out the treaties, it was unable to comply with
the request because of the antagonism of the clan-rulers. When the
clan-rulers demanded that the government annul the treaties and drive
out the hated and much-feared foreigners, it found itself utterly
unable to do so, because of the formidable naval power of the
foreigners.
As a consequence of this state of affairs, a few serious collisions
took place between the foreigners and the two-sworded samurai,
retainers of the clan-rulers. The Tokugawa rulers apparently did their
best to protect the foreigners, and, when there was no possible method
of evasion, to execute the treaties they had made. But they could not
control the clans already rebellious. A few murders of foreigners,
followed by severe reprisals, and two bombardments of native towns by
foreign gunboats, began to reveal to the military class at large that
no individual or local action against the foreigners was at all to be
thought of. The first step necessary was the unification of the Empire
under the Imperial rule. This, however, could be done only by the
overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate; which was effected in 1867-68
after a short struggle, marked by great clemency.
We thus realize that the overthrow of the Shogunate as also the final
abolishment of feudalism with its clans, lords, and hereditary rulers,
and the establishment of those principles of political and personal
centralization which lie at the foundation of real national unity, not
only were hastened by, but in a marked degree dependent on, the
stimulus and contribution of foreigners. They compelled a more
complete Japanese unity than had existed before, for they demanded
direct relations with the national head. And when treaty negotiations
revealed the lack of such a head, they undertook to show its necessity
by themselves punishing those local rulers who did not recognize the
Tokugawa headship.
With the establishment of the Emperor on the throne, began the modern
era in Japanese history, known in Japan as "Meiji"--"Enlightened
Rule."
But not even yet was the purpose of the nation attained, namely, the
expulsion of the polluters of the sacred soil of Japan. As soon as the
new government was established and had turned its attention to foreign
affairs, it found itself in as great a dilemma as had its
predecessors, the Tokugawa rulers. For the foreign governments
insisted that the treaties negotiated with the old government should
be accepted in full by the new. It was soon as evident to the new
rulers as it had been to the old that direct and forcible resistance
to the foreigners was futile. Not by might were they to be overcome.
Westerners had, however, supplied the ideals whereby national,
political unity was to be secured. Mill's famous work on
"Representative Government" was early translated, and read by all the
thinking men of the day. These ideas were also keenly studied in their
actual workings in the West. The consequence was that feudalism was
utterly rejected and the new ideas, more or less modified, were
speedily adopted, even down to the production of a constitution and
the establishment of local representative assemblies and a national
diet. In other words, the theories and practices of the West in regard
to the political organization of the state supplied Japan with those
new intellectual variations which were essential to the higher
development of her own national unity.
A further point of importance is the fact that at the very time that
the West applied this pressure and supplied Japan with these political
ideals she also put within her reach the material instruments which
would enable her to carry them into practice. I refer to steam
locomotion by land and sea, the postal and telegraphic systems of
communication, the steam printing press, the system of popular
education, and the modern organization of the army and the navy. These
instruments Japan made haste to acquire. But for these, the rapid
transformation of Old Japan into New Japan would have been an
exceedingly long and difficult process. The adoption of these tools of
civilization by the central authority at once gave it an immense
superiority over any local force. For it could communicate speedily
with every part of the Empire, and enforce its decisions with a
celerity and a decisiveness before unknown. It became once more the
actual head of the nation.
We have thus reached the explanation of one of the most astonishing
changes in national attitude that history has to record, and the new
attitude seems such a contradiction of the old as to be inexplicable,
and almost incredible. But a better knowledge of the facts and a
deeper understanding of their significance will serve to remove this
first impression.
What, then, did the new government do? It simply said, "For us to
drive out these foreigners is impossible; but neither is it desirable.
We need to know the secrets of their power. We must study their
language, their science, their machinery, their steamboats, their
battle-ships. We must learn all their secrets, and then we shall be
able to turn them out without difficulty. Let us therefore restrict
them carefully to the treaty ports, but let us make all the use of
them we can."