church one day with an English-speaking Japanese, who had had a good
deal to do with foreigners. Suddenly, without any introduction, he
remarked that he did not comprehend how the men of the West could
endure such tyranny as was exercised over them by their wives. I, of
course, asked what he meant. He then said that he had seen me
buttoning my wife's shoes. I should explain that on calling on the
Japanese, in their homes, it is necessary that we leave our shoes at
the door, as the Japanese invariably do; this is, of course, awkward
for foreigners who wear shoes; especially so is the necessity of
putting them on again. The difficulty is materially increased by the
invariably high step at the front door. It is hard enough for a man to
kneel down on the step and reach for his shoes and then put them on;
much more so is it for a woman. And after the shoes are on, there is
no suitable place on which to rest the foot for buttoning and tying. I
used, therefore, very gladly to help my wife with hers. Yet, so
contrary to Japanese precedent was this act of mine that this
well-educated gentleman and Christian, who had had much intercourse
with foreigners, could not see in it anything except the imperious
command of the wife and the slavish obedience of the husband. His
conception of the relation between the Occidental husband and wife is
best described as tyranny on the part of the wife.
One of the early shocks I received on this general subject was due to
the discovery that whenever my wife took my arm as we walked the
street to and from church, or elsewhere, the people looked at us in
surprised displeasure. Such public manifestation of intimacy was to be
expected from libertines alone, and from these only when they were
more or less under the influence of drink. Whenever a Japanese man
walks out with his wife, which, by the way, is seldom, he invariably
steps on ahead, leaving her to follow, carrying the parcels, if there
are any. A child, especially a son, may walk at his side, but not his
wife.
Let me give a few more illustrations to show how the present family
life of the Japanese checks the full and free development of the
affections. In one of our out-stations I but recently found a young
woman in a distressing condition. Her parents had no sons, and
consequently, according to the custom of the land, they had adopted a
son, who became the husband of their eldest daughter; the man proved a
rascal, and the family was glad when he decided that he did not care
to be their son any longer. Shortly after his departure a child was
born to the daughter; but, according to the law, she had no husband,
and consequently the child must either be registered as illegitimate,
or be fraudulently registered as the child of the mother's father.
There is much fraudulent registration, the children of concubines are
not recognized as legitimate; yet it is common to register such
children as those of the regular wife, especially if she has few or
none of her own.
An evangelist who worked long in Kyushu was always in great financial
trouble because of the fact that he had to support two mothers,
besides giving aid to his father, who had married a third wife. The
first was his own mother, who had been divorced, but, as she had no
home, the son took her to his. When the father divorced his second
wife, the son was induced to take care of her also. Another
evangelist, with whom I had much to do, was the adopted son of a
scheming old man; it seems that in the earlier part of the present era
the eldest son of a family was exempt from military draft. It often
happened, therefore, that families who had no sons could obtain large
sums of money from those who had younger sons whom they wished to have
adopted for the purpose of escaping the draft. This evangelist, while
still a boy, was adopted into such a family, and a certain sum was
fixed upon to be paid at some time in the future. But the adopted son
proved so pleasing to the adopting father that he did not ask for the
money; by some piece of legerdemain, however, he succeeded in adopting
a second son, who paid him the desired money. After some years the
first adopted son became a Christian, and then an evangelist, both
steps being taken against the wishes of the adopting father. The
father finally said that he would forego all relations to the son, and
give him back his original name, provided the son would pay the
original sum that had been agreed on, plus the interest, which
altogether would, at that time, amount to several hundred yen. This
was, of course, impossible. The negotiations dragged on for three or
four years. Meanwhile, the young man fell in love with a young girl,
whom he finally married; as he was still the son of his adopting
father, he could not have his wife registered as his wife, for the old
man had another girl in view for him and would not consent to this
arrangement. And so the matter dragged for several months more. Unless
the matter could be arranged, any children born to them must be
registered as illegitimate. At this point I was consulted and, for the
first time, learned the details of the case. Further consultations
resulted in an agreement as to the sum to be paid; the adopted son was
released, and re-registered under his newly acquired name and for the
first time his marriage became legal. The confusion and suffering
brought into the family by this practice of adoption and of separation
are almost endless.
The number of cases in which beautiful and accomplished young women
have been divorced by brutal and licentious husbands is appalling. I
know several such. What wonder that Christians and others are
constantly laying emphasis, in public lectures and sermons and private
talks, on the crying need of reform in marriage and in the home?
Throughout the land the newspapers are discussing the pros and cons of
monogamy and polygamy. In January of 1898 the _Jiji Shimpo_, one of
the leading daily papers of Tokyo, had a series of articles on the
subject from the pen of one of the most illustrious educators of New
Japan, Mr. Fukuzawa. His school, the "Keio Gijiku," has educated more
thousands of young men than any other, notwithstanding the fact that
it is a private institution. Though not a Christian himself, nor
making any professions of advocating Christianity, yet Mr. Fukuzawa
has come out strongly in favor of monogamy. His description of the
existing social and family life is striking, not to say sickening. If
I mistake not, it is he who tells of a certain noble lady who shed
tears at the news of the promotion of her husband in official rank;
and when questioned on the matter she confessed that, with added
salary, he would add to the number of his concubines and to the
frequency of his intercourse with famous dancing and singing girls.
The distressing state of family life may also be gathered from the
large numbers of public and secret prostitutes that are to be found in
all the large cities, and the singing girls of nearly every town.
According to popular opinion, their number is rapidly increasing.
Though this general subject trenches on morality rather than on the
topic immediately before us, yet it throws a lurid light on this
question also. It lets us see, perhaps, more clearly than we could in
any other way, how deficient is the average home life of the people. A
professing Christian, a man of wide experience and social standing,
not long since seriously argued at a meeting of a Young Men's
Christian Association that dancing and singing girls are a necessary
part of Japanese civilization to-day. He argued that they supply the
men with that female element in social life which the ordinary woman
cannot provide; were the average wives and daughters sufficiently
accomplished to share in the social life of the men as they are in the
West, dancing and singing girls, being needless, would soon cease to
be.
One further question in this connection merits our attention. How are
we to account for an order of society that allows so little scope for
the natural affections of the heart, unless by saying that that order
is the true expression of their nature? Must we not say that the
element of affection in the present social order is deficient because
the Japanese themselves are naturally deficient? The question seems
more difficult than it really is.
In the first place, the affectionate relation existing between
husbands and wives and between parents and children, in Western lands,
is a product of relatively recent times. In his exhaustive work on
"The History of Human Marriage," Westermarck makes this very plain.
Wherever the woman is counted a slave, is bought and sold, is
considered as merely a means of bearing children to the family, or in
any essential way is looked down upon, there high forms of affection
are by the nature of the case impossible, though some affection
doubtless exists; it necessarily attains only a rudimentary
development. Now it is conspicuous that the conception of the nature
and purpose of woman, as held in the Orient, has always been debasing
to her. Though individual women might rise above their assigned
position the whole social order, as established by the leaders of
thought, was against her. The statement that there was a primitive
condition of society in Japan in which the affectionate relations
between husband and wife now known in the West prevailed, is, I think,
a mistake.
We must remember, in the second place, what careful students of human
evolution have pointed out, that those tribes and races in which the
family was most completely consolidated, that is to say, those in
which the power of the father was absolute, were the ones to gain the
victory over their competitors. The reason for this is too obvious to
require even a statement. Every conquering race has accordingly
developed the "patria potestas" to a greater or less degree. Now one
general peculiarity of the Orient is that that stage of development
has remained to this day; it has not experienced those modifications
and restrictions which have arisen in the West. The national
government dealt with families and clans, not with individuals, as the
final social unit. In the West, however, the individual has become the
civil unit; the "patria potestas" has thus been all but lost. This,
added to religious and ethical considerations, has given women and
children an ever higher place both in society and in the home. Had
this loss of authority by the father been accompanied with a weakening
of the nation, it would have been an injury; but, in the West, his
authority has been transferred to the nation. These considerations
serve to render more intelligible and convincing the main proposition
of these chapters, that the distinctive emotional characteristics of
the Japanese are not inherent; they are the results of the social and
industrial order; as this order changes, they too will surely change.
The entire civilization of a land takes its leading, if not its
dominant, color from the estimate set by the people as a whole on the
value of human life. The relatively late development of the tender
affections, even in the West, is due doubtless to the extreme slowness
with which the idea of the inherent value of a human being, as such,
has taken root, even though it was clearly taught by Christ. But the
leaven of His teaching has been at work for these hundreds of years,
and now at last we are beginning to see its real meaning and its vital
relation to the entire progress of man. It may be questioned whether
Christ gave any more important impetus to the development of
civilization than by His teaching in regard to the inestimable worth
of man, grounding it, as He did, on man's divine sonship. Those
nations which insist on valuing human life only by the utilitarian
standard, and which consequently keep woman in a degraded place,
insisting on concubinage and all that it implies, are sure to wane
before those nations which loyally adopt and practice the higher
ideals of human worth. The weakness of heathen lands arises in no
slight degree from their cheap estimate of human life.
In Japan, until the Meiji era, human life was cheap. For criminals of
the military classes, suicide was the honorable method of leaving this
world; the lower orders of society suffered loss of life at the hands
of the military class without redress. The whole nation accepted the
low standards of human value; woman was valued chiefly, if not
entirely, on a utilitarian basis, that, namely, of bearing children,
doing house and farm work, and giving men pleasure. So far as I know,
not among all the teachings of Confucius or Buddha was the supreme
value of human life, as such, once suggested, much less any adequate
conception of the worth and nature of woman. The entire social order
was constructed without these two important truths.
By a great effort, however, Japan has introduced a new social order,
with unprecedented rapidity. By one revolution it has established a
set of laws in which the equality of all men before the law is
recognized at least; for the first time in Oriental history, woman is
given the right to seek divorce. The experiment is now being made on a
great scale as to whether the new social order adopted by the rulers
can induce those ideas among the people at large which will insure its
performance. Can the mere legal enactments which embody the principles
of human equality and the value of human life, regardless of sex,
beget those fundamental conceptions on which alone a steady and
lasting government can rest? Can Japan really step into the circle of
Western nations, without abandoning her pagan religions and pushing
onward into Christian monotheism with all its corollaries as to the
relations and mutual duties of man? All earnest men are crying out for
a strengthening of the moral life of the nation through the reform of
the family and are proclaiming the necessity of monogamy; but, aside
from the Christians, none appear to see how this is to be done. Even
Mr. Fukuzawa says that the first step in the reform of the family and
the establishment of monogamy is to develop public sentiment against
prostitution and plural or illegal marriage; and the way to do this
is first to make evil practices secret. This, he says, is more
important than to give women a higher education. He does not see that
Christianity with its conceptions of immediate responsibility of the
individual to God, the loving Heavenly Father, and of the infinite
value of each human soul, thus doing away with the utilitarian scale
for measuring both men and women, together with its conceptions of the
relations of the sexes and of man to man, can alone supply that
foundation for all the elements of the new social order, intellectual
and emotional, which will make it workable and permanent, and of which
monogamy is but one element.[L] He does not see that representative
government and popular rights cannot stand for any length of time on
any other foundation.
X
CHEERFULNESS--INDUSTRY--TRUTHFULNESS--SUSPICIOUSNESS
Many writers have dwelt with delight on the cheerful disposition that
seems so common in Japan. Lightness of heart, freedom from all anxiety
for the future, living chiefly in the present, these and kindred
features are pictured in glowing terms. And, on the whole, these
pictures are true to life. The many flower festivals are made
occasions for family picnics when all care seems thrown to the wind.
There is a simplicity and a freshness and a freedom from worry that is
delightful to see. But it is also remarked that a change in this
regard is beginning to be observed. The coming in of Western
machinery, methods of government, of trade and of education, is
introducing customs and cares, ambitions and activities, that militate
against the older ways. Doubtless, this too is true. If so, it but
serves to establish the general proposition of these pages that the
more outstanding national characteristics are largely the result of
special social conditions, rather than of inherent national character.
The cheerful disposition, so often seen and admired by the Westerner,
is the cheerfulness of children. In many respects the Japanese are
relatively undeveloped. This is due to the nature of their social
order during the past. The government has been largely paternal in
form and fully so in theory. Little has been left to individual
initiative or responsibility. Wherever such a system has been dominant
and the perfectly accepted order, the inevitable result is just such a
state of simple, childish cheerfulness as we find in Japan. It
constitutes that golden age sung by the poets of every land. But being
the cheerfulness of children, the happiness of immaturity, it is
bound to change with growth, to be lost with coming maturity.
Yet the Japanese are by no means given up to a cheerful view of life.
Many an individual is morose and dejected in the extreme. This
disposition is ever stimulated by the religious teachings of Buddhism.
Its great message has been the evanescent character of the present
life. Life is not worth living, it urges; though life may have some
pleasures, the total result is disappointment and sorrow. Buddhism has
found a warm welcome in the hearts of many Japanese. For more than a
thousand years it has been exercising a potent influence on their
thoughts and lives. Yet how is this consistent with the cheerful
disposition which seems so characteristic of Japan? The answer is not
far to seek. Pessimism is by its very nature separative, isolating,
silent. Those oppressed by it do not enter into public joys. They hide
themselves in monasteries, or in the home. The result is that by its
very nature the actual pessimism of Japan is not a conspicuous feature
of national character. The judgment that all Japanese are cheerful
rests on shallow grounds. Because, forsooth, millions on holidays bear
that appearance, and because on ordinary occasions the average man and
woman seem cheerful and happy, the conclusion is reached that all are
so. No effort is made to learn of those whose lives are spent in
sadness and isolation. I am convinced that the Japan of old, for all
its apparent cheer, had likewise its side of deep tragedy. Conditions
of life that struck down countless individuals, and mental conditions
which made Buddhism so popular, both point to this conclusion.
Again I wish to call attention to the fact that the prominence of
children and young people is in part the cause of the appearance of
general happiness. The Japanese live on the street as no Western
people do. The stores and workshops are the homes; when these are
open, the homes are open. When the children go out of the house to
play they use the streets, for they seldom have yards. Here they
gather in great numbers and play most enthusiastically, utterly
regardless of the passers-by, for these latter are all on foot or in
jinrikishas, and, consequently, never cause the children any alarm.
The Japanese give the double impression of being industrious and
diligent on the one hand, and, on the other, of being lazy and utterly
indifferent to the lapse of time. The long hours during which they
keep at work is a constant wonder to the Occidental. I have often been
amazed in Fukuoka to find stores and workshops open, apparently in
operation, after ten and sometimes even until eleven o'clock at night,
while blacksmiths and carpenters and wheelwrights would be working
away as if it were morning. Many of the factories recently started
keep very long hours. Indeed most of the cotton mills run day and
night, having two sets of workers, who shift their times of labor
every week. Those who work during the night hours one week take the
day hours the following week. In at least one such factory, with which
I am acquainted, the fifteen hundred girls who work from six o'clock
Saturday evening until six o'clock Sunday morning, are then supposed
to have twenty-four hours of rest before they begin their day's work
Monday morning; but, as a matter of fact, they must spend three or
four and sometimes five hours on Sunday morning cleaning up the
factory.
In a small silk-weaving factory that I know the customary hours for
work were from five in the morning until nine at night, seven days in
the week. The wife, however, of the owner became a Christian. Through
her intervention time for rest was secured on Sunday long enough for a
Bible class, which the evangelist of the place was invited to teach.
After several months of instruction a number of the hands became
Christian, and all were sufficiently interested to ask that the whole
of the Sabbath be granted to them for rest; but in order that the
master might not lose thereby, they agreed to begin work at four each
morning and to work on until ten at night. With such hours one would
have expected them to fall at once into their beds when the work of
the day was over. But for many months, at ten o'clock in the evening,
my wife and I heard them singing a hymn or two in their family
worship before retiring for the night.
In certain weaving factories I have been told that the girls are
required to work sixteen hours a day; and that on Sundays they are
allowed to have some rest, being then required to work but ten hours!
The diligence of mail deliverers, who always run when on duty, the
hours of consecutive running frequently performed by jin-irikisha men
(several have told me that they have made over sixty miles in a single
day), the long hours of persistent study by students in the higher
schools, and many kindred facts, certainly indicate a surprising
capacity for work.
But there are equally striking illustrations of an opposite nature.
The farmers and mechanics and carpenters, among regular laborers, and
the entire life of the common people in their homes, give an
impression of indifference to the flight of time, if not of absolute
laziness. The workers seem ready to sit down for a smoke and a chat at
any hour of the day. In the home and in ordinary social life, the loss
of time seems to be a matter of no consequence whatever. Polite
palaver takes unstinted hours, and the sauntering of the people
through the street emphasizes the impression that no business calls
oppress them.
In my opinion these characteristics, also, are due to the conditions
of society, past and present, rather than to the inherent nature of
the people. The old civilization was easy-going; it had no clocks; it
hardly knew the time of day; it never hastened. The hour was estimated
and was twice as long as the modern hour. The structure of society
demanded the constant observance of the forms of etiquette; this, with
its numberless genuflections and strikings of the head on the floor,
always demanded time. Furthermore, the very character of the footgear
compelled and still compels a shuffling, ambling gait when walking the
streets. The clog is a well-named hindrance to civilization in the
waste of time it compels. The slow-going, time-ignoring
characteristics of New Japan are social inheritances from feudal
times, characteristics which are still hampering its development. The
industrious spirit that is to be found in so many quarters to-day is
largely the gift of the new civilization. Shoes are taking the place
of clogs. The army and all the police, on ordinary duty, wear shoes.
Even the industry of the students is largely due to the new conditions
of student life. The way in which the Japanese are working to-day, and
the feverish haste that some of them evince in their work, shows that
they are as capable as Occidentals of acquiring the rush of
civilization.
The home life of the people gives an impression of listlessness that
is in marked contrast to that of the West. This is partly due to the
fact that the house work is relatively light, there being no furniture
to speak of, the rooms small, and the cooking arrangements quite
simple. Housewives go about their work with restful deliberation,
which is trying, however, to one in haste. It is the experience of the
housekeepers from the West that one Japanese domestic is able to
accomplish from a third to a half of what is done by a girl in
America. This is not wholly due to slowness of movement, however, but
also to smallness of stature and corresponding lack of strength. On
the other hand, the long hours of work required of women in the
majority of Japanese homes is something appalling. The wife is
expected to be up before the husband, to prepare his meals, and to
wait patiently till his return at night, however late that may be. In
all except the higher ranks of society she takes entire care of the
children, except for the help which her older children may give her.
During much of the time she goes about her work with an infant tied to
her back. Though she does not work hard at any one time (and is it to
be wondered at?) yet she works long. Especially hard is the life of
the waiting girls in the hotels. I have learned that, as a rule, they
are required to be up before daylight and to remain on duty until
after midnight. In some hotels they are allowed but four or five hours
out of the twenty-four. The result is, they are often overcome and
fall asleep while at service. Sitting on the floor and waiting to
serve the rice, with nothing to distract their thoughts or hold their
attention, they easily lose themselves for a few moments.