peoples? Although no other people have manifested such phenomena as
the Japanese in regard to suicide for loyalty, yet any true
appreciation of Western peoples will at once dispel the idea that they
lack courage. Manifestations of courage differ according to the nature
of the social order, but no nation could long maintain itself, to say
nothing of coming into existence, without a high degree of this
endowment.
But Japanese courage is not entirely of the physical order, although
that is the form in which it has chiefly shown itself thus far. The
courage of having and holding one's own convictions is known in Japan
as elsewhere. There has been a long line of martyrs. During the
decades after the introduction of Buddhism, there was such opposition
that it required much courage for converts to hold to their beliefs.
So, too, at the time of the rise of the new Buddhist sects, there was
considerable persecution, especially with the rise of the Nichiren
Shu. And when the testing time of Christianity came, under the edict
of the Tokugawas by which it was suppressed, tens of thousands were
found who preferred death to the surrender of their faith. In recent
times, too, much courage has been shown by the native Christians.
As an illustration is the following: When an eminent American teacher
of Japanese youth returned to Japan after a long absence, his former
pupils gathered around him with warm admiration. They had in the
interval of his absence become leaders among the trustees and faculty
of the most prosperous Christian college in Japan. He was accordingly
invited to deliver a course of lectures in the Chapel. It was
generally known that he was no longer the earnest Christian that he
had once been, when, as teacher in an interior town, he had inspired a
band of young men who became Christians under his teaching and a power
for good throughout the land. But no one was prepared to hear such
extreme denunciations of Christianity and Christian missions and
missionaries as constituted the substance of his lectures. At first
the matter was passed over in silence. But, by the end of the second
lecture, the missionaries entered a protest, urging that the Christian
Chapel should not again be used for such lectures. The faculty,
however, were not ready to criticise their beloved teacher. The third
lecture proved as abusive as the others; the speaker seemed to have no
sense of propriety. A glimpse of his thought, and method of expression
may be gained from a single sentence: "I have been commissioned,
gentlemen, by Jesus Christ, to tell you that there is no such thing as
a soul or a future life." Although the missionary members of the
faculty urged it, the Japanese members, most of whom were his former
pupils, were unwilling to take any steps whatever to prevent the
continuation of the blasphemous lectures. The students of the
institution accordingly held a mass-meeting, in which the matter was
discussed, and it was decided to inform the speaker that the students
did not care to hear any more such lectures. The question then arose
as to who would deliver the resolution. There was general hesitancy,
and anyone who has seen or known the lecturer, and has heard him
speak, can easily understand this feeling; for he is a large man with
a most impressive and imperious manner. The young man, however, who
had perhaps been most active in agitating the matter, and who had
presented the resolution to the meeting, volunteered to go. He is
slight and rather small, even for a Japanese. Going to the home of the
lecturer, he delivered calmly the resolution of the students. To the
demand as to who had drawn up and presented the resolution to the
meeting, the reply was: "I, sir." That ended the conversation, but not
the matter. From that day the idolized teacher was gradually lowered
from his pedestal. But the moral courage of the young man who could
say in his enraged presence, "I, sir," has not been forgotten. Neither
has that of the young man who had acted as interpreter for the first
lecture; not only did he decline to act in that capacity any longer,
but, taking the first public opportunity, at the chapel service the
following day, which proved to be Sunday, he went to the platform and
asked forgiveness of God and of men that he had uttered such language
as he had been compelled to use in his translating. Here, too, was
moral courage of no mean order.
XIV
FICKLENESS--STOLIDITY--STOICISM
A frequent criticism of the Japanese is that they are fickle; that
they run from one fad to another, from one idea to another, quickly
tiring of each in turn. They are said to lack persistence in their
amusements no less than in the most serious matters of life.
None will deny the element of truth in this charge. In fact, the
Japanese themselves recognize that of late their progress has been by
"waves," and not a few lament it. A careful study of school attendance
will show that it has been subject to alternate waves of popularity
and disfavor. Private schools glorying in their hundreds of pupils
have in a short time lost all but a few score. In 1873 there was a
passion for rabbits, certain varieties of which were then for the
first time introduced into Japan. For a few months these brought
fabulous prices, and became a subject of the wildest speculation. In
1874-75 cock-fighting was all the rage. Foreign waltzing and gigantic
funerals were the fashion one year, while wrestling was the fad at
another time, even the then prime minister, Count Kuroda, taking the
lead. But the point of our special interest is as to whether
fickleness is an essential element of Japanese character, and so
dominant that wherever the people may be and whatever their
surroundings, they will always be fickle; or whether this trait is due
to the conditions of their recent history. Let us see.
Prof. Basil H. Chamberlain says, "Japan stood still so long that she
has to move quickly and often now to make up for lost time." This
states the case pretty well. Had we known Japan only through her
Tokugawa period, the idea of fickleness would not have occurred to us;
on the contrary, the dominant impression would have been that of the
permanence and fixity of her life and customs. This quality or
appearance of fickleness is, then, a modern trait, due to the
extraordinary circumstances in which Japan finds herself. The
occurrence of wave after wave of fresh fashions and fads is neither
strange nor indicative of an essentially fickle disposition. Glancing
below the surface for a moment, we shall see that there is an
earnestness of purpose which is the reverse of fickle.
What nation, for example, ever voluntarily set itself to learn the
ways and thoughts and languages of foreign nations as persistently as
Japan? That there has been fluctuation of intensity is not so
surprising as that, through a period of thirty years, she has kept
steadily at it. Tens of thousands of her young men are now, able to
read the English language with some facility; thousands are also able
to read German and French. Foreign languages are compulsory in all the
advanced schools. A regulation going into force in September, 1900,
requires the study of two foreign languages. This has been done at a
cost of many hundred thousands of dollars. There has been a fairly
permanent desire and effort to learn all that the West has to teach.
The element of fickleness is to be found chiefly in connection with
the methods rather than in connection with the ends to be secured.
From the moment when Japan discovered that the West had sources of
power unknown to herself, and indispensable if she expected to hold
her own with the nations of the world, the aim and end of all her
efforts has been to master the secrets of that power. She has seen
that education is one important means. That she should stumble in the
adoption of educational methods is not strange. The necessary
experience is being secured. But for a lesson of this sort, more than
one generation of experience is required of a nation. For some time to
come Japan is sure to give signs of unsteadiness, of lack of perfect
balance.
A pitiful sight in Japan is that of boys not more than five or six
years of age pushing or pulling with all their might at heavily loaded
hand-carts drawn by their parents. Yet this is typical of one aspect
of Japanese civilization. The work is largely done by young people
under thirty, and vast multitudes of the workers are under twenty
years of age. This is true not only of menial labor, but also in
regard to labor involving more or less responsibility. In the post
offices, for instance, the great majority of the clerks are mere boys.
In the stores one rarely sees a man past middle age conducting the
business or acting as clerk. Why are the young so prominent? Partly
because of the custom of "abdication." As "family abdication" is
frequent, it has a perceptible effect on the general character of the
nation, and accounts in part for rash business ventures and other
signs of impetuosity and unbalanced judgment. Furthermore, under the
new civilization, the older men have become unfitted to do the
required work. The younger and more flexible members of the rising
generation can quickly adjust themselves to the new conditions, as in
the schools, where the older men, who had received only the regular
training in Chinese classics, were utterly incompetent as teachers of
science. Naturally, therefore, except for instruction in these
classics, the common-school teachers, during the earlier decades, were
almost wholly young boys. The extreme youthfulness of school-teachers
has constantly surprised me. In the various branches of government
this same phenomenon is equally common. Young men have been pushed
forward into positions with a rapidity and in numbers unknown in the
West, and perhaps unknown in any previous age in Japan.
The rise and decline of the Christian Church in Japan has been
instanced as a sign of the fickleness of the people. It is a mistaken
instance, for there are many other causes quite sufficient to account
for the phenomenon in question. Let me illustrate by the experience of
an elderly Christian. He had been brought to Christ through the
teachings of a young man of great brilliancy, whose zeal was not
tempered with full knowledge--which, however, was not strange, in view
of his limited opportunities for learning. His instruction was
therefore narrow, not to say bigoted. Still the elderly gentleman
found the teachings of the young man sufficiently strong and clear
thoroughly to upset all his old ideas of religion, his polytheism, his
belief in charms, his worship of ancestors, and all kindred ideas. He
accepted the New Testament in simple unquestioning faith. But, after
six or eight years, the young instructor began to lose his own
primitive and simple faith. He at once proceeded to attack that which
before he had been defending and expounding. Soon his whole
theological position was changed. Higher criticism and religious
philosophy were now the center of his preaching and writing. The
result was that this old gentleman was again in danger of being upset
in his religious thinking. He felt that his new faith had been
received in bulk, so to speak, and if a part of it were false, as his
young teacher now asserted, how could he know that any of it was true?
Yet his heart's experience told him that he had secured something in
this faith that was real; he was loath to lose it; consequently, for
some years now, he has systematically stayed away from church
services, and refrained from reading magazines in which these new and
destructive views have been discussed; he has preferred to read the
Bible quietly at home, and to have direct communion with God, even
though, in many matters of Biblical or theoretical science, he might
hold his mistaken opinions. A surface view of this man's conduct might
lead one to think of him as fickle; but a deeper consideration will
lead to the opposite conclusion.
The fluctuating condition of the Christian churches is not cause for
astonishment, nor is it to be wholly, if at all, attributed to the
fickleness of the national character, but rather, in a large degree,
to the peculiar conditions of Japanese life. The early Christians had
much to learn. They knew, experimentally, but little of Christian
truth. The whole course of Christian thought, the historical
development of theology, with the various heresies, the recent
discussions resting on the so-called "higher criticism" of the Bible,
together with the still more recent investigations into the history
and philosophy of religion in general, were of course wholly unknown
to them. This was inevitable, and they were blameless. All could not
be learned at once.
Nor is there any blame attached to the missionaries. It was as
impossible for them to impart to young and inexperienced Christians a
full knowledge of these matters as it was for the latter to receive
such information. The primary interest of the missionaries was in the
practical and everyday duties of the Christian life, in the great
problem of getting men and women to put away the superstitions and
narrowness and sins springing from polytheism or practical atheism,
and getting them started in ways of godliness. The training schools
for evangelists were designed to raise up practical workers rather
than speculative theologians. Missionaries considered it their duty
(and they were beyond question right) to teach religion rather than
the science and philosophy of religion. When, therefore, the
evangelists discovered that they had not been taught these advanced
branches of knowledge, it is not strange that some should rush after
them, and, in their zeal for that which they supposed to be important,
hasten to criticise their former teachers. As a result, they
undermined both their own faith and that of many who had become
Christians through their teaching.
The dullness of the church life, so conspicuous at present in many of
the churches, is only partly due to the fact that the Christians are
tired of the services. It is true that these services no longer afford
them that mental and spiritual stimulus which they found at the first,
and that, lacking this, they find little inducement to attend. But
this is only a partial explanation. Looking over the experience of the
past twenty-five years, we now see that the intense zeal of the first
few years was a natural result of a certain narrowness of view. It is
an interesting fact that, during one of the early revivals in the
Doshisha, the young men were so intense and excited that the
missionaries were compelled to restrain them. These young Christians
felt and said that the missionaries were not filled with the Holy
Spirit; they accordingly considered it their duty to exhort their
foreign leaders, even to chide them for their lack of faith. The
extraordinary expectations entertained by the young Japanese workers
of those days and shared by the missionaries, that Japan was to
become a Christian nation before the end of the century, was due in
large measure to an ignorance alike of Christianity, of human nature,
and of heathenism, but, under the peculiar conditions of life, this
was well-nigh inevitable. And that great and sudden changes in feeling
and thought have come over the infant churches, in consequence of the
rapid acquisition of new light and new experience, is equally
inevitable. These changes are not primarily attributable to fickleness
of nature, but to the extraordinary additions to their knowledge.
There is good reason to think, however, that the period of these rapid
fluctuations is passing away. All the various fads, fancies, and
follies, together with the sciences, philosophies, ologies, and isms
of the Western world, have already come to Japan, and are fairly well
known. No essentially new and sudden experiences lie before the
people.
Furthermore, the young men are year by year growing older. Experience
and age together are giving a soberness and a steadiness otherwise
unattainable. In the schools, in the government, in politics, and in
the judiciary, and in the churches, men of years and of training in
the new order are becoming relatively numerous, and erelong they will
be in the majority. We may expect to see Japan gradually settling down
to a steadiness and a regularity that have been lacking during the
past few decades. The newcomer to Japan is much impressed with the
expressionless character of so many Japanese faces. They appear like
the images of Buddha, who is supposed to be so absorbed in profound
meditation that the events of the passing world make no impression
upon him. I have sometimes heard the expression "putty face" used to
describe the appearance of the common Japanese face. This immobility
of the Oriental is more conspicuous to a newcomer than to one who has
seen much of the people and who has learned its significance. But
though the "putty" effect wears off, there remains an impression of
stoicism that never fades away. These two features, stolidity and
stoicism, are so closely allied in appearance that they are easily
mistaken, yet they are really distinct. The one arises from
stupidity, from dullness of mind. The other is the product of
elaborate education and patient drill. Yet it is often difficult to
determine where the one ends and the other begins.
The stolidity of stupidity is, of course, commonest among the peasant
class. For centuries they have been in closest contact with the soil;
nothing has served to awaken their intellectual faculties. Reading and
writing have remained to them profound mysteries. Their lives have
been narrow in the extreme. But the Japanese peasant is not peculiar
in this respect. Similar conditions in other lands produce similar
results, as in France, according to Millet's famous painting, "The Man
with the Hoe."
It is an interesting fact, however, that this stolidity of stupidity
can be easily removed. I have often heard comments on the marked
change in the facial expression of those adults who learn to read the
Bible. Their minds are awakened; a new light is seen in their eyes as
new ideas are started in their minds.
The impression of stolidity made on the foreigner is, due less,
however, to stupidity than to a stoical education. For centuries the
people have been taught to repress all expression of their emotions.
It has been required of the inferior to listen quietly to his superior
and to obey implicitly. The relations of superior and inferior have
been drilled into the people for ages. The code of a military camp has
been taught and enforced in all the homes. Talking in the presence of
a superior, or laughter, or curious questions, or expressions of
surprise, anything revealing the slightest emotion on the part of the
inferior was considered a discourtesy.
Education in these matters was not confined to oral instruction;
infringements were punished with great rigor. Whenever a daimyo
traveled to Yedo, the capital, he was treated almost as a god by the
people. They were required to fall on their knees and bow their faces
to the ground, and the death penalty was freely awarded to those who
failed to make such expressions of respect.
One source, then, of the systematic repression of emotional expression
is the character of the feudal order of society that so long
prevailed. The warrior who had best control of his facial expression,
who could least expose to his foe or even to his ordinary friends the
real state of his feelings, other things being equal, would come off
the victor. In further explanation of this repression is the religion
of Buddha. For 1200 years it has helped to mold the middle and the
lower classes of the people. According to its doctrine, desire is the
great evil; from it all other evils spring. For this reason, the aim
of the religious life is to suppress all desire, and the most natural
way to accomplish this is to suppress the manifestation of desire; to
maintain passive features under all circumstances. The images of
Buddha and of Buddhist saints are utterly devoid of expression. They
indicate as nearly as possible the attainment of their desire, namely,
freedom from all desire. This is the ambition of every earnest
Buddhist. Being the ideal and the actual effort of life, it does
affect the faces of the people. Lack of expression, however, does not
prove absence of desire.
Every foreigner has had amusing proof of this. A common experience is
the passing of a group of Japanese who, apparently, give no heed to
the stranger. Neither by the turn of the head nor by the movement of a
single facial muscle do they betray any curiosity, yet their eyes take
in each detail, and involuntarily follow the receding form of the
traveler. In the interior, where foreigners are still objects of
curiosity, young men have often run up from behind, gone to a distance
ahead of me, then turned abruptly, as though remembering something,
and walked slowly back again, giving me, apparently, not the slightest
attention. The motive was the desire to get a better look at the
foreigner. They hoped to conceal it by a ruse, for there must be no
manifestation of curiosity.
Phenomena which a foreigner may attribute to a lack of emotion of, at
least, to its repression, may be due to some very different cause. Few
things, for instance, are more astonishing to the Occidental than the
silence on the part of the multitude when the Emperor, whom they all
admire and love, appears on the street. Under circumstances which
would call forth the most enthusiastic cheers from Western crowds, a
Japanese crowd will maintain absolute silence. Is this from lack of
emotion? By no means. Reverence dominates every breast. They would no
more think of making noisy demonstrations of joy in the presence of
the Emperor than a congregation of devout Christians would think of
doing the same during a religious service. This idea of reverence for
superiors has pervaded the social order--the intensity of the
reverence varying with the rank of the superior. But a change has
already begun. Silence is no longer enforced; no profound bowings to
the ground are now demanded before the nobility; on at least one
occasion during the recent China-Japan war the enthusiasm of the
populace found audible expression when the Emperor made a public
appearance. Even the stoical appearance of the people is passing away
under the influence of the new order of society, with its new,
dominant ideas. Education is bringing the nation into a large and
throbbing life. Naturalness is taking the place of forced repression.
A sense of the essential equality of man is springing up, especially
among the young men, and is helping to create a new atmosphere in this
land, where, for centuries, one chief effort has been to repress all
natural expression of emotion.
While touring in Kyushu several years ago, I had an experience which
showed me that the stolidity, or vivacity, of a people is largely
dependent on the prevailing social order rather than on inherent
nature. Those who have much to do with the Japanese have noted the
extreme quiet and reserve of the women. It is a trait that has been
lauded by both native and foreign writers. Because of this
characteristic it is difficult for a stranger, to carry on
conversation with them. They usually reply in monosyllables and in low
tones. The very expression of their faces indicates a reticence, a
calm stolidity, and a lack of response to the stimulus of social
intercourse that is striking and oppressive to an Occidental. I have
always found it a matter of no little difficulty to become acquainted
with the women, and especially with the young women, in the church
with which I have been connected. With the older women this reticence
is not so marked. Now for my story: