first is that the people have long been taught that Occidentals desire
to seize and possess their land. Although the more enlightened have
long since abandoned this fear and suspicion, the people still suspect
the stranger; they do not propose to admit foreigners to any leading
position in the political life of the land. They do not implicitly
trust the foreigners, even when taken into their employ. That
foreigners should not be admitted to the inner circle of Japanese
political life, therefore, is not strange. Nor is it unique to Japan.
It is not done in any land except the United States. Secondly, the
diverse methods of social intercourse characterizing the East and the
West make a deep chasm between individuals of these civilizations on
coming into social relations. The Oriental bows low, utters
conventional "aisatsu" salutations, listens respectfully, withholds
his own opinion, agrees with his vis-à-vis, weighs every word uttered
with a view to inferring the real meaning, for the genius of the
language requires him to assume that the real meaning is not on the
surface, and chooses his own language with the same circumspection.
The Occidental extends his hand for a hearty shake--if he wishes to be
friendly--looks his visitor straight in the eye, speaks directly from
his heart, without suspicion or fear of being misunderstood, expresses
his own opinions unreservedly. The Occidental, accustomed to this
direct and open manner, spontaneously doubts the man who lacks it. It
is impossible for the Occidental to feel genuinely acquainted with an
Oriental who does not respond in Occidental style of frank open
intercourse. Furthermore, it is not Japanese custom to open one's
heart, to make friends with everyone who comes along. The
hail-fellow-well-met characteristic of the Occident is a feature of
its individualism, that could not come into being in a feudal
civilization in which every respectable man carried two swords with
which to take instant vengeance on whoever should malign or doubt him.
Universal secretiveness and conventionality, polite forms and veiled
expressions, were the necessary shields of a military feudalism. Both
the social order and the language were fitted to develop to a high
degree the power of attention to minutest details of manner and speech
and of inferring important matters from slight indications. The whole
social order served to develop the intuitional method in human
relations. Reliance was placed more on what was not said than on what
was clearly expressed. A doubting state of mind was the necessary
psychological prerequisite for such an inferential system. And doubt
was directly taught. "Hito wo mireba dorobo to omoye," "when you see a
man, count him a robber," may be an exaggeration, but this ancient
proverb throws much light on the Japanese chronic state of mind.
Mutual suspicion--and especially suspicion of strangers--was the rule
in Old Japan. Among themselves the Japanese make relatively few
intimate friends. They remark on Occidental skill in making friends.
That the foreigner is not admitted to the inner social life of the
Japanese is likewise not difficult of explanation, if we bear in mind
the nature of that social life. Is it possible for one who keeps
concubines, who takes pleasure in geisha, and who visits houses of
prostitution, to converse freely and confidentially with those who
condemn these practices? Can he who stands for a high-grade morality,
who criticises in unsparing measure the current morality of Japanese
society, expect to be admitted to its inner social circles?
Impossible. However friendly the relations of Japanese and foreigners
may be in business and in the diplomatic corps, the moral chasm
separating the social life of the Occident from that of the Orient
effectually prevents a foreigner from being admitted to its inner
social life.
It might be thought that immoral Occidentals would be so admitted. Not
so. The Japanese distinguish between Occidentals. They know well that
immoral Occidentals are not worthy of trust. Although for a season
they may hobnob together, the intimacy is shallow and short-lived; it
rests on lust and not on profound sympathies of head and heart.
And this suggests the secret of genuine acquaintance. Men become
profoundly acquainted in proportion as they hold in common serious
views of life, and labor together for the achievement of great moral
ends. Now a gulf separates the ordinary Japanese, even though
educated, from the serious-minded Occidental. Their views of life are
well-nigh antipodal. If their social intercourse is due only to the
accident of business or of social functions, what true intimacy can
possibly arise? The acquaintance can only be superficial. Nothing
binds the two together beyond the temporary and accidental. Let them,
however, become possessed of a common and a serious view of life; let
them strive for the attainment of some great moral reform, which they
feel of vital importance to the welfare of the nation and the age, and
immediately a bond of connection and intercourse will be established
which will ripen into real intimacy.
I dispute the correctness of the generalization above quoted, however,
not only on theoretical considerations, but also as a matter of
experience. Among Christians, the conditions are fulfilled for
intimate relations between Occidentals and Orientals which result, as
a matter of fact, in genuine and intimate friendship. The relations
existing between many missionaries and the native Christians and
pastors refute the assertion of the editor of the _Japan Mail_ that,
"no foreigner has ever yet succeeded in being admitted into the inner
circle of Japanese intercourse." This assertion is doubtless true in
regard to the relation of foreigners to non-Christian society. The
reason, for the fact, however, is not because one is Occidental and
the other Oriental in psychic nature, but solely because of diverse
moral views, aims, and conduct.
It is not the contention of these pages, however, that intimate
friendships between Occidental and Oriental Christians are as easily
formed as between members of two Occidental nations. Although common
views of life, and common moral aims and conduct may provide the
requisite foundations for such intimate friendships, the diverse
methods of thought and of social intercourse may still serve to hinder
their formation. It is probably a fact that missionaries experience
greater difficulty in making genuine intimate friendships with
Japanese Christians than with any other race on the face of the globe.
The reasons for this fact are manifold. The Japanese racial ambition
manifests itself not only in the sphere of political life; it does not
take kindly to foreign control in any line. The churches manifest this
characteristic. It is a cause of suspicion of the foreign missionary
and separation from him; it has broken up many a friendship. Intimacy
between missionaries and leading native pastors and evangelists was
more common in the earlier days of Christian work than more recently,
because the Japanese church organization has recently developed a
self-consciousness and an ambition for organic independence which have
led to mutual criticisms.
Furthermore, Japanese Christians are still Japanese. Their methods of
social intercourse are Oriental; they bow profoundly, they repeat
formal salutations, they refrain from free expression of personal
opinion and preference. The crust of polite etiquette remains. The
foreigner must learn to appreciate it before he can penetrate to the
kindly, sincere, earnest heart. This the foreigner does not easily do,
much to the detriment of his work.
And on the other hand, before the Oriental can penetrate to the
kindly, sincere, and earnest heart of the Occidental, he must abandon
the inferential method; he must not judge the foreigner by what is
left unsaid nor by slight turns of that which is said, but by the
whole thought as fully expressed. In other words, as the Occidental
must learn and must trust to Oriental methods of social intercourse,
so the Oriental must learn and must trust to the corresponding
Occidental methods. The difficulty is great in either case, though of
an opposite nature. Which has the greater difficulty is a question I
do not attempt to solve.
Another generalization as to the essential difference marking Oriental
and Occidental psychic natures is that the former is meditative and
appreciative, and the latter is active. This too is a characterization
of no little truth. The easy-going, time-forgetting, dreaming
characteristics of the Orient are in marked contrast to the rush,
bustle, and hurry of the Occident. One of the first and most forcible
impressions made on the Oriental visiting the West is the tremendous
energy displayed even in the ordinary everyday business. In the home
there is haste; on the streets men, women, and children are "always on
the run." It must seem to be literally so, when the walk of the
Occidental is compared with the slow, crawling rate at which the
Oriental moves. Horse cars, electric cars, steam cars, run at high
speed through crowded streets. Conversation is short and hurried.
Visits are curtailed--hardly more than glimpses. Everyone is so
nervously busy as to have no time for calm, undisturbed thought. So
does the Orient criticise and characterize the Occident.
In the Orient, on the contrary, time is nothing. Walking is slow,
business is deliberate, visiting is a fine art of bows and
conventional phrases preliminary to the real purpose of the call;
amusements even are long-drawn-out, theatrical performances requiring
an entire day. In the home there is no hurry, on the street there is
no rush. To the Occidental, the Oriental seems so absorbed in a dream
life that the actual life is to him but a dream.
If the characterization we are considering is meant to signify that
the Orient possesses a power of appreciation not possessed by the
West, then it seems to me an error. The Occident is not deficient in
appreciation. A better statement of the difference suggested by the
above characterization is that Western civilization is an expression
of Will, whereas Eastern civilization is an expression of
subordination to the superior--to Fate. This feature of Oriental
character is due to the fact that the Orient is still as a whole
communal in its social order, whereas the Occident is individualistic.
In the West each man makes his own fortune; his position in society
rests on his own individual energy. He is free to exert it at will.
Society praises him in proportion as he manifests energy, grit,
independence, and persistence. The social order selects such men and
advances them in political, in business, in social, and in academic
life. The energetic, active characteristics of the West are due, then,
to the high development of individualism. The entire Occidental
civilization is an expression of free will.
The communal nature of the Orient has not systematically given room
for individual progress. The independent, driving man has been
condemned socially. Submission, absolute and perpetual, to parents, to
lord, to ancestors, to Fate, has been the ruling idea of each man's
life. Controlled by such ideas, the easy-going, time-ignoring,
dreaming, contemplative life--if you so choose to call it--of the
Orient is a necessary consequence.
But has this characteristic become congenital, or is it still only
social? Is dreamy appreciation now an inborn racial characteristic of
Oriental mind, while active driving energy is the corresponding
essential trait of Occidental mind? Or may these characteristics
change with the social order? I have no hesitancy whatever in
advocating the latter position. The way in which Young Japan, clad in
European clothing, using watches and running on "railroad time," has
dropped the slow-going style of Old Japan and has acquired habits of
rapid walking, direct clear-cut conversation, and punctuality in
business and travel (comparatively speaking) proves conclusively the
correctness of my contention. New Japan is entering into the hurry and
bustle of Occidental life, because, in contact with the West, she has
adopted in a large measure, though not yet completely, the
individualism of the West.
As time goes on, Japanese civilization will increasingly manifest the
phenomena of will, and will proportionally become assimilated to the
civilization of the West. But the ultimate cause of this
transformation in civilization will be the increasing introduction of
individualism into the social order. And this is possible only because
the so-called racial characteristics are sociological, and not
biological. The transformation of "race soul" therefore does not
depend on the intermarriage of diverse races, but only on the adoption
of new ideas and practices through social intercourse.
We conclude, then, that the only thoroughgoing interpretation of the
differences characterizing Eastern and Western psychic nature is a
social one, and that social differences can be adequately expressed
only by contrasting the fundamental ideas ruling their respective
social orders, namely, communalism for the East and individualism for
the West.
The unity that pervades the Orient, if it is not due to the
inheritance of a common psychic nature, to what is it due? Surely to
the possession of a common civilization and social order. It would be
hard to prove that Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Siamese, Burmese,
Hindus (and how many distinct races does the ethnologist find in
India), Persians, and Turks are all descendants from a common ancestry
and are possessed therefore by physical heredity of a common racial
psychic nature. Yet such is the requirement of the theory we are
opposing. That the races inhabiting the Asiatic continent have had
from ancient times mutual social intercourse, whereby the
civilization, mental, moral, and spiritual, of the most developed has
passed to the other nations, so that China has dominated Eastern Asia,
and India has profoundly influenced all the races inhabiting Asia, is
an indisputable fact. The psychic unity of the Orient is a
civilizational, a social unity, as is also the psychic unity of the
Occident. The reason why the Occident is so distinct from the Orient
in social, in psychic, and in civilizational characteristics is
because these two great branches of the human race have undergone
isolated evolution. Isolated biological evolution has produced the
diverse races. These are now fixed physical types, which can be
modified only by intermarriage. But although isolated social evolution
has produced diverse social and psychic characteristics these are not
fixed and unalterable. To transform psychic and social
characteristics, intimate social intercourse, under special
conditions, is needful alone.
If the characteristics differentiating the Eastern from the Western
peoples are only social, it might be supposed that the results of
association would be mutual, the East influencing the West as much as
the West influences the East, both at last finding a common level.
Such a result, however, is impossible, from the laws regulating
psychic and social intercourse. The less developed psychic nature can
have no appreciable effect on the more highly developed, just as
undeveloped art cannot influence highly developed art, nor crude
science and philosophy highly developed science and philosophy. The
law governing the relations of diverse civilizations when brought into
contact is not like the law of hydrostatics, whereby two bodies of
water of different levels, brought into free communication, finally
find a common level, determined by the difference in level and their
respective masses. In social intercourse the higher civilization is
unaffected by the lower, in any important way, while the lower is
mightily modified, and in sufficient time is lifted to the grade of
the higher in all important respects. This is a law of great
significance. The Orient is becoming Occidentalized to a degree and at
a rate little realized by travelers and not fully appreciated by the
Orientals themselves. They know that mighty changes have taken place,
and are now taking place, but they do not fully recognize their
nature, and the multitudes do not know the source of these changes. In
so far as the East has surpassed the West in any important direction
will the East influence the West.
In saying, then, as we did in our first chapter, that the Japanese
have already formed an Occidento-Oriental civilization, we meant that
Japan has introduced not only the external and mechanical elements of
Western civilization into her new social order, but also its inner and
determinative principle--individualism. In saying that, as the
Ethiopian cannot change his skin nor the leopard his spots, so Japan
will never become thoroughly Occidentalized, we did not intend to say
that she was so Oriental in her physiological nature, in her "race
soul," that she could make no fundamental social transformation; but
merely that she has a social heredity that will always and inevitably
modify every Occidental custom and conception that may be brought to
this land. Although in time Japan may completely individualize her
social order, it will never be identical with that of the West. It
will always bear the marks of her Oriental social heredity in
innumerable details. The Occidental traveler will always be impressed
with the Orientalisms of her civilization. Although the Oriental
familiar with the details of the pre-Meiji social order will be
impressed with what seems to him the complete Occidentalization of her
new civilization and social order, although to-day communalism and
individualism are the distinguishing characteristics respectively of
the East and the West, they are not necessary characteristics due to
inherent race nature. The Orient is sure to become increasingly
individualistic. The future evolution of the great races of the earth
is to be increasingly convergent in all the essentials of individual
and racial prosperity, but in countless non-essential details the
customs of the past will remain, to give each race and nation
distinctive psychic and social characteristics.
XXXVII
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
The aim of the present work has been to gain insight into the real
nature of both Japanese character and its modern transformation.
In doing this we have necessarily entered the domain of social
science, where we have been compelled to take issue with many, to us,
defective conceptions. Our discussions of social principles have,
however, been narrowly limited. We have confined our attention to the
interpretation of those social and psychic characteristics
differentiating the Japanese from other races. Our chief contention
has been that these characteristics are due to the nature of the
social order that has prevailed among them, and not to the inherent
nature of the people; and that the evolution of the psychic
characteristics of all races is due to social more than to biological
evolution.
This position and the discussions offered to prove it imply more than
has been explicitly stated. In this closing chapter it seems desirable
to state concisely, and therefore with technical terminology, some of
the more fundamental principles of social philosophy assumed or
implied in this work. Brevity requires that this statement take the
form of dogmatic propositions and unillustrated abstractions. The
average reader will find little to interest him, and is accordingly
advised to omit it entirely.
Let us first clearly see that we have made no effort to account for
the origin or inherent nature of psychic life. That association or the
social order is the original producing cause of psychic life is by no
means our contention. Given the psychic nature as we find it in man,
the problem is to account for its diverse manifestation in the
different races and civilizations. This, and this alone, has been our
problem.
Psychic nature is the sole and final cause of social life. Without
psychic nature there could be no association. Personalized psychic
nature is the sole and final cause of human social life. Numberless
conditions determine by stimulation or imitation the manifestation of
psychic life. These conditions differ for different lands, peoples,
ages, and political relations, producing diverse social orders for
each separated group. These diverse social orders determine the
psychic characteristics differentiating the various groups. Social
life and social order are objective expressions of a reality of which
psychic nature is the subjective and therefore deeper reality. The two
cannot be ruthlessly torn apart and remain complete, nor can they be
understood, or completely interpreted, apart from each other. They are
correlative and complementary expressions for the same reality.
Similarly physical and psychical life are to be conceived as
profoundly interrelated, being respectively objective and subjective
expressions of a reality incapable of separate interpretation. Yet
each has markedly distinct characteristics and is the subject of
distinct laws of activity and development.
Heredity is of two kinds, biological heredity, transmitting innate
characters, and social heredity, transmitting acquired habits and
their physiological results.
The innate characters transmitted by biological heredity are either
physiological, anatomical, or psychical.
The acquired habits transmitted by social heredity are essentially
psychical: but they may result in acquired physiological, or even
anatomical, characters. Here belong the physiological effects of diet,
housing, clothing, occupation, education, etc., which have not yet
been taken up and incorporated into the innate physiological
constitution by biological heredity. The physiological effects of
social heredity are through the daily physical life and activity of
each individual, in accordance with the requirements of the social
order in which he is reared; and these are reached through its
influence on the acquired psychical habits, which are transmitted
through association, imitation, and the control of activities by
language and education. In biological heredity the transmission is
exclusively prior to birth, while in social heredity it is chiefly, if
not entirely, after birth.
In social heredity the transmission is not determined by
consanguinity, and therefore extends to members of alien races when
they are incorporated in the social organization.
While the transmission of biological inheritance to each offspring is
inevitable and complete, that of social inheritance is largely
voluntary. It is also more or less complete, according to the
knowledge, purpose, and effort of the individuals concerned. The
transmission of acquired social and psychic characteristics even from
parents to offspring depends on their association, and the imposition
on their offspring by parents of their own modes of life. Sharing with
parents their bodily activities, their language and their environment,
both social and psychical, the offspring necessarily develop psychic
and social characteristics similar to those of the parents.
Evolution takes place through the transformation of inheritance. The
evolution of _innate_ physiological, anatomical, and psychical
characters takes place through the transformation of biological
inheritance; and the evolution of society and of _acquired_ characters
chiefly through the transformation of social inheritance.