Changes came as great earthquakes come, without warning: the
transformation of daimyates into prefectures, the suppression of
the military class, the reconstruction of the whole social
system. These events filled the youth with sadness, although he
felt no difficulty in transferring his allegiance from prince to
emperor, and although the wealth of his family remained
unimpaired by the shock. All this reconstruction told him of the
greatness of the national danger, and announced the certain
disappearance of the old high ideals, and of nearly all things
loved. But he knew regret was vain. By self-transformation alone
could the nation hope to save its independence; and the obvious
duty of the patriot was to recognize necessity, and fitly prepare
himself to play the man in the drama of the future.
In the samurai school he had learned much English, and he knew
himself able to converse with Englishmen. He cut his long hair,
put away his swords, and went to Yokohama that he might continue
his study of the language under more favorable conditions. At
Yokohama everything at first seemed to him both unfamiliar and
repellent. Even the Japanese of the port had been changed by
foreign contact: they were rude and rough; they acted and spoke
as common people would not have dared to do in his native town.
The foreigners themselves impressed him still more disagreeably:
it was the period when new settlers could assume the tone of
conquerors to the conquered, and when the life of the "open
ports" was much less decorous than now. The new buildings of
brick or stuccoed timber revived for him unpleasant memories of
the Japanese colored pictures of foreign manners and customs; and
he could not quickly banish the fancies of his boyhood concerning
Occidentals. Reason, based on larger knowledge and experience,
fully assured him what they really were; but to his emotional
life the intimate sense of their kindred humanity still failed to
come. Race-feeling is older than intellectual development; and
the superstitions attaching to race-feeling are not easy to get
rid of. His soldier-spirit, too, was stirred at times by ugly
things heard or seen,--incidents that filled him with the hot
impulse of his fathers to avenge a cowardice or to redress a
wrong. But he learned to conquer his repulsions as obstacles to
knowledge: it was the patriot's duty to study calmly the nature
of his country's foes. He trained himself at last to observe the
new life about him without prejudice,--its merits not less than
its defects; its strength not less than its weakness. He found
kindness; he found devotion to ideals,--ideals not his own, but
which he knew how to respect because they exacted, like the
religion of his ancestors, abnegation of many things.
Through such appreciation he learned to like and to trust an aged
missionary entirely absorbed in the work of educating and
proselytizing. The old man was especially anxious to convert this
young samurai, in whom aptitudes of no common order were
discernible; and he spared no pains to win the boy's confidence.
He aided him in many ways, taught him something of French and
German, of Greek and Latin, and placed entirely at his disposal a
private library of considerable extent. The use of a foreign
library, including works of history, philosophy, travel, and
fiction, was not a privilege then easy for Japanese students to
obtain. It was gratefully appreciated; and the owner of the
library found no difficulty at a later day in persuading his
favored and favorite pupil to read a part of the New Testament.
The youth expressed surprise at finding among the doctrines of
the "Evil Sect" ethical precepts like those of Confucius. To the
old missionary he said: "This teaching is not new to us; but it
is certainly very good. I shall study the book and think about
it."
V
The study and the thinking were to lead the young man much
further than he had thought possible. After the recognition of
Christianity as a great religion came recognitions of another
order, and various imaginings about the civilization of the races
professing Christianity. It then seemed to many reflective
Japanese, possibly even to the keen minds directing the national
policy, that Japan was doomed to pass altogether under alien
rule. There was hope, indeed; and while even the ghost of hope
remained, the duty for all was plain. But the power that could be
used against the Empire was irresistible. And studying the
enormity of that power, the young Oriental could not but ask
himself, with a wonder approaching awe, whence and how it had
been gained. Could it, as his aged teacher averred, have some
occult relation to a higher religion? Certainly the ancient
Chinese philosophy, which declared the prosperity of peoples
proportionate to their observance of celestial law and their
obedience to the teaching of sages, countenanced such a theory.
And if the superior force of Western civilization really
indicated the superior character of Western ethics, was it not
the plain duty of every patriot to follow that higher faith, and
to strive for the conversion of the whole nation? A youth of that
era, educated in Chinese wisdom, and necessarily ignorant of the
history of social evolution in the West, could never have
imagined that the very highest forms of material progress were
developed chiefly through a merciless competition out of all
harmony with Christian idealism, and at variance with every great
system of ethics. Even to-day in the West unthinking millions
imagine some divine connection between military power and
Christian belief, and utterances are made in our pulpits implying
divine justification for political robberies, and heavenly
inspiration for the invention of high explosives. There still
survives among us the superstition that races professing
Christianity are divinely destined to rob or exterminate races
holding other beliefs. Some men occasionally express their
conviction that we still worship Thor and Odin,--the only
difference being that Odin has become a mathematician, and that
the Hammer Mjolnir is now worked by steam. But such persons are
declared by the missionaries to be atheists and men of shameless
lives.
Be this as it may, a time came when the young samurai resolved to
proclaim himself a Christian, despite the opposition of his
kindred. It was a bold step; but his early training had given him
firmness; and he was not to be moved from his decision even by
the sorrow of his parents. His rejection of the ancestral faith
would signify more than temporary pain for him: it would mean
disinheritance, the contempt of old comrades, loss of rank, and
all the consequences of bitter poverty. But his samurai training
had taught him to despise self. He saw what he believed to be his
duty as a patriot and as a truthseeker, and he followed it
without fear or regret.