unaccustomed foreign eye to discern the physical charm. Beauty,
according to our Western standards, can scarcely be said to exist in
this race,--or, shall we say that it has never yet been developed?
One seeks in vain for a facial angle satisfying Western aesthetic
canons. It is seldom that one meets even with a fine example of that
physical elegance,--that manifestation of the economy of
force,--which we call grace, in the Greek meaning of the word. Yet
there is charm--great charm--both of face and form: the charm of
childhood--childhood with its every feature yet softly and vaguely
outlined (efface, as a French artist would call it),--childhood
before the limbs have fully lengthened,--slight and, dainty, with
admirable little hands and feet. The eyes at first surprise us, by
the strangeness of their lids, so unlike Aryan eyelids, and folding
upon another plan. Yet they are often very charming; and a Western
artist would not fail to appreciate the graceful terms, invented by
Japanese or Chinese art, to designate particular beauties in the
lines of the eyelids. Even if she cannot be called handsome,
according to Western [364] standards, the Japanese woman must be
confessed pretty,--pretty like a comely child; and if she be seldom
graceful in the Occidental sense, she is at least in all her ways
incomparably graceful: her every motion, gesture, or expression
being, in its own Oriental manner, a perfect thing,--an act
performed, or a look conferred, in the most easy, the most graceful,
the most modest way possible. By ancient custom, she is not permitted
to display her grace in the street: she must walk in a particular
shrinking manner, turning her feet inward as she patters along upon
her wooden sandals. But to watch her at home, where she is free to be
comely,--merely to see her performing any household duty, or waiting
upon guests, or arranging flowers, or playing with her children,--is
an education in Far Eastern aesthetics for whoever has the head and
the heart to learn.... But is she not, then, one may ask, an
artificial product,--a forced growth of Oriental civilization? I
would answer both "Yes" and "No." She is an artificial product in
only the same evolutional sense that all character is an artificial
product; and it required tens of centuries to mould her. She is not,
on the other hand, an artificial type, because she has been
particularly trained to be her true self at all times when
circumstances allow,--or, in other words, to be delightfully natural.
The old-fashioned education of her sex was directed to the
development [365] of every quality essentially feminine, and to the
suppression of the opposite quality. Kindliness, docility, sympathy,
tenderness, daintiness--these and other attributes were cultivated
into incomparable blossoming. "Be good, sweet maid, and let who will
be clever: do noble things, not dream them, all day long"--those
words of Kingsley really embody the central idea in her training. Of
course the being, formed by such training only, must be protected by
society; and by the old Japanese society she was protected.
Exceptions did not affect the rule. What I mean is that she was able
to be purely herself, within certain limits of emotional etiquette,
in all security. Her success in life was made to depend on her power
to win affection by gentleness, obedience, kindliness;--not the
affection merely of a husband, but of the husband's parents and
grandparents, and brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law,--in short of
all the members of a strange household. Thus to succeed required
angelic goodness and patience; and the Japanese woman realized at
least the ideal of a Buddhist angel. A being working only for others,
thinking only for others, happy only in making pleasure for
others,--a being incapable of unkindness, incapable of selfishness,
incapable of acting contrary to her own inherited sense of
right,--and in spite of this softness and gentleness ready, at any
moment, to lay down her life, to [366] sacrifice everything at the
call of duty: such was the character of the Japanese woman. Most
strange may seem the combination, in this child-soul, of gentleness
and force, tenderness and courage,--yet the explanation is not far to
seek. Stronger within her than wifely affection or parental affection
or even maternal affection,--stronger than any womanly emotion, was
the moral conviction born of her great faith. This religious quality
of character can be found among ourselves only within the shadow of
cloisters, where it is cultivated at the expense of all else; and the
Japanese woman has been therefore compared to a Sister of Charity.
But she had to be very much more than a Sister of
Charity,--daughter-in-law and wife and mother, and to fulfil without
reproach the multiform duties of her triple part. Rather might she be
compared to the Greek type of noble woman,--to Antigone, to Alcestis.
With the Japanese woman, as formed by the ancient training, each act
of life was an act of faith: her existence was a religion, her home a
temple, her every word and thought ordered by the law of the cult of
the dead.... This wonderful type is not extinct--though surely doomed
to disappear. A human creature so shaped for the service of gods and
men that every beat of her heart is duty, that every drop of her
blood is moral feeling, were not less out of place in the future
world of competitive selfishness, than an angel in hell.
[367]
THE SHINTO REVIVAL
The slow weakening of the Tokugawa Shogunate was due to causes not
unlike those which had brought about the decline of previous
regencies: the race degenerated during that long period of peace
which its rule had inaugurated; the strong builders were succeeded by
feebler and feebler men. Nevertheless the machinery of
administration, astutely devised by Iyeyasu, and further perfected by
Iyemitsu, worked so well that the enemies of the Shogunate could find
no opportunity for a successful attack until foreign aggression
unexpectedly came to their aid. The most dangerous enemies of the
government were the great clans of Satsuma and Choshu. Iyeyasu had
not ventured to weaken them beyond a certain point: the risks of the
undertaking would have been great; and, on the other hand, the
alliance of those clans was for the time being a matter of vast
political importance. He only took measures to preserve a safe
balance of power, placing between those formidable allies new
lordships in whose rulers he could put trust,--a trust based first
upon interest, secondly upon kinship. But he always felt that danger
to the Shogunate [368] might come from Satsuma and Choshu; and he
left to his successors careful instructions about the policy to be
followed in dealing with such possible enemies. He felt that his work
was not perfect,--that certain outlying blocks of the structure had
not been properly clamped to the rest. He could not do more in the
direction of consolidation, simply because the material of society
had not yet sufficiently evolved, had not yet become plastic enough,
to permit of perfect and permanent cohesion. In order to effect that,
it would have been necessary to dissolve the clans. But Iyeyasu did
all that human foresight could have safely attempted under the
circumstances; and no one was more keenly conscious than himself of
the weak points in his wonderful organization.
For more than two hundred years the Satsuma and Choshu clans, and
several others ready to league with them, submitted to the discipline
of the Tokugawa rule. But they chafed under it, and watched for a
chance to break the yoke. All the while this chance was being slowly
created for them--not by any political changes, but by the patient
toil of Japanese men of letters. Three among these--the greatest
scholars that Japan ever produced--especially prepared the way, by
their intellectual labours, for the abolition of the Shogunate. They
were Shinto scholars; and they represented the not unnatural reaction
of native conservatism against the [309] long tyranny of alien ideas
and alien beliefs,--against the literature and philosophy and
bureaucracy of China,--against the preponderant influence upon
education of the foreign religion of Buddhism. To all this they
opposed the old native literature of Japan, the ancient poetry, the
ancient cult, the early traditions and rites of Shinto. The names of
these three remarkable men were Mabuchi (1697-1769), Motowori
(1730-1801), and Hirata (1776-1843). Their efforts actually resulted
in the disestablishment of Buddhism, and in the great Shinto revival
of 1871.
The intellectual revolution made by these scholars could have been
prepared only during a long era of peace, and by men enjoying the
protection and patronage of members of the ruling class. By a strange
chance, it was the house of Tokugawa itself which first gave to
literature such encouragement and aid as made possible the labours of
the Shinto scholars. Iyeyasu had been a lover of learning; and had
devoted the later years of his life--passed in retirement at
Shidzuoka--to the collection of ancient books and manuscripts. He
bequeathed his Japanese books to his eighth son, the Prince of Owari;
and his Chinese books to another son, the Prince of Kishu. The Prince
of Owari himself composed several works upon Japanese early
literature. Other descendants of Iyeyasu, inherited the great [370]
Shogun's love of letters: one of his grandsons, Mitsukuni, the second
Prince of Mito (1622-1700), compiled, with the aid of various
scholars, the first, important history of Japan,--the Dai-Nihon-Shi,
in 240 books. Also he compiled a work of 500 volumes upon the
ceremonies and the etiquette of the Imperial Court, and set aside
from his revenues a sum equal to about 30,000 pounds per annum, to
cover the cost of publishing the splendid productions.... Under the
patronage of great lords like these--collectors of libraries--there
gradually developed a new school of men-of-letters: men who turned
away from Chinese literature to the study of the Japanese classics.
They reedited the ancient poetry and chronicles; they republished the
sacred records, with ample commentaries. They produced whole
libraries of works upon religious, historical, and philological
subjects; they made grammars and dictionaries; they wrote treatises
on the art of poetry, on popular errors, on the nature of the gods,
on government, on the manners and customs of ancient days.... The
foundations of this new scholarship were laid by two Shinto
priests,--Kada and Mabuchi.
The high patrons of learning never suspected the possible results of
those researches which they had encouraged and aided. The study of
the ancient records, the study of Japanese literature, the study of
the early political and religious conditions, [371] naturally led men
to consider the history of those foreign literary influences which
had well-nigh stifled native learning, and to consider also the
history of the foreign creed which had overwhelmed the religion of
the ancestral gods. Chinese ethics, Chinese ceremonial, and Chinese
Buddhism had reduced the ancient faith to the state of a minor
belief--almost to the state of a superstition. "The Shinto gods,"
exclaimed one of the scholars of the new school, "have become the
servants of the Buddhas!" But those Shinto gods were the ancestors of
the race,--the fathers of its emperors and princes,--and their
degradation could not but involve the degradation of the imperial
tradition. Already, indeed, the emperors had been deprived not only
of their immemorial rights and privileges, but of their revenues:
many had been deposed and banished and insulted. Just as the gods had
been admitted only as inferior personages to the Buddhist pantheon,
so their living descendants were now permitted to reign only as the
dependants of military usurpers. By sacred law the whole soil of the
empire belonged to the Heavenly Sovereign: yet there had been great
poverty at times in the imperial palace; and the revenues, allotted
for the maintenance of the Mikado, had often been insufficient to
relieve his family from want. Assuredly all this was wrong. The
Shogunate had indeed established peace and inaugurated prosperity;
but who could forget that [372] it had originated in a military
usurpation of imperial rights? Only by the restoration of the Son of
Heaven to his ancient position of power, and by the relegation of the
military chiefs to their proper state of subordination, could the
best interests of the nation be really served....
All this was thought and felt and strongly suggested; but not all of
it was openly proclaimed. To have publicly preached against the
military government as a usurpation would have been to invite
destruction. The Shinto scholars dared only so much as the politics
and the temper of their time seemed to permit,--though they closely
approached the danger-line. By the end of the eighteenth century,
however, their teaching had created a strong party in favour of the
official revival of the ancient religion, the restoration of the
Mikado to supreme power, and the repression, if not suppression, of
the military power. Yet it was not until the year 1841 that the
Shogunate took alarm, and proclaimed its disquiet by banishing from
the capital the great scholar Hirata, and forbidding him to write
anything more. Not long afterwards he died. But he had been able to
teach for forty years; he had written and published several hundred
volumes; and the school of which he was the last and greatest
theologian already exerted far-reaching influence. The restive lords
of Choshu, Satsuma, Tosa, and Hizen were watching and waiting. They
perceived [373] the worth of the new ideas to their own policy; they
encouraged the new Shintoism; they felt that a time was coming when
they could hope to shake off the domination of the Tokugawa. And
their opportunity came at last with the advent to Japan of Commodore
Perry's fleet.
The events of that time are well known, and need not here be dwelt
upon at any length. Suffice to say that after the Shogunate had been
terrified into making commercial treaties with the United States and
other powers, and practically compelled to open sundry ports to
foreign trade, great discontent arose and was fomented as much as
possible by the enemies of the military government. Meanwhile the
Shogunate had ascertained for itself the impossibility of resisting
foreign aggression: it was fairly well informed as to the strength of
Western countries. The imperial court was nowise informed; and the
Shogunate naturally dreaded to furnish the information. To
acknowledge incapacity to resist Occidental aggression would be to
invite the ruin of the Tokugawa house; to resist, on the other hand,
would be to invite the destruction of the Empire. The enemies of the
Shogunate then persuaded the imperial court to order the expulsion of
the foreigners; and this order--which, it must be remembered, was
essentially a religious order, emanating from the source of all
acknowledged authority--placed the military government in a serious
dilemma. [374] It tried to effect by diplomacy what it could not
accomplish by force; but while it was negotiating for the withdrawal
of the foreign' settlers, matters were suddenly forced to a crisis by
the Prince of Choshu, who fired upon various ships belonging to the
foreign powers. This action provoked the bombardment of Shimonoseki,
and the demand of an indemnity of three million dollars. The Shogun
Iyemochi attempted to chastise the daimyo of Choshu for this act of
hostility; but the attempt only proved the weakness of the military
government. Iyemochi died soon after this defeat; and his successor
Hitotsubashi had no chance to do anything,--for the now evident
feebleness of the Shogunate gave its enemies courage to strike a
fatal blow. Pressure was brought upon the imperial court to proclaim
the abolition of the Shogunate; and the Shogunate was abolished by
decree. Hitotsubashi submitted; and the Tokugawa regime thus came to
an end,--although its more devoted followers warred for two years
afterwards, against hopeless odds, to reestablish it. In 1867 the
entire administration was reorganized; the supreme power, both
military and civil, being restored to the Mikado. Soon afterward the
Shinto cult, officially revived in its primal simplicity, was
declared the Religion of State; and Buddhism was disendowed. Thus the
Empire was reestablished upon the ancient lines; and all that the
literary party had [375] hoped for seemed to be realized--except one
thing....
Be it here observed that the adherents of the literary party wanted
to go much further than the great founders of the new Shintoism had
dreamed of going. These later enthusiasts were not satisfied with the
abolition of the Shogunate, the restoration of imperial power, and
the revival of the ancient cult: they wanted a return of all society
to the simplicity of primitive times; they desired that all foreign
influence should be got rid of, and that the official ceremonies, the
future education, the future literature, the ethics, the laws, should
be purely Japanese. They were not even satisfied with the
disendowment of Buddhism: there was a vigorous proposal made for its
total suppression! And all this would have signified, in more ways
than one, a social retrogression towards barbarism. The great
scholars had never proposed to cast away Buddhism and all Chinese
learning; they had only insisted that the native religion and culture
should have precedence. But the new literary party desired what would
have been equivalent to the destruction of a thousand years'
experience. Happily the clansmen who had broken down the Shogunate
saw both past and future in another light. They understood that the
national existence was in peril, and that resistance to foreign
pressure would be hopeless. Satsuma had witnessed the bombardment of
Kagoshima in [376] 1863; Choshu, the bombardment of Shimonoseki in
1864. Evidently the only chance of being able to face Western power
would be through the patient study of Western science; and the
survival of the Empire depended upon the Europeanization of society.
By 1871 the daimiates were abolished; in 1873 the edicts against
Christianity were withdrawn; in 1876 the wearing of swords was
prohibited. The samurai, as a military body, were suppressed; and all
classes were declared thenceforward equal before the law. New codes
were compiled; a new army and navy organized; a new police system
established; a new system of education introduced at Government
expense; and a new constitution promised. Finally, in 1891, the first
Japanese parliament (strictly speaking) was convoked. By that time
the entire framework of society had been remodelled, so far as laws
could remodel it, upon a European pattern. The nation had fairly
entered upon its third period of integration. The clan had been
legally dissolved; the family was no longer the legal unit of
society: by the new constitution the individual had been recognized.
When we consider the history of some vast and sudden political change
in its details only,--the factors of the movement, the combinations
of immediate cause and effect, the influences of strong personality,
the conditions impelling individual action, [377]--then the
transformation is apt to appear to us the work and the triumph of a
few superior minds. We forget, perhaps, that those minds themselves
were the product of their epoch, and that every such rapid change
must represent the working of a national or race-instinct quite as
much as the operation of individual intelligence. The events of the
Meiji reconstruction strangely illustrate the action of such instinct
in the face of peril,--the readjustment of internal relations to
sudden changes of environment. The nation had found its old political
system powerless before the new conditions; and it transformed that
system. It had found its military organization incapable of defending
it; and it reconstructed that organization. It had found its
educational system useless in the presence of unforeseen necessities;
and it replaced that system,--simultaneously crippling the power of
Buddhism, which might otherwise have offered serious opposition to
the new developments required. And in that hour of greatest danger
the national instinct turned back at once to the moral experience
upon which it could best rely,--the experience embodied in its
ancient cult, the religion of unquestioning obedience. Relying upon
Shinto tradition, the people rallied about their ruler, descendant of
the ancient gods, and awaited his will with unconquerable zeal of
faith. By strict obedience to his commands the peril might be
averted,--never otherwise: this was [378] the national conviction.
And the imperial order was simply that the nation should strive by
study to make itself, as far as possible, the intellectual equal of
its enemies. How faithfully that command was obeyed,--how well the
old moral discipline of the race served it in the period of that
supreme emergency,--I need scarcely say. Japan, by right of
self-acquired strength, has entered into the circle of the modern
civilized powers,--formidable by her new military organization,
respectable through her achievements in the domain of practical
science. And the force to effect this astonishing self-improvement,
within the time of thirty years, she owes assuredly to the moral
habit derived from her ancient cult,--the religion of the ancestors.
To fairly measure the feat, we should remember that Japan was
evolutionally younger than any modern European nation, by at least
twenty-seven hundred years, when she went to school! ...
Herbert Spencer has shown that the great value to society of
ecclesiastical institutions lies in their power to give cohesion to
the mass,--to strengthen rule by enforcing obedience to custom, and
by opposing innovations likely to supply any element of
disintegration. In other words, the value of a religion, from the
sociological standpoint, lies in its conservatism. Various writers
have alleged that the [379] Japanese national religion proved itself
weak by incapacity to resist the overwhelming influence of Buddhism.
I cannot help thinking that the entire social history of Japan yields
proof to the contrary. Though Buddhism did for a long period appear
to have almost entirely absorbed Shinto, by the acknowledgment of the
Shinto scholars themselves; though Buddhist emperors reigned who
neglected or despised the cult of their ancestors; though Buddhism
directed, during ten centuries, the education of the nation, Shinto
remained all the while so very much alive that it was able not only
to dispossess its rival at last, but to save the country from foreign
domination. To assert that the Shinto revival signified no more than
a stroke of policy imagined by a group of statesmen, is to ignore all
the antecedents of the event. No such change could have been wrought
by mere decree had not the national sentiment welcomed it....
Moreover, there are three important facts to be remembered in regard
to the former Buddhist predomination: (1) Buddhism conserved the
family-cult, modifying the forms of the rite; (2) Buddhism never
really supplanted the Ujigami cults, but maintained them; (3)
Buddhism never interfered with the imperial cult. Now these three
forms of ancestor-worship,--the domestic, the communal, and the
national,--constitute all that is vital in Shinto. No single
essential of the ancient faith had ever been weakened, [380] much
less abolished, under the long pressure of Buddhism.
The Supreme Cult is not now the State Religion by request of the
chiefs of Shinto, it is not even officially classed as a
religion. Obvious reasons of state policy decided this course.
Having fulfilled its grand task, Shinto abdicated. But as
representing all those traditions which appeal to race-feeling,
to the sentiment of duty, to the passion of loyalty, and the love
of country, it yet remains an immense force, a power to which
appeal will not be vainly made in another hour of national peril.
[381]
SURVIVALS