which certainly presupposes ethical conditions very different from
our own), it was probably at one time the best possible under the new
order. Considering the extraordinary changes suddenly made in the
educational system, it will be obvious that a teacher's immediate
value was likely---twenty years ago--to depend on his ability to make
his teaching attractive. If he attempted to teach either above or
below the average capacity of his pupils, or if he made his
instruction unpalatable to minds greedy for new knowledge, but
innocent as to method, his inexperience could be corrected by the
will of his class.]
From above downwards through all the grades of society, the same
system of responsibility, and the same restraints upon individual
exercise of will, persist under varying forms. The conditions within
the household differ but little in this regard from the conditions in
a government department: no householder, for example, can impose his
will, beyond certain fixed limits, even upon his own servants or
dependents. Neither for love nor money can a good servant be induced
to break with traditional custom; and the old opinion, that the value
of a servant is proved by such inflexibility, has been justified by
the experience of centuries. Popular sentiment remains conservative;
and the apparent zeal for superficial innovation affords no
indication of the real order of existence. Fashions and formalities,
house-interiors and street-vistas, habits and methods, and all the
outer aspects of life are changed; but the old regimentation of
society persists under all these surface-shiftings; and the national
character remains little affected by all the transformations of
Meiji.
The second kind of coercion to which the individual is subjected
--the communal, or communistic--[401] seems likely to prove
mischievous in the near future, as it signifies practical suppression
of the right to compete.... The everyday life of any Japanese city
offers numberless suggestions of the manner in which the masses
continue to think and to act by groups. But no more familiar and
forcible illustration of the fact can be cited than that which is
furnished by the code of the kurumaya or jinrikisha-men. According to
its terms, one runner must not attempt to pass by another going in
the same direction. Exceptions have been made, grudgingly, in favour
of runners in private employ,--men selected for strength and speed,
who are expected to use their physical powers to the utmost. But
among the tens of thousands of public kurumaya, it is the rule that a
young and active man must not pass by an old and feeble man, nor even
by a needlessly slow and lazy man. To take advantage of one's own
superior energy, so as to force competition, is an offence against
the calling, and certain to be resented. You engage a good runner,
whom you order to make all speed: he springs away splendidly, and
keeps up the pace until he happens to overtake some weak or lazy
puller, who seems to be moving as slowly as the gait permits.
Therewith, instead of bounding by, your man drops immediately behind
the slow-going vehicle, and slackens his pace almost to a walk. For
half an hour, or more, you may be thus delayed by the regulation
which obliges the strong and [402] swift to wait for the weak and
slow. An angry appeal is made to the runner who dares to pass
another; and the idea behind the words might be thus expressed:--"You
know that you are breaking the rule,--that you are acting to the
disadvantage of your comrades! This is a hard calling; and our lives
would be made harder than they are, if there were no rules to prevent
selfish competition!" Of course there is no thought of the
consequences of such rules to business interests at large.... Now it
is not unjust to say that this moral code of the kurumaya exemplifies
an unwritten law which has been always imposed, in varying forms,
upon every class of workers in Japan: "You must not try, without
special authorization, to pass your fellows." ... La carriere est
ouverte aux talents--mais la concurrence est defendue!
Of course the modern communal restraint upon free competition
represents the survival and extension of that altruistic spirit which
ruled the ancient society,--not the mere continuance of any fixed
custom. In feudal times there were no kurumaya; but all craftsmen and
all labourers formed guilds or companies; and the discipline
maintained by those guilds or companies prohibited competition as
undertaken for merely personal advantage. Similar or nearly similar
forms of organization are maintained by artizans and labourers
to-day; and the relation [403] of any outside employer to skilled
labour is regulated, by the guild or company, in the old communistic
manner.... Let us suppose, for instance, that you wish to have a good
house built. For that undertaking, you will have to deal with a very
intelligent class of skilled labour; for the Japanese house-carpenter
may be ranked with the artist almost as much as with the artizan. You
may apply to a building-company; but, as a general rule, you will do
better by applying to a master-carpenter, who combines in himself the
functions of architect, contractor, and builder. In any event you
cannot select and hire workmen: guild-regulations forbid. You can
only make your contract; and the master-carpenter, when his plans
have been approved, will undertake all the rest,--purchase and
transport of material,--hire of carpenters, plasterers, tilers,
mat-makers, screen-fitters, brass-workers, stone-cutters, locksmiths,
and glaziers. For each master-carpenter represents much more than his
own craft-guild: he has his clients in every trade related to
house-building and house-furnishing; and you must not dream of trying
to interfere with his claims and privileges. He builds your house
according to contract; but that is only the beginning of the
relation. You have really made with him an agreement which you must
not break, without good and sufficient reason, for the rest of your
life. Whatever afterwards may happen to any part [404] of your
house,--walls, floor, ceiling, roof, foundation,--you must arrange
for repairs with him, never with anybody else. Should the roof leak,
for instance, you must not send for the nearest tiler or tinsmith; if
the plaster cracks, you must not send for a plasterer. The man who
built your house holds himself responsible for its condition; and he
is jealous of that responsibility: none but he has the right to send
for the plasterer, the roofer, the tinsmith. If you interfere with
that right, you may have some unpleasant surprises. If you make
appeal to the law against that right, you will find that you can get
no carpenter, tiler, or plasterer to work for you at any terms.
Compromise is always possible; but the guilds will resent a needless
appeal to the law. And after all, these craft-guilds are usually
faithful performers, and well worth conciliating.
Or take the occupation of landscape-gardening. You want a pretty
garden; and you hire a professional gardener who comes to you well
recommended. He makes the garden; and you pay his price. But your
gardener really represents a company; and by engaging him it is
understood that either he, or some other member of the gardeners'
corporation to which he belongs, will continue to take care of your
garden as long as you own it. At each season he will pay your garden
a visit, and put everything to rights--he will clip the hedges, prune
the fruit trees, [405] repair the fences, train the climbing-plants,
look after the flowers,--putting up paper awnings to protect delicate
shrubs from the sun during the hot season, or making little tents of
straw to shelter them in time of frost;--he will do a hundred useful
and ingenious things for a very small remuneration. You cannot
dismiss him, however, without good reason, and hire another gardener
to take his place. No other gardener would serve you at any price,
unless assured that the original relation had been dissolved by
mutual consent. If you have just cause for complaint, the matter can
be settled through arbitration; and the guild will see that you have
no further trouble. But you cannot dismiss your gardener without
cause, merely to engage another.
The above examples will suffice to show the character of the old
communistic organization which is yet maintained in a hundred forms.
This communism suppressed competition, except as between groups; but
it insured good work, and secured easy conditions for the workman. It
was the best system possible in those ages of isolation when there
was no such thing as want, and when the population, for yet
undetermined causes, appears to have remained always below the
numerical level at which serious pressure begins.... Another
interesting survival is represented by existing conditions of
apprenticeship [406] and service,--conditions which also originated
in the patriarchal organization, and imposed other kinds of restraint
upon competition. Under the old regime service was, for the most
part, unsalaried. Boys taken into a commercial house to learn the
business, or apprentices bound to a master-workman, were boarded,
lodged, clothed, and even educated by their patron, with whom they
might hope to pass the rest of their lives. But they were not paid
wages until they had learned the business or the trade of their
employer, and were fully capable of managing a business or a workshop
of their own. To a considerable degree these conditions still prevail
in commercial centres,--though the merchant or patron seldom now
finds it necessary to send his clerk or apprentice to school. Many of
the great commercial houses pay salaries only to men of great
experience: other employes are only trained and cared for until their
term of service ends, when the most clever among them will be
reengaged as experts, and the others helped to start in business for
themselves. In like manner the apprentice to a trade, when his term
expires, may be reengaged by his master as a hired journeyman, or
helped to find permanent employ elsewhere. These paternal and filial
relations between employer and employed have helped to make life
pleasant and labour cheerful; and the quality of all industrial
production must suffer much when they disappear.
[407] Even in private domestic service the patriarchal system still
prevails to a degree that is little imagined; and this subject
deserves more than a passing mention. I refer especially to female
service. The maid-servant, according to the old custom, is not
primarily responsible to her employers, but to her own family; and
the terms of her service must be arranged with her family, who pledge
themselves for their daughter's good behaviour. As a general rule, a
nice girl does not seek domestic service for the sake of the wages
(which it is now the custom to pay), nor for the sake of a living,
but chiefly to prepare herself for marriage; and this preparation is
desired as much in the hope of doing credit to her own family, as in
the hope of better fitting herself for membership in the family of
her future husband. The best servants are country girls; and they are
sometimes put out to service very young. Parents are careful about
choosing the family into which their daughter thus enters: they
particularly desire that the house be one in which a girl can learn
nice ways,--therefore a house in which things are ordered according
to the old etiquette. A good girl expects to be treated rather as a
helper than as a hireling,--to be kindly considered, and trusted, and
liked. In an old-fashioned household the maid is indeed so treated;
and the relation is not a brief one--from three to five years being
the term of service usually agreed upon. But when a girl is [408]
taken into service at the age of eleven or twelve, she will probably
remain for eight or ten years. Besides wages, she is entitled to
receive from her employers the gift of a dress, twice every year,
besides other necessary articles of clothing; and she is entitled
also to a certain number of holidays. Such wages, or presents in
money, as she receives, should enable her to provide herself, by
degrees, with a good wardrobe. Except in the event of some
extraordinary misfortune, her parents will make no claim upon her
wages; but she remains subject to them; and when she is called home
to be married, she must go. During the period of her service, the
services of her family are also at the disposal of her employers.
Even if the mistress or master desire no recognition of the interest
taken in the girl, some recognition will certainly be made. If the
servant be a farmer's daughter, it is probable that gifts of
vegetables, fruits, or fruit trees, garden-plants or other country
products, will be sent to the house at intervals fixed by custom;--if
the parents belong to the artizan-class, it is likely that some
creditable example of handicraft will be presented as a token of
gratitude. The gratitude of the parents is not for the wages or the
dresses given to their daughter, but for the practical education she
receives, and for the moral and material care taken of her, as a
temporarily adopted child of the house. The employers may reciprocate
such attentions [409] on the part of the parents by contributing to
the girl's wedding outfit. The relation, it will be observed, is
entirely between families, not between individuals; and it is a
permanent relation. Such a relation, in feudal ages, might continue
through many generations.
The patriarchal conditions which these survivals exemplify helped to
make existence easy and happy. Only from a modern point of view is it
possible to criticise them. The worst that can be said about them is
that their moral value was chiefly conservative, and that they tended
to repress effort in new directions. But where they still endure,
Japanese life keeps something of its ancient charm; and where they
have disappeared, that charm has vanished forever.
There remains to be considered a third form of restraint,--that
exercised upon the individual by official authority. This also
presents us with various survivals, which have their bright as well
as their dark aspects.
We have seen that the individual has been legally freed from most of
the obligations imposed by the ancient law. He is no longer obliged
to follow a particular occupation; he is able to travel; he is at
liberty to marry into a higher or a lower class than his own; he is
not even forbidden to change his religion; he can do a great many
things--at his own [410] risk. But where the law leaves him free, the
family and the community do not; and the persistence of old sentiment
and custom nullifies many of the rights legally conferred. Precisely
in the same way, his relations to higher authority are still
controlled by traditions which maintain, in despite of constitutional
law, many of the ancient restraints, and not a little of the ancient
coercion. In theory any man of great talent and energy may rise, from
rank to rank, up to the highest positions. But as private life is
still controlled to no small degree by the old communism, so public
life is yet controlled by survivals of class or clan despotism. The
chances for ability to rise without assistance, to win its way to
rank and power, are extraordinarily small; since to contend alone
against an opposition that thinks by groups, and acts by masses, must
be almost hopeless. Only commercial or industrial life now offers
really fair opportunities to capable men. The few talented persons of
humble origin who do succeed in official directions owe their success
chiefly to party-help or clan-patronage: in order to force any
recognition of personal ability, group must be opposed to group.
Alone, no man is likely to accomplish anything by mere force of
competition, outside of trade or commerce.... It is true, of course,
that individual talent must in every country encounter many forms of
opposition. It is likewise true that the malevolence of envy and the
brutalities of class-prejudice [411] have their sociological worth:
they help to make it impossible for any but the most gifted to win
and to keep success. But in Japan the peculiar constitution of
society lends excessive power to social intrigues directed against
obscure ability, and makes them highly injurious to the interests of
the nation;--for at no previous time in her history has Japan needed,
so much as now, the best capacities of her best men, irrespective of
class or condition.
But all this was inevitable in the period of reconstruction. More
significant is the fact that in no single department of its
multitudinous service does the Government yet offer substantial
reward to rising merit. No matter how well a man may strive to win
Government approbation, he must strive for little more than honour
and the bare means of existence. The costliest efforts are no more
highly paid in proportion to their worth than the cheapest; the most
invaluable services are scarcely better recognized than those most
easily dispensed with or replaced. (There have been some remarkable
exceptions: I am stating only the general rule.) By extraordinary
energy, patience, and cleverness, one may reach, with class-help,
some position which in Europe would assure comfort as well as honour;
but the emoluments of such a position in Japan will scarcely cover
the actual cost of living. Whether in the army or in the navy, in the
departments of justice, of education, of communications, or of [412]
home affairs,--the differences in remuneration nowhere represent the
differences in capacity and responsibility. To rise from grade to
grade signifies pecuniarily almost nothing,--for the expenses of each
higher position augment out of all proportion to the salaries fixed
by law. The general rule has been to exact everywhere the greatest
possible amount of service for the least possible amount of pay.* Any
one unacquainted with the social history [413] of the country might
suppose that the policy of the Government toward its employes
consisted in substituting empty honours for material advantages. But
the truth is that the Government has simply maintained, under modern
forms, the ancient feudal condition of service,--service in exchange
for the means of simple but honourable living. In feudal times the
farmer was expected to pay all that he could pay for the right to
exist; the artist or artizan was expected to content himself with the
good fortune of having a distinguished patron; even the ordinary
samurai were supplied with barely more than the necessary by their
liege-lords. To receive considerably more than the necessary
signified extraordinary favour; and the gift was usually accompanied
by promotion. But although the same policy is yet successfully
maintained by Government, under the modern system of money-payments,
the conditions everywhere, outside of commercial life, are
incomparably harder than in feudal times. Then the poorest samurai
was secured against want, and not liable to be dismissed from his
post without fault. Then the teacher received no salary; but the
respect of the community and the gratitude of his pupils assured him
of the means to live [414] respectably. Then the artizans were
patronized by great lords who vied with each other in the
encouragement of humble genius. They might expect the genius to be
satisfied with merely nominal payment, so far as money was concerned;
but they secured him against want or discomfort, allowed him ample
leisure to perfect his work, made him happy in the certainty that his
best would be prized and praised. But now that the cost of living has
tripled or quadrupled, even the artist and the artizan have small
encouragement to do their best: cheap rapid work is replacing the
beautiful leisurely work of the old days; and the best traditions of
the crafts are doomed to perish. It cannot even be said that the
state of the agricultural classes to-day is happier or better than in
the time when a farmer's land could not legally be taken from him.
And as the cost of life continues always to increase, it is evident
that at no distant time, the present patient order of things will
become impossible.
[*Salaries of judges range from 70 pounds to 500 pounds per
annum,--the latter figure representing the highest possible
emolument. The highest salary allowed to a Japanese professor in the
imperial universities has been fixed at 120 pounds. The wages of
employees in the postal departments is barely sufficient to meet the
cost of living. The police are paid from 1 pound to 1 pound 10s. per
month, according to locality; and the average pay of school-teachers
is yet lower (being 9 yen 50 sen, or about 19s. per month),--many
receiving less than 7s. a month.
Readers may be interested in the following table of army-payments
(1904):--
MONTHLY PAY ALLOWANCE FOR TOTAL
HOUSE-RENT
yen yen yen
General 500 (50 pounds) 25:00 525:00
Lieutenant-General 333 18:75 351:75
Major-General 263 12:50 275:50
Colonel 179 10:00 189:00
Lieutenant-Colonel 146 8:75 154:75
Major 102 7:50 109:50
Captain (1st grade) 70 4:75 74:75
(2nd grade) 60 4:75 64:75
Lieutenant (1st grade) 45 4:00 49:00
(2nd grade) 34 4:00 38:00
Second Lieutenant 30 3:50 33:50
When these rates of pay were fixed, about twenty years ago,
house-rent was cheap: a good house could be rented anywhere at 3 Yen
or 4 Yen per month. To-day in Tokyo an officer can scarcely rent even
a very small house at less than 19 yen or 20 yen; and prices of
food-stuffs have tripled. Yet there have been very few complaints.
Officers whose pay will not allow them to rent houses hire rooms
wherever they can. Many suffer hardship; but all are proud of the
privilege of serving, and no one dreams of resigning.]