impracticability of indefinitely maintaining its present demand for
self-sacrifice, must perceive the necessity of encouraging talent,
inviting fair competition, and making the prizes of life large enough
to stimulate healthy egoism. But it is possible that the Government
has been acting more wisely than outward appearances would indicate.
Several years ago a Japanese official made in [415] my presence this
curious observation: "Our Government does not wish to encourage
competition beyond the necessary. The people are not prepared for it;
and if it were strongly encouraged, the worst side of character would
came to the surface." How far this statement really expressed any
policy I do not know. But every one is aware that free competition
can be made as cruel and as pitiless as war,--though we are apt to
forget what experience must have been undergone before Occidental
free competition could become as comparatively merciful, as it is.
Among a people trained for centuries to regard all selfish
competition as criminal, and all profit-seeking despicable, any
sudden stimulation of effort for purely personal advantage might well
be impolitic. Evidence as to how little the nation was prepared,
twelve or thirteen years ago, for Western forms of free government,
has been furnished by the history of the earlier district-elections
and of the first parliamentary sessions. There was really no personal
enmity in those furious election-contests, which cost so many lives;
there was scarcely any personal antagonism in those parliamentary
debates of which the violence astonished strangers. The political
struggles were not really between individuals, but between
clan-interests, or party-interests; and the devoted followers of each
clan or party understood the new politics only as a new kind of
war,--a war of loyalty to be fought for the leader's sake, [416]--a
war not to be interfered with by any abstract notions of right or
justice. Suppose that a people have been always accustomed to think
of loyalty in relation to persons rather than to principles,--loyalty
as involving the duty of self-sacrifice regardless of
consequence,--it is obvious that the first experiments of such a
people with parliamentary government will not reveal any
comprehension of fair play in the Western sense. Eventually that
comprehension may come; but it will not come quickly. And if you can
persuade such a people that in other matters every man has a right to
act according to his own convictions, and for his own advantage,
independently of any group to which he may belong, the immediate
result will not be fortunate,--because the sense of individual moral
responsibility has not yet been sufficiently cultivated outside of
the group-relation.
The probable truth is that the strength of the government up to the
present time has been chiefly due to the conservation of ancient
methods, and to the survival of the ancient spirit of reverential
submission. Later on, no doubt, great changes will have to be made;
meanwhile, much must be bravely endured. Perhaps the future history
of modern civilization will hold record of nothing more touching than
the patient heroism of those myriads of Japanese patriots, content to
accept, under legal [417] conditions of freedom, the official
servitude of feudal days,--satisfied to give their talent, their
strength, their utmost effort, their lives, for the simple privilege
of obeying a government that still accepts all sacrifices in the
feudal spirit--as a matter of course,--as a national duty. And as a
national duty, indeed, the sacrifices are made. All know that Japan
is in danger, between the terrible friendship of England and the
terrible enmity of Russia,--that she is poor,--that the cost of
maintaining her armaments is straining her resources,--that it is
everybody's duty to be content with as little as possible. So the
complaints are not many.... Nor has the simple obedience of the
nation at large been less touching,--especially, perhaps, as regards
the imperial order to acquire Western knowledge, to learn Western
languages, to imitate Western ways. Only those who have lived in
Japan during or before the early nineties are qualified to speak of
the loyal eagerness that made self-destruction by over-study a common
form of death,--the passionate obedience that impelled even children
to ruin their health in the effort to master tasks too difficult for
their little minds (tasks devised by well-meaning advisers with no
knowledge of Far-Eastern psychology),--and the strange courage of
persistence in periods of earthquake and conflagration, when boys and
girls used the tiles of their ruined homes for school-slates, and
bits of fallen plaster for pencils. What [418] tragedies I might
relate even of the higher educational life of universities!--of fine
brains giving way under pressure of work beyond the capacity of the
average European student,--of triumphs won in the teeth of death,--of
strange farewells from pupils in the time of the dreaded
examinations, as when one said to me: "Sir, I am very much afraid
that my paper is bad, because I came out of the hospital to make
it--there is something the matter with my heart." (His diploma was
placed in his hands scarcely an hour before he died.) ... And all
this striving--striving not only against difficulties of study, but
in most cases against difficulties of poverty, and underfeeding, and
discomfort--has been only for duty, and the means to live. To
estimate the Japanese student by his errors, his failures, his
incapacity to comprehend sentiments and ideas alien to the experience
of his race, is the mistake of the shallow: to judge him rightly one
must have learned to know the silent moral heroism of which he is
capable.
[419]
OFFICIAL EDUCATION
The extent to which national character has been fixed by the
discipline of centuries, and the extent or its extraordinary capacity
to resist change, is perhaps most strikingly indicated by certain
results of State education. The whole nation is being educated, with
Government help, upon a European plan; and the full programme
includes the chief subjects of Western study, excepting Greek and
Latin classics. From Kindergarten to University the entire system is
modern in outward seeming; yet the effect of the new education is
much less marked in thought and sentiment than might be supposed.
This fact is not to be explained merely by the large place which old
Chinese study still occupies in the obligatory programme, nor by
differences of belief--it is much more due to the fundamental
difference in the Japanese and the European conceptions of education
as means to an end. In spite of new system and programme the whole of
Japanese education is still conducted upon a traditional plan almost
the exact opposite of the Western plan. With us, the repressive part
of moral training begins in early childhood--the European or American
teacher is strict with the little [420] ones; we think that it is
important to inculcate the duties of behaviour,--the "must" and the
"must not" of individual obligation,--as soon as possible. Later on,
more liberty is allowed. The well-grown boy is made to understand
that his future will depend upon his personal effort and capacity;
and he is thereafter left, in a great measure, to take care of
himself, being occasionally admonished or warned, as seems needful.
Finally, the adult student of promise and character may become the
intimate, or, under happy circumstances, even the friend of his
tutor, to whom he can look for counsel in all difficult situations.
And throughout the whole course of mental and moral training
competition is not only expected, but required. But it is more and
more required as discipline is more and more relaxed, with the
passing of boyhood into manhood. The aim of Western education is the
cultivation of individual ability and personal character,--the
creation of an independent and forceful being.
Now Japanese education has always been conducted, and, in spite of
superficial appearances, is still being conducted, mostly upon the
reverse plan. Its object never has been to train the individual for
independent action, but to train him for cooperative action,--to fit
him to occupy an exact place in the mechanism of a rigid society.
Constraint among ourselves begins with childhood, and gradually
relaxes; constraint in Far-Eastern training begins later, [421] and
thereafter gradually tightens; and it is not a constraint imposed
directly by parents or teachers--which fact, as we shall presently
see, makes an enormous difference in results. Not merely up to the
age of school-life,--supposed to begin at six years,--but
considerably beyond it, a Japanese child enjoys a degree of liberty
far greater than is allowed to Occidental children. Exceptional cases
are common, of course; but the general rule is that the child be
permitted to do as he pleases, providing that his conduct can cause
no injury to himself or to others. He is guarded, but not
constrained; admonished, but rarely compelled. In short, he is
allowed to be so mischievous that, as a Japanese proverb says, "even
the holes by the roadside hate a boy of seven or eight years old"*
[*By former custom a newly-born child was said to be one year old;
and in this case the words "seven or eight years old" mean "six or
seven years old."] (Nanatsu, yatsu--michibata no ana desaimon
nikumu). Punishment is administered only when absolutely necessary;
and on such occasions, by ancient custom, the entire
household--servants and all--intercede for the offender; the little
brothers and sisters, if any there be, begging in turn to bear the
penalty instead. Whipping is not a common punishment, except among
the roughest classes; the moxa is preferred as a deterrent; and it is
a severe one. To frighten a child by loud harsh words, or angry
looks, is condemned by general opinion: all punishment ought [422] to
be inflicted as quietly as possible, the punisher calmly admonishing
the while. To slap a child about the head, for any reason, is a proof
of vulgarity and ignorance. It is not customary to punish by
restraining from play, or by a change of diet, or by any denial of
accustomed pleasures. To be perfectly patient with children is the
ethical law. At school the discipline begins; but it is at first so
very light that it can hardly be called discipline: the teacher does
not act as a master, but rather as an elder brother; and there is no
punishment beyond a public admonition. Whatever restraint exists is
chiefly exerted on the child by the common opinion of his class; and
a skilful teacher is able to direct that opinion. Also each class is
nominally governed by one or two little captains, selected for
character and intelligence; and when a disagreeable order has to be
given, it is the child-captain, the kyucho, who is commissioned with
the duty of giving it. (These little details are worthy of note: I
cite them only to show how early in school-life begins the discipline
of opinion, the pressure of the common will, and how perfectly this
policy accords with the ethical traditions of the race.) In higher
classes the pressure slightly increases; and in higher schools it is
very much stronger; the ruling power always being class-sentiment,
not the individual will of the teacher. In middle schools the pupils
become serious: class-opinion there attains a force to which the
teacher [423] himself must bend, as it is quite capable of expelling
him for any attempt to override it. Each middle-school class has its
elected officers, who represent and enforce the moral code of the
majority,--the traditional standard of conduct. (This moral standard
is deteriorating; but it survives everywhere to some degree.)
Fighting or bullying are yet unknown in Japanese schools of this
grade for obvious reasons: there can be little indulgence of personal
anger, and no attempt at personal domination, under a discipline
enforcing a uniform manner of behaviour. It is never the domination
of the one over the many that regulates class-life: it is always the
rule of the many over the one,--and the power is formidable. The
student who consciously or unconsciously offends class-sentiment will
suddenly find himself isolated,--condemned to absolute solitude. No
one will speak to him or notice him even outside of the school, until
such time as he decides to make a public apology, when his pardon
will depend upon a majority-vote.
Such temporary ostracism is not unreasonably feared, because it is
regarded even outside of student-circles as a disgrace; and the
memory of it will cling to the offender during the rest of his
career. However high he may rise in official or professional life in
after years, the fact that he was once condemned by the general
opinion of his schoolmates will not be forgotten,--though
circumstances may occur [424] which will turn the fact to his
credit.... In the great Government schools--to one of which the
student may proceed after graduating from a
middle-school--class-discipline is still more severe. The instructors
are mostly officials looking for promotion: the students are grown
men, preparing for the University, and destined, with few exceptions,
for public office. In this quietly and coldly ordered world there is
little place for the joy of youth, and small opportunity for
sympathetic expansion. There are gatherings and societies; but these
are arranged or established for practical purposes--chiefly in
relation to particular branches of study; there is little time for
merry-making, and less inclination. Under all circumstances, a
certain formal demeanour is exacted by tradition,--a tradition older
by far than any public school. Everybody watches everybody:
eccentricities or singularities are quickly marked and quietly
suppressed. The results of this class-discipline, as maintained in
some institutions, must seem to the foreign observer discomforting.
What most impressed me about these higher official schools was the
sinister silence of them. In one where I taught for several
years--the most conservative school in the country--there were more
than a thousand young men, full of life and energy; yet during the
intervals between classes, or during recreation-hours in the
playground, the garden, and the gymnastic hall, the general hush gave
one a strange sense of [425] oppression. One might watch a game of
foot-ball being played, and hear nothing but the thud of the kicking;
or one might watch wrestling-contests in the jiujutsu-room, and hear
no word spoken for half an hour at a time. (The rules of jiujutsu, it
is true, require not only silence, but the total suppression of all
visible emotional interest on the part of the spectators.) All this
repression at first seemed to me very strange--though I knew that
thirty years previously, the training at samurai-schools compelled
the same impassiveness and reticence.
At last the University is reached,--the great gate of ceremony to
public office. Here the student finds himself released from the
restraints previously imposed upon his private life,* though the
class-will continues to rule him in certain directions. As a rule,
the student passes into official life after having graduated,
marries, and becomes the head, or the [426] prospective head, of a
household. How sudden the transformation of the man at this epoch of
his career, only those who have observed the transformation can
imagine. It is then that the full significance of Japanese education
reveals itself.
[*This release is of recent date; and the results, by the
acknowledgment of the students themselves, have not been good.
Twenty-five years ago, University study was so seriously thought
about that a scholar who failed, through his own fault, would have
been considered a criminal. There was then a Chinese poem in vogue,
which used to be sung at the departure of youths for the University
of that time (Daigaku Nanko) by their friends and relations:--
Danji kokorozashi wo tatete, kyokwan wo idzu;
Gaku moshi narazunba, shisudomo kaeradzu,
[The young man, having made a firm resolve, leaves his native home.
If he fail to acquire learning, then, even though he die, he must
never return.]
In those years also it was obligatory upon students to live and dress
simply, and to abstain from all self-indulgence.]
Few incidents of Japanese life are more surprising than the
metamorphosis of the gawky student into the dignified, impassive,
easy-mannered official. But a little time ago he was respectfully
asking, cap in hand, the explanation of some text, the meaning of
some foreign idiom; to-day, perhaps, he is judging cases in some
court, or managing diplomatic correspondence under ministerial
supervision, or directing the management of some public school.
Whatever you may have thought of his particular capacity as a
student, you will scarcely doubt his particular fitness for the
position to which he has been called. Success in study was at best a
secondary consideration in the matter of his appointment,--though he
had to succeed. He was put through some special course, under high
protection, after having been selected for certain qualities of
character,--or at least for the promise of such qualities. There may
have been favouritism in his case; but, generally speaking, capable
men are appointed to positions of trust: the Government seldom makes
serious mistakes. This man has value beyond what mere study could
make for him,--some capacity in the direction of management or of
organization, [427]--some natural force or talent which his training
has served to cultivate. According to the quality of his worth, his
position was chosen for him in advance. His long, hard schooling has
taught him more than books can teach, and more than a stupid person
can ever learn: how to read minds and motives,--how to remain
impassive under all circumstances,--how to reach a truth quickly by
simple questioning,--how to live upon his guard (even against the
most intimate of old acquaintances),--how to remain, even when most
amiable, secretive and inscrutable. He has graduated in the art of
worldly wisdom. He is really a wonderful person, a highly developed
type of his race; and no inexperienced Occidental is capable of
judging him, because his visible acquirements count for very little
in the measure of his relative value. His University study--his
English or French or German knowledge--serves him only as so much oil
to make easy the working of certain official machinery: he esteems
this learning only as means to some administrative end; his real
learning, considerably deeper, represents the development of the
Japanese soul of him. Between that mind and any Western mind the
distance has become immeasurable. And now, less than ever before,
does he belong to himself. He belongs to a family, to a party, to a
government: privately he is bound by custom; publicly he must act
according to order only, and never dream of yielding to [428] any
impulses at variance with order, however generous or sensible such
impulses may be. A word might ruin him: he has learned to use no
words unnecessarily. By silent submission and tireless observance of
duty he may rise, and rise quickly: he may become Governor, Chief
justice, Minister of State, Minister Plenipotentiary; but the higher
he rises, the heavier will his bonds become.
Long training in caution and self-control is indeed an indispensable
preparation for official existence; the ability either to keep a
position won, or to resign it with honour, depending much upon such
training. The most sinister circumstance of official life is the
absence of moral freedom,--the absence of the right to act according
to one's own convictions of justice. The subordinate, who desires
above all things to keep his place, is not supposed to have personal
convictions or sympathies--save by permission. He is not the slave of
a man, but of a system--a system as old as China. Were human nature
perfect, that system would be perfect; but so long as human nature
remains what it is now, the system leaves much to be desired.
Everything may depend upon the personal character of those
temporarily intrusted with higher power; and the only choice left for
the most capable servant under a bad master may be to resign or to do
wrong. The strong man faces the problem bravely and resigns; but for
one strong man there are fifty timid ones. [429] Probably the
prospect of a broken career is much less terrifying than the ancient
idea of crime attaching to any form of insubordination. As the forms
of a religion survive after the faith in doctrine has passed away, so
the power of Government to coerce even conscience still remains,
though religion is no longer identified with Government. The system
of secrecy, implacably enforced, helps to maintain the vague awe that
has always attached to the idea of administrative authority; and such
authority is practically omnipotent within those limits which I have
already indicated. To be favoured by authority means to experience
all the illusive pleasure of a suddenly created popularity: an entire
community, a whole city, is made by a word to turn all the amiable
side of its human nature toward the favourite,--to charm him into the
belief that he is worthy of the best that the world can give him. But
suppose that the moving powers happen, latter on, to find the
favoured man in the way of some policy--lo! at another whispered word
he finds himself, without knowing why, the public enemy. None speak
to him or salute him or smile upon him--save ironically:
long-esteemed friends pass him by without recognition, or, if
pursued, reply to his most earnest questions with all possible
brevity and caution. Most likely they do not know the "why" of the
matter: they only know that orders have been given, and that into the
[430] reason of orders it is not good to enquire. Even the
street-children know this much, and mock the despondent victim of
fortune; even the dogs seem instinctively to divine the change and
bark at him as he passes by.... Such is the power of official
displeasure; and the penalty of a blunder or a breach of discipline
may extend considerably further--but in feudal times the offender
would have been simply told to perform harakiri. Sometimes, when the
wrong men get into power, the force of authority may be used for
malevolent ends; and in such event it requires not a little courage
to disobey an order to act against conscience. What saved Japanese
society in former ages from the worst results of this form of
tyranny, was the moral sentiment of the mass,--the common feeling
that underlay all submission to authority, and remained always
capable, if pressed upon too brutally, of compelling a reaction.
Conditions to-day are more favourable to justice; but it requires
much tact, steadiness, and resolution on the part of a rising
official to steer himself safely among the reefs and the whirlpools
of the new political life.
* * * * * *
The reader will now be able to understand the general character, aim,
and results of official education as a system. It will be also worth
while to consider in detail certain phases of student-life, which
equally prove the survival of old conditions and old [431]
traditions. I can speak about these matters from personal experience
as a teacher,--an experience extending over nearly thirteen years.
Readers of Goethe will remember the trustful docility of the student
received by Doctor Mephistopheles in the First Part of Faust, and the
very different demeanour of the same student when he reappears, in
the Second Part, as Baccalaureus. More than one foreign professor in
Japan must have been reminded of that contrast by personal
experience, and must have wondered whether some one of the early
educational advisers to the Japanese Government did not play, without
malice prepense, the very role of Mephistopheles.... The gentle boy
who, with innocent reverence, makes his visit of courtesy to the
foreign teacher, bringing for gift a cluster of iris-flowers or
odorous spray of plum-blossoms,--the boy who does whatever he is
told, and charms by an earnestness, a trustfulness, a grace of manner
rarely met with among Western lads of the same age,--is destined to
undergo the strangest of transformations long before becoming a
baccalaureus. You may meet with him a few years later, in the uniform
of some Higher School, and find it difficult to recognize your former
pupil,--now graceless, taciturn, secretive, and inclined to demand as
a right what could scarcely, with propriety, be requested as a
favour. You may find [432] him patronizing,--possibly something
worse. Later on, at the University, he becomes more formally correct,
but also more far away,--so very far away from his boyhood that the
remoteness is a pain to one who remembers that boyhood. The Pacific
is less wide and deep than the invisible gulf now extending between
the mind of the stranger and the mind of the student. The foreign
professor is now regarded merely as a teaching-machine; and he is
more than likely to regret any effort made to maintain an intimate
relation with his pupils. Indeed the whole formal system of official
education is opposed to the development of any such relation. I am
speaking of general facts in this connexion, not of merely personal
experiences. No matter what the foreigner may do in the hope of
finding his way into touch with the emotional life of his students,
or in the hope of evoking that interest in certain studies which
renders possible an intellectual tie, he must toil in vain. Perhaps
in two or three cases out of a thousand he may obtain something
precious,--a lasting and kindly esteem, based upon moral
comprehension; but should he wish for more he must remain in the
state of the Antarctic explorer, seeking, month after month, to no
purpose, some inlet through endless cliffs of everlasting ice. Now
the case of the Japanese professor proves the barrier natural, to a
large extent. The Japanese professor can ask for extraordinary
efforts and, [433] obtain them; he can afford to be easily familiar
with his students outside of class; and he can get what no stranger
can obtain,--their devotion. The difference has been attributed to
race-feeling; but it cannot be so easily and vaguely explained.