speculative as that of trying to arrive at final enlightenment by pure
contemplation could ever have taken root in Japan, among a people who,
generally speaking, have never troubled themselves much about things
apart from their actual and immediate use. An explanation of this is not
far to seek. Eisai, the founder of the Rinzai school, the branch of the
Contemplative sect first established on our soil, came back to Japan
from his second visit to China in 1192 A.D.[15] This was the time when
the short-lived rule of the Minamoto clan (1186-1219) was nearing the
end of its real supremacy. Only fifteen years before that the world had
seen the downfall of another mighty clan. The battle of Dannoura put an
end to the Heike ascendancy after an incessant series of desperate
battles extending over a century, giving our soldier-like qualities
enough occasion for an excellent schooling. The whole country during
this period had been under the raging sway of Mars, who swept with his
fiery breath the blossoms of human prosperity, and the people high and
low were obliged to recognise the folly of clinging to shadowy desires
and to learn the urgent necessity for facing every emergency with
something akin to indifference. To pass from glowing life into the cold
grasp of death with a smile, to meet the hardest decrees of fate with
the resolute calm of stoic fortitude, was the quality demanded of every
man and woman in that stormy age. In the meanwhile, different military
clans had been forming themselves in different parts of Japan and
preparing to wage an endless series of furious battles against one
another. In half a century too came the one solitary invasion of our
whole history when a foreign power dared to threaten us with
destruction. The mighty Kublei, grandson of the great Genghis Khan,
haughty with his resistless army, whose devastating intrepidity taught
even Europe to tremble at the mention of his name, despatched an embassy
to the Japanese court to demand the subjection of the country. The
message was referred to Kamakura, then the seat of the Hôjô regency, and
was of course indignantly dismissed. Enraged at this, Kublei equipped a
large number of vessels with the choicest soldiers China could furnish.
The invading force was successful at first, and committed massacres in
Iki and Tsushima, islands lying between Corea and Japan. The position
was menacing; even the steel nerves of the trained Samurai felt that
strange thrill a patriot knows. Shinto priests and Buddhist monks were
equally busy at their prayers. A new embassy came from the threatening
Mongol leader. The imperious ambassadors were taken to Kamakura, to be
put to death as an unmistakable sign of contemptuous refusal. A
tremendous Chinese fleet gathered in the boisterous bay of Genkai in the
summer of 1281. At last the evening came with the ominous glow on the
horizon that foretells an approaching storm. It was the plan of the
conquering army victoriously to land the next morning on the holy soil
of Kyûshû. But during this critical night a fearful typhoon, known to
this day as the 'Divine Storm,' arose, breaking the jet-black sky with
its tremendous roar of thunder and bathing the glittering armour of our
soldiers guarding the coastline in white flashes of dazzling light. The
very heaven and earth shook before the mighty anger of nature. The
result was that the dawn of the next morning saw the whole fleet of the
proud Yuan, that had darkened the water for miles, swept completely away
into the bottomless sea of Genkai, to the great relief of the
horror-stricken populace, and to the unspeakable disappointment of our
determined soldiers. Out of the hundred thousand warriors who manned the
invading ships, only three are recorded to have survived the destruction
to tell the dismal tale to their crestfallen great Khan!
[15] Four years later the first temple of this school was opened in
Hakata under the patronship of the Emperor Gotoba.
Then after a short interval of a score of peaceful years, Japan was
plunged again into another series of internal disturbances, from which
she can hardly be said to have emerged until the beginning of the
seventeenth century, when order and rest were brought back by the able
hand of Tokugawa Iyeyasu. During all these troublous days, the original
Contemplative sect, paralleled soon after its establishment in Japan by
a new school called _Sôtô_, as it was again supplemented by another, the
_Ôbaku_ school, five centuries afterwards, found ample material to
propagate its special method of enlightenment. This sect, which drew its
patrons from the ruling classes of Japan, was unanimously looked up to
as best calculated to impart the secret power of perfect self-control
and undisturbable peace of mind. It must be remembered that the ultimate
riddance in the Buddhist sense, the entrance into cold Nirvâna, was not
what our practical mind wanted to realise. It was the stoic
indifference, enabling man to meet after a moment's thought, or almost
instinctively, any hardships that human life might impose, that had
brought about its otherwise strange popularity.
Another charm it offered to the people of the illiterate Middle Ages,
when they had to attend to other things than a leisurely pursuit of
literature, was its systematic neglect of book-learning. Truth was to be
directly read from heart to heart. The intervention of words and writing
was regarded as a hindrance to its true understanding. A rudimentary
symbolism expressed by gestures was all that a Zen priest really relied
upon for the communication of the doctrine. Everybody with a heart to
feel and a mind to understand needed nothing further to begin and finish
his quest of the desired freedom from life's everlasting torments.
The self-control that enables us not to betray our inner feeling through
a change in our expression, the measured steps with which we are taught
to walk into the hideous jaws of death--in short, all those qualities
which make a present Japanese of truly Japanese type look strange, if
not queer, to your eyes, are in a most marked degree a product of that
direct or indirect influence on our past mentality which was exercised
by the Buddhist doctrine of Dhyâna taught by the Zen priests.
Another benefit which the Zen sect conferred on us is the healthy
influence it exercised on our taste. The love of nature and the desire
of purity that we had shown from the earliest days of our history, took,
under the leading idea of the Contemplative sect, a new development, and
began to show that serene dislike of loudness of form and colour. That
apparent simplicity with a fulness of meaning behind it, like a Dhyâna
symbol itself, which we find so pervadingly manifested in our works of
art, especially in those of the Ashikaga period (1400-1600 A.D.), is
certainly to be counted among the most valuable results which the Zen
doctrine quickened us to produce.
In short, so far-reaching is the influence of the Contemplative sect on
the formation of the Japanese spirit as you find it at present, that an
adequate interpretation of its manifestations would be out of the
question unless based on a careful study of this branch of Buddhism. So
long as the Zen sect is not duly considered, the whole set of phenomena
peculiar to Japan--from the all-pervading laconism to the
hara-kiri--will remain a sealed book.
This fact is my excuse for having detained you for so long on the
subject.
I now pass on to the consideration of our own native cult.
Shinto, or the 'Path of the Gods,' is the name by which we distinguish
the body of our national belief from Buddhism, Christianity, or any
other form of religion. It is remarkable that this appellation, like
Nippon (which corresponds to your word Japan), is no purely Japanese
term. Buddhism is called Buppô (from _Butsu_, Buddha, and _hô_,
doctrine) or Bukkyô (_kyô_, teaching); Confucianism is known as Jukyô
(_Ju_, literati); and both terms are taken from the Chinese. In keeping
with these we have Shinto (_Shin_, deity, and _to_, way). This state of
things in some measure explains the rather unstable condition in which
Buddhism on its first arrival found our national cult. It has ever since
remained in its main aspects nothing more than a form of
ancestor-worship based on the central belief in the divine origin of the
imperial line. A systematised creed it never was and has never become,
even if we take into consideration the attempts at its consolidation
made by such scholars as Yamazaki-Ansai (1618-1682), who in the middle
of the seventeenth century tried to formalise it in accordance with
Chu-Hsi's philosophy, or, later still, by such eager revivalists as
Hirata-Atsutane (1776-1843), etc. At the time when Shintoism had to meet
its mighty foe from India, its whole mechanism was very simple. It
consisted in a number of primitive rites, such as the recital of the
liturgy, the offering of eatables to the departed spirits of deified
ancestors, patriarchal, tribal, or national. This naïve cult was as
innocent of the cunning ideas and subtle formalisms of the rival creed
as its shrines were free from the decorations and equipments of an
Indian temple. So, although at the start Buddhism met with some
obstinate resistance at the hand of the Shintoists, who attributed the
visitations of pestilence that followed the introduction of the foreign
belief to the anger of the native gods, its superiority in organisation
soon overcame these difficulties; especially from the time when the
great Buddhist priest Kûkai (774-835 A.D.) hit upon the ingenious but
mischievous idea of solving the dilemma by the establishment of what is
generally known in our history as Ryôbu-Shinto, or double-faced Shinto.
According to this doctrine, a Shinto god was to be regarded as an
incarnation of a corresponding Indian deity, who made his appearance in
Japan through metamorphosis for Japan's better salvation--a doctrine
which is no more than a clever application of the notion known in India
as Nirmanakâya. This incarnation theory opened a new era in the history
of the expansion of Buddhism in Japan, extending over a period of eleven
centuries, during which Shintoism was placed in a very awkward position.
It was at last restored to its original purity at the beginning of the
present Meiji period, and that only after a century of determined
endeavour on the part of native Shintoist scholars.
From these words you might perhaps conclude that Buddhism succeeded in
supplanting the native cult, at least for more than a thousand years.
But, strange to say, if we judge the case not by outward appearances,
but by the religious conviction that lurks in the depth of the heart, we
cannot but recognise the undeniable fact that no real conversion has
ever been achieved during the past eleven centuries by the doctrine of
Buddha. Our actual self, notwithstanding the different clothes we have
put on has ever remained true in its spirit to our native cult. Speaking
generally, we are still Shintoists to this day--Buddhists, Christians,
and all--so long as we are born Japanese. This might sound to you
somewhat paradoxical. Here is the explanation:--
For an average Japanese mind in present Japan, thanks to the
ancestor-worship practised consciously or unconsciously from time
immemorial, it is not altogether easy to imagine the spirit of the
deceased, if it believes in one at all, to be something different and
distant from our actual living self. The departed, although invisible,
are thought to be leading their ethereal life in the same world in much
the same state as that to which they had been accustomed while on earth.
Like the little child so touchingly described by Wordsworth, we cannot
see why we should not count the so-called dead still among the existing.
The difference between the two is that of tangibility or visibility, but
nothing more.
The _raison d'être_ of this illusive notion is, of course, not far to
seek. Any book on anthropology or ethnology would tell you how sleep,
trance, dream, hallucination, reflection in still water, etc., help to
build up the spirit-world in the untaught mind of primitive man. Yet it
must be remembered that these origins have led to something far higher,
to something of real value to our nation, and to something which is a
moral force in our daily lives that may well be compared to what is
efficacious in other creeds. Notice the fact that Buddhism from the
moment of its introduction in the sixth century after Christ to this
very day has on the whole remained the religion, so to say, of night and
gloomy death, while Shintoism has always retained its firm hold on the
popular mind as the cult, if I might so express it, of daylight and the
living dead. From the very dawn of our history we read of patriarchs,
chieftains, and national heroes deified and worshipped as so many
guardian spirits of families, of clans, or of the country. Nor has this
process of deification come to an end yet, even in this age of airship
and submarine boat. We continue to erect shrines to men of merit. This
may look very strange to you, but is not your poet Swinburne right when
he sings--
'Whoso takes the world's life on him and his own
lays down,
He, dying so, lives.'
Might not these lines explain, when duly extended, the subtle feeling
that lurks behind our apparently incomprehensible custom of speaking
with the departed over the altar? The present deification, is, like your
custom of erecting monuments to men of merit, a way of making the best
part of a man's career legible to the coming generations. The numberless
shrines you now find scattered all over Japan are only so many chapters
written in unmistakable characters of the lessons our beloved and
revered heroes and good men have left us for our edification and
amelioration. It is in the sunny space within the simple railing of
these Shinto shrines, where the smiling presence of the patron spirit of
a deified forefather or a great man is so clearly felt, that our
childhood has played for tens of centuries its games of innocent joy.
Monthly and yearly festivals are observed within the divine enclosure of
a guardian god, when a whole community under his protection let
themselves go in good-natured laughter and gleeful mirth before the
favouring eyes of their divine patron. How different is this jovial
feeling from that gloomy sensation with which we approach a Buddhist
temple, recalling death and the misery of life from every corner of its
mysterious interior. Such seriousness has never been congenial to the
gay Japanese mind with its strong love of openness and light. Until
death stares us right in the face, we do not care to be religious in the
ordinary sense of the term. True, we say and think that we believe in
death, but all the while this so-called death is nothing else than a new
life in this present world of ours led in a supernatural way. For
instance, when the father of a Japanese family begins a journey of any
length, the raised part of his room will be made sacred to his memory
during his temporary absence; his family will gather in front of it and
think of him, expressing their devotion and love in words and gifts in
kind. In the hundreds of thousands of families that have some one or
other of their members fighting for the nation in this dreadful war with
Russia, there will not be even one solitary house where the mother,
wife, or sister is not practising this simple rite of endearment for the
beloved and absent member of the family. And if he die on the field, the
mental attitude of the poor bereaved towards the never-returning does
not show any substantial difference. The temporarily departed will now
be regarded as the forever departed, but not as lost or passed away. His
essential self is ever present, only not visible. Daily offerings and
salutations continue in exactly the same way as when he was absent for a
time. Even in the mind of the modern Japanese with its extremely
agnostic tendencies, there is still one corner sacred to this inherited
feeling. You could sooner convince an ordinary European of the
non-existence of a personal God. When it gets dusk every bird knows
whither to wing its way home. Even so with us all when the night of
Death spreads its dark folds over our mortal mind!
But ask a modern Japanese of ordinary education in the broad daylight of
life, if he believes in a God in the Christian sense; or in Buddha as
the creator; or in the Shinto deities; or else in any other personal
agency or agencies, as originating and presiding over the universe; and
you would immediately get an answer in the negative in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred. Do you ask why? First, because our school education
throughout its whole course has, ever since its re-establishment
thirty-five years ago, been altogether free from any teaching of a
denominational nature. The ethical foundations necessary for the
building up of character are imparted through an adequate commentary on
the moral sayings and maxims derived mostly from Chinese classics.
Secondly, because the little knowledge about natural science which we
obtain at school seems to make it impossible to anchor our rational
selves on anything other than an impersonal law. Thirdly, because we do
not see any convincing reason why morals should be based on the teaching
of a special denomination, in face of the fact that we can be upright
and brave without the help of a creed with a God or deities at its other
end. So, for the average mind of the educated Japanese something like
modern scientific agnosticism, with a strong tendency towards the
materialistic monism of recent times, is just what pleases and satisfies
it most.
If not so definitely thought out, and if expressed with much less
learned terminology, the thought among our educated classes as regards
supernatural agencies has during the past three centuries been much the
same. The Confucian warning against meddling with things supernatural,
the atheistic views and hermit-like conduct of the adherents of Laoism,
and the higher Buddhism, all contributed towards the consolidation of
this mental attitude with a conscious or unconscious belief in the
existing spirit-world. Except for the philosophy which they knew how to
utilise for their practical purposes, the educated felt no charm in
religion. The lower form of Buddhism with its pantheon has been held as
something only for the aged and the weak. For the execution of the
religious rites, at funerals or on other occasions (except in the rare
instances when some families for a special reason of their own preferred
the Shintoist form), we have unanimously drawn on the Buddhist
priesthood, just in the same way as you go to your family doctor or
attorney in case of a bodily or legal complication, knowing well that
religion as we have understood it is something as much outside the pale
of the layman as medicine and law.
For the proper conduct of our daily life as members of society, the body
of Confucian morality resting on the tripod of loyalty, filial piety,
and honesty, has been the only standard which high and low have alike
recognised. These ethical ideals, when embraced by that formidable
warrior caste who played such an important part in feudal Japan, form
the code of unwritten morality known among us as Bushido, which means
the Path of the Samurai. This last word, which has found its way into
your language, is the substantival derivative from the verb _samurau_
(to serve), and, like its English counterpart 'knight' (Old English
_cniht_), has raised itself from its original sense of a retainer (cp.
German _Knecht_) to the meaning in which it is now used. To be a Samurai
in the true sense of the word has been the highest aspiration of a
Japanese. Your term 'gentleman,' when understood in its best sense,
would convey to you an approximate idea if you added a dash of soldier
blood to it. Rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, veracity,
loyalty, and a predominating sense of honour--these are the chief
colours with which a novelist in the days of yore used to paint an ideal
Samurai; and his list of desirable qualities was not considered complete
without a well-developed body and an expression of the face that was
manly but in no way brutal. No special stress was at first laid on the
cultivation of thinking power and book-learning, though they were not
altogether discouraged; it was thought that these accomplishments might
develop other qualities detrimental to the principal character, such as
sophistry or pedantry. To have good sense enough to keep his name
honourable, and to act instead of talking cleverly, was the chief
ambition of a Samurai.
But this view gradually became obscured. It lost its fearful rigidity in
course of time, as the world became more and more sure of a lasting
peace. Literature and music have gradually added softening touches to
its somewhat brusque features.
It must, however, be always remembered that the keynote of Bushido was
from the very beginning an indomitable sense of honour. This was all in
all to the mind of the Samurai, whose sword at his side reminded him at
every movement of the importance of his good name. The care with which
he preserved it reached in some cases to a pathetic extreme; he
preferred, for example, an instant suicide to a reputation on which
doubt had been cast, however falsely. The very custom of seppuku (better
known as hara-kiri), a form of suicide not known in early Japan,[16] is
an outcome of this love of an unstained name, originating, in my
opinion, in the metaphorical use of the word _hara_ (abdomen), which was
the supposed organ for the begetting of ideas. In consequence of this
curious localisation of the thinking faculty, the word _hara_ came to
denote at the same time intention or idea. Therefore, in cutting open
(_kiru_) his abdomen, a person whose motives had come to be suspected
meant to show that his inside was free from any trace of ideas not
worthy of a Samurai. This explanation is, I think, amply sustained by
the constant use to this very day of the word _hara_ in the sense of
one's ideas.
[16] The first mention in books of a similar mode of death dates from
the latter part of the twelfth century. But it does not seem that the
custom became universal until a considerably later period.
So Bushido, as you will now see, was itself but a manifestation of those
same forces already at work in the formation of Japanese thought, like
Buddhism, Confucianism, etc. But as it has played a most important part
in the development of modern Japan, I thought it more proper to consider
it as an independent factor in the history of our civilisation. Had it
not been for this all-daring spirit of Bushido, Japan would never have
been able to make the gigantic progress which she has been achieving in
these last forty years. As soon as our ports were flung open to the
reception of Western culture, Samurai, now deeply conscious of their new
mission, took leave of those stern but faithful friends, their beloved
swords, not without much reluctance, even as did Sir Bedivere, in order
to take up the more peaceful pen, which they were determined to wield
with the same knightly spirit. It is, in short, Bushido that has urged
our Japan on for the last three centuries, and will continue to urge her
on, on forever, onward to her ideals of the true, the good, and the
beautiful. Look to the spot where every Japanese sabre and every
Japanese bayonet is at present pointing with its icy edge of determined
patriotism in the dreary fields of Manchuria, or think of the intrepid
heroes on our men-of-war and our torpedo-boats amid blinding snowstorms
and the glare of hostile searchlights, and your eyes will invariably end
at the magic Path of the Samurai.
Having thus far followed my enumeration of the various factors in the
formation of the present thought in Japan, some of you might perhaps be
curious to know what Christianity has contributed towards the general
stock of modern Japanese mentality.
It must surely have exercised a very healthy influence on our mind since
its re-introduction at the beginning of the present Meiji period. Some
have indeed gone so far as to say that we owe the whole success we have
up to now achieved in this remarkable war to the holy inspiration we
drew from the teaching of Jesus Christ.