_Political and Religious Condition of Japan, as found
by the Portuguese—The Yakatas, or Kings, and their
Vassals—Revenues—Money—Distinction of Ranks—The Kubō-Sama—The
Dairi—Shintō—Buddhism—Judō—A.D. 1550._
Japan, as found by the Portuguese, embraced three large islands,
besides many smaller ones. Shimo (or Kiūshiū), the most southern and
western of the group, and the one with which the Portuguese first
became acquainted, is separated at the north, by a narrow strait,
from the much larger island of Nippon,[25] forming with its western
portion a right angle, within which the third and much smaller island
of Sikoku is included. These islands were found to be divided into
sixty-six separate governments or kingdoms, of which Nippon contained
fifty-three, Shimo (or Kiūshiū) nine, and Sikoku four—the numerous
smaller islands being reckoned as appurtenant to one or another of the
three larger ones. These kingdoms, grouped into eight, or rather nine,
larger divisions, and subdivided into principalities, of which, in all,
there were not less than six hundred, had originally (at least such was
the Japanese tradition) been provinces of a consolidated empire; but
by degrees and by dint of civil wars, by which the islands had been,
and still were, very much distracted, they had reached at the period
of the Portuguese discovery a state of almost complete independence.
Indeed, several of the kingdoms, like that of Hizen, in the west
part of Shimo, had still further disintegrated into independent
principalities.
It still frequently happened, however, that several provinces were
united under one ruler; and such was especially the case with five
central provinces of Nippon, including the great cities of Miyako,
Ōsaka and Sakai, which five provinces formed the patrimony of a prince
who bore the title of Kubō-Sama—Sama meaning lord, and Kubō general
or commander. This title the Portuguese rendered into _Emperor_,
and it was almost precisely equivalent to the original sense of the
_Imperator_ of the Romans, though still more exactly corresponding to
Cromwell’s title of _Lord-general_.
This Kubō or Shōgun, as he was otherwise called, was acknowledged by
all the other princes as in some respect their superior and head. The
other rulers of provinces bore the title of Shugo, or Yakata, which
the Portuguese rendered by the term _King_. Reserving to themselves,
as their personal domain, a good half of the whole extent of their
territories, these chiefs divided the rest among certain great vassals,
called Tono, Kunishū, or Kunidaimiō, who were bound to military service
in proportion to the extent of the lands which they held; which lands,
after reserving a portion for their private domain, these nobles
distributed in their turn to other inferior lords, called Yoriki, who
held of them upon similar conditions of military service, and who had
still beneath them, upon the same footing, a class of military vassals
and tenants, called Dōshin, and corresponding to the men-at-arms of the
feudal times of Europe. The actual cultivators of the lands—as had
also been, and still to a considerable extent was, the case in feudal
Europe—were in the condition of serfs.
Thus it happened, that, as in feudal Europe, so in Japan, great armies
might be very suddenly raised; and war being the chief employment of
the superior classes, and the only occupation, that of the priesthood
excepted, esteemed honorable, the whole country was in a constant state
of turbulence and commotion.
All the classes above enumerated except the last enjoyed the highly
prized honor of wearing two swords. One sword was worn by certain
inferior officials; but merchants, traders, and artisans, were
confounded, as to this matter, with the peasants, not being permitted
to wear any. The revenue of the princes and other proprietors was, and
still is, reckoned in _koku_ of rice, each of three sacks or bales,
each bale containing (according to Titsingh) thirty-three and one-third
gantings [_shō_],—the universal Japanese measure for all articles,
liquid or dry,—and weighing from eighty-two to eighty-three katties, or
somewhat more than a hundred of our pounds.[26] Ten thousand koku make
a mankoku, in which the revenues of the great princes are reckoned.
The distinction of rank was very strictly observed, being even
ingrained into the language. Inferiors being seated on their heels,
according to the Japanese fashion, testified their respect for their
superiors by laying the palms of their hands on the floor, and bending
their bodies so low that their foreheads almost touched the ground,
in which position they remained for some seconds. This is called the
_kitō_. The superior responded by laying the palms of his hands upon
his knees, and nodding or bowing, more or less low, according to the
rank of the other party.
As to everything that required powers of analysis, or the capacity
of taking general views, the Portuguese missionaries were but poor
observers; yet they could not but perceive in the Dairi the surviving
shadow, and indeed, in the earlier days of the missions, something more
than a mere shadow, of a still more ancient form of government, in
which the civil and ecclesiastical authority had both been united under
one head.
The Dairi,[27] Ō, or Mikado, as he was otherwise designated, had
for his residence the northeast quarter of Miyako (a great city not
far from the centre of Nippon, but nearest the southern shore). This
quarter was of vast extent, surrounded by a wall, with a ditch and
rampart, by which it was separated from the rest of the city. In the
midst of this fortified place, in a vast palace, easily distinguished
from a distance by the height of its tower, the Dairi dwelt, with his
empress or chief wife; his other eleven wives had adjoining palaces
in a circle around, outside of which were the dwellings of his
chamberlains and other officers. These Dairi claimed to be descended
from Jimmu, who, it was said, had, A. D. 660, introduced civilization
into Japan, and first established a regular government, and commencing
with whom, the Japanese annals show a regular series of Dairi, who are
represented as having been for many ages the sole lords and imperial
rulers of Japan, till at length they had been insensibly set aside, as
to the actual exercise of authority, by the Kubō-Sama, or commanders
of the armies. Yet these gradually eclipsed and finally superseded
emperors—equivalents of the “idle kings” of the Carlovingian race of
France, or to the present nominal sovereign of the British empire—were,
and still are, treated (as Queen Victoria is) with all the ceremonial
of substantial power, and even with the respect and reverence due to
the spiritual head of the national church, descended from a race of
divinities, and destined at death to pass by a regular apotheosis into
the list of the national gods.
All the revenue drawn from the city of Miyako and its dependencies was
appropriated to their support, to which the Kubō-Sama added a further
sum from his treasury. He himself treated the Dairi with as much
ceremonious respect and semi-worship as the British prime minister
bestows upon the British queen. He paid an annual visit to the court
of the Dairi in great state, and, withal, the carriage of an inferior;
but took care to maintain a garrison at Miyako, or its neighborhood,
sufficient to repress any attempt on the part of the Dairi or his
partisans to reëstablish the old order of things,—an idea which, when
the islands first became known to the Portuguese, seems not yet to have
been entirely abandoned.
We may trace a still further resemblance between the position of the
Dairi of Japan and the Queen of England, in the circumstance that all
public acts are dated by the years of his reign, and that all titles of
honor nominally emanate from him, though of course obliged, as to this
matter, to follow the suggestions of the Kubō-Sama. Even the Kubō-Sama
himself condescends, like a British prime minister, to accept such
decorations at the hands of the Dairi, affecting to feel extremely
honored and flattered at titles which had been, in fact, dictated by
himself.
The whole court of the Dairi, and all the inhabitants of the quarter of
Miyako in which he dwelt, consisted of persons who plumed themselves
upon the idea of being, like the Dairi himself, descended from
Tenshō-daijin, the first of the demigods, and who in consequence looked
down, like the Indian Brahmins, upon all the rest of the nation as an
inferior race, distinguishing themselves as Kuge, and all the rest
of the nation as Gege. These Kuge, who may be conjectured to have
once formed a class resembling the old Roman patricians, all wore a
particular dress, by which was indicated, not only their character
as members of that order, but, by the length of their sashes,
the particular rank which they held in it; a distinction the more
necessary, since, as generally happens with these aristocracies of
birth, many of the members were in a state of poverty, and obliged to
support themselves by various handicrafts.[28]
Of the magnificence of the court of the Dairi, and of the ceremonials
of it, the missionaries reported many stories, chiefly, of course, on
the credit of hearsay. It was said that the Dairi was never allowed
to breathe the common air, nor his foot to touch the ground; that he
never wore the same garment twice, nor ate a second time from the same
dishes, which, after each meal, were carefully broken,—for, should any
other person attempt to dine from them, he would infallibly perish
by an inflammation of the throat. Nor could any one who attempted to
wear the Dairi’s cast-off garments, without his permission, escape a
similar punishment. The Dairi, as we are told, was, in ancient times,
obliged to seat himself every morning on his throne, with the crown
on his head, and there to hold himself immovable for several hours
like a statue. This immobility, it was imagined, was an augury of the
tranquillity of the empire; and if he happened to move ever so little,
or even to turn his eyes, war, famine, fire, or pestilence was expected
soon to afflict the unhappy province toward which he had squinted. But
as the country was thus kept in a state of perpetual agitation, the
happy substitute was finally hit upon of placing the crown upon the
throne without the Dairi—a more fixed immobility being thus assured;
and, as Kämpfer dryly observes, one doubtless producing much the same
good effects.
At the time of the arrival of Xavier in Japan the throne of the Dairi
was filled by Go-Nara, the hundred and sixth, according to the Japanese
chronicles, in the order of succession; while the throne of the
Kubō-Sama was occupied by Yoshiharu, who was succeeded the next year by
his son Yoshiteru, the twenty-fourth of these officers, according to
the Japanese, since their assumption of sovereign power in the person
of Yoritomo, A. D. 1185.
The Japanese annals, which are scarcely more than a chronological
table of successions, cast little light upon the causes and progress
of this revolution;[29] but, from the analogy of similar cases, we
may conjecture that it was occasioned, at least in part, by the
introduction into Japan, and the spread there, of a new religion,
gradually superseding, to a great extent, the old system, of which the
Dairi was the head.
[Illustration: IMAGE OF YORITOMO
From _Official History of Japan_]
One might have expected from the Portuguese missionaries a pretty
exact account of the various creeds and sects of Japan, or, at least,
of the two leading religions, between which the great bulk of the
people were divided; instead of which they confound perpetually the
ministers of the two religions under the common name of bonzes,
taking very little pains to distinguish between the two systems,
both of which they regarded as equally false and pernicious. Their
attention, indeed, seems to have been principally fixed on the new
religion, that of Buddha, or Ho, of which the adherents were by far
the most numerous, and the hierarchy the most compact and formidable,
presenting, in its organization and practices (with, however, on some
points a very different set of doctrines), a most singular counterpart
to the Catholic Church,—a similarity which the missionaries could
only explain by the theory of a diabolical imitation; and which some
subsequent Catholic writers have been inclined to ascribe, upon very
unsatisfactory grounds, to the ancient labors of Armenian and Nestorian
missionaries, being extremely unwilling to admit what seems, however,
very probable, if not, indeed, certain,—little attention has as yet
been given to this interesting inquiry,—that some leading ideas of
the Catholic Church have been derived from Buddhist sources, whose
missionaries, while penetrating, as we know they did, to the East,
and converting entire nations, may well be supposed not to have been
without their influence also on the West.
Notwithstanding, however, the general prevalence, at the time when
Japan first became known to Europeans, of the doctrine of Buddha,—of
which there would seem to have been quite a number of distinct
observances, not unlike the different orders of monks and friars in the
Catholic Church,—it appears, as well from the memoirs of the Jesuit
missionaries, as from more exact and subsequent observations made by
residents in the Dutch service, that there also existed another and
more ancient religious system, with which the person and authority of
the Dairi had been and still were closely identified. This system[30]
was known as the religion of _Shintō_, or of the _Kami_,—a name given
not only to the seven mythological personages, or celestial gods,
who compose the first Japanese dynasty, and to the five demigods, or
terrestrial gods, who compose the second (two dynasties which, as in
the similar mythology of the Egyptians and Hindus, were imagined to
have extended through immense and incomprehensible ages preceding the
era of Jimmu), but including also the whole series of the Dairi, who
traced their descent from the first of the demigods, and who, though
regarded during their lives as mere men, yet at their deaths underwent,
as in the case of the Roman Cæsars, a regular apotheosis, by which they
were added to the number of the Kami, or Shin,—words both of which
had the same signification, namely, inhabitants of heaven.[31] A like
apotheosis was also extended to all who had seemed to deserve it by
their sanctity, their miracles, or their great benefactions.
The Kami of the first dynasty, the seven superior gods, being regarded
as too elevated above the earth to concern themselves in what is
passing on it, the chief object of the worship of the adherents of this
ancient system was the goddess Tenshō-daijin,[32] already mentioned as
the first of the demigods, and the supposed progenitor of the Dairi,
and of the whole order of the Kuge. Of this Tenshō-daijin, and of her
heroic and miraculous deeds, a vast many fables were in circulation.
Even those who had quitted the ancient religion to embrace the new
sects paid a sort of worship to the pretended mother of the Japanese
nation; and there was not a considerable city in the empire in which
there was not a temple to her honor. On the other hand, the religion
of the Kami, by its doctrine of the apotheosis of all great saints
and great heroes, gave, like the old pagan religions, a hospitable
reception to all new gods, so that even the rival demigod, Buddha, came
to be regarded by many as identical with Tenshō-daijin,—a circumstance
which will serve to explain the great intermixture of religious ideas
found in Japan, and the alleged fact, very remarkable, if true, that,
till after the arrival of the Portuguese missionaries, religious
persecution had never been known there.
Each of these numerous demigods was supposed by the adherents of the
religion of Shintō to preside over a special paradise of his own;
this one in the air, that one at the bottom of the sea, one in the
moon and another in the sun, and so on; and each devotee, choosing
his god according to the paradise that pleased him best, spared no
pains to gain admission into it. For what St. Paul had said of the
Athenians, might, according to the missionaries, be applied with equal
truth to the Japanese,—they were excessively superstitious, and this
superstition had so multiplied temples, that there was scarcely a city
in which, counting all the smaller chapels, the number did not seem at
least equal to that of the most pious Catholic countries.
The temples of the Shintō religion, called _Miya_, were and are—for in
this respect no change has taken place—ordinarily built upon eminences,
in retired spots, at a distance from bustle and business, surrounded
by groves and approached by a great avenue having a gate of stone or
wood, and bearing a tablet or door-plate of a foot and a half square,
which announces, in gilded letters, the name of the Kami to whom the
temple is consecrated. These exterior appendages would seem to foretell
a considerable structure; but within there is usually found only a
wretched little building of wood, half hid among trees and shrubbery,
about eighteen feet in length, breadth, and height, all its dimensions
being equal, and with only a single grated window, through which the
interior may be seen, empty, or containing merely a mirror of polished
metal, set in a frame of braided straw, or hung about with fringes of
white paper. Just within the entrance of the enclosure stands a basin
of water, by washing in which the worshippers may purify themselves.
Beside the temple is a great chest for the reception of alms, partly
by which, and partly by an allowance from the Dairi, the guardians of
the temples are supported, while at the gate hangs a gong, on which
the visitant announces his arrival. Most of these temples have also
an antechamber, in which sit those who have the charge, clothed in
rich garments. There are commonly also in the enclosure a number of
little chapels, or miniature temples, portable so as to be carried in
religious processions. All of these temples are built after one model,
the famous one of _Ise_, near the centre of the island of Nippon, and
which within the enclosure is equally humble with all the rest.
[Illustration: ISE TEMPLE]
The worship consists in prayers and prostrations. Works of religious
merit are, casting a contribution into the alms-chest, and avoiding or
expiating the impurities supposed to be the consequence of being
touched by blood, of eating of the flesh of any quadruped except
the deer, and to a less extent even that of any bird, of killing
any animal, of coming in contact with a dead person, or even, among
the more scrupulous, of seeing, hearing of, or speaking of any such
impurities. To these may be added, as works of religious merit, the
celebration of festivals, of which there are two principal ones in each
month, being the first and fifteenth day of it, besides five greater
ones distributed through the year, and lasting, some of them, for
several days, in which concerts, spectacles, and theatrical exhibitions
form a leading part. We must add the going on pilgrimages, to which,
indeed, all the religious of Japan are greatly addicted. The pilgrimage
esteemed by the adherents of Shintō as the most meritorious, and which
all are bound to make once a year, or, at least, once in their life,
is that of _Ise_, the name of a central province on the south coast
of Nippon, in which Tenshō-daijin was reported to have been born and
to have died, and which contains a Miya, exceedingly venerated, and
already mentioned as the model after which all the others are built.
Though it is not at all easy to distinguish what, either of ceremony
or doctrine, was peculiar or original in the system of Shintō,[33] yet
in general that system seems to have been much less austere than the
rival doctrine of Buddha, which teaches that sorrow is inseparable from
existence, the only escape from it being in annihilation. The adherents
of Shintō were, on the other hand, much more disposed to look upon the
bright side of things, turning their religious festivals into holidays,
and regarding people in sorrow and distress as unfit for the worship of
the gods, whose felicity ought not to be disturbed by the sight of pain
and misery. And this, perhaps, was one of the causes that enabled the
religion of Buddha, which addresses itself more to the sorrowing hearts
of which the world is so full, to obtain that predominance of which the
Portuguese missionaries found it in possession.
[Illustration: A SHINTŌ PRIEST]
Of this religion of Buddha, by no means peculiar to Japan, but
prevailing through the whole of central and southeastern Asia, and
having probably more adherents than any other religious creed, it is
not necessary here to speak at any length. A much more correct idea
of it is to be obtained from the recorded observations of our modern
missionaries, and from the elaborate investigations of Abel Rémusat,
and several other learned Orientalists, who have shed a flood of
light upon this interesting subject, than can be gathered from the
letters of the Portuguese missionaries, whose comprehension of the
Buddhist doctrine was, on many important points, especially as to the
cardinal one of annihilation, exceedingly confused, contradictory,
and erroneous; and, indeed, the same confusion and error exists in
almost all European travellers in the East, down to a very recent
period. Suffice it to say, that in the austerities and contempt for
the world and its pleasures, practised and professed by the bonzes
of the Buddhists, even Xavier and his brother Jesuits found their
match; while, in the hierarchy into which those bonzes were arranged;
the foreign language, imperfectly known even to themselves, of their
sacred books and their liturgy, and which recent investigations
have detected to be, with the bonzes of China and Japan, not Pali
alone, but also pure Sanscrit; their doctrine of celibacy; the
establishment of monasteries and nunneries; their orders of begging
devotees; their exterior of purity and self-denial, but supposed
secret licentiousness;[34] their fasts; their garbs; the tinkling
of bells; the sign of the cross; the rosaries on which they counted
their prayers; the large number of persons of noble birth who entered
upon the clerical life; their manner of preaching; their religious
processions; their pilgrimages; the size, splendor, and magnificence
of their temples, known as Tera, the roofs supported by tall pillars
of cedar; the altar within, and the lamps and incense burning there;
the right of asylum possessed by the Tera; and even the practice of
confession, prayers for the dead, and the sale of merit;—in all these
respects, this system presented a complete counterpart at least to
the show and forms and priestly devices of that very scheme of Roman
Catholic worship which Xavier and his brother missionaries sought to
introduce into Japan. The only striking difference was in the images,
often of gigantic size, to be found in the Tera, but which, after
all, were no more than a set-off against the pictures of the Catholic
churches.
At the head of the Buddhist hierarchy was a high priest called _Shaku_,
resident at Miyako, and having much the same spiritual prerogative with
the Pope of Rome, including the canonization of saints. With him rested
the consecration of the _Jūji_, corresponding to the bishops, or rather
to the abbots, of the Catholic Church—all the Buddhist clergy being,
in the language of Rome, regulars (similar, that is, to the monks and
friars), and living together in monasteries of which the Jūji were
the heads. These Jūji, however, could not enter upon their offices,
to which great revenues were attached, except by the consent of the
temporal authorities, which took care to limit the interference of the
Shaku and the Jūji strictly to spiritual matters.[35]
[Illustration: PILGRIMS RETURNING FROM A TEMPLE]
There was this further resemblance also to the regular orders of the
Romish church, that the Buddhist clergy were divided into a number of
observances, hardly less hostile to each other than the Dominicans to
the Franciscans, or both to the Jesuits. But as the church and state
were kept in Japan perfectly distinct,—as now in the United States,—and
as the bonzes possessed no direct temporal power, there was no appeal
to the secular arm, no civil punishments for heresy, and no religious
vows perpetually binding, all being at liberty, so far as the civil law
was concerned, to enter or leave the monasteries at pleasure. It was
also another result of this separation of state and church—as here in
the United States—that there was only needed a Jo Smith, a man hardy
or self-deceived enough to pretend to inspiration, to set up a new
observance; an occurrence by which the theology of Japan had become
from time to time more and more diversified.
There were also, besides the more regular clergy, enthusiasts, or
impostors, religious vagabonds who lived by beggary, and by pretending
to drive away evil spirits, to find things lost, to discover robbers,
to determine guilt or innocence of accused parties, to interpret
dreams, to predict the future, to cure desperate maladies, and other
similar feats, which they performed chiefly through the medium, not
of a table, but of a child, into whom they pretended to make a spirit
enter, able to answer all their questions. Such, in particular, were
the Yamabushi, or mountain priests, an order of the religion of Shintō.
Yet, exceedingly superstitious as the Japanese were, there was not
wanting among them a sect of Rationalists, the natural result of
freedom of opinion, who regarded all these practices and doctrines,
and all the various creeds of the country, with secret incredulity,
and even contempt. These Rationalists, known as Jiudōshiu, and their
doctrine as Judō, and found chiefly among the upper classes, looked up
to the Chinese Confucius as their master and teacher. They treated the
system of Buddha with open hostility, as mere imposture and falsehood;
but, in order to avoid the odium of being destitute of all religion,
conformed, at least so far as external observances were concerned, to
the old national system of Shintō.[36]
[Illustration: A BUDDHIST SERMON]