Real enlightenment and emperor-worship are hardly compatible, complains
a missionary in Formosa. He should have had no difficulty in
recognizing, in far less time than he has probably spent there, that for
all its outward garb the government of the island, if not of Japan
itself, is a real shogunate still, a feudal type of thing, in which all
men bow low before their official superiors, in which there is never any
of the hearty frankness of modern life. The slowest-minded people ever
to reach high estate are also the tightest little people on earth;
compared to the Japanese the Chinese are open and aboveboard, as well as
brilliant and overflowing with the sense of humor.
There is no free press in Taiwan; the barriers against one are mainly
secrecy and dictatorship. If the government is concerned, there is
virtually no chance of getting any news, or at least correct news; if it
is outside news, and in the slightest degree concerns the government, a
strict censorship will see that it is not shared with the public. Such
information as one may find in Formosan papers, therefore, is true in
just so far as the government wishes the truth to be known. “It is
undesirable,” said a recent governor-general, “to see in newspapers
comments and criticisms concerning the administration.” No doubt
American politicians often feel the same way about it. The same
mikado-appointed autocrat dissolved a society of Formosans who planned
to introduce governmental reforms, with the placid remark: “To establish
a legislature in Taiwan is against the constitution of Japan, and the
constitution has never been amended. Any movement aiming at the
conclusion of the laws of Japan from this island is against peace and
order. The constitution of Japan allows freedom of speech and the
organization of political societies, _but_ people under a constitutional
government should be moral and gentlemanly in their acts, and it is
accordingly the duty of the state to correct persons who are unable to
take such a gentlemanly and moral attitude.” A number of such persons,
whose lack of gentlemanly morals consisted in attempting to organize one
of the political societies permitted by the constitution, are being
corrected in the big “model” prison of Taihoku, and incidentally
learning to work with their hands instead of their heads.
In other words, though the Japanese have copied the constitutions of the
West, by way of that of Bavaria, those of them at least who are
governing Formosa have no real conception of what a modern free
government with the consent of the governed means. Compare Japanese rule
in their semi-tropical isle with Porto Rico or the Philippines, where
even legislation and the courts are in Spanish! It is rather a pity that
the group of islands not far south of Formosa over which the American
flag still flutters cannot have a sample of Formosan rule to offset
their complaints at their present status, and as a reminder of what may
very easily happen to them if they win that independence for which
certain of their political-minded citizens are clamoring.
But to come back to the complaining missionary and his charge of
mikado-worship. “The Japanese constitution,” he continues, “guarantees
to all citizens religious liberty; how then can the government require
its officials, and every child in its government schools, be they
Formosans or Koreans, to bow down before the picture of the emperor and
to worship him in Shinto shrines? For certainly this is nothing more nor
less than worship, so far as the word has any meaning in English or to
the mere Western mentality, in spite of the clever but ineffectual
explanation that ‘the government declares that all ceremonial
observances which are officially obligatory shall not be regarded as
religious but as patriotic.’”
It is easy enough for a stern government to order men to believe thus
and so, but the human mind is sometimes perverse in its workings.
Shintoism is taught in the schools of Formosa; gleaming new Shinto
shrines are to be found throughout the pacified part of the island; but
I have yet to see a Formosan enter one of them as a voluntary worshiper
or to hear of one who has given his free-will adherence to the Japanese
doctrine. The Chinese type of temples still holds the allegiance of the
great non-Japanese mass of the population; and the majority of us are
inclined to sympathize with them in their choice, even though their
mainly devil-propitiating form of worship may be a lower one than pure
Shintoism.
But is the charge of mikado-worship justified? I took the trouble one
day to ask one of the most intelligent Japanese officials it has been my
fortune to meet, a man educated in the West and with as liberal views as
such officials ever seem to attain, what the more cultured Japanese
thought of the suicide of General Nogi and his wife, that they might
accompany the late mikado to the other world. He showed immense surprise
that such a question could occur to me at all, and promptly assured me
that “every” Japanese considered it a noble act, and one to be emulated.
The house in which this ancient Nipponese sacrifice was committed was
set aside by the government as a national museum, and squads of
school-children were constantly being shown through it when we were in
Tokyo, while their teachers preached to them on the ideal patriotism of
Nogi’s life, and particularly of his death, striving to inculcate into
their plastic minds, probably with considerable success, the same more
than medieval ideas. The authorities are tireless in their attempts to
bring the younger generation of Formosans to the same point of view,
though there is no evidence that these efforts have thus far borne any
fruit.
[Illustration: The Japanese furnish excellent school accommodations
throughout Formosa, at least to their own children]
[Illustration: Japanese boys on their way to school in southern Formosa]
[Illustration: The Japanese say that they themselves cannot distinguish
the reformed head-hunters of Formosa from their own country people; but
for the teacher and two children in the front row these are all of the
wild mountain tribes, the tallest man and his little boy in front of him
being both in the first grade]
[Illustration: Former head-hunters more or less domesticated during
years of labor in the camphor camps of the Japanese]
Not long ago the prince regent of Japan made an official visit to
Formosa, partly no doubt for this very purpose. There were months of
preparation for the “epoch-making” occasion, preparations so intensive
that neither the governor-general nor the government had much time left
for less important matters. The group of buildings on the hilltop above
Takao, of which I have already spoken, were specially constructed for
the housing of the royal visitors. They are of wood, but spacious enough
to accommodate a dozen large families. The prince spent two nights
there, leaving them so sacred that no one else can enter, much less
inhabit them. I had the luck to see translations of articles on the
princely visit as they appeared in Formosan papers, though it was not,
of course, intended that this evidence of the essentially shogunal
character of modern Japan should be given out to the world at large.
Among this mass of evidence unconsciously tending to bear out the charge
that the Japanese consider their supreme ruler virtually a god a few are
especially amusing. For, remember, this was merely the son of the divine
mikado, not yet quite deified himself, I suppose, so that one can only
surmise how much nearer the focus of absurdity matters might have gone
if the sacred emperor had been mentally capacitated to make the visit
himself. One horrified writer reports that the imperial personage
“seemed to be most interested in water-buffaloes and sedan-chairs”! How
that must have broken the hearts of the improvement-showing officials!
Two hundred and seventy police in plain clothes were stationed along the
road by which the prince traveled, but “they hid themselves behind trees
and other things, because the authorities wished them to be so
inconspicuous, if possible, as not to catch the imperial eye at all.” A
long list of instructions were issued to the people of Formosa, a few of
which will give the atmosphere of the occasion quite as fully as the
whole document. The population was ordered: