Produced by Don Kostuch
[Transcriber's note:
Page numbers are enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They are
located where page breaks occurred in the original book. Paragraphs
are not broken.
When a paragraph flows around illustrations the "next" page
immediately preceding or following the illustrations jumps to
account for the pages occupied by the illustrations. The location of
the paragraph following the illustration group is indicated as
{52 continued}. The material following {10}, up to the next {}, is on
page 10, even if the next page number is not 11.
Italic are enclosed in underscores: _this is italicized_.
End Transcriber's note]
WHERE HALF THE WORLD IS WAKING UP
[Illustration: COUNT SHIGE-NOBU OKUMA OF JAPAN]
(From a photograph and autograph given the author)
Count Okuma, one of the Genro or Elder Statesmen of Japan and
ex-Premier of the Empire, is an opponent of his country's high
protective tariff and an earnest advocate of international
arbitration.
WHERE HALF THE WORLD IS WAKING UP
THE OLD AND THE NEW IN JAPAN, CHINA, THE
PHILIPPINES, AND INDIA, REPORTED
WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO
AMERICAN CONDITIONS
BY
CLARENCE POE
Author of "A Southerner in Europe," "Cotton: Its Cultivation and
Manufacture," Editor "The Progressive Farmer," Sec'y North Carolina
Historical Association, etc., etc.
Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1911
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN
LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY CLARENCE POE
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
TO
THE RIGHT HONORABLE JAMES BRYCE
IN WHOM ACHIEVEMENT, CHARACTER AND PERSONAL CHARM MEET IN RARE
SYMMETRY; WHO HAS WON THE WISDOM OF AGE WITHOUT LOSING THE DEW OP
YOUTH; AND WHOSE GENEROUS FRIENDSHIP HAD MADE ME HIS DEBTOR BEFORE IT
AIDED ME ANEW IN PLANNING AND EXECUTING MY ORIENTAL TOUR
{vii}
PREFACE
"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong," as Mr.
Gilbert Chesterton begins one of his books by saying, has half its
members in Asia. That Americans should know something about so
considerable a portion of our human race is manifestly worth while.
And really to know them at all we must know them as they are to-day.
Vast changes are in progress, and even as I write this, the revolution
in China, foreshadowed in the chapters written by me from that
country, is remaking the political life of earth's oldest empire. From
Japan to India there is industrial, educational, political ferment.
The old order changes, yielding place to the new.
"Where Half the World is Waking Up" is not inappropriate therefore as
the title of the book now offered to the public. The reader will
kindly observe here that I have written of where half the world is
waking up and not merely of the waking-up itself. My purpose has been
to set forth the old and the new in due proportion; to present the
play of new forces against and upon the ancient, the amazingly
ancient, forces that have dominated whole races for centuries. In most
places, in fact, the ancient force is still clearly the dominant one.
Observe, too, therefore, that I have written not of where half the
world has waked up, but only of where it is waking up. The significant
thing is that the waking is really taking place at all, and of this
there can be no doubt.
It was, in short, with the hope of securing for myself and presenting
to others a photograph of the Orient as it is to-day that I made my
long trip through Japan, Korea, Manchuria, {viii} China, the
Philippines, and India during the past year. It was not a pleasure
trip nor yet a hurried "seaport trip." I travelled either entirely
across or well into the interior of each country visited, and all my
time was given to study and research to fit me for the preparation of
these articles.
That despite of the care exercised the book contains some errors, is
doubtless true. The sources of information in the Orient are not
always easy to find, nor always in accord after one finds them.
Consider, for example, the population of Manchuria: it seems a simple
enough matter, yet it required the help of consuls of two or three
nations to enable me to sift out the truth from the conflicting
representations of several writers and so-called authorities.
For my part I can only claim a laborious and painstaking effort to get
the facts. Letters of introduction to eminent Englishmen kindly
furnished me by Ambassador Bryce opened the doors of British
officialdom for me, and the friendship of Mr. Roosevelt and letters
from Mr. Bryan and our Department of State proved helpful in other
ways. I thus had the good fortune not only to get the ready fraternal
assistance of my brother newspaper men (of all races) everywhere, and
the help of English, German, and American consuls, but I was aided by
some of the most eminent authorities in each country visited--in
China, by H. E. Tang Shao-yi, Wu Ting Fang, Sir Robert Bredon, Dr. C.
D. Tenney, Dr. Timothy Richard; in Japan, by ex-Premier Okuma,
Viscount Kaneko, Baron Shibusawa, Dr. Juichi Soyeda; in Hong Kong, by
Governor-General Sir Frederick Lugard; in Manila by Governor-General
Forbes, Vice-Governor Gilbert; in India, the members of the Viceroy's
Cabinet, Hon. Krishnaswami Iyer, Dr. J. P. Jones, etc, etc. To all of
these and to scores of others, my grateful acknowledgments are
tendered. They helped me get information, but of course are in no case
to be held responsible for any opinions that I have expressed.
To Mr. G. D. Adams, of Akron, Ohio, and Dr. Arthur {ix} Mez, of
Mannheim, Germany, two generous fellow-travellers, my thanks are due
for the use of many of their photographs, and I am also indebted to
_The World's Work_ and _The Review of Reviews_ for permission to
republish articles that have already appeared in these magazines. The
larger number of chapters included in this volume, however, were
originally prepared with a view to their use in my own paper, The
Progressive Farmer. They are, therefore, often more elementary in
character, let me say in the outset, than if they had been written
exclusively for bookbuyers, but it is my hope that their journalistic
flavor, even if it has this disadvantage, will also be found to have
certain compensating qualities.
Perhaps just one other thing ought to be said: that practically every
article about any country was written while I was still in the country
described. In this way I hoped not only to write with greater
freshness and vividness, but I was enabled to have my articles revised
and criticised by friends well informed concerning the subjects
discussed. The reader will please bear in mind, therefore, that a
letter about Tokyo is also a letter from Tokyo, a letter about Korea
is a letter from Korea, etc., and shift his viewpoint accordingly. I
have also thought it best to be frank with the reader and let the
chapters on China remain exactly as they were written--presenting a
pen picture of the Dragon Empire as it appeared on the eve of the
outbreak, while the revolution was indeed definitely in prospect but
not yet a reality.
-----
"Give us as many anecdotes as you can," was old Samuel Johnson's
advice to Boswell, when that worthy proposed to write of Corsica; and
this wise suggestion I have sought to keep in mind in all my travel.
Moreover, another saying of the great lexicographer's comes quaintly
into my memory as I conclude this Foreword: "There are two things
which I am confident I could do very well," he once remarked to Sir
Joshua Reynolds; "one is an introduction to any literary work stating
{x} what it is to contain, and how it should be executed in the most
perfect manner: the other is a conclusion, showing from various causes
why the execution has not been equal to what the author promised to
himself and to the publick!"
C. P.
Raleigh, N. C.
December 1, 1911.
{xi}
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Japan: The Land of Upside Down 3
A Land of Contradictions
Music as an Example
Marriage and the Home Life
Patriarchal Ideas Still Dominant.
II. Snapshots of Japanese Life and Philosophy 9
What a Japanese City Is Like
Strange Clothing of the Japanese
Who Ever Saw So Many Babies?
Alphonse and Gaston Outdone
The Grace of the Little Women
How the Old Japan and the Old South Were Alike
A "Moral Distinction" Between Producers and Non-Producers.
III. Japanese Farming and Farmer Folk 17
Japanese Farm Children Getting More Schooling
than American Farm Children
No Illiteracy in the New Japan
Where Five Acres Is a Large Farm
How Iowa Might Feed the Whole United States
Farming Without Horses or Oxen
What the Japanese Farmers Raise
The Crime of Soil-waste
All Work Done by Hand
Cooperative Credit Societies a Success
Farm Houses Grouped in Villages
"A Seller of the Ancestral Land"
The Japanese Love of the Beautiful a Suggestion for America.
IV. "Welfare Work" in Japanese Factories 29
Manufacturing Bound to Increase
Tariff Legislation Unfair to Agriculture
A Visit to a Progressive Japanese Factory
How the Factory Operatives Are Looked After
Stricter Factory Legislation Coming.
V. Does Japanese Competition Menace the White Man's Trade 34
A Study of Japanese Industrial Conditions
Japanese Labor Cheap but Inefficient
Actual Cost of Output Little Cheaper than in America
Laborers in a State {xii} of Deplorable Inexperience
Illustrations of Japanese Inefficiency
Some Current Misconceptions Corrected
Labor Wage Has Increased 40 Per Cent, in Eight Years
The Burden of Taxation
High Tariff Will Decrease Japan's Export Trade
Subsidy Policy Destroying Individual Initiative
Japanese Competition Not a Serious Menace to the White Man.
VI. Buddhism, Shintoism, and Christianity in Japan 48
The Artistic Touch of the Japanese
Religion Without Morals
Buddhism in Fact vs. Buddhism Idealized by Arnold
Official Notices Prohibiting Christianity
Christianity "Puts Too High an Estimate on Woman"
The Worth of the Individual Not Recognized
The Elemental Significance of Japan's Awakening
A New Type of Civilization.
VII. Korea: "The Land of the Morning Calm" 60
I Have Become a Contemporary of David
The Fascination of a Primitive City
Some Odd Korean Customs-A True Romance and an Odd One
Many Faces Marked by Smallpox
A Typical Monarchy of Ancient Asia-The Honorable Mr. Yang-ban
Six Men to Carry Fifty Dollars' Worth of Money
Japanese Annexation
Splendid Work of Foreign Missionaries.
VIII. Manchuria: Fair and Fertile 70
Some First-hand Stories of the Russo-Japanese War
A Bit of History with a Lesson
The Site of the World's Next Great War
Manchuria: Fair and Fertile
Fat Harvests of Food, Feed, and Fuel
A Land Where Everybody "Knows Beans"
Golden Opportunities for Stock-raising
Better Plows and Level Culture
Graves as Thick as Corn Shocks
IX. Where Japan Is Absorbing an Empire 78
Manchuria the One Great Oriental Empire Not Yet Developed
Its Strategic Importance
Why the "Open Door" Concerns Us All
Japan's Shrewd Policies {xiii}
Contempt of Chinese Authority
Japan at Home vs. Japan in Manchuria
How the Open Door Policy Was Violated
Will Manchuria Go the Way of Korea?
A Bit of Chinese Wit and Wisdom
Truth Is in the Interest of Peace.
X. Light from China on Problems at Home 93
A Chinese Martyr-Hero
The Most Tremendous Moral Achievement of Recent Times
A Lesson for America
Putting Officials on Salaries
Money Changers and Title Changers
Making Education Practical
The Parcels Post and Tariff Reform.
XI. The New China: Awake and at Work 102
The Coming National Parliament
The Successful War Against Opium
China's Right-about-face in Education
Building Up an Army
Attacking the Graft System
Railroads, Posts, and Telegraphs
America's Relations with China.
XII. A Trip into Rural China 116
The Camels from Mongolia
Strange Traffic and Travel in Nankou Pass
The Great Wall of China
Surprisingly Progressive Farming Methods.
XIII. From Peking to the Yangtze-Kiang 123
Street Life in Peking
History That Is History
Martyrdoms That Have Enriched the World
Average Wages 15 to 18 Cents a Day
Homes Without Firesides
All China a Vast Cemetery
Keeping on Good Terms with Dragons
The Blessings of Our Alphabet
Confucius as a Moral Teacher
My Friendship with a Descendant of Confucius.
XIV. Sidelights on Chinese Character and Industry 132
Healthy Public Sentiment
Slavery and Foot-binding Still Practised
"Big Feet No B'long Pretty"
The Popularity of a No. 2 Wife
The Virtue That Is Next to Godliness Largely Disregarded
Some Discredited Americans Discovered Abroad
A 600-Mile Trip on the Yangtze {xiv} River
An Interview with Wu Ting Fang
Farming on the Yangtze
Shanghai Factory Laborers Paid 12 Cents a Day.
XV. Farewell to China 142
A City of 2,000,000 People Without a Vehicle
A Dead Chinaman More Important and Respected Than a Live One
Queer Features of Chinese Funerals
Cruelty of Chinese Punishments
A Sample of Chinese Humor: The Story of the Magic Jar
Amusing Trials of a Land Buyer
"Pidgin English"
Everything Is Saved
The Influence That Is Remaking China.
XVI. What I Saw in the Philippines 153
In Manila
A Trip Through Five Provinces
What the Philippine Country Looks Like
Every Filipino Has Cigarette and a Clean Suit
A Mania for Cock-fighting
Snapshots of Philippine Life
Labor the One Thing Lacking.
XVII. What the United States Is Doing in the Philippines 163
Thirty Thousand White People and 7,000,000 Filipinos
Rich Resources and Varied Products
Millions in Lumber
How the Islands Are Governed
Restricting the Suffrage
Education: Achievements of the American Government
Postal Savings Banks and the Torrens System
Public Health Work
Building Roads
And Then Keeping Them Up
"A George Junior Republic."
XVIII. Asia's Greatest Lesson foe America . . 173
Where 10 Cents a Day Is a Laborer's Wage
The Savage Struggle for Existence in the East
Tasks Heart-sickening in Their Heaviness
Where Women Are Burden-bearers
$12 a Year for a Farm Hand
An Overcrowded Population Not the Chief Cause of Asia's Poverty
A Defective Organization of Industry Responsible
Foolish Opposition to Labor-saving Tools
Our Debt to Machinery
Knowledge Itself a Productive Agency
Ineffectiveness of Oriental Labor
Tools and Knowledge the Secret of Wealth
Importance of Our Racial Heritage
The Final Lesson.
{xv}
XIX. The Straits Settlements and Burma 186
The Amazing Industry of the Chinese
Easy Money in Cocoanuts
How Germany Is Capturing Oriental Trade
Rangoon the City of Gorgeous Colors
Burma's Buddhist Temples
Rangoon's Beasts of Burden
Where the Elephants Do the Work
Some First-hand Jungle Stories
My Lord the Elephant
Good-by to Burma.
XX. Hinduism--and the Himalayas 198
Theoretical vs. Practical Hinduism
The Kalighat Temple, Calcutta
Human Sacrifices
Two Indian Places of Worship: A Contrast
A Visit to Benares
Burning the Bodies of the Dead
"Religion" as It Is in Benares
The Himalayas: A New and Happier Subject.
XXI. "The Poor Benighted Hindus" 210
India's Enormous Population
"The Wealth of the Indies" a Romance
A Typical Indian Village
No Chairs, Mattresses, Knives, or Forks Used
Where It Is 105 at Midnight
"Gunga Din" in Evidence
The Lady of Banbury Cross Outdone.
XXII. Hindu Farming and Farm Life 218
Primitive Tools Used by Farmers
What Crops Are Grown
Where Drought Means Death
Reducing the Ravages of Famine
Usury and a Remedy
Where America Is Behind
Landowner and Farm Laborer
Salaam, O Little Folk!
XXIII. The Caste System in India 226
No Man May Rise Higher, but May Fall Lower
How Fatalism Sustains Caste
Contamination by Touch
A Bone Collector's Pride of Rank
The "Thief Caste"
Caste and the Banyan Tree
A Maharaja's Defence of Caste
Some Forces That Are Battering Down the System
Foreign Travel Weakening Caste.
XXIV. The Plight of the Hindu Woman 236
"Woman Is Not to Be Trusted"
Twelve-year-old Brides and Bridegrooms
A Wedding Procession in Agra {xvi}
5000 Rupees for a Wedding Feast
The Plight of the Child-wives
Cruel Treatment of Widows
The Picture Not Wholly Dark
One Worthy Tribute to the Grace of Woman.
XXV. More Leaves from an India Notebook 246
Some Historic Indian Cities
India No More Homogeneous than Europe
English Rule: An Interview with Mr. Krishnaswami Iyer
Indian Wealth in a Few Hands
16 Cents a Day an Incredibly High Wage
No Horses on Indian Farms
Bombay a Great Cotton Market
The Story of a Man-eater
A Snake Story to End With.
XXVI. What the Orient May Teach Us 261
Conservation the Keynote
What Neglect of Her Forests Has Cost China
Forestry Lessons from Japan and Korea
Conserving Individual Wealth
The Essential Immorality of Waste
Avoiding the Wastes of War
Preserving Our Physical Stamina and Racial Strength
A Lesson from China
Patriotism as a Moral Force
The Coming "Conflict of Color"
Oriental vs. Occidental Ideals.
{xvii}
ILLUSTRATIONS
Count Shige-Nobu Okuma of Japan Frontispiece
PAGE
The Giant Avenue of Cryptomerias at Nikko 13
Typical Japanese Costumes and Temple Architecture 14
Japanese Farming Scenes 19
Japanese School Children 20
The Great Buddha (Diabutsu) at Kamakura 53
The Degenerate Koreans at Rest and at Work 54
Like Scenes from Our Western Prairies 81
Manchurian Women (showing peculiar head-dress) 82
Chinese Waste-paper Collector 82
Pu Yi the Son of Heaven and
Emperor of the Middle Kingdom 105
How China Is Dealing with Opium Intemperance 106
A Man-made Desert 117
Pumping Water for Irrigation 117
Transportation and Travel in China 118
Fashionable Chinese Dinner Party 137
How Lumber Is Sawed in the Orient 137
A Quotation from Confucius 138
The Great Wall of China 147
Chinese Woman's Ruined Feet 147
Chinese School Children 148
The American Consulate at Antung 148
A Filipino's Home 157
The Carabao, the Work-stock of the Filipinos 158
An Old Spanish Cathedral 158
Society Belles of Mindanao, Philippine Islands 181
A Street Scene in Manila 181
{xviii}
Two Kinds of Workers in Burma 182
Types at Darjeeling, Northern India,
and at Delhi, Central India 205
Two Rangoon Types 206
A Hindu Faquir 213
Some Fashionable Hindus 213
Hindu Children 214
The Taj Mahal from the Entrance Gate 241
Gunga Din on Dress Parade 242
Bathing in the Sacred Ganges at Benares 249
The Battle-scarred and
World-famous Residency at Lucknow 250
Burning the Bodies of Dead Hindus 255
An Indian Camel Cart 255
Travel in India 256
{xix}
WHERE HALF THE WORLD IS WAKING UP
{3}
I
JAPAN: THE LAND OF UPSIDE DOWN
"I cannot help thinking," said one of my friends to me when I left
home, "that when you get over on the other side of the world, in Japan
and China, you will have to walk upside down like the flies on the
ceiling!"
While I find that this is not true in a physical sense, it is true, as
Mr. Percival Lowell has pointed out, that, with regard to the manners
and customs of the people, everything is reversed, and the surest way
to go right is to take pains to go dead wrong! "To speak backward,
write backward, read backward, is but the A B C of Oriental
contrariety."
Alice need not have gone to Wonderland; she should have come to Japan.
I cannot get used, for example, to seeing men start at what with us
would be the back of a book or paper and read toward the front; and it
is said that no European or American ever gets used to the
construction of a Japanese sentence, considered merely from the
standpoint of thought-arrangement. I had noticed that the Japanese
usually ended their sentences with an emphatic upward spurt before I
learned that with them the subject of a sentence usually comes last
(if at all), as for example, "By a rough road yesterday came John,"
instead of, "John came by a rough road yesterday."
And this, of course, is but one illustration of thousands that might
be given to justify my title, "The Land of Upside Down," the land of
contradictions to all our Occidental ideas. That {4} Japan is a land
"where the flowers have no odor and the birds no song" has passed into
a proverb that is almost literally true; and similarly, the far-famed
cherry blossoms bear no fruit. The typesetters I saw in the _Kokumin
Shimbum_ office were singing like birds, but the field-hands I saw at
Komaba were as silent as church-worshippers. The women carry children
on their backs and not in their arms. The girls dance with their
hands, not with their feet, and alone, not with partners. An ox is
worth more than a horse. The people bathe frequently, but in dirty
water. The people are exceptionally artistic, yet the stone "lions" at
Nikko Temple look as much like bulldogs as lions. A man's birthday is
not celebrated, but the anniversary of his death is. The people are
immeasurably polite, and yet often unendurably cocky and conceited.
Kissing or waltzing, even for man and wife, would be improper in
public, but the exposure of the human body excites no surprise. The
national government is supposed to be modern, and yet only 2 per cent,
of the people--the wealthiest--can vote. Famed for kindness though the
people are, war correspondents declared the brutality of Japanese
soldiers to the Chinese at Port Arthur such as "would damn the fairest
nation on earth." Though the nation is equally noted for simplicity of
living, it is a Japanese banker, coming to New York, who breaks even
America's record for extravagance, by giving a banquet costing $40 a
plate. The people are supposed to be singularly contented, and yet
Socialism has had a rapid growth. The Emperor is regarded as sacred
and almost infallible, and yet the Crown Prince is not a legitimate
son. Although the government is one of the most autocratic on earth,
it has nevertheless adopted many highly "paternalistic"
schemes-government ownership of railways and telegraphs, for example.
The people work all the time, but they refuse to work as strenuously
as Americans. The temples attract thousands of people, but usually
only in a spirit of frolic: in the first Shinto temple I visited the
priests offered me sake (the national liquor) {5} to drink. Labor per
day is amazingly cheap, but, in actual results, little cheaper than
American labor.
It is amid such a maze of contradictions and surprises that one moves
in Japan. When I go into a Japanese home, for example, it is a hundred
times more important to take off my shoes than it is to take off my
hat--even though, as happened this week when I called on a celebrated
Japanese singer, there be holes in my left sock. (But I was comforted
later when I learned that on President Taft's visit to a famous Tokyo
teahouse his footwear was found to be in like plight.)
Speaking of music, we run squarely against another oddity, in that
native Japanese (as well as Chinese) music usually consists merely of
monotonous twanging on one or two strings--so that I can now
understand the old story of Li Hung Chang's musical experiences in
America. His friends took him to hear grand opera singers, to listen
to famous violinists, but these moved him not; the most gifted
pianists failed equally to interest him. But one night the great
Chinaman went early to a theatre, and all at once his face beamed with
delight, and he turned to his friends in enthusiastic gratitude: "We
have found it at last!" he exclaimed. "That is genuine music!" . . .
And it was only the orchestra "tuning up" their instruments!
I might as well say just here that this story, while good, always
struck me as a humorous exaggeration till I came to Japan, but the
music which I heard the other night in one of the most fashionable and
expensive Japanese restaurants in Tokyo was of exactly the same
character--like nothing else in all the world so much as an orchestra
tuning up! And yet by way of modification (as usual) it must be said
that appreciation of Western music is growing, and one seldom hears in
classical selections a sweeter combination of voice and piano than
Mrs. Tamaki Shibata's, while my Japanese student-friend has also
surprised me by singing "Suwanee River" and other old-time American
favorites like a genuine Southerner.
Take the social relations of the Japanese people as another {6}
example of contrariety. Here the honorable sex is not the feminine but
the masculine. There is even a proverb, I believe, "Honor men, despise
women." Perhaps the translation "despise" is too strong, but certainly
it would be regarded as nothing but contemptible weakness for young
men to show any such regard for young women, or husbands for their
wives, as is common in America. The wives exist solely for their
husbands, nor must the wife object if the husband maintains other
favorites, or even brings these favorites into the home with her. And
although a man is with his wife a much greater part of his time than
is the case in America, he may have little or no voice in selecting
her; in fact, he may see her only once before marrying.
After having seen probably half a million or more Japanese, Sundays
and week-days, I have not noticed a single young Japanese couple
walking together, and in the one case where I saw a husband and a wife
walking thus side by side I discovered on investigation that the man
was blind!
"For a young couple to select each other as in America," said a young
Japanese gentleman to me, "would be considered immoral, and as for a
young man calling on a young woman, that never happens except
clandestinely." And when I asked if it was true that when husband and
wife go together the woman must follow the man instead of walking
beside him as his equal, he answered: "But it is very, very seldom
that the two go out together."
My Japanese friend also told me that the young man often has
considerable influence in selecting his life-partner (in case it is
for life: there is one divorce to every three to five marriages), but
the young woman has no more voice in the matter than the commodity in
any other bargain-and-sale. When a young man or young woman gets of
marriageable age, which is rather early, the parents decide on some
satisfactory prospective partner, and a "middleman" interviews the
parents of the prospective partner aforesaid, and if they are willing,
and {7} financial and other considerations are satisfactory, it
doesn't matter what the girl thinks, nor does it matter much whether
young Barkis himself is "willin'." The Sir Anthony Absolutes in Japan
indeed brook no opposition. All of which, while not wholly commendable
(my young Japanese friend himself dislikes the plan, at least in his
own prospective case), has at least the advantage of leaving but
remarkably few bachelors and old maids in Japan. Here every man's
house may not be his castle, but it is certainly his nursery. Usually,
too, in the towns at least, his home is his shop; the front part full
of wares, with no hard and fast dividing line between merchandise
rooms and the living rooms, children being equally conspicuous and
numerous in both compartments.
Japan is still governed largely on patriarchal lines. The Emperors
themselves depend largely on the patriarchal spirit for their power,
claiming direct descent in unbroken line from the Sun-Goddess, while
the people are supposed to be themselves descendants of Emperors or of
minor gods. In family life the patriarchal idea is still more
prominent, the father being the virtual ruler until he abdicates in
favor of the eldest son.
Ancestor-worship is general, of course, and a typical case is that of
my young Nikko friend, who tells me that in his home are memorial
tablets to six of his most recently deceased ancestors, and that hot
rice is placed before these tablets each morning. Now the teaching is
that the spirits of the dead need the odor of the rice for
nourishment, and also require worship of other kinds. Consequently the
worst misfortune that can befall a man is to die without heirs to
honor his memory (the mere dying itself is not so bad); and if an
oldest son die unmarried such action amounts almost to treason to the
family.
Moreover, if a man be without sons (daughters don't count), he may
adopt a son; and the cases of adoption are surprisingly frequent.
Count Okuma, ex-prime minister of the empire, whom I visited last
Sunday, adopted his son-in-law as his {8} legal son. A distinguished
banker I visited is also an adopted son; and in a comparatively brief
list of eminent Japanese, a sort of abbreviated national "Who's Who,"
I find perhaps twenty cases in which these eminent officials and
leaders have been adopted and bear other family names than those with
which they were born.
The willingness to give up one's name in adoption, viewed in the light
of the excessive devotion to one's own ancestors and family name, is
only another illustration of Japanese contrariety. It is a land of
surprises.
Miyanoshita, Japan.
{9}
II
SNAPSHOTS OF JAPANESE LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY
"What is a Japanese city like?" Well, let us "suppose," as the children
say. You know the American city nearest you, or the one you live in.
Suppose then you should wake up in this city to-morrow morning and
find in the first place that forty-nine people out of every fifty have
put on such unheard-of clothing as to make you rub your eyes in wonder
as to whether you are asleep or awake; next, that everybody has become
six inches shorter, and that all these hundred-thousand five-foot men
and four-foot women have unanimously developed most violent
sunburn--have become bronzed almost beyond recognition.
Moreover, the high buildings you once knew have all disappeared, and a
wilderness chiefly of tiny one and two story houses has taken their
places, wherein the first story, even in two-story buildings, is so
low that all your new brown friends warn you by a gesture to duck your
head as you go through the doors, while the second story is usually
little more than a garret.
Next, a wild jargon of unmeaning voices strikes your ear and you
discover that ninety-nine people out of a hundred have forgotten how
to speak English. More than this, the English signs are no more, and
on the billboards and before the business offices are marks that look
as if a thousand ostriches fresh from a thousand ink barrels had been
set to scratching new signs to take the places of the old. You pick up
a book {10} or the morning paper, and the same thing has happened--pig
tracks, chicken tracks, and double bowknots fantastically tied instead
of English type--and everybody begins at the back of the book and
reads toward him instead of reading the way you have grown used to!
And the buggies, carriages, and automobiles: what on earth has become
of them? There's hardly a horse in sight, but dozens or scores of men
with bare legs and odd clothes, each flying around pulling a light
two-wheeled jinrikisha, a man or a woman seated in each man-drawn
"buggy"; and there are dozens of other bare-legged men laboriously
pulling heavy loads of vegetables, freight, and even lumber and giant
telegraph poles! You jump into one of the rickshaws and forget your
strange little Puck-like steed in the marvel of your surroundings till
a voice from the shafts makes you feel like Balaam when the ass spoke
to him!
By this time you begin to get a hazy idea as to how the people are
dressed, and as nearly as you can make out, it is something like this:
Evidently all the inhabitants of an ancient Roman city, a modern
American town, a half-dozen Hindoo villages, and several thousand
seashore bathers have all thrown their clothes--(or the lack of
them!)--into one tremendous pile, and everybody has rushed in
pell-mell and put on the first thing, or the first two or three
things, that came to hand. There is every conceivable type of
clothing, but perhaps the larger number have wound up with something
like a light bathing suit and a sort of gingham dressing-gown belted
over it; and if one has less than this, why, then, as the Japanese
say, "_Shikata na gai_" (All right; it can't be helped). In the shops
and stores one passes a few men clad only in their own integrity and a
loin-cloth, and both children and grown people dress with a hundred
times more disregard of convention than the negroes in America.
Of shoes, there is an equally great variety as of clothing, {11} but
the majority of men, women, and children (in muddy weather at least)
have compromised on the "getas," a sort of wooden sole strapped on the
foot, with wooden pieces put fore and aft the instep, these pieces
throwing the foot and sole about three inches above ground. It looks
almost as difficult to walk in them as to walk on stilts, but away the
people go, young and old, and the muddy places marked by the strange
footwear look as if the corrugated wheels of a hundred mowing-machines
had passed along! In most cases the clatter of the "get as" is the
loudest noise on the streets, for the Japanese are remarkably quiet:
in Tokyo to-day I saw a thousand of them waiting to see the Empress,
and an American crowd would literally have made more noise in a minute
than they made in an hour.
On entering their houses, as we have already noticed, the people take
off their getas, sandals, shoes or whatever outer footwear is
used--for the very good reason that the people sit on the floor (on
mats or on the floor itself), eat on the floor (very daintily,
however), and sleep on the floor, so that to walk over the floor here
with muddy feet would be the same as if an American should walk
roughshod over his chairs, table and bed. Even in the Japanese
department store I visited this morning cloth covers were put on my
shoes, and this afternoon at the Ni-no Go Reiya Shinto temple I had to
go in my stocking feet.
Then the babies--who ever saw as many babies to the square inch? About
10 per cent of the male population seems to be hauling other men, but
50 per cent, of the female population seems hardly enough to carry the
wise and happy-looking little Jap babies--not in go-carts (a go-cart
or a hired nurse is almost never seen), but on the back. And these
little women who when standing are only about as tall as you are when
sitting--they seem hardly more than children themselves, so that you
recall Kipling's saying of Japan: "A four-foot child walks with a
three-foot child, who is holding the hand {12} of a two-foot child,
who carries on her back a one-foot child."
Boys in their teens are also seen with babies strapped on their backs
in the same loose-fitting, sack-like baby-holders, and after work-time
the father takes a turn at the same business. You are reminded of the
negro who said to another: "'Fo Gawd, Bill, you's got the mos' chillun
any nigger I ever seed. Why, I passed yo' house yistiddy mornin' at
nine erclock and throwed a brick on top and hollered 'Fiah!' an' at
five erclock in the evenin' nigger chillun was still runnin' out!" It
seems sometimes as if such an incident, with Jap children substituted
for negroes (I doubt if there is a negro here), might actually happen
in Japan.
And those two men bowing to each other as they meet--are they
rehearsing as Alphonse and Gaston for the comedy show to-night, or are
they serious? No, they are serious, for yonder is another pair meeting
in the same way, and yonder another couple separating with even more
violent "convulsions of politeness"--and nobody laughing but yourself.
No wonder the Japanese are strong: they only need to meet a few
friends a day to get exercise enough to keep them in trim! Look again:
those women meeting at the depot, for example (for there are
familiar-looking street cars and less familiar-looking passenger cars
amid all these strange surroundings). There is the woman with her hair
combed straight back, which, I am told, means that she is a widow; one
with an odd Japanese topknot, which means that she is married, and a
younger one whose hair is arranged in the style of unmarried girls;
and though they are evidently bosom friends, they do not embrace and
kiss at meeting--to kiss in public would be shocking to the
Japanese--and you can only guess the depth of their affection by the
greater warmth and emphasis of their bows to one another.
{13}
[Illustration: THE GIANT AVENUE OF CRYPTOMERIAS AT NIKKO.]
This magnificent avenue, twenty-five miles in length, consists of
trees planted by daimyos, or small lords, as a memorial to the great
Japanese warrior and statesman, Iyeyasu. A spirit of simplicity and
love of nature has produced a nobler monument than extravagance
could possibly have done.
{14}
[Illustration: TYPICAL JAPANESE COSTUMES AND TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE.]
In the temple picture notice also how the limbs of the trees have
been trained. Many fantastic effects are often produced in this way.
{12 continued}
They are trained in politeness from their youth up, are these
Japanese; and it is perhaps the greatest charm of both young and old.
I must have seen a full hundred thousand Japanese {15} by this time,
and I do not recall one in the attitude of scolding or abuse, while
authorities tell me that the Japanese language simply has no words to
enable one to swear or curse. I was also interested to have the
American Ambassador here tell me that in all his three years' stay in
Japan, and with all the freedom with which a million children run
about the streets and stores, he has never seen a man impatient with a
child. At the Imperial University yesterday morning I noticed two
college boys part with the same deep courtesy used by the older men,
and the little five-year-old girl near Chuzenji the other day thanked
me for my gift with the most graceful of Eastern salaams.
I shall not say that the excessive ceremoniousness of the men does not
at times seem ludicrous, but when you come to your hotel dining-room,
and the inexpressibly dainty little Japanese girls, moving almost
noiselessly on their sandaled feet (no getas indoors) welcome each
guest with smiling bows, happy, refined and graceful, a very different
impression of Japanese courtesy comes over you. In America,
unfortunately, the like courteous attention under such circumstances
might be misinterpreted, but here you are only reminded of how a
thousand years of courtesy and gentle manners have given the women of
Japan--pretty though they are not, judged by our Western standards--an
unsurpassed grace of manner and happiness of disposition together with
Shakespeare's well-praised "voice, soft and low, an excellent thing in
woman."
And here and everywhere, as in the old fable of the man with the
overcoat, must not such sun-like gentleness be more powerful in
compelling deference than all the stormy strength of the "new woman"?
Which reminds me that however much the social, political, and economic
revolution of the last forty years may have changed the national
character (and upon this point I shall not speak till later), it is
certain that Old Japan and the Old South were distinguished for not a
few characteristics {16} in common. For example, we are reminded of
the South's ante-bellum civilization when we learn that in old Japan
"the business of money-making was held in contempt by the superior
classes," and of all forms of business, agriculture was held in
highest esteem. Next to the nobility stood the Samurai, or soldier
class, the social rank of all other persons then being as follows: (1)
farmers, (2) artisans, (3) merchants. And farming was thus not only
regarded as the most honorable of all occupations, but farmers in the
early ages were privileged to wear swords, the emblem of rank next to
the nobility. Below the farmers ranked the mechanic element, while as
Lafcadio Hearn tells us:
"The commercial class (A kindo), including bankers, merchants,
shopkeepers, and traders of all kinds, was the lowest officially
recognized. The business of money-making was held in contempt by the
superior classes; and all methods of profiting by the purchase and
resale of the produce of labor were regarded as dishonorable. . . .
There is a generally, in militant society, small respect for the
common forms of labor. But in old Japan the occupation of the farmer
and artisan were not despised; trade alone appears to have been
considered degrading, and the distinction may have been partly a
moral one."
I wonder if there is not really a great deal more than we have
realized in what Hearn here suggests as to the soundness and essential
"morality" of the Japanese plan of ranking farming and manufacturing
above trade as occupations? Morally and economically considered, it is
the men who actually produce wealth rather than those men who trade or
barter in the products of other men's labor who deserve most honor.
They serve the world best: The barterers are, in limited numbers,
necessary and useful servants of those who do produce, but the
strength of a state manifestly lies in the classes who are really
creators of values.
Tokyo, Japan.
{17}
III
JAPANESE FARMING AND FARMER FOLK
I went yesterday to the Agricultural College of the Imperial
University of Japan, situated at Komaba, near Tokyo, where I had an
appointment with Director Matsui. My purpose was to get further
information concerning the general condition of Japanese farmers and
Japanese farming, but the biggest fact my researches brought out was
not in regard to rice or barley or potatoes or taro, or any other
field product of the Mikado's empire.
Rather it was a fact with regard to what is in every land the most
important of all crops--the crop of boys and girls. And the big fact I
discovered was simply this:
These brown Mongolian farm children, whose land we opened to
civilization but fifty years ago, and whom we thought of but yesterday
as backward "heathen"--they are getting, as a general proposition,
just twice as much schooling as is furnished pupils in many of our
American rural districts: their parents are providing, in their zeal
for their children's welfare, just twice as good educational
facilities as we are giving many of our white farm boys and
girls--boys and girls who have in their veins the blood of a race
which has carried the flag of human progress for a thousand years, and
whom we are expecting to continue leaders in civilization and
enlightenment.
In other words, so Doctor Matsui told me (and I went to-day to the
Japanese National Department of Education to verify the fact), the
Japanese farm boys and girls are getting ten months' schooling a year,
while the farm boy or girl {18} in my own state is getting only five
or six months--and when I was in a country school fifteen years ago,
not nearly so much as that! Do you wonder that I avoided telling the
Japanese educational officer just how our provision for farm boys and
girls compared with Japan's? Also that I neglected to tell him how we
compare in the matter of utilizing school advantages, when he showed
me that of all the children between six and fourteen in all the empire
of Japan the school attendance is 98 per cent.--98 out of every 100
children of "school age" attending school, and in several provinces 99
out of every 100! Thirty-five years ago the average school attendance
in Japan was only 28, and in 1893 only 59, but by the time of the war
with Russia it had passed 90, and since then has been climbing
straight and steadily toward the amazing maximum itself, the official
figures showing a gain of 1 per cent, a year--94 per cent., then 95,
then 96, then 97, and now 98, and the leaders are now ambitious for 99
or 100, as they told me to-day.
When this officer of an "inferior race" showed me, furthermore, that
Japan is so intent upon educating every boy and girl in her borders
that she compels attendance on the public schools for eight years, I
didn't tell him that in civilized America, in the great enlightened
nation so long held up to him as a model, demagogues and others in
many states on one pretext or another have defeated every effort for
effective compulsory education laws, so that if a boy's parents are
indifferent to his future, the state does not compel them to give him
a fighting chance in life--for the state's own sake and for the boy's.
{19}
[Illustration: JAPANESE FARMING SCENES.]
The upper picture shows a rice field in the foreground, tea
alongside the buildings, and the graceful feathery bamboo in the
background; also, an unusual sight on a Japanese farm, a group of
cattle. The lower picture shows the work of transplanting rice.
{20}
[Illustration: JAPANESE SCHOOL CHILDREN.]
Boys predominate in the upper picture, girls in the lower. A system
of compulsory education is enforced in Japan, and 98 per cent, of
the children of school age attend. Even the country schools run ten
months in the year--longer than in a majority of our states.
{18 continued}
With these facts before me, as I have said, I did not make any
vainglorious boasts of the great educational progress of our own
states these last twenty years: However much progress we have made,
these brown Japanese "heathen" have beaten us. While there is no
official census on the question of illiteracy here, every Japanese man
in his twenties must serve {21} two years in the army (unless he is in
a normal school studying to be a teacher), and a record is made as to
the literacy or illiteracy of each recruit. That is to say, there is a
place where the fact of any recruit's inability to read would be
recorded, but the Department of Education informed me to-day that the
illiterate column is now absolutely blank.
There are no illiterates among Japan's rising generation.
More than this, we have to reflect that it is in their poverty that
the Japanese are thus doing more than we are doing in our plenty. We
waste more in a year than they make. Even with a hundred acres of land
the American farmer is likely to consider himself poor, but when I
asked my Japanese guide the other day if two _cho_ (five acres) would
be an average sized farm here he said: "No, not an average; such a man
would be regarded as a middle-class farmer--a rather large farmer."
And the figures which I have just obtained in a call on the national
Department of Agriculture and Commerce more than justify the reply.
Forty-six farmers out of every 100 in Japan own less than one and one
quarter acres of land; 26 more out of every 100 own less than two and
one half acres, and only one man in a hundred owns as much as
twenty-five acres. (In the matter of cultivation also I find that 70
per cent, cultivate less than two and one half acres, and nearly half
are tenants.)
This year the situation is even worse than usual, for disastrous
floods have reduced the rice crop, which represents one half Japan's
crop values, 20 per cent, below last year's figures, and many people
will suffer.
Ordinarily, however, these little handkerchief-sized farms yield
amazingly. It has been shown by Prof. F. H. King that the fields of
Japan are cultivated so intensively, fertilized so painstakingly, and
kept so continuously producing some crop, that they feed 2277 people
to the square mile--21,321 square miles of cultivated fields in the
main islands supporting a population of 48,542,376. If the tilled
fields of Iowa, for {22} example, supported an equal number of people per
square mile, the population so supported would be over 100,000,000.
That state alone could feed the entire population of the United States
and then have an excess product left for export to other countries! If
North Carolina did as well with her cultivated land she would support
30,000,000 people, and if Mississippi's 11,875 square miles of land
under cultivation supported each 2277 persons, then 27,041,375 people,
or thirteen times the present population of the state, could live off
their produce!
And yet these Japanese lands have been in cultivation for unnumbered
centuries. Some of them may have been cleared when King Herod trembled
from his dream of a new-born rival in Judea, and certainly "the glory
that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" had not faded from the
earth when some of these fields began their age-long ministry to human
need. And they have been kept fertile simply by each farmer putting
back on the ground every ounce of fertility taken from it, for
commercial fertilizers were absolutely unknown until our own
generation.