Act IV. _Scene: Interior of Ichirō's house. Three persons kneeling in

the guest-room: Ichirō, his wife, and an aged woman, who is weeping._

Ichirō. "And now, mother, to leave you alone in this world, though

you have no other son, is indeed an evil thing. I can only pray your

forgiveness. But my uncle will always care for you, and to his house

you must go at once, since it is time we two should die. No common,

vulgar death shall we have, but an elegant, splendid death,--_Rippana!_

And you must not see it. Now go."

She passes away, with a wail. The doors are solidly barred behind her.

All is ready.

O-Noto thrusts the point of the sword into her throat. But she still

struggles. With a last kind word Ichiro ends her pain by a stroke that

severs the head.

And then?

Then he takes his writing-box, prepares the inkstone, grinds some ink,

chooses a good brush, and, on carefully selected paper, composes five

poems, of which this is the last:--

"Meido yori

Yu dempō ga

Aru naraba,

Hay aha an chaku

Mōshi okuran."[2]

Then he cuts his own throat perfectly well.

Now, it was clearly shown, during the official investigation of these

facts, that Ichirō and his wife had been universally liked, and had

been from their childhood noted for amiability.

The scientific problem of the origin of the Japanese has never yet been

solved. But sometimes it seems to me that those who argue in favor

of a partly Malay origin have some psychological evidence in their

favor. Under the submissive sweetness of the gentlest Japanese woman--a

sweetness of which the Occidental can scarcely form any idea--there

exist possibilities of hardness absolutely inconceivable without ocular

evidence. A thousand times she can forgive, can sacrifice herself in a

thousand ways unutterably touching: but let one particular soul-nerve

be stung, and fire shall forgive sooner than she. Then there may

suddenly appear in that frail-seeming woman an incredible courage,

an appalling, measured, tireless purpose of honest vengeance. Under

all the amazing self-control and patience of the man there exists an

adamantine something very dangerous to reach. Touch it wantonly, and

there can be no pardon. But resentment is seldom likely to be excited

by mere hazard. Motives are keenly judged. An error can be forgiven;

deliberate malice never.

In the house of any rich family the guest is likely to be shown some

of the heirlooms. Among these are almost sure to be certain articles

belonging to those elaborate tea ceremonies peculiar to Japan. A pretty

little box, perhaps, will be set before you. Opening it, you see only

a beautiful silk bag, closed with a silk running-cord decked with tiny

tassels. Very soft and choice the silk is, and elaborately figured.

What marvel can be hidden under such a covering? You open the bag, and

see within another bag, of a different quality of silk, but very fine.

Open that, and lo! a third, which contains a fourth, which contains

a fifth, which contains a sixth, which contains a seventh bag, which

contains the strangest, roughest, hardest vessel of Chinese clay that

you ever beheld. Yet it is not only curious but precious: it may be

more than a thousand years old.

Even thus have centuries of the highest social culture wrapped the

Japanese character about with many priceless soft coverings of

courtesy, of delicacy, of patience, of sweetness, of moral sentiment.

But underneath these charming multiple coverings there remains the

primitive clay, hard as iron;--kneaded perhaps with all the mettle of

the Mongol,--all the dangerous suppleness of the Malay.

[1] The meaning is, "Give to the beloved one a little more [wine]." The

"_Ya-ton-ton_" is only a burden, without exact meaning, like our own

"_With a hey! and a ho!_" etc.

[2] The meaning is about as follows: "If from the Meido it be possible

to send letters or telegrams, I shall write and forward news of our

speedy safe arrival there."

VII

_December_ 28. Beyond the high fence inclosing my garden in the

rear rise the thatched roofs of some very small houses occupied by

families of the poorest class. From one of these little dwellings there

continually issues a sound of groaning,--the deep groaning of a man in

pain. I have heard it for more than a week, both night and day, but

latterly the sounds have been growing longer and louder, as if every

breath were an agony. "Somebody there is very sick," says Manyemon, my

old interpreter, with an expression of extreme sympathy.

The sounds have begun to make me nervous. I reply, rather brutally, "I

think it would be better for all concerned if that somebody were dead."

Manyemon makes three times a quick, sudden gesture with both hands,

as if to throw off the influence of my wicked words, mutters a

little Buddhist prayer, and leaves me with a look of reproach. Then,

conscience-stricken, I send a servant to inquire if the sick person

has a doctor, and whether any aid can be given. Presently the servant

returns with the information that a doctor is regularly attending the

sufferer, and that nothing else can be done.

I notice, however, that, in spite of his cobwebby gestures, Manyemon's

patient nerves have also become affected by those sounds. He has even

confessed that he wants to stay in the little front room, near the

street, so as to be away from them as far as possible. I can neither

write nor read. My study being in the extreme rear, the groaning is

there almost as audible as if the sick man were in the room itself.

There is always in such utterances of suffering a certain ghastly

timbre by which the intensity of the suffering can be estimated; and I

keep asking myself, How can it be possible for the human being making

those sounds by which I am tortured, to endure much longer?

It is a positive relief, later in the morning, to hear the moaning

drowned by the beating of a little Buddhist drum in the sick man's

room, and the chanting of the _Namu myō ho renge kyō_ by a multitude

of voices. Evidently there is a gathering of priests and relatives

in the house. "Somebody is going to die," Manyemon says. And he also

repeats the holy words of praise to the Lotus of the Good Law.

The chanting and the tapping of the drum continue for several hours.

As they cease, the groaning is heard again. Every breath a groan!

Toward evening it grows worse--horrible. Then it suddenly stops. There

is a dead silence of minutes. And then we hear a passionate burst of

weeping,--the weeping of a woman,--and voices calling a name. "Ah!

somebody is dead!" Manyemon says.

We hold council. Manyemon has found out that the people are miserably

poor; and I, because my conscience smites me, propose to send them the

amount of the funeral expenses, a very small sum. Manyemon thinks I

wish to do this out of pure benevolence, and says pretty things. We

send the servant with a kind message, and instructions to learn if

possible the history of the dead man. I cannot help suspecting some

sort of tragedy; and a Japanese tragedy is generally interesting.

_December_ 29. As I had surmised, the story of the dead man was worth

learning. The family consisted of four,--the father and mother, both

very old and feeble, and two sons. It was the eldest son, a man of

thirty-four, who had died. He had been sick for seven years. The

younger brother, a kurumaya, had been the sole support of the whole

family. He had no vehicle of his own, but hired one, paying five sen a

day for the use of it. Though strong and a swift runner, he could earn

little: there is in these days too much competition for the business

to be profitable. It taxed all his powers to support his parents

and his ailing brother; nor could he have done it without unfailing

self-denial. He never indulged himself even to the extent of a cup of

saké; he remained unmarried; he lived only for his filial and fraternal

duty.

This was the story of the dead brother: When about twenty years of age,

and following the occupation of a fish-seller, he had fallen in love

with a pretty servant at an inn. The girl returned his affection. They

pledged themselves to each other. But difficulties arose in the way of

their marriage.

The girl was pretty enough to have attracted the attention of a man of

some means, who demanded her hand in the customary way. She disliked

him; but the conditions he was able to offer decided her parents in his

favor. Despairing of union, the two lovers resolved to perform jōshi.

Somewhere or other they met at night, renewed their pledge in wine, and

bade farewell to the world. The young man then killed his sweetheart

with one blow of a sword, and immediately afterward cut his own throat

with the same weapon. But people rushed into the room before he had

expired, took away the sword, sent for the police, and summoned a

military surgeon from the garrison. The would-be suicide was removed to

the hospital, skillfully nursed back to health, and after some months

of convalescence was put on trial for murder.

What sentence was passed I could not fully learn. In those days,

Japanese judges used a good deal of personal discretion when dealing

with emotional crime; and their exercise of pity had not yet been

restricted by codes framed upon Western models. Perhaps in this case

they thought that to have survived a jōshi was in itself a severe

punishment. Public opinion is less merciful, in such instances, than

law. After a term of imprisonment the miserable man was allowed

to return to his family, but was placed under perpetual police

surveillance. The people shrank from him. He made the mistake of living

on. Only his parents and brother remained to him. And soon he became a

victim of unspeakable physical suffering; yet he clung to life.

The old wound in his throat, although treated at the time as skillfully

as circumstances permitted, began to cause terrible pain. After its

apparent healing, some slow cancerous growth commenced to spread

from it, reaching into the breathing-passages above and below where

the sword-blade had passed. The surgeon's knife, the torture of the

cautery, could only delay the end. But the man lingered through seven

years of continually increasing agony. There are dark beliefs about

the results of betraying the dead,--of breaking the mutual promise to

travel together to the Meido. Men said that the hand of the murdered

girl always reopened the wound,--undid by night all that the surgeon

could accomplish by day. For at night the pain invariably increased,

becoming most terrible at the precise hour of the attempted shinjū!

Meanwhile, through abstemiousness and extraordinary self-denial, the

family found means to pay for medicines, for attendance, and for more

nourishing food than they themselves ever indulged in. They prolonged

by all possible means the life that was their shame, their poverty,

their burden. And now that death has taken away that burden, they weep!

Perhaps all of us learn to love that which we train ourselves to make

sacrifices for, whatever pain it may cause. Indeed, the question might

be asked whether we do not love most that which causes us most pain.

VI

THE STONE BUDDHA

I

On the ridge of the hill behind the Government College,--above a

succession of tiny farm fields ascending the slope by terraces,--there

is an ancient village cemetery. It is no longer used: the people of

Kurogamimura now bury their dead in a more secluded spot; and I think

their fields are beginning already to encroach upon the limits of the

old graveyard.

Having an idle hour to pass between two classes, I resolve to pay the

ridge a visit. Harmless thin black snakes wiggle across the way as I

climb; and immense grasshoppers, exactly the color of parched leaves,

whirr away from my shadow. The little field path vanishes altogether

under coarse grass before reaching the broken steps at the cemetery

gate; and in the cemetery itself there is no path at all--only weeds

and stones. But there is a fine view from the ridge: the vast green

Plain of Higo, and beyond it bright blue hills in a half-ring against

the horizon light, and even beyond them the cone of Aso smoking forever.

Below me, as in a bird's-eye view, appears the college, like a

miniature modern town, with its long ranges of many windowed

buildings, all of the year 1887. They represent the purely utilitarian

architecture of the nineteenth century: they might be situated equally

well in Kent or in Auckland or in New Hampshire without appearing in

the least out of tone with the age. But the terraced fields above and

the figures toiling in them might be of the fifth century. The language

cut upon the haka whereon I lean is transliterated Sanscrit. And there

is a Buddha beside me, sitting upon his lotus of stone just as he sat

in the days of Kato Kiyomasa. His meditative gaze slants down between

his half-closed eyelids upon the Government College and its tumultuous

life; and he smiles the smile of one who has received an injury not to

be resented. This is not the expression wrought by the sculptor: moss

and scurf have distorted it. I also observe that his hands are broken.

I am sorry, and try to scrape the moss away from the little symbolic

protuberance on his forehead, remembering the ancient text of the

"Lotus of the Good Law:"--

"_There issued a ray of light from the circle of hair between the

brows of the Lord. It extended over eighteen hundred thousand Buddha

fields, so that all those Buddha fields appeared wholly illuminated

by its radiance, down to the great hell Aviki, and up to the limit of

existence. And all the beings in each of the Six States of existence

became visible,--all without exception. Even the Lord Buddhas in those

Buddha fields who had reached final Nirvana, all became visible._"

II

The sun is high behind me; the landscape before me as in an old

Japanese picture-book. In old Japanese color-prints there are, as a

rule, no shadows. And the Plain of Higo, all shadowless, broadens

greenly to the horizon, where the blue spectres of the peaks seem to

float in the enormous glow. But the vast level presents no uniform

hue: it is banded and seamed by all tones of green, intercrossed as if

laid on by long strokes of a brush. In this again the vision resembles

some scene from a Japanese picture-book.

Open such a book for the first time, and you receive a peculiarly

startling impression, a sensation of surprise, which causes you to

think: "How strangely, how curiously, these people feel and see

Nature!" The wonder of it grows upon you, and you ask: "Can it be

possible their senses are so utterly different from ours?" Yes, it is

quite possible; but look a little more. You do so, and there defines

a third and ultimate idea, confirming the previous two. You feel the

picture is more true to Nature than any Western painting of the same

scene would be,--that it produces sensations of Nature no Western

picture could give. And indeed there are contained within it whole

ranges of discoveries for you to make. Before making them, however, you

will ask yourself another riddle, somewhat thus: "All this is magically

vivid; the inexplicable color is Nature's own. _But why does the thing

seem so ghostly?_"

Well, chiefly because of the absence of shadows. What prevents you from

missing them at once is the astounding skill in the recognition and use

of color-values. The scene, however, is not depicted as if illumined

from one side, but as if throughout suffused with light. Now there are

really moments when landscapes do wear this aspect; but our artists

rarely study them.

Be it nevertheless observed that the old Japanese loved shadows made

by the moon, and painted the same, because these were weird and did

not interfere with color. But they had no admiration for shadows that

blacken and break the charm of the world under the sun. When their

noon-day landscapes are flecked by shadows at all,'tis by very thin

ones only,--mere deepenings of tone, like those fugitive half-glooms

which run before a summer cloud. And the inner as well as the outer

world was luminous for them. Psychologically also they saw life without

shadows.

Then the West burst into their Buddhist peace, and saw their art, and

bought it up till an Imperial law was issued to preserve the best of

what was left. And when there was nothing more to be bought, and it

seemed possible that fresh creation might reduce the market price of

what had been bought already, then the West said: "Oh, come now! you

must n't go on drawing and seeing things that way, you know! It is n't

Art! You, must really learn to see shadows, you know,--and pay me to

teach you."

So Japan paid to learn how to see shadows in Nature, in life, and in

thought. And the West taught her that the sole business of the divine

sun was the making of the cheaper kind of shadows. And the West taught

her that the higher-priced shadows were the sole product of Western

civilization, and bade her admire and adopt. Then Japan wondered at

the shadows of machinery and chimneys and telegraph-poles; and at the

shadows of mines and of factories, and the shadows in the hearts of

those who worked there; and at the shadows of houses twenty stories

high, and of hunger begging under them; and shadows of enormous

charities that multiplied poverty; and shadows of social reforms that

multiplied vice; and shadows of shams and hypocrisies and swallow-tail

coats; and the shadow of a foreign God, said to have created mankind

for the purpose of an _auto-da-fé_. Whereat Japan became rather

serious, and refused to study any more silhouettes. Fortunately for the

world, she returned to her first matchless art; and, fortunately for

herself, returned to her own beautiful faith. But some of the shadows

still clung to her life; and she cannot possibly get rid of them. Never

again can the world seem to her quite so beautiful as it did before.

III

Just beyond the cemetery, in a tiny patch of hedged-in land, a farmer

and his ox are plowing the black soil with a plow of the Period of the

Gods; and the wife helps the work with a hoe more ancient than even the

Empire of Japan. All the three are toiling with a strange earnestness,

as though goaded without mercy by the knowledge that labor is the price

of life.

That man I have often seen before in the colored prints of another

century. I have seen him in kakemono of much more ancient date. I have

seen him on painted screens of still greater antiquity. Exactly the

same! Other fashions beyond counting have passed: the peasant's straw

hat, straw coat, and sandals of straw remain. He himself is older,

incomparably older, than his attire. The earth he tills has indeed

swallowed him up a thousand times a thousand times; but each time

it has given back to him his life with force renewed. And with this

perpetual renewal he is content: he asks no more. The mountains change

their shapes; the rivers shift their courses; the stars change their

places in the sky: he changes never. Yet, though unchanging, is he a

maker of change. Out of the sum of his toil are wrought the ships of

iron, the roads of steel, the palaces of stone; his are the hands that

pay for the universities and the new learning, for the telegraphs and

the electric lights and the repeating-rifles, for the machinery of

science and the machinery of commerce and the machinery of war. He is

the giver of all; he is given in return--the right to labor forever.

Wherefore he plows the centuries under, to plant new lives of men.

And he will thus toil on till the work of the world shall have been

done,--till the time of the end of man.

And what will be that end? Will it be ill or well? Or must it for all

of us remain a mystery insolvable?

Out of the wisdom of the West is answer given: "Man's evolution is

a progress into perfection and beatitude. The goal of evolution is

Equilibration. Evils will vanish, one by one, till only that which is

good survive. Then shall knowledge obtain its uttermost expansion; then

shall mind put forth its most wondrous blossoms; then shall cease all

struggle and all bitterness of soul, and all the wrongs and all the

follies of life. Men shall become as gods, in all save immortality; and

each existence shall be prolonged through centuries; and all the joys

of life shall be made common in many a paradise terrestrial, fairer

than poet's dream. And there shall be neither riders nor ruled, neither

governments nor laws; for the order of all things shall be resolved by

love."

But thereafter?

"Thereafter? Oh, thereafter by reason of the persistence of Force and

other cosmic laws, dissolution must come: all integration must yield

to disintegration. This is the testimony of science."

Then all that may have been won, must be lost; all that shall have been

wrought, utterly undone. Then all that shall have been overcome, must

overcome; all that may have been suffered for good, must be suffered

again for no purpose interpretable. Even as out of the Unknown was born

the immeasurable pain of the Past, so into the Unknown must expire the

immeasurable pain of the Future. What, therefore, the worth of our

evolution? what, therefore, the meaning of life--of this phantom-flash

between darknesses? Is your evolution only a passing out of absolute

mystery into universal death? In the hour when that man in the hat of

straw shall have crumbled back, for the last mundane time, into the

clay he tills, of what avail shall have been all the labor of a million

years?

"Nay!" answers the West. "There is not any universal death in such a

sense. Death signifies only change. Thereafter will appear another

universal life. All that assures us of dissolution, not less certainly

assures us of renewal. The Cosmos, resolved into a nebula, must

recondense to form another swarm of worlds. And then, perhaps, your

peasant may reappear with his patient ox, to till some soil illumined

by purple or violet suns." Yes, but after that resurrection? "Why, then

another evolution, another equilibration, another dissolution. This is

the teaching of science. This is the infinite law."

But then that resurrected life, can it be ever new? Will it not rather

be infinitely old? For so surely as that which is must eternally be, so

must that which will be have eternally been. As there can be no end,

so there can have been no beginning; and even Time is an illusion,

and there is nothing new beneath a hundred million suns. Death is

not death, not a rest, not an end of pain, but the most appalling of

mockeries. And out of this infinite whirl of pain you can tell us no

way of escape. Have you then made us any wiser than that straw-sandaled

peasant is? He knows all this. He learned, while yet a child, from

the priests who taught him to write in the Buddhist temple school,

something of his own innumerable births, and of the apparition and

disparition of universes, and of the unity of life. That which you have

mathematically discovered was known to the East long before the coming

of the Buddha. How known, who may say? Perhaps there have been memories

that survived the wrecks of universes. But be that as it may, your

annunciation is enormously old: your methods only are new, and serve

merely to confirm ancient theories of the Cosmos, and to recomplicate

the complications of the everlasting Riddle.

Unto which the West makes answer:--"Not so! I have discerned the

rhythm of that eternal action whereby worlds are shapen or dissipated;

I have divined the Laws of Pain evolving all sentient existence, the

Laws of Pain evolving thought; I have discovered and proclaimed the

means by which sorrow may be lessened; I have taught the necessity of

effort, and the highest duty of life. And surely the knowledge of the

duty of life is the knowledge of largest worth to man."

Perhaps. But the knowledge of the necessity and of the duty, as you

have proclaimed them, is a knowledge very, very much older than you.

Probably that peasant knew it fifty thousand years ago, on this planet.

Possibly also upon other long--vanished planets, in cycles forgotten

by the gods. If this be the Omega of Western wisdom, then is he of the

straw sandals our equal in knowledge, even though he be classed by the

Buddha among the ignorant ones only,--they who "people the cemeteries

again and again."

"He cannot know," makes answer Science; "at the very most he only

believes, or thinks that he believes. Not even his wisest priests can

prove. I alone have proven; I alone have given proof absolute. And

I have proved for ethical renovation, though accused of proving for

destruction. I have defined the uttermost impassable limit of human

knowledge; but I have also established for all time the immovable

foundations of that highest doubt which is wholesome, since it is the

substance of hope. I have shown that even the least of human thoughts,

of human acts, may have perpetual record,--making self-registration

through tremulosities invisible that pass to the eternities. And I

have fixed the basis of a new morality upon everlasting truth, even

though I may have left of ancient creeds only their empty shell."

Creeds of the West--yes! But not of the creed of this older East.

Not yet have you even measured it. What matter that this peasant

cannot prove, since thus much of his belief is that which you have

proved for all of us? And he holds still another belief that reaches

beyond yours. He too has been taught that acts and thoughts outlive

the lives of men. But he has been taught more than this. He has been

taught that the thoughts and acts of each being, projected beyond the

individual existence, shape other lives unborn; he has been taught to

control his most secret wishes, because of their immeasurable inherent

potentialities. And he has been taught all this in words as plain

and thoughts as simply woven as the straw of his rain-coat. What if

he cannot prove his premises? you have proved them, for him and for

the world. He has only a theory of the future, indeed; but you have

furnished irrefutable evidence that it is not founded upon dreams. And

since all your past labors have only served to confirm a few of the

beliefs stored up in his simple mind, is it any folly to presume that

your future labors also may serve to prove the truth of other beliefs

of his, which you have not yet taken the trouble to examine?

"For instance, that earthquakes are caused by a big fish?"

Do not sneer! Our Western notions about such things were just as crude

only a few generations back. No! I mean the ancient teaching that acts

and thoughts are not merely the incidents of life, but its creators.

Even as it has been written, "_All that we are is the result of what

we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our

thoughts._"

IV

And there comes to me the memory of a queer story.

The common faith of the common people, that the misfortunes of the

present are results of the follies committed in a former state of

existence, and that the errors of this life will influence the future

birth, is curiously reinforced by various superstitions probably much

older than Buddhism, but not at variance with its faultless doctrine of

conduct. Among these, perhaps the most remarkable is the belief that

even our most secret thoughts of evil may have ghostly consequences

upon _other people's lives._

The house now occupied by one of my friends used to be haunted. You

could never imagine it to have been haunted, because it is unusually

luminous, extremely pretty, and comparatively new. It has no dark nooks

or corners. It is surrounded with a large bright garden,--a Kyūshū

landscape garden without any big trees for ghosts to hide behind. Yet

haunted it was, and in broad day.

First you must learn that in this Orient there are two sorts of

haunters: the Shi-ryō and the Iki-ryō. The Shi-ryō are merely the

ghosts of the dead; and here, as in most lands, they follow their

ancient habit of coming at night only. But the Iki-ryō, which are the

ghosts of the living, may come at all hours; and they are much more to

be feared, because they have power to kill.

Now the house of which I speak was haunted by an Iki-ryō.

The man who built it was an official, wealthy and esteemed. He designed

it as a home for his old age; and when it was finished he filled it

with beautiful things, and hung tinkling wind bells along its eaves.

Artists of skill painted the naked precious wood of its panels with

blossoming sprays of cherry and plum tree, and figures of gold-eyed

falcons poised on crests of pine, and slim fawns feeding under maple

shadows, and wild ducks in snow, and herons flying, and iris flowers

blooming, and long-armed monkeys clutching at the face of the moon in

water: all the symbols of the seasons and of good fortune.

Fortunate the owner was; yet he knew one sorrow--he had no heir.

Therefore, with his wife's consent, and according to antique custom, he

took a strange woman into his home that she might give him a child,--a

young woman from the country, to whom large promises were made. When

she had borne him a son, she was sent away; and a nurse was hired for

the boy, that he might not regret his real mother. All this had been

agreed to beforehand; and there were ancient usages to justify it. But

all the promises made to the mother of the boy had not been fulfilled

when she was sent away.

And after a little time the rich man fell sick; and he grew worse

thereafter day by day; and his people said there was an Iki-ryō in

the house. Skilled physicians did all they could for him; but he only

became weaker and weaker; and the physicians at last confessed they had

no more hope. And the wife made offerings at the Ujigami, and prayed

to the Gods; but the Gods gave answer: "He must die unless he obtain

forgiveness from one whom he wronged, and undo the wrong by making just

amend. For there is an Iki-ryō in your house."

Then the sick man remembered, and was conscience-smitten, and sent

out servants to bring the woman back to his home. But she was

gone,--somewhere lost among the forty millions of the Empire. And the

sickness ever grew worse; and search was made in vain; and the weeks

passed. At last there came to the gate a peasant who said that he knew

the place to which the woman had gone, and that he would journey to

find her if supplied with means of travel. But the sick man, hearing,

cried out: "No! she would never forgive me in her heart, because she

could not. It is too late!" And he died.

After which the widow and the relatives and the little boy abandoned

the new house; and strangers entered thereinto.

Curiously enough, the people spoke harshly concerning the mother of the

boy--holding her to blame for the haunting.

I thought it very strange at first, not because I had formed any

positive judgment as to the rights and wrongs of the case. Indeed I

could not form such a judgment; for I could not learn the full details

of the story. I thought the criticism of the people very strange,

notwithstanding.

Why? Simply because there is nothing voluntary about the sending of an

Iki-ryō. It is not witchcraft at all. The Iki-ryō goes forth without

the knowledge of the person whose emanation it is. (There is a kind of

witchcraft which is believed to send Things,--but not Iki-ryō.) You

will now understand why I thought the condemnation of the young woman

very strange.

But you could scarcely guess the solution of the problem. It is a

religious one, involving conceptions totally unknown to the West. She

from whom the Iki-ryō proceeded was never blamed by the people as

a witch. They never suggested that it might have been created with

her knowledge. They even sympathized with what they deemed to be her

just plaint. They blamed her only for having been too angry,--for

not sufficiently controlling her unspoken resentment,--because she

should have known _that anger, secretly indulged, can have ghostly

consequences._

I ask nobody to take for granted the possibility of the Iki-ryō, except

as a strong form of conscience. But as an influence upon conduct, the

belief certainly has value. Besides, it is suggestive. Who is really

able to assure us that secret evil desires, pent-up resentments, masked

hates, do not exert any force outside of the will that conceives and

nurses them? May there not be a deeper meaning than Western ethics

recognize in those words of the Buddha,--"_Hatred ceases not by hatred

at any time; hatred ceases by love: this is an old rule_"? It was very

old then, even in his day. In ours it has been said, "Whensoever a

wrong is done you, and you do not resent it, then so much evil dies in

the world." But does it? Are we quite sure that not to resent it is

enough? Can the motive tendency set loose in the mind by the sense of

a wrong be nullified simply by non-action on the part of the wronged?

Can any force die? The forces we know may be transformed only. So much

also may be true of the forces we do not know; and of these are Life,

Sensation, Will,--all that makes up the infinite mystery called "I."

V

"The duty of Science," answers Science, "is to systematize human

experience, not to theorize about ghosts. And the judgment of the time,

even in Japan, sustains this position taken by Science. What is now

being taught below there,--my doctrines, or the doctrines of the Man in

the Straw Sandals?"

Then the Stone Buddha and I look down upon the college together; and

as we gaze, the smile of the Buddha--perhaps because of a change in

the light--seems to me to have changed its expression, to have become

an ironical smile. Nevertheless he is contemplating the fortress of

a more than formidable enemy. In all that teaching of four hundred

youths by thirty-three teachers, there is no teaching of faith, but

only teaching of fact,--only teaching of the definite results of the

systematization of human experience. And I am absolutely certain that

if I were to question, concerning the things of the Buddha, any of

those thirty-three instructors (saving one dear old man of seventy,

the Professor of Chinese), I should receive no reply. For they belong

unto the new generation, holding that such topics are fit for the

consideration of Men-in-Straw-Rain--coats only, and that in this

twenty-sixth year of Meiji, the scholar should occupy himself only

with the results of the systematization of human experience. Yet the

systematization of human experience in no wise enlightens us as to the

Whence, the Whither, or, worst of all!--the Why.

"_The Laws of Existence which proceed from a cause,--the cause of these

hath the Buddha explained, as also the destruction of the same. Even of

such truths is the great Sramana the teacher._"

And I ask myself, Must the teaching of Science in this land efface at

last the memory of the teaching of the Buddha?

"As for that," makes answer Science, "the test of the right of a

faith to live must be sought in its power to accept and to utilize

my revelations. Science neither affirms what it cannot prove, nor

denies that which it cannot rationally disprove. Theorizing about the

Unknowable, it recognizes and pities as a necessity of the human mind.

You and the Man-in-the-Straw-Rain-coat may harmlessly continue to

theorize for such time as your theories advance in lines parallel with

my facts, but no longer."

And seeking inspiration from the deep irony of Buddha's smile, I

theorize in parallel lines.

VI

The whole tendency of modern knowledge, the whole tendency of

scientific teaching, is toward the ultimate conviction that the

Unknowable, even as the Brahma of ancient Indian thought, is

inaccessible to prayer. Not a few of us can feel that Western Faith

must finally pass away forever, leaving us to our own resources when

our mental manhood shall have been attained, even as the fondest of

mothers must leave her children at last. In that far day her work will

all have been done; she will have fully developed our recognition

of certain eternal spiritual laws; she will have fully ripened our

profounder human sympathies; she will have fully prepared us by her

parables and fairy tales, by her gentler falsehoods, for the terrible

truth of existence;--prepared us for the knowledge that there is no

divine love save the love of man for man; that we have no All-Father,

no Saviour, no angel guardians; that we have no possible refuge but in

ourselves.

Yet even in that strange day we shall only have stumbled to the

threshold of the revelation given by the Buddha so many ages ago:

"Be ye lamps unto yourselves; be ye a refuge unto yourselves. Betake

yourselves to no other refuge. The Buddhas are only teachers. Hold ye

fast to the truth as to a lamp. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth.

Look not for refuge to any beside yourselves."

Does the utterance shock? Yet the prospect of such a void awakening

from our long fair dream of celestial aid and celestial love would

never be the darkest prospect possible for man. There is a darker,

also foreshadowed by Eastern thought. Science may hold in reserve

for us discoveries infinitely more appalling than the realization

of Richter's dream,--the dream of the dead children seeking vainly

their father Jesus. In the negation of the materialist even, there

was a faith of consolation--self-assurance of individual cessation,

of oblivion eternal. But for the existing thinker there is no such

faith. It may remain for us to learn, after having vanquished all

difficulties possible to meet upon this tiny sphere, that there await

us obstacles to overcome beyond it,--obstacles vaster than any system

of worlds,--obstacles weightier than the whole inconceivable Cosmos

with its centuries of millions of systems; that our task is only

beginning; and that there will never be given to us even the ghost of

any help, save the help of unutterable and unthinkable Time. We may

have to learn that the infinite whirl of death and birth, out of which

we cannot escape, is of our own creation, of our own seeking--that the

forces integrating worlds are the errors of the Past;--that the eternal

sorrow is but the eternal hunger of insatiable desire;--and that the

burnt-out suns are rekindled only by the inextinguishable passions of

vanished lives.

VII

JIUJUTSU

Man at his birth is supple and weak; at his death, firm and strong. So

is it with all things.... Firmness and strength are the concomitants of

death; softness and weakness, the concomitants of life. Hence he who

relies on his own strength shall not conquer. Tao-Te-King.

I

There is one building in the grounds of the Government College quite

different in structure from the other edifices. Except that it is

furnished with horizontally sliding glass windows instead of paper

ones, it might be called a purely Japanese building. It is long, broad,

and of one story; and it contains but a single huge room, of which

the elevated floor is thickly cushioned with one hundred mats. It has

a Japanese name, too,--Zuihōkwan,--signifying "The Hall of Our Holy

Country;" and the Chinese characters which form that name were painted

upon the small tablet above its entrance by the hand of a Prince of

the Imperial blood. Within there is no furniture; nothing but another

tablet and two pictures hanging upon the wall. One of the pictures

represents the famous "White-Tiger Band" of seventeen brave boys who

voluntarily sought death for loyalty's sake in the civil war. The other

is a portrait in oil of the aged and much beloved Professor of Chinese,

Akizuki of Aidzu, a noted warrior in his youth, when it required much

more to make a soldier and a gentleman than it does to-day. And the

tablet bears Chinese characters written by the hand of Count Katsu,

which signify: "Profound knowledge is the best of possessions."

But what is the knowledge taught in this huge unfurnished apartment? It

is something called jiujutsu. And what is jiujutsu?

Here I must premise that I know practically nothing of jiujutsu. One

must begin to study it in early youth, and must continue the study a

very long time in order to learn it even tolerably well. To become an

expert requires seven years of constant practice, even presupposing

natural aptitudes of an uncommon order. I can give no detailed account

of jiujutsu, but merely venture some general remarks about its

principle.

Jiujutsu is the old samurai art of fighting without weapons. To the

uninitiated it looks like wrestling. Should you happen to enter the

Zuihōkwan while jiujutsu is being practiced, you would see a crowd

of students watching ten or twelve lithe young comrades, barefooted

and barelimbed, throwing each other about on the matting. The dead

silence might seem to you very strange. No word is spoken, no sign of

approbation or of amusement is given, no face even smiles. Absolute

impassiveness is rigidly exacted by the rules of the school of

jiujutsu. But probably only this impassibility of all, this hush of

numbers, would impress you as remarkable.

A professional wrestler would observe more. He would see that those'

young men are very cautious about putting forth their strength, and

that the grips, holds, and flings are both peculiar and risky. In spite

of the care exercised, he would judge the whole performance to be

dangerous play, and would be tempted, perhaps, to advise the adoption

of Western "scientific" rules.

The real thing, however,--not the play,--is much more dangerous than

a Western wrestler could guess at sight. The teacher there, slender

and light as he seems, could probably disable an ordinary wrestler

in two minutes. Jiujutsu is not an art of display at all: it is not

a training for that sort of skill exhibited to public audiences; it

is an art of self-defense in the most exact sense of the term; it is

an art of war. The master of that art is able, in one moment, to put

an untrained antagonist completely _hors de combat_. By some terrible

legerdemain he suddenly dislocates a shoulder, unhinges a joint, bursts

a tendon, or snaps a bone,--without any apparent effort. He is much

more than an athlete: he is an anatomist. And he knows also touches

that kill--as by lightning. But this fatal knowledge he is under oath

never to communicate except under such conditions as would render its

abuse almost impossible. Tradition exacts that it be given only to men

of perfect self-command and of unimpeachable moral character.

The fact, however, to which I want to call attention is that the master

of jiujutsu never relies upon his own strength. He scarcely uses his

own strength in the greatest emergency. Then what does he use? Simply

the strength of his antagonist. The force of the enemy is the only

means by which that enemy is overcome. The art of jiujutsu teaches you

to rely for victory solely upon the strength of your opponent; and

the greater his strength, the worse for him and the better for you. I

remember that I was not a little astonished when one of the greatest

teachers of jiujutsu[1] told me that he found it extremely difficult to

teach a certain very strong pupil, whom I had innocently imagined to

be the best in the class. On asking why, I was answered: "Because he

relies upon his enormous muscular strength, and uses it." The very name

"jiujutsu" means _to conquer by yielding._

I fear I cannot explain at all; I can only suggest. Every one knows

what a "counter" in boxing means. I cannot use it for an exact simile,

because the boxer who counters opposes his whole force to the impetus

of the other; while a jiujutsu expert does precisely the contrary.

Still there remains this resemblance between a counter in boxing and

a yielding in jiujutsu,--that the suffering is in both cases due to

the uncontrollable forward impetus of the man who receives it. I

may venture then to say, loosely, that in jiujutsu there is a sort

of counter for every twist, wrench, pull, push, or bend: only, the

jiujutsu expert does not oppose such movements at all. No: he yields

to them. But he does much more than yield to them. He aids them with a

wicked sleight that causes the assailant to put out his own shoulder,

to fracture his own arm, or, in a desperate case, even to break his own

neck or back.

[1] Kano Jigoro. Mr. Kano contributed some years ago to the

_Transactions of the Asiatic Society_ a very interesting paper on the

history of Jiujutsu.

II

With even this vaguest of explanations, you will already have been able

to perceive that the real wonder of jiujutsu is not in the highest

possible skill of its best professor, but in the uniquely Oriental idea

which the whole art expresses. What Western brain could have elaborated

this strange teaching,--never to oppose force to force, but only to

direct and utilize the power of attack; to overthrow the enemy solely

by his own strength,--to vanquish him solely by his own effort? Surely

none! The Occidental mind appears to work in straight lines; the

Oriental, in wonderful curves and circles. Yet how fine a symbolism of

Intelligence as a means to foil brute force! Much more than a science

of defense is this jiujutsu: it is a philosophical system; it is an

economical system; it is an ethical system (indeed, I had forgotten to

say that a very large part of jiujutsu-training is purely moral); and

it is, above all, the expression of a racial genius as yet but faintly

perceived by those Powers who dream of further aggrandizement in the

East.

Twenty-five years ago,--and even more recently,---foreigners might

have predicted, with every appearance of reason, that Japan would

adopt not only the dress, but the manners of the Occident; not only

our means of rapid transit and communication, but also our principles

of architecture; not only our industries and our applied science, but

likewise our metaphysics and our dogmas. Some really believed that

the country would soon be thrown open to foreign settlement; that

Western capital would be tempted by extraordinary privileges to aid in

the development of various resources; and even that the nation would

eventually proclaim, through Imperial Edict, its sudden conversion to

what we call Christianity. But such beliefs were due to an unavoidable

but absolute ignorance of the character of the race,--of its deeper

capacities, of its foresight, of its immemorial spirit of independence.

That Japan might only be practicing jiujutsu, nobody supposed for

a moment: indeed at that time nobody in the West had ever heard of

jiujutsu.

And, nevertheless, jiujutsu it all was. Japan adopted a military

system founded upon the best experience of France and Germany, with

the result that she can call into the field a disciplined force of

250,000 men, supported by a formidable artillery. She created a strong

navy, comprising some of the finest cruisers in the world;--modeling

her naval system upon the best English and French teaching. She made

herself dockyards under French direction, and built or bought steamers

to carry her products to Korea, China, Manilla, Mexico, India, and

the tropics of the Pacific. She constructed, both for military and

commercial purposes, nearly two thousand miles of railroad. With

American and English help she established the cheapest and perhaps the

most efficient telegraph and postal service in existence. She built

lighthouses to such excellent purpose that her coast is said to be the

best lighted in either hemisphere; and she put into operation a signal

service not inferior to that of the United States. From America she

obtained also a telephone system, and the best methods of electric

lighting. She modeled her public-school system upon a thorough study

of the best results obtained in Germany, France, and America, but

regulated it so as to harmonize perfectly with her own institutions.

She founded a police system upon a French model, but shaped it to

absolute conformity with her own particular social requirements.

At first she imported machinery for her mines, her mills, her

gun-factories, her railways, and hired numbers of foreign experts: she

is now dismissing all her teachers. But what she has done and is doing

would require volumes even to mention. Suffice to say, in conclusion,

that she has selected and adopted the best of everything represented by

our industries, by our applied sciences, by our economical, financial,

and legal experience; availing herself in every case of the highest

results only, and invariably shaping her acquisitions to meet her own

needs.

Now in all this she has adopted nothing for a merely imitative reason.

On the contrary, she has approved and taken only what can help her

to increase her strength. She has made herself able to dispense with

nearly all foreign technical instruction; and she has kept firmly in

her own hands, by the shrewdest legislation, all of her own resources.

But she has _not_ adopted Western dress, Western habits of life,

Western architecture, or Western religion; since the introduction

of any of these, especially the last, would have diminished instead

of augmenting her force. Despite her railroad and steamship lines,

her telegraphs and telephones, her postal service and her express

companies, her steel artillery and magazine-rifles, her universities

and technical schools, she remains just as Oriental to-day as she

was a thousand years ago. She has been able to remain herself, and to

profit to the utmost possible limit by the strength of the enemy. She

has been, and still is, defending herself by the most admirable system

of intellectual self-defense ever heard of,--by a marvelous national

jiujutsu.

III

Before me lies an album more than thirty years old. It is filled

with photographs taken at the time when Japan was entering upon her

experiments with foreign dress and with foreign institutions. All are

photographs of samurai or daimyô; and many possess historical value as

reflections of the earliest effects of foreign influence upon native

fashions.

Naturally the military class were the earliest subjects of the

new influence; and they seem to have attempted several curious

compromises between the Western and the Eastern costume. More than

a dozen photographs represent feudal leaders surrounded by their

retainers,--all in a peculiar garb of their own composition. They

have frock coats, waistcoats, and trousers of foreign style and

material; but under the coat the long silk girdle or obi is still worn,

simply for the purpose of holding the swords. (For the samurai were

never in a literal sense _traîneurs de sabre_; and their formidable

but exquisitely finished weapons were never made to be slung at the

side,--besides being in most cases much too long to be carried in the

Western way.) The cloth of the suits is broadcloth; but the samurai

will not surrender his mon, or crest, and tries to adapt it to his

novel attire by all manner of devices. One has faced the lappets of

his coat with white silk; and his family device is either dyed or

embroidered upon the silk six times--three mon to each lappet. All the

men, or nearly all, wear European watches with showy guards; one is

examining his timepiece curiously, probably a very recent acquisition.

All wear Western shoes, too,--shoes with elastic sides. But none seem

to have yet adopted the utterly abominable European hat--destined,

unfortunately, to become popular at a later day. They still retain the

jingasa,--a strong wooden headpiece, heavily lacquered in scarlet

and gold. And the jingasa and the silken girdle remain the only

satisfactory parts of their astounding uniform. The trousers and coats

are ill fitting; the shoes are inflicting slow tortures; there is an

indescribably constrained, slouchy, shabby look common to all thus

attired. They have not only ceased to feel free: they are conscious of

not looking their best. The incongruities are not grotesque enough to

be amusing; they are merely ugly and painful. What foreigner in that

time could have persuaded himself that the Japanese were not about to

lose forever their beautiful taste in dress?

Other photographs show still more curious results of foreign

influences. Here are samurai who refuse to adopt the Western fashions,

but who have compromised with the new mania by having their haori

and hakama made of the heaviest and costliest English broadcloth,--a

material utterly unsuited for such use both because of its weight and

its inelasticity. Already you can see that creases have been formed

which no hot iron can ever smooth away.

It is certainly an æsthetic relief to turn from these portraits to

those of a few conservatives who paid no attention to the mania at

all, and clung to their native warrior garb to the very last. Here are

nagabakama worn by horsemen,--and jin-baori, or war-coats, superbly

embroidered,--and kamishimo,--and shirts of mail,--and full suits of

armor. Here also are various forms of kaburi,--the strange but imposing

head-dresses anciently worn on state occasions by princes and by

samurai of high rank,--curious cobwebby structures, of some light black

material. In all this there is dignity, beauty, or the terrible grace

of war.

But everything is totally eclipsed by the last photograph of the

collection,--a handsome youth with the sinister, splendid gaze of a

falcon,--Matsudaira Buzen-no-Kami, in full magnificence of feudal war

costume. One hand bears the tasseled signal-wand of a leader of armies;

the other rests on the marvelous hilt of his sword. His helmet is a

blazing miracle; the steel upon his breast and shoulders was wrought

by armorers whose names are famed in all the museums of the West. The

cords of his war-coat are golden; and a wondrous garment of heavy

silk--all embroidered with billowings and dragonings of gold--flows

from his mailed waist to his feet, like a robe of fire. And this is no

dream;--this was!--I am gazing at a solar record of one real figure

of mediæval life! How the man flames in his steel and silk and gold,

like some splendid iridescent beetle,--but a War beetle, all horns and

mandibles and menace despite its dazzlings of jewel-color!

IV

From the princely magnificence of feudal costume as worn by

Matsudaira--Buzen-no-Kami to the nondescript garments of the transition

period, how vast a fall! Certainly the native dress and the native

taste in dress might well have seemed doomed to pass away forever.

And when even the Imperial Court had temporarily adopted Parisian

modes, few foreigners could have doubted that the whole nation was

about to change garb. As a fact, there then began in the chief cities

that passing mania for Western fashions which was reflected in the

illustrated journals of Europe, and which created for a while the

impression that picturesque Japan had become transformed into a land

of "loud" tweeds, chimney-pot hats, and swallow-tail coats. But in

the capital itself to-day, among a thousand passers-by, you may see

scarcely one in Western dress, excepting, of course, the uniformed

soldiers, students, and police. The former mania really represented

a national experiment; and the results of that experiment were not

according to Western expectation. Japan has adopted various styles of

Western uniform,[1] with some excellent modifications, for her army,

her navy, and her police, simply because such attire is the best

possible for such callings. Foreign civil costume has been adopted by

the Japanese official world, but only to be worn during office-hours

in buildings of Western construction furnished with modern desks

and chairs.[2] At home even the general, the admiral, the judge,

the police-inspector, resume the national garb. And, finally, both

teachers and students in all but the primary schools are expected to

wear uniform, as the educational training is partly military. This

obligation, once stringent, has, however, been considerably relaxed; in

many schools the uniform being now obligatory only during drill-time

and upon certain ceremonial occasions. In all Kyūshū schools, except

the Normal, the students are free to wear their robes, straw sandals,

and enormous straw hats, when not on parade. But everywhere after

class-hours both teachers and students return at home to their kimono

and their girdles of white crape silk.

In brief, then, Japan has fairly resumed her national dress; and it

is to be hoped that she will never again abandon it. Not only is

it the sole attire perfectly adapted to her domestic habits; it is

also, perhaps, the most dignified, the most comfortable, and the most

healthy in the world. In some respects, indeed, the native fashions

have changed during the era of Meiji much more than in previous eras;

but this was largely due to the abolition of the military caste. As to

forms, the change has been slight; as to color, it has been great. The

fine taste of the race still appears in the beautiful tints and colors

and designs of those silken or cotton textures woven for apparel. But

the tints are paler, the colors are darker, than those worn by the

last generation;--the whole national costume, in all its varieties,

not excepting even the bright attire of children and of young girls,

is much more sober of tone than in feudal days. All the wondrous old

robes of dazzling colors have vanished from public life: you can study

them now only in the theatres, or in those marvelous picture-books

reflecting the fantastic and beautiful visions of the Japanese classic

drama, which preserves the Past.

[1] What seems to be the only serious mistake Japan has made in this

regard is the adoption of leather shoes for her infantry. The fine feet

of young men accustomed to the freedom of sandals, and ignorant of

the existence of what we call corns and bunions, are cruelly tortured

by this unnatural footgear. On long marches they are allowed to wear

sandals, however; and a change in footgear may yet be made. With

sandals, even a Japanese boy can easily walk his thirty miles a day,

almost unfatigued.

[2] A highly educated Japanese actually observed to a friend of mine:

"The truth is that we dislike Western dress. We have been temporarily

adopting it only as certain animals take particular colors in

particular seasons,--_for protective reasons_".

V

Indeed, to give up the native dress would involve the costly necessity

of changing nearly all the native habits of life. Western costume is

totally unsuited to a Japanese interior; and would render the national

squatting, or kneeling, posture extremely painful or difficult for

the wearer. The adoption of Western dress would thus necessitate the

adoption of Western domestic habits: the introduction into home of

chairs for resting, tables for eating, stoves or fireplaces for warmth

(since the warmth of the native robes alone renders these Western

comforts at present unnecessary), carpets for floors, glass for

windows,--in short, a host of luxuries which the people have always

been well able to do without. There is no furniture (according to the

European sense of the term) in a Japanese home,--no beds, tables, or

chairs. There may be one small book-case, or rather "book-box;" and

there are nearly always a pair of chests of drawers in some recess

hidden by sliding paper screens; but such articles are quite unlike any

Western furniture. As a rule, you will see nothing in a Japanese room

except a small brazier of bronze or porcelain, for smoking purposes; a

kneeling-mat, or cushion, according to season; and in the alcove only,

a picture or a flower vase. For thousands of years Japanese life has

been on the floor. Soft as a hair mattress and always immaculately

clean, the floor is at once the couch, the dining-table, and most often

the writing-table; although there exist tiny pretty writing-tables

about one foot high. And the vast economy of such habits of life

renders it highly improbable they will ever be abandoned, especially

while the pressure of population and the struggle of life continue to

increase. It should also be remembered that there exists no precedent

of a highly civilized people--such as were the Japanese before the

Western aggression upon them--abandoning ancestral habits out of a

mere spirit of imitation. Those who imagine the Japanese to be merely

imitative also imagine them to be savages. As a fact, they are not

imitative at all: they are assimilative and adoptive only, and that to

the degree of genius.

It is probable that careful study of Western experience with

fire-proof building-material will eventually result in some changes in

Japanese municipal architecture. Already, in some quarters of Tōkyō,

there are streets of brick houses. But these brick dwellings are matted

in the ancient manner; and their tenants follow the domestic habits

of their ancestors. The future architecture of brick or stone is not

likely to prove a mere copy of Western construction; it is almost

certain to develop new and purely Oriental features of rare interest.

Those who believe the Japanese dominated by some blind admiration for

everything Occidental might certainly expect at the open ports to find

less of anything purely Japanese (except curios) than in the interior:

less of Japanese architecture; less of national dress, manners, and

customs; less of native religion, and shrines, and temples. But exactly

the reverse is the fact. Foreign buildings there are, but, as a general

rule, in the foreign concessions only, and for the use of foreigners.

The usual exceptions are a fire-proof post-office, a custom-house, and

perhaps a few breweries and cotton-mills. But not only is Japanese

architecture excellently represented at all the foreign ports: it is

better represented there than in almost any city of the interior.

The edifices heighten, broaden, expand; but they remain even more

Oriental than elsewhere. At Kobe, at Nagasaki, at Ōsaka, at Yokohama,

everything that is essentially and solely Japanese (except moral

character) accentuates as if in defiance of foreign influence. Whoever

has looked over Kobe from some lofty roof or balcony will have seen

perhaps the best possible example of what I mean,--the height, the

queerness, the charm of a Japanese port in the nineteenth century,

the blue-gray sea of tile-slopes ridged and banded with white, the

cedar world of gables and galleries and architectural conceits and

whimsicalities indescribable. And nowhere outside of the Sacred City of

Kyōto, can you witness a native religious festival to better advantage

than in the open ports; while the multitude of shrines, of temples, of

torii, of all the sights and symbols of Shintō and of Buddhism, are

scarcely paralleled in any city of the interior except Nikko, and the

ancient capitals of Nara and Saikyō. No! the more one studies the

characteristics of the open ports, the more one feels that the genius

of the race will never voluntarily yield to Western influence, beyond

the rules of jiujutsu.

VI

The expectation that Japan would speedily announce to the world

her adoption of Christianity was not so unreasonable as some other

expectations of former days. Yet it might well seem to have been more

so. There were no precedents upon which to build so large a hope. No

Oriental race has ever yet been converted to Christianity. Even under

British rule, the wonderful labors of the Catholic propaganda in

India have been brought to a standstill. In China, after centuries of

missions, the very name of Christianity is detested,--and not without

cause, since no small number of aggressions upon China have been

made in the name of Western religion. Nearer home, we have made even

less progress in our efforts to convert Oriental races. There is not

the ghost of a hope for the conversion of the Turks, the Arabs, the

Moors, or of any Islamic people; and the memory of the Society for the

Conversion of the Jews only serves to create a smile. But, even leaving

the Oriental races out of the question, we have no conversions whatever

to boast of. Never within modern history has Christendom been able to

force the acceptance of its dogmas upon a people able to maintain any

hope of national existence. The nominal[1] success of missions among

a few savage tribes, or the vanishing Maori races, only proves the

rule; and unless we accept the rather sinister declaration of Napoleon

that missionaries may have great political usefulness, it is not easy

to escape the conclusion that the whole work of the foreign mission

societies has been little more than a vast expenditure of energy, time,

and money, to no real purpose.

In this last decade of the nineteenth century, at all events, the

reason should be obvious. A religion means much more than mere dogma

about the supernatural: it is the synthesis of the whole ethical

experience of a race, the earliest foundation, in many cases, of its

wiser laws, and the record, as well as the result, of its social

evolution. It is thus essentially a part of the race-life, and

cannot possibly be replaced in any natural manner by the ethical and

social experience of a totally alien people,--that is to say, by a

totally alien religion. And no nation in a healthy social state can

voluntarily abandon the faith so profoundly identified with its ethical

life. A nation may reshape its dogmas: it may willingly even accept

another faith; but it will not voluntarily cast away its older belief,

even when the latter has lost all ethical or social usefulness. When

China accepted Buddhism, she gave up neither the moral codes of her

ancient sages, nor her primitive ancestor-worship; when Japan accepted

Buddhism, she did not forsake the Way of the Gods. Parallel examples

are yielded by the history of the religions of antique Europe. Only

religions the most tolerant can be voluntarily accepted by races

totally alien to those that evolved them; and even then only as an

addition to what they already possess, never as a substitute for it.

Wherefore the great success of the ancient Buddhist missions. Buddhism

was an absorbing but never a supplanting power: it incorporated alien

faiths into its colossal system, and gave them new interpretation.

But the religion of Islam and the religion of Christianity--Western

Christianity--have always been religions essentially intolerant,

incorporating nothing and zealous to supplant everything. To introduce

Christianity, especially into an Oriental country, necessitates the

destruction not only of the native faith but of the native social

systems as well. Now the lesson of history is that such wholesale

destruction, can be accomplished only by force, and, in the case of

a highly complex society, only by the most brutal force. And force,

the principal instrument of Christian propagandism in the past, is

still the force behind our missions. Only we have, or affect to have,

substituted money power and menace for the franker edge of the sword;

occasionally fulfilling the menace for commercial reasons in proof

of our Christian professions. We force missionaries upon China, for

example, under treaty clauses extorted by war; and pledge ourselves

to support them with gunboats, and to exact enormous indemnities for

the lives of such as get themselves killed. So China pays blood-money

at regular intervals, and is learning more and more each year to

understand the value of what we call Christianity. And the saying of

Emerson, that by some a truth can never be comprehended until its

light happens to fall upon a fact, has been recently illustrated by

some honest protests against the immorality of missionary aggressions

in China,--protests which would never have been listened to before it

was discovered that the mission troubles were likely to react against

purely commercial interests.

But in spite of the foregoing considerations there was really at one

time fair reason for believing the nominal conversion of Japan quite

possible. Men could not forget that after the Japanese Government had

been forced by political necessity to extirpate the wonderful Jesuit

missions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the very word

Christian had become a term of hatred and scorn.[2]

But the world had changed since then; Christianity had changed; and

more than thirty different Christian sects were ready to compete for

the honor of converting Japan. Out of so large a variety of dogmas,

representing the principal shades both of orthodoxy and of heterodoxy,

Japan might certainly be able to choose a form of Christianity to her

own taste! And the conditions of the country were more propitious than

ever before for the introduction of some Western religion. The whole

social system had been disorganized to the very core; Buddhism had been

disestablished, and was tottering under the blow; Shintō appeared to be

incapable of resistance; the great military caste had been abolished;

the system of rule had been changed; the provinces had been shaken

by war; the Mikado, veiled for centuries, had shown himself to his

astonished people; the tumultuous flood of new ideas threatened to

sweep away all customs and to wreck all beliefs; and the preaching of

Christianity had been once more tolerated by law. Nor was this all.

In the hour of its prodigious efforts to reconstruct society, the

Government had actually considered the question of Christianity--just

as shrewdly and as impartially as it had studied the foreign

educational, military, and naval systems. A commission was instructed

to report upon the influence of Christianity in checking crime and vice

abroad. The result confirmed the impartial verdict of Kaempffer, in

the seventeenth century, upon the ethics of the Japanese: "They profess

a great respect and veneration for their Gods, and worship them in

various ways. And I think I may affirm that, in the practice of virtue,

in purity of life, and outward devotion, they far outdo the Christians."

In short, it was wisely decided that the foreign religion, besides its

inappropriateness to the conditions of Oriental society, had proved

itself less efficacious as an ethical influence in the West than

Buddhism had done in the East. Certainly, in the great jiujutsu there

could have been little to gain, but much to lose, by a patriarchal

society established on the principle of reciprocal duties, through the

adoption of the teaching that a man shall leave his father and his

mother and shall cleave unto his wife.[3]

The hope of making Japan Christian by Imperial edict has passed; and

with the reorganization of society, the chances of making Christianity,

by any means whatever, the national religion, grow less and less.

Probably missionaries must be tolerated for some time longer, in

spite of their interference in matters altogether outside of their

profession; but they will accomplish no moral good, and in the interim

they will be used by those whom they desire to use. In 1894 there were

in Japan some eight hundred Protestant, ninety-two Roman Catholic,

and three Greek Catholic missionaries; and the total expenditure for

all the foreign missions in Japan must represent not much less than

a million dollars a year,--probably represents more. As a result of

this huge disbursement, the various Protestant sects claim to have

made about 50,000 converts, and the Catholics an equal number; leaving

some thirty-nine million nine hundred thousand unconverted souls.

Conventions, and very malignant ones, forbid all unfavorable criticism

of mission reports; but in spite of them I must express my candid

opinion that even the above figures are not altogether trustworthy.

Concerning the Roman Catholic missions, it is worthy of note that they

profess with far smaller means to have done as much work as their

rivals; and that even their enemies acknowledge a certain solidity in

that work--which begins, rationally enough, with the children. But it

is difficult not to feel skeptical as to mission reports: when one

knows that among the lowest classes of Japanese there are numbers

ready to profess conversion for the sake of obtaining pecuniary

assistance or employment; when one knows that poor boys pretend to

become Christians for the sake of obtaining instruction in some foreign

language; when one hears constantly of young men, who, after professing

Christianity for a time, openly return to their ancient gods; when

one sees--immediately after the distribution by missionaries of

foreign contributions for public relief in time of flood, famine,

or earthquake--sudden announcement of hosts of conversions, one is

obliged to doubt not only the sincerity of the converted, but the

morality of the methods. Nevertheless, the expenditure of one million

dollars a year in Japan for one hundred years might produce very

large results, the nature of which may be readily conceived, though

scarcely admired; and the existing weakness of the native religions,

both in regard to educational and financial means of self-defense,

tempts aggression. Fortunately there now seems to be more than a mere

hope that the Imperial Government will come to the aid of Buddhism

in matters educational. On the other hand, there is at least a faint

possibility that Christendom, at no very distant era, may conclude that

her wealthiest missions are becoming transformed into enormous mutual

benefit societies.

[1] Nominal, because the simple fact is that the real object of

missions is impossible. This whole question has been very strongly

summed up in a few lines by Herbert Spencer:--

"Everywhere, indeed, the special theological bias, accompanying a

special set of doctrines, inevitably prejudges many sociological

questions. One who holds a creed to be absolutely true, and who by

implication holds the multitudinous other creeds to be absolutely false

in so far as they differ from his own, cannot entertain the supposition

that the value of a creed is relative. That each religious system is,

in its general characters, a natural part of the society in which it

is found, is an entirely alien conception, and indeed a repugnant

one. His system of dogmatic theology he thinks good for all places

and all times. He does not doubt that, when planted among a horde of

savages, it will be duly understood by them, duly appreciated by them,

and will work upon them results such as those he experiences from it.

Thus prepossessed, he passes over the proofs that a people is no more

capable of receiving a higher form of religion than it is capable of

receiving a higher form of government; and that inevitably along with

such religion, as with such government, there will go on a degradation

which presently reduces it to one differing but nominally from its

predecessor. In other words, his special theological bias blinds him to

an important class of sociological truths."

[2] The missionary work was begun by St. Francis Xavier, who landed at

Kagoshima in Kyūshū on the 15th of August, 1549. A curious fact is that

the word _Bateren,_ a corruption of the Portuguese or Spanish _padre_,

and so adopted into the language two centuries ago, still lingers

among the common people in some provinces as a synonym for "wicked

magician." Another curious fact worth mentioning is that a particular

kind of bamboo screen--from behind which a person can see all that goes

on outside the house without being himself seen--is still called a

_Kirishitan_ (Christian).

Griffis explains the larger success of the Jesuit missions of the

sixteenth century partly by the resemblance between the outer forms of

Roman Catholicism and the outer forms of Buddhism. This shrewd judgment

has been confirmed by the researches of Ernest Satow (see _Transactions

of the Asiatic Society of Japan_, vol. ii. part 2), who has published

facsimiles of some documents proving that the grant to the foreign

missionaries by the Lord of Yamaguchi was made that they might "_preach

the law of Buddha,_"--the new religion being at first taken for a

higher form of Buddhism. But those who have read the old Jesuit letters

from Japan, or even the more familiar compilation of Charlevoix,

must recognize that the success of the missions could not be thus

entirely explained. It presents us with psychological phenomena of a

very remarkable order,--phenomena perhaps never again to be repeated

in the history of religion, and analogous to those strange forms of

emotionalism classed by Hecker as contagious (see his _Epidemics of

the Middle Ages_). The old Jesuits understood the deeper emotional

character of the Japanese infinitely better than any modern missionary

society: they studied with marvelous keenness all the springs of the

race-life, and knew how to operate them. Where they failed, our modern

Evangelical propagandists need not hope to succeed. Still, even in

the most flourishing period of the Jesuit missions, only six hundred

thousand converts were claimed.

[3] A recent French critic declared that the comparatively small number

of public charities and benevolent institutions in Japan proved the

race deficient in humanity! Now the truth is that in Old Japan the

principle of mutual benevolence rendered such institutions unnecessary.

And another truth is that the vast number of such institutions in the

West testifies much more strongly to the inhumanity than to the charity

of our own civilization.

VII

The idea that Japan would throw open her interior to foreign industrial

enterprise, soon after the beginning of Meiji, proved as fallacious

as the dream of her sudden conversion to Christianity. The country

remained, and still remains, practically closed against foreign

settlement. The Government itself had never seemed inclined to pursue

a conservative policy, and had made various attempts to bring about

such a revision of treaties as would have made Japan a new field for

large investments of Western capital Events, however, proved that the

national course was not to be controlled by statecraft only, but was to

be directed by something much less liable to error,--the Race-Instinct.

The world's greatest philosopher, writing in 1867, uttered this

judgment: "Of the way in which disintegrations are liable to be set up

in a society that has evolved to the limit of its type, and reached

a state of moving equilibrium, a good illustration is furnished

by Japan. The finished fabric into which its people had organized

themselves maintained an almost constant state so long as it was

preserved from fresh external forces. But as soon as it received

an impact from European civilization,--partly by armed aggression,

partly by commercial impulse, partly by the influence of ideas,--this

fabric began to fall to pieces. There is now in progress a political

dissolution. Probably a political reorganization will follow; but,

be this as it may, the change thus far produced by outer action is

a change towards dissolution,--a change from integrated motions to

disintegrated motions."[1]

The political reorganization suggested by Mr. Spencer not only

followed rapidly, but seemed more than likely to prove all that could

be desired, providing the new formative process were not seriously

and suddenly interfered with. Whether it would be interfered with by

treaty revision, however, appeared a very doubtful question. While

some Japanese politicians worked earnestly for the removal of every

obstacle to foreign settlement in the interior, others felt that such

settlement would mean a fresh introduction into the yet unstable social

organism of disturbing elements sure to produce new disintegrations.

The argument of the former was that by the advocated revision of

existing treaties the revenue of the Empire could be much increased,

and that the probable number of foreign settlers would be quite small.

But conservative thinkers considered that the real danger of opening

the country to foreigners was not the danger of the influx of numbers;

and on this point the Race-Instinct agreed with them. It comprehended

the peril only in a vague way, but in a way that touched the truth.

One side of that truth ought to be familiar to Americans,--the

Occidental side. The Occidental has discovered that, under any

conditions of fair play, he cannot compete with the Oriental in the

struggle for life: he has fully confessed the fact, both in Australia

and in the United States, by the passage of laws to protect himself

against Asiatic emigration. For outrages upon Chinese or Japanese

immigrants he has nevertheless offered a host of absurd "moral

reasons." The only true reason can be formulated in six words: _The

Oriental can underlive the Occidental._ Now in Japan the other face

of the question was formulated thus: _The Occidental can overlive

the Oriental[2] under certain favorable conditions_. One condition

would be a temperate climate; the other, and the more important,

that, in addition to full rights of competition, the Occidental

should have power for aggression. Whether he _would_ use such power

was not a common-sense question: the real question was, _could_ he

use it? And this answered in the affirmative, all discussion as to

the nature of his possible future policy of aggrandizement--whether

industrial, financial, political, or all three in one--were pure waste

of time. It was enough to know that he might eventually find ways

and means to master, if not to supplant, the native race; crushing

opposition, paralyzing competition by enormous combinations of capital,

monopolizing resources, and raising the standard of living above the

native capacity. Elsewhere various weaker races had vanished or were

vanishing under Anglo-Saxon domination. And in a country so poor as

Japan, who could give assurance that the mere admission of foreign

capital did not constitute a national danger? Doubtless Japan would

never have to fear conquest by any single Western power: she could

hold her own, on her own soil, against any one foreign nation. Neither

would she have to face the danger of invasion by a combination of

military powers: the mutual jealousies of the Occident would render

impossible any attack for the mere purpose of territorial acquisition.

But she might reasonably fear that, by prematurely opening her

interior to foreign settlement, she would condemn herself to the fate

of Hawaii,--that her land would pass into alien ownership, that her

politics would be regulated by foreign influence, that her independence

would become merely nominal, that her ancient empire would eventually

become transformed into a sort of cosmopolitan industrial republic.

Such were the ideas fiercely discussed by opposite parties until

the eve of the war with China. Meanwhile the Government had been

engaged upon difficult negotiations. To open the country in the face

of the anti-foreign reaction seemed in the highest degree dangerous;

yet to have the treaties revised without opening the country seemed

impossible. It was evident that the steady pressure of the Western

powers upon Japan was to be maintained unless their hostile combination

could be broken either by diplomacy or by force. The new treaty

with England, devised by the shrewdness of Aoki, met the dilemma.

By this treaty the country is to be opened; but British subjects

cannot own land. They can even hold land only on leases terminating,

according to Japanese law, _ipso facto_ with the death of the lessor.

No coasting-trade is permitted them--not even to some of the old

treaty ports; and all other trade is to be heavily taxed. The foreign

concessions are to revert to Japan; British settlers pass under

Japanese jurisdiction; England, in fact, loses everything, and Japan

gains all by this treaty.

The first publication of the articles stupefied the English merchants,

who declared themselves betrayed by the mother-country,--legally tied

hand and foot and delivered into Oriental bondage. Some declared

their resolve to leave the country before the treaty should be put in

force. Certainly Japan may congratulate herself upon her diplomacy.

The country is, indeed, to be opened; but the conditions have been

made such as not only to deter foreign capital seeking investment, but

as even to drive existing capital away. Should similar conditions be

obtained from other powers, Japan will have much more than regained all

that she lost by former treaties contrived to her disadvantage. The

Aoki document surely represents the highest possible feat of jiujutsu

in diplomacy.

But no one can well predict what may occur before this or any other

new treaty be put into operation. It is still uncertain whether Japan

will ultimately win all her ends by jiujutsu, although never in history

did any race display such courage and such genius in facing colossal

odds. Within the memory of men not yet old, Japan has developed her

military power to a par with that of more than one country of Europe;

industrially she is fast becoming a competitor of Europe in the markets

of the East; educationally she has placed herself also in the front

rank of progress, having established a system of schools less costly

but scarcely less efficient than those of any Western country. And she

has done this in spite of being steadily robbed each year by unjust

treaties, in spite of enormous losses by floods and earthquakes,

in spite of political troubles at home, in spite of the efforts of

foreign proselytizers to sap the national spirit, and in spite of the

extraordinary poverty of her people.

[1] _First Principles_, 2d Ed., § 178.

[2] That is, of course, the Japanese. I do not believe that under

any circumstances the Occidentals could overlive the Chinese,--no

matter what might be the numerical disproportion. Even the Japanese

acknowledge their incapacity to compete with the Chinese; and one of

the best arguments against the unreserved opening of the country is the

danger of Chinese immigration.

VII

Should Japan fail in her glorious purpose, her misfortune will

certainly not be owing to any lack of national spirit. That quality she

possesses in a degree without existing modern parallel,--in a degree

that so trite a word as "patriotism" is utterly powerless to represent.

However psychologists may theorize on the absence or the limitations of

personal individuality among the Japanese, there can be no question at

all that, as a nation, Japan possesses an individuality much stronger

than our own. Indeed we may doubt whether Western civilization has not

cultivated the qualities of the individual even to the destruction of

national feeling.

On the topic of duty the entire people has but one mind. Any schoolboy

will say to you, if questioned about this subject: "The duty of every

Japanese to our Emperor is to help to make our country strong and

wealthy, and to help to defend and preserve our national independence."

All know the danger. All are morally and physically trained to meet

it. Every public school gives its students a preparatory course of

military discipline; every town has its _bataillons scolaires_. Even

the children too young to be regularly drilled are daily taught to

sing in chorus the ancient songs of loyalty and the modern songs of

war. And new patriot songs are composed at regular intervals, and

introduced by Government approval into the schools and the camps. It

is quite an experience to hear four hundred students chanting one of

these at the school in which I teach. The young men are all in uniform

on such occasions, and marshaled in military rank. The commanding

officer gives the order to "mark time," and all the feet begin to beat

the ground together, with a sound as of a drum-roll. Then the leader

sings a verse, and the students repeat it with surprising spirit,

throwing a peculiar emphasis always _on the last syllable_ of each

line, so that the vocal effect is like a crash of musketry. It is a

very Oriental, but also a very impressive manner of chanting: you can

hear the fierce heart of Old Japan beating through every Word. But

still more impressive is the same kind of singing by the soldiery.

And at this very moment, while writing these lines, I hear from the

ancient castle of Kumamoto, like a pealing of thunder, the evening song

of its garrison of eight thousand men, mingled with the long, sweet,

melancholy calling of a hundred bugles.[1]

The Government never relaxes its efforts to keep aglow the old sense of

loyalty and love of country. New festivals have lately been established

to this noble end; and the old ones are celebrated with increasing

fervor each succeeding year. Always on the Emperor's birthday, His

Imperial Majesty's photograph is solemnly saluted in all the public

schools and public offices of the Empire, with appropriate songs

and ceremonies.[2] Occasionally some students, under missionary

instigation, refuse this simple tribute of loyalty and gratitude,

on the extraordinary ground that they are "Christians," and thus

get themselves ostracized by their comrades--sometimes to such an

extent that they find it unpleasant to remain in the school. Then

the missionaries write home to sectarian papers some story about the

persecution of Christians in Japan, "_for refusing to worship an Idol

of the Emperor_"![3] Such incidents are, of course, infrequent, and

serve only to indicate those methods by which the foreign evangelizers

manage to defeat the real purpose of their mission.

Probably their fanatical attacks, not only upon the native spirit,

the native religion, and the native code of ethics, but even

upon the native dress and customs, may partly account for some

recent extraordinary displays of national feeling by the Japanese

Christians themselves. Some have openly expressed their desire to

dispense altogether with the presence of foreign proselytizers,

and to create a new and peculiar Christianity, to be essentially

Japanese and essentially national in spirit. Others have gone much

further,--demanding that all mission schools, churches, and other

property, now held (to satisfy or evade law) in Japanese names, shall

be made over in fact as well as name to Japanese Christians, as a

proof of the purity of the motives professed. And in sundry cases

it has already been found necessary to surrender mission schools

altogether to native direction.

I spoke in a former paper of the splendid enthusiasm with which the

entire nation had seconded the educational efforts and purposes of the

Government.[4] Not less zeal and self-denial have been shown in aid

of the national measures of self-defense. The Emperor himself having

set the example, by devoting a large part of his private income to the

purchase of ships-of-war, no murmur was excited by the edict requiring

one tenth of all government salaries for the same purpose. Every

military or naval officer, every professor or teacher, and nearly every

employee of the Civil Service[5] thus contributes monthly to the naval

defense. Minister, peer, or member of Parliament, is no more exempt

than the humblest post-office clerk. Besides these contributions by

edict, to continue for six years, generous donations are voluntarily

made by rich land-owners, merchants, and hankers throughout the Empire.

For, in order to save herself, Japan must become strong quickly: the

outer pressure upon her is much too serious to admit of delay. Her

efforts are almost incredible, and their success is not improbable. But

the odds against her are vast; and she may--stumble. Will she stumble?

It is very hard to predict. But a future misfortune could scarcely

be the result of any weakening of the national spirit. It would be

far more likely to occur as a result of political mistakes,--of rash

self-confidence.

[1] This was written in 1893.

[2] The ceremony of saluting His Majesty's picture is only a repetition

of the ceremony required on presentation at court. A bow; three steps

forward; a deeper how; three more steps forward, and a very low how. On

retiring from the Imperial presence, the visitor walks backward, bowing

again three times as before.

[3] This is an authentic text.

[4] See _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan_.

[5] Letter-carriers and ordinary policemen are exempted. But the salary

of a policeman is only about six yen a month; that of a letter-carrier

much less.

IX

It still remains to ask what is the likely fate of the old morality

in the midst of all this absorption, assimilation, and reaction. And

I think an answer is partly suggested in the following conversation

which I had recently with a student of the University. It is written

from memory, and is therefore not exactly verbatim, but has interest

as representing the thought of the new generation---witnesses of the

vanishing of the gods:--

"Sir, what was your opinion when you first came to this country, about

the Japanese? Please to be quite frank with me."

"The young Japanese of to-day?"

"No."

"Then you mean those who still follow the ancient customs, and maintain

the ancient forms of courtesy,--the delightful old men, like your

former Chinese teacher, who still represent the old samurai spirit?"

"Yes. Mr. A---- is an ideal samurai. I mean such as he."

"I thought them all that is good and noble. They seemed to me just like

their own gods."

"And do you still think so well of them?"

"Yes. And the more I see the Japanese of the new generation, the more I

admire the men of the old."

"We also admire them. But, as a foreigner, you must also have observed

their defects."

"What defects?"

"Defects in practical knowledge of the Western kind."

"But to judge the men of one civilization by the standard requirements

of another, which is totally different in organization, would be

unjust. It seems to me that the more perfectly a man represents his

own civilization, the more we must esteem him as a citizen, and as a

gentleman. And judged by their own standards, which were morally very

high, the old Japanese appear to me almost perfect men."

"In what respect?"

"In kindness, in courtesy, in heroism, in self-control, in power of

self-sacrifice, in filial piety, in simple faith, and in the capacity

to be contented with a little."

"But would such qualities be sufficient to assure practical success in

the struggle of Western life?"

"Not exactly; but some of them would assist."

"The qualities really necessary for practical success in Western life

are just those qualities wanting to the old Japanese--are they not?"

"I think so."

"And our old society cultivated those qualities of unselfishness,

and courtesy, and benevolence which you admire, at the sacrifice of

the individual. But Western society cultivates the individual by

unrestricted competition,--competition in the power of thinking and

acting."

"I think that is true."

"But in order that Japan be able to keep her place among nations, she

must adopt the industrial and commercial methods of the West. Her

future depends upon her industrial development; but there can be no

development if we continue to follow our ancient morals and manners."

"Why?"

"Not to be able to compete with the West means ruin; but to compete

with the West we must follow the methods of the West; and these are

quite contrary to the old morality."

"Perhaps."

"I do not think it can be doubted. To do any kind of business upon a

very large scale, men must not be checked by the idea that no advantage

should be sought which could injure the business of others. And on

the other hand, wherever there is no restraint on competition, men who

hesitate to compete because of mere kindliness of heart, must fail.

The law of the struggle is that the strong and active shall win, the

weak and the foolish and the indifferent lose. But our old morality

condemned such competition."

"That is true."

"Then, Sir, no matter how good the old morality, we cannot make any

great industrial progress, nor even preserve our national independence,

by following it. We must forsake our past. We must substitute law for

morality."

"But it is not a good substitute."

"It has been a good substitute in the West, if we can judge by the

material greatness and power of England. We must learn in Japan to be

moral by reason, instead of being moral by emotion. A knowledge of the

moral reason of law is itself a moral knowledge."

"For you, and those who study cosmic law, perhaps. But what of the

common people?"

"They will try to follow the old religion; they will continue to trust

in their gods. But life will, perhaps, become more difficult for them.

They were happy in the ancient days."

* * * * *

The foregoing essay was written two years ago. Later political events

and the signing of new treaties obliged me to remodel it last year;

and now, while the proofs are passing through my hands, the events of

the war with China compel some further remarks. What none could have

predicted in 1893 the whole world recognizes in 1895 with astonishment

and with admiration. Japan has won in her jiujutsu. Her autonomy is

practically restored, her place among civilized nations seems to be

assured: she has passed forever out of Western tutelage. What neither

her arts nor her virtues could ever have gained for her, she has

obtained by the very first display of her new scientific powers of

aggression and destruction.

Not a little has been hastily said about long secret preparation

for the war made by Japan, and about the flimsiness of her pretexts

for entering upon it. I believe that the purposes of her military

preparations were never other than those indicated in the preceding

chapter. It was to recover her independence that Japan steadily

cultivated her military strength for twenty-five years. But

successive pulses of popular reaction against foreign influence

during that period--each stronger than the preceding--warned the

Government of the nation's growing consciousness of power and of its

ever-increasing irritation against the treaties. The reaction of

1893-94 took so menacing a form through the House of Representatives

that the dissolution of the Diet became an immediate necessity. But

even repeated parliamentary dissolutions could only have postponed

the issue. It has since been averted partly by the new treaties,

and partly by the sudden loosening of the Empire's military force

against China. Should it not be obvious that only the merciless

industrial and political pressure exercised by a combined Occident

against Japan really compelled this war,--as a manifestation of force

in the direction of least resistance? Happily that manifestation

has been effectual. Japan has proved herself able to hold her own

against the world. She has no wish to break her industrial relations

with the Occident unless further imposed upon; but with the military

revival of her Empire it is almost certain that the day of Occidental

influence upon her--whether direct or indirect--is definitely over.

Further anti-foreign reaction may be expected in the natural order of

things,--not necessarily either violent or unreasonable, but embodying

the fullest reassertion of national individuality. Some change even in

the form of government is not impossible, considering the questionable

results of experimentation with Constitutional Government made by a

people accustomed for untold centuries to autocratic rule. But the

fallacy of Sir Harry Parkes's prediction that Japan would become "a

South American republic" warns against ventures to anticipate the

future of this wonderful and enigmatic race.

It is true that the war is not yet over;--but the ultimate triumph of

Japan seems beyond doubt,--even allowing for the formidable chances of

a revolution in China. The world is already asking with some anxiety

what will come next? Perhaps the compulsion of the most peaceable and

most conservative of all nations, under both Japanese and Occidental

pressure, to really master our arts of war in self-defense. After that

perhaps a great military awakening of China, who would be quite likely,

under the same circumstances as made New Japan, to turn her arms _South

and West_. For possible ultimate consequences, consult Dr. Pearson's

recent book, _National Character_.

It is to be remembered that the art of jiujutsu was invented in China.

And the West has yet to reckon with China,--China, the ancient teacher

of Japan,--China, over whose changeless millions successive storms

of conquest have passed only as a wind over reeds. Under compulsion,

indeed, she may be forced, like Japan, to defend her integrity by

jiujutsu. But the end of that prodigious jiujutsu might have results

the most serious for the entire world. It might be reserved for China

to avenge all those aggressions, extortions, exterminations, of which

the colonizing West has been guilty in dealing with feebler races.

Already thinkers, summarizing the experience of the two great

colonizing nations,--thinkers not to be ignored, both French and

English,--have predicted that the earth will never be fully dominated

by the races of the West, and that the future belongs to the Orient.

Such, too, are the convictions of many who have learned by long sojourn

in the East to see beneath the surface of that strange humanity so

utterly removed from us in thought,--to comprehend the depth and force

of its tides of life,--to understand its immeasurable capacities of

assimilation,--to discern its powers of self-adaptation to almost

any environment between the arctic and antarctic circles. And in the

judgment of such observers nothing less than the extermination of a

race comprising more than one third of the world's population could now

assure us even of the future of our own civilization.

Perhaps, as has been recently averred by Dr. Pearson, the long history

of Western expansion and aggression is even now approaching its close.

Perhaps our civilization has girdled the earth only to force the study

of our arts of destruction and our arts of industrial competition upon

races much more inclined to use them against us than for us. Even to do

this we had to place most of the world under tribute,--so colossal were

the powers needed. Perhaps we could not have attempted less, because

the tremendous social machinery we have created, threatens, like the

Demon of the old legend, to devour us in the same hour that we can find

no more tasks for it.

A wondrous creation, indeed, this civilization of ours,--ever growing

higher out of an abyss of ever-deepening pain; but it seems also to

many not less monstrous than wonderful. That it may crumble suddenly in

a social earthquake has long been the evil dream of those who dwell in

its summits. That as a social structure it cannot endure, by reason of

its moral foundation, is the teaching of Oriental wisdom.

Certainly the results of its labors cannot pass away till man shall

have fully played out the drama of his existence upon this planet.

It has resurrected the past;--it has revived the languages of the

dead;--it has wrested countless priceless secrets from Nature;--it has

analyzed suns and vanquished space and time;--it has compelled the

invisible to become visible;--it has torn away all veils save the veil

of the Infinite;--it has founded ten thousand systems of knowledge;--it

has expanded the modern brain beyond the cubic capacity of the mediæval

skull;--it has evolved the most noble, even if it has also evolved

the most detestable, forms of individuality;--it has developed the

most exquisite sympathies and the loftiest emotions known to man, even

though it has developed likewise forms of selfishness and of suffering

impossible in other eras. Intellectually it has grown beyond the

altitude of the stars. That it must, in any event, bear to the future

a relation incomparably vaster than that of Greek civilization to the

past, is impossible to disbelieve.

But more and more each year it exemplifies the law that the greater

the complexity of an organism, the greater also its susceptibility to

fatal hurt Always, as its energies increase, is there evolved within

it a deeper, a keener, a more exquisitely ramified sensibility to

every shock or wound,--to every exterior force of change. Already the

mere results of a drought or a famine in the remotest parts of the

earth, the destruction of the smallest centre of supply, the exhaustion

of a mine, the least temporary stoppage of any commercial vein or

artery, the slightest pressure upon any industrial nerve, may produce

disintegrations that carry shocks of pain into every portion of the

enormous structure. And the wondrous capacity of that structure to

oppose exterior forces by corresponding changes within itself would

appear to be now endangered by internal changes of a totally different

character. Certainly our civilization is developing the individual more

and more. But is it not now developing him much as artificial heat

and colored light and chemical nutrition might develop a plant under

glass? Is it not rapidly evolving millions into purely special fitness

for conditions impossible to maintain,--of luxury without limit for

the few, of merciless servitude to steel and steam for the many? To

such doubts the reply has been given that social transformations will

supply the means of providing against perils, and of recuperating all

losses. That, for a time at least, social reforms will work miracles

is much more than a hope. But the ultimate problem of our future seems

to be one that no conceivable social change can happily solve,--not

even supposing possible the establishment of an absolutely perfect

communism,--because the fate of the higher races seems to depend upon

their true value in the future economy of Nature. To the query, "Are

we not the Superior Race?"--we may emphatically answer "Yes;" but this

affirmative will not satisfactorily answer a still more important

question, "Are we the fittest to survive?"

Wherein consists the fitness for survival? In the capacity of

self-adaptation to any and every environment;--in the instantaneous

ability to face the unforeseen;--in the inherent power to meet and to

master all opposing natural influences. And surely not in the mere

capacity to adapt ourselves to factitious environments of our own

invention, or to abnormal influences of our own manufacture,--but only

in the simple power to live. Now in this simple power of living, our

so-called higher races are immensely inferior to the races of the Far

East. Though the physical energies and the intellectual resources of

the Occidental exceed those of the Oriental, they can be maintained

only at an expense totally incommensurate with the racial advantage.

For the Oriental has proved his ability to study and to master the

results of our science upon a diet of rice, and on as simple a diet can

learn to manufacture and to utilize our most complicated inventions.

But the Occidental cannot even live except at a cost sufficient for

the maintenance of twenty Oriental lives. In our very superiority lies

the secret of our fatal weakness. Our physical machinery requires a

fuel too costly to pay for the running of it in a perfectly conceivable

future period of race-competition and pressure of population.

Before, and very probably since, the apparition of Man, various

races of huge and wonderful creatures, now extinct, lived on this

planet. They were not all exterminated by the attacks of natural

enemies: many seem to have perished simply by reason of the enormous

costliness of their structures at a time when the earth was forced to

become less prodigal of her gifts. Even so it may be that the Western

Races will perish--because of the cost of their existence. Having

accomplished their uttermost, they may vanish from the face of the

world,--supplanted by peoples better fitted for survival.

Just as we have exterminated feebler races by merely _overliving_

them,--by monopolizing and absorbing, almost without conscious

effort, everything necessary to their happiness,--so may we

ourselves be exterminated at last by races capable of underliving

us, of monopolizing all our necessities; races more patient, more

self-denying, more fertile, and much less expensive for Nature to

support. These would doubtless inherit our wisdom, adopt our more

useful inventions, continue the best of our industries,--perhaps

even perpetuate what is most worthy to endure in our sciences and

our arts. But they would scarcely regret our disappearance any more

than we ourselves regret the extinction of the dinotherium or the

ichthyosaurus.

VIII

THE RED BRIDAL

Falling in love at first sight is less common in Japan than in the

West; partly because of the peculiar constitution of Eastern society,

and partly because much sorrow is prevented by early marriages which

parents arrange. Love suicides, on the other hand, are not infrequent;

but they have the particularity of being nearly always double.

Moreover, they must be considered, in the majority of instances, the

results of improper relationships. Still, there are honest and brave

exceptions; and these occur usually in country districts. The love

in such a tragedy may have evolved suddenly out of the most innocent

and natural boy-and-girl friendship, and may have a history dating

back to the childhood of the victims. But even then there remains a

very curious difference between a Western double suicide for love

and a Japanese jōshi. The Oriental suicide is not the result of a

blind, quick frenzy of pain. It is not only cool and methodical: it is

sacramental. It involves a marriage of which the certificate is death.

The twain pledge themselves to each other in the presence of the gods,

write their farewell letters, and die. No pledge can be more profoundly

sacred than this. And therefore, if it should happen that, by sudden

outside interference and by medical skill, one of the pair is snatched

from death, that one is bound by the most solemn obligation of love and

honor to cast away life at the first possible opportunity. Of course,

if both are saved, all may go well. But it were better to commit any

crime of violence punishable with half a hundred years of state prison

than to become known as a man who, after pledging his faith to die with

a girl, had left her to travel to the Meido alone. The woman who should

fail in her vow might be partially forgiven; but the man who survived a

jōshi through interference, and allowed himself to live on because his

purpose was once frustrated, would be regarded all his mortal days as a

perjurer, a murderer, a bestial coward, a disgrace to human nature. I

knew of one such case--but I would now rather try to tell the story of

an humble love affair which happened at a village in one of the eastern

provinces.

I